Page 371 - The Social Animal

Prejudice 353

father at the airport. In the next panel, a letter carrier delivers a pack-
age to the boy. In the third panel, the boy opens the package, finds a
toy airplane inside, and bursts into tears. Bridgeman asked the chil-
dren why they thought the little boy burst into tears at the sight of
the airplane. Nearly all of the children could answer correctly—be-
cause the toy airplane reminded him of how much he missed his fa-
ther. Then Bridgeman asked the crucial question: “What did the
letter carrier think when he saw the boy open the package and start
to cry?”
Most children of this age make a consistent error; they assume
that everyone knows what they know. Thus, the youngsters from the
traditional classrooms thought that the letter carrier would know the
boy was sad because the gift reminded him of his father leaving. But
the children who had participated in the jigsaw classroom responded
differently. Because of their experience with the jigsaw method they
had developed the ability to take the perspective of the letter car-
rier—to put themselves in his shoes; therefore, they realized that he
would be confused at seeing the boy cry over receiving a nice present
because the letter carrier hadn’t witnessed the farewell scene at the
airport.
At first glance, this might not seem very important. After all,
who cares whether kids have the ability to figure out what is in the
mind of a cartoon character? In point of fact, we should all care—a
great deal. Recall our discussion of the Columbine tragedy in the
preceding chapter. In that chapter we suggested how important em-
pathy is in curbing aggression. The extent to which youngsters can
develop the ability to see the world from the perspective of another
human being has profound implications for interpersonal relations in
general. When we develop the ability to understand what another
person is going through, it increases the probability that our heart
will open to that person. Once our heart opens to another person, it
becomes virtually impossible to feel prejudice against that person, to
bully that person, to taunt that person, to humiliate that person. My
guess is that, if the jigsaw strategy had been used in Columbine High
School (or in the elementary and middle schools that feed into
Columbine), the tragedy could have been avoided and those young-
sters would be alive today.
My students and I invented the jigsaw technique in 1971. Sub-
sequently, similar cooperative techniques were developed by others. 104