Sympathy In The Film 'A Class Divided'

889 Words2 Pages

A Class Divided
Many individuals mislead themselves to think their expressing empathy for someone, not realizing there really feeling sympathy. Empathy is defined in the text as, “the ability to re-create another person’s perspective, to experience the world from the others point of view()”. Sympathy differs from empathy by viewing the other person’s situation from your point of view, instead of the other persons point of view. Empathy involves three dimensions in order for a person to express it from another point of view. One dimension involves perspective taking which is an attempt to take on the viewpoint of the other person. Second, an emotional dimension that helps us get closer to experiencing others’ feelings. Finally, a third dimension is a genuine …show more content…

The exercise that the teacher performed in the film A Class Divided reached all the dimensions of empathy.
The exercise that she performed on her third grade class was during a very important time in history. She described how she made the decision to perform the exercise the next day to her third grade class mates on the night of Martin Luther King’s death. Knowing that her students were going to come in with questions that she couldn’t answer, the exercise would really give them a taste on what discrimination felt like to people of a different race. The exercise was thought of before but the white men that were hate talking about the

Open Document