Abstract

Peterson, A.. Compassion and Education: Cultivating Compassionate Children, Schools and Communities. In this thoughtful and scholarly work, Peterson tackles the nature of compassion as a relational human property and applies it to the context of education. Essentially, Peterson’s argument is that compassion is a human virtue which shapes an individual’s personal and social life and that it comprises ‘particular emotional, cognitive and active responses which recognize common humanity with one’s fellow human beings’. Peterson’s wide-ranging discussion of compassion’s cognitive and emotional domains establishes a convincing case that young children can learn about, and value, compassion as a defining aspect of the human condition through their education.