This is an overdue article on an important question - what is the purpose of teaching social science? Compared to natural science and engineering subjects, social sciences generally receive less funding and have gloomier job prospects - greater difficulty in finding a job and on average, lower salaries at different stages of careers. For students who go to schools only to earn money, it seems less a good choice to take a social science course than an engineering course. Despite this, social science carries a special mission - helping people understand the social world with scientific tools and better sitting in other people’s shoes.
When I was still a Sociology of law, criminology, and deviance student at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, there was a debate among social scientists, especially sociologists, on Twitter about what an introduction to sociology class should teach its students. The scholar who initiated the debate argued that it is a failure of the subject that students who took the intro class overwhelmingly said that one of their biggest takeaways was stronger compassion but not as this many students said they learned hard-core knowledge. She herein argued that professors should teach more about sociology and less about compassion or emotions.
However, is this a bad thing? In fact, compassion is such an important skill that it is what makes us human, not animals. Animals do not have compassion, or at least they don’t do that purposefully. It should be the success of a subject rather than a failure should this subject make students more easily compassionate to others. Undeniably we go to college (here, I am using colleges interchangeably with universities, despite that there are minor differences between these two) and receive higher education in hope that we can find a job easier and earn more money. Notwithstanding, for a country, universities are also the places that cultivate talents who not only have professional knowledge in their field but with morals and critical thinking abilities.
I am skeptical if a class or a subject could take on such important tasks.
Since this post specifically talks about sociology, I want to talk a little bit about the subject before diving into why compassion is hard to be developed from courses. Sociology is a subject about social facts, social problems, and social constructions of these facts and problems. A typical sociologist studying corrections would ask what are the degrees of racial disparities in incarcerating facilities, what social factors caused these disparities, and how to fix them. For instance, the invisible links between mass incarcerations and a new age of new Jim Crow where African Americans are punished in unpublic but systematic ways would be a standard sociology topic, whereas, in contrast, other social scientists may ponder questions, such as what political forces drive racial disparities in the criminal justice space, how to evaluate a crime prevention program, or are people naturally psychopaths? Of course, a sociology study is beyond intuitions and based on scientific research methods, for example, statistical analysis or ethnography. Because of the nature of the subject, students in a sociology class usually learn more about the “dark corners” of society. They, therefore, may develop some sympathies with certain social groups that have a less degree of social, economical, and political power. However, although compassion might work as a side effect, sociology doesn’t teach compassion nor does any other social science subject and such skill can not be taught.
This is because compassion is a skill that comes with the process of socialization, which makes people who already have compassion more compassionate about others and makes people who do not more discompassionate. I am using the word “socialization” because conflicts and pursuits of own benefit are what is inscribed in humans' DNAs. Compassion is not, which origins from two places: one, we are social animals, and two, we humans learned in history that sympathies make us more productive in work and healthier both mentally and physically. It is only because of the development of compassion that a civilization can be called civilization. However, as reflected in so many examples, our compassion is frequently only between certain social groups, for example, a slave master can not compassionate his slaves and Ancient Roman citizens can not compassionate noncitizens like women. The exclusive nature of compassion passes down from each generation to another and is written by different laws. This is also why identity politics really matter that disturbance and political ignorance are usually what happened when people make policies for other identity groups (because they simply can’t relate their feelings).
Moreover, many professions have their own subcultures that obstruct the cultivation of real compassion. Sociologist Edwin Sutherland noted in his subculture theory that in some occupations, people make their own norms and rules that off-group people can not understand, and sometimes the subgroup culture may be opposite to what everyone accepts in society. He uses the theory to mainly explain white-collar crime and gangs, but this idea can be seen in many other places as well. Another example of this is the police culture that worships militarism and intentionally rejected reform-minded people to maintain its cliche (policing is my top research interest, and I used to work with a non-profit group against police brutality). This phenomenon has been widespread in many police departments, long before the killing of George Floyd. While I was working with the nonprofit (Communities United Against Police Brutality, or CUAPB), there was a poster hung on the wall of our base that demands support and justice for two officers who were fired for standing along with protestors and asking their department to change unreasonable policies. In a similar fashion, one good friend of mine who spent her whole life preparing to be an officer was threatened by her department because of filming other officers’ misconducts, i.e. doing cop watches. Both actions were protected by the First Amendment as declared by many Supreme Court rulings. However, they faced consequences, such as exclusion, expulsion, lawsuits, and threats for their actions because what they did were deemed unacceptable by the police subculture that emphasizes unity and cohesion and worships violence and personal bravery. The fact that morals may not always be right shed light on the power of subculture.
I want to talk a little bit deeper about this. The recent best-selling book on Amazon, The End of Policing, by Alex Vitale, was marketed with the central message that police culture, diversity, or training are not the root causes of police violence. Instead, policing itself is. Alex was right on the second half of his words, though he didn’t explain it well and spoke it too radically. The issue of police brutality in the US is largely related to the militarization of police departments, which has dramatically changed officers' responsibilities from guardians to soldiers and worsened their relationships with community members whom they swore to protect. However, denying the influence of police training, method and other important factors is a fatal fallacy for police researchers. The warrior battleground mindset, aka the “us vs them” mentality, that officers developed during their police training, fostered them to internalize each civilian encounter as a life-or-death situation so that they must treat community members as enemies to protect themselves. Officers, to ensure they can still survive after this encounter, pulled out their guns toward community members, screamed at them, and fired shots without a reasonable mind to judge the level of danger in the situation (imminent danger must be presented for officers to deploy their force as decided in Connor vs Graham). Instead of using force, in a lot of situations, what officers should do is prioritize de-escalation strategies to mitigate the danger, especially when the suspect displayed mental issues.
With the warrior mentality, officers only developed compassions with their partners who sit in the squad car with them but not lives lying on the ground, bleeding and about to die. In the case of Thurman Blevins which I helped investigate with other volunteers from CUAPB, officers testified in their interview with BCA (Bureau of Criminal Apprehension) that they were concerned about their partner’s safety during the encounter that they decided to shoot the suspect. These officers certainly have compassion. It is just that they are only compassionate to certain people.
This is why I am making the argument that compassion can not be taught. People who found them with stronger compassions must first have compassion. Should someone be cold-blooded or that they only develop sympathy toward some people but not others, no class can change them. Even if someone has greater compassion because of their training in sociology, or more generally, social science, the power of subculture in their occupation may be strong enough to “distort” and “reverse” their ability to compassion others.
For me, it is sad that sociology is only sociology, not some magical medicine for the ill of being compassionless. Despite this, in an age where we have less care for others, teaching social science is still imperative.
Note: An original version of this article was written in June 2022.