Dear Nadhim Zahawi, teaching empathy is difficult while Tory scandals pile up | Michael Rosen
Saturday 7th May 2022
The party’s contempt for refugees and the goings on in Westminster make conveying moral values a tough job
I was in a secondary school last week, asked in to talk about how books and writing help with developing a sense of empathy. Before the session, I went through my books looking for pieces that might suggest to the students how they were being invited to put themselves in someone else’s shoes.
I started with something personal: when I was 11, I came across a photo of my mother with a baby on her lap. I asked my father whether this was me or my brother. He looked and said it wasn’t either of us, it was the baby who died, called Alan. As I explained in my poem “Going through the old photos”, this was the first time that I had ever heard about this baby brother. The piece ends with a question about my parents: though my father mentioned Alan several times down the years, my mother never did; I ask myself who was the more upset about it. I put that to the students.
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