Education: Teaching Love (Philia/Brotherly love) as a Priority Cause
TLDR: Teaching love as a core curriculum (or even a basic one) could be a highly effective path to transforming the world and impacting many of the core issues EA aims to address.
@Yassin Alaya in her Rational Education as a Cause Priority? post advocates for the teaching of Philosophy, Psychology, Microeconomics and statistics as core school subjects.
@TimSpreeuwers discusses How to bring EA into the classroom? and I believe may be onto something with his assignments to students of finding a worthwhile charity for him to donate to.
My hypothesis is that what the world most needs is… more love. Brotherly love is defined as “feelings of humanity and compassion towards one’s fellow humans.” by Oxford Languages.
While philosophy and rational thinking are great EA values, those tend to be dryer subjects that not everyone may be suited for. Love, on the other hand, is a value generally shared and desired by all countries/peoples and could be taught from early age. I get the feeling that EA’s tend to frown on fuzzies, however I would argue that as it is what currently drives most people, it is likely to have a much greater impact.
Exact curriculum can be debated/researched (I and I suspect others likely would be willing to fund research/development), however teaching all humans the basics of humanity and compassion (with possible advanced classes on EA for those keen on the subject) could arguably have an enormous impact on almost all causes discussed here and many more.
If people were taught to listen to each other, care for one another, to disagree/dislike actions/opinions but to nonetheless respect/value/be compassionate towards the PEOPLE behind them, most issues we face in the world and as individuals would, I argue, become MUCH easier to address (and/or not arise in the first place). (research could be done if necessary)
I am new here (love the place, my brain’s in heaven though I’ll make some suggestions in a separate post), so perhaps I am missing something, but it feels like the world is AWARE that more love is needed, that we should “do something” about it, but doesn’t know how to go about it.
It feels like (am I allowed to say stuff like that here? ;) ) if we could come up with a healthy, inclusive (but respectful of differing opinions), curriculum that -encourages/rewards- love but does not impose it, governments the world over would be hard-pressed to argue that “more love” is unnecessary/undesirable. As it likely would make policing much easier/less resource intensive (at least in theory, as it may spur more peaceful movements, which I read somewhere are actually more effective), even authoritarian regimes may be encouraged to adopt it.
Arguably, it ought to set billions on a path to altruism, with the more rational portion of them likely to join EA. Considering the almost limitless impact this could have over time, I would argue that even a small chance of success is worth investing in. Furthermore, any research/development of tools/curricula to help humanity learn be more loving could have very high value, even if not included in all/any schools.
In conclusion, I would love to discuss this, and perhaps gather a group/work with Effective Philanthropy to fund/help with research on the topic.
I suspect there would be a lot of challenges with this, such as how to measure/assess the impact, and the actual implementation of the project/intervention. The details matter a lot. But I also think that at its core this idea has merit.
I was just recently thinking about how reading two pieces of writing in my early 20s had a very beneficial effect on my long-term happiness. If I was building a curiculum on something like how to have a happy life or practical wisdom, I’d include these.
If money doesn’t make you happy, then you probably aren’t spending it right
Happiness: Lessons from a New Science
I welcome this idea! More love would be a good thing, and we would rather make this change earlier in the life course.
I think implementation is hard. This is a big “if”:
As Joseph said, it is difficult to assess educational interventions. When it comes to knowledge transfer we can be generally confident that education is helping—calculus classes increase students’ aptitude for calculus. But love?
Recent research suggests that mindfulness interventions in schools were much less impactful than hoped. I suspect that something like mindfulness works well if you opt in—and is much less useful if you didn’t ask for it.
To explore this idea further, I recommend looking for comparable values-based educational experiments that have been tried in the past (maybe something about attitudes to sexuality, or religious tolerance, or positive thinking, or even campaigns to instil hate). Did they succeed in changing values? If they failed, why did they fail? If they succeeded, what can we learn from them?
Extremist indoctrination campaigns clearly have an impact, to the point of getting member to self-sacrifice. Not the path i would want to explore.
While I’d like to -encourage- love and perhaps other related/close/universally accepted positive values (don’t steal, don’t murder/hurt others type things), I believe everyone should retain self-agency.
Basically, people -should- be free to -choose- to hurt others (or at least not benefit them) if they so decide, possibly incurring society’s wrath/punishment in the process depending on the degree of harm, as it is currently done (reform of prisons/legal punishments is another topic).
Let’s steer clear of 1984. Most people find helping others fulfilling to some degree. We ought to encourage that and make it an easy and early realization. Those that aren’t interested can drop out after going through the 101 if they so choose.
I posit that the cost of researching and developing/testing a curriculum to that effect would be minimal compared to the possible impact.
And yes it’s a big “if”, but we don’t have to get it perfectly right from the get-go.
I’ll be back in the Philippines in a few weeks, where i will be launching a sort of 360 housing/living/community program, aimed at the poorest of the poor/most excluded to provide safety, counseling, nutrition, health as well as education, life and professional skills etc. I’d love to have -something- like this to try out with those that join.
My experience is that the culture is -already- very Altruistic-oriented, if often un-efficiently so. I’d very much like for them NOT to lose that aspect of the culture if/when they join the capitalist bandwagon.
I think indoctrination (at least among adults) is actually surprisingly difficult. The psychologist Hugo Mercier was recently on the 80,000 Hours podcast to discuss why.
I’d also echo others’ comments that I think testing a curriculum will be relatively hard. Even education programs with clear measurables (e.g. financial literacy programs, work-skills programs for former convicts, second language programs) often end up unsuccessful. It would be even more difficult to teach “love.” How do you measure how loving someone is and reliably teach it to others?