Too little
Conditional welcome
“Let us see whether you belong here.”
A first result becomes a test of whether the person deserves consideration.
Kindness
Let welcome arrive before the right answer.
A settled wish for the good of others.
Kindness is a settled wish for another person’s good. In teaching, it gives a learner a place before their work has impressed you. It is more than a pleasant manner: goodwill can require a clear correction, a practical adjustment, or a limit that protects the group.
Kindness gives a welcome that is not an entrance examination
The new learner arrives with an empty notebook and an apology. You have prepared a splendid introductory quiz. For a moment, even your greeting seems to be waiting for a score. Then you move a chair, offer a page, and begin with their name. The quiz can do its own job later.
Finding the balance in Kindness
An illustrative everyday situation
A learner brings an unsuccessful first attempt to a workshop.
A fitting response
Goodwill with standards
“You are welcome here. Let us find a place to start.”
The person receives welcome and the work receives honest attention.
Pursued too far
Approval of everything
“It is perfect; no need to change anything.”
Avoiding all difficulty withholds the help the learner came for.
You can be glad someone has come without pretending that their work is finished.
When the situation changes
A welcoming response need not be effusive. A clear introduction, a usable place and an unhurried explanation can express goodwill without asking anyone to perform gratitude.
What Kindness makes possible
Learning has room for first attempts when consideration does not depend on getting things right. Kindness keeps the learner’s good in view when your own wish to be admired, obeyed or quickly finished grows louder.
Kindness in ordinary life
An adult returns to study
You explain an unfamiliar routine without making the years away from a classroom into a joke.
A small discovery
You share a learner’s pleasure in a newly understood idea without turning it into a comparison with everyone else.
Nearby virtues, different work
Generosity
Generosity offers time or resources; kindness is the goodwill that can guide the offer.
Gentleness
Gentleness avoids needless harshness; kindness also initiates welcome when no correction is needed.
Kindness and its counterfeits
Counterfeit: Niceness that avoids help
Keeping every exchange pleasant can leave a real difficulty untouched. Say what needs attention without withdrawing goodwill.
Counterfeit: Kindness as a bargain
A friendly manner is not a purchase of trust, affection or compliance. Let an offer remain an offer.
How to cultivate Kindness
Notice who receives your warmest greeting and who must first prove themselves.
Make one ordinary beginning easier to enter.
Separate your regard for the person from your assessment of this attempt.
Try it today
Respect privacy, personal space and professional boundaries. Kindness does not require touch, personal disclosure, special intimacy, or tolerating harmful conduct.
At the next ordinary learning encounter, offer a clear welcome and one useful orientation. Let the learner choose how much to say about themselves.
When helping someone learn
Welcome the learner before judging the work.
Questions worth returning to
What part of my welcome was waiting for a good performance?
What would serve this learner’s good without requiring their gratitude?
Keep the practice proportionate
Respect privacy, personal space and professional boundaries. Kindness does not require touch, personal disclosure, special intimacy, or tolerating harmful conduct.
About these practices · DisclaimerQuotations and further reading
Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.
I am glad to see you, my dear, and hope you’ll be happy here,
Louisa May Alcott · Little Men · chapter I, Nat; Mrs. Bhaer speaking · excerpt
Mrs. Bhaer welcomes Nat to the fictional school before testing his accomplishments. Retain the welcome without making physical affection or family intimacy a teaching requirement.
Children are born persons.
Charlotte M. Mason · Home Education · preface; synopsis, principle 1 · excerpt
Mason begins with personhood rather than achievement. The teaching application is regard for the learner before a mark, without adopting her whole historical theory of authority.
To those who are good (to me), I am good; and to those who are not good (to me), I am also good;
Laozi · Tao Te Ching · 49.2 · James Legge translation · excerpt
Laozi’s sage does not restrict goodwill to those who return it. This does not promise that a teacher’s kindness will change every response or require enduring harm.
What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?
George Eliot · Middlemarch · chapter LXXII; Dorothea speaking · excerpt
Dorothea speaks of easing another person’s difficulty. A teacher can offer an ordinary considerate beginning without demanding evidence of distress.
Seek the good of other men, but be not in bondage to their faces or fancies;
Francis Bacon · Essays · Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature · excerpt
Bacon separates seeking another’s good from being governed by approval. Kindness can sustain a necessary boundary or honest correction.
no one was allowed to mock him
Louisa May Alcott · Little Men · chapter II, The Boys; narrator · excerpt
Alcott’s fictional school protects a boy who stutters from mockery. Kindness includes an active welcome and protection of dignity; the surrounding historical treatment assumptions are not adopted.
The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.
Kahlil Gibran · The Prophet · On Teaching; Almustafa speaking · excerpt
Almustafa’s poetic teacher offers lovingness as well as instruction. Read this as goodwill supporting learning, not a demand for intimacy or a denial of knowledge.
Continue exploring
Take these ideas into everyday life
Read freely, follow the nineteen-virtue program, or adapt this collection in My Virtues. These practices concern your own choices, not a learner’s performance.