Compassion Education Reader

Aboriginal Australian painting, "The Wurreker" (Message Carriers) by Kevin J Williams. The story of the painting is that of Wile the Possum and Tyuling the Goanna. Wile and Tyuling are the Totems of learning and they are seen reaching out to people in the community to carry the messages of knowledge.  The red circle in the middle of the painting represents the heart of the community.

The Education Compassion Reader is divided into topics that range in presentation from investigating compassion and other related skills (i.e., altruism,  empathy, forgiveness, gratitude, happiness, integrity, justice, kindness, mindfulness, resilience, self-compassion, and responsibility), and finding ways that they can be applied to education, to reading about some of the latest research on the science of compassion. 

Of utmost importance for parents, as well as teachers, are articles that relate directly to raising a responsible child. Also, there are two sections that speak to new ideas and theories about education.  "Thinking about Education," provides background information and in most cases, video presentations on radical ("getting to the root") and transformational ideas for the classroom and beyond, from pre-school to graduate school, and within community-based settings. "Successful Education Models and Organizations" presents new approaches that are demonstrating some significant measure of success throughout the global community.

The purpose of this Compassion Reader, like "readers" in all other of our program sectors (i.e., business, cities, healthcare, peace and religion) is to provide ideas and processes that are being developed, experimented with and used successfully in various communities. These programs and ideas can be considered by any educational institution as they explore their compassion action plan.