In the fast-evolving world of modern education, there’s an undeniable shift toward academic excellence, technological advancement, and standardized testing. Schools, colleges, and universities are increasingly focused on measurable outcomes—grades, scores, and degrees. While these metrics are important, a critical aspect of education often gets left behind in the rush for success: empathy.

Empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of others, is an essential human skill. It’s the foundation of strong relationships, communities, and societies. However, in today's educational systems, empathy seems to be sidelined. Let’s explore why this is happening and the consequences it has for students, educators, and society as a whole.

The Shift Toward Standardized Success

In the modern educational landscape, success is often equated with high test scores, prestigious degrees, and career outcomes. From a young age, students are drilled on the importance of excelling in exams and achieving the best grades possible. The pressure to perform and outshine others has created an environment where the focus is placed primarily on individual achievements rather than the collective well-being of others.

As a result, empathy—qualities like compassion, active listening, and understanding diverse perspectives—are often overlooked. The intense focus on academic performance leaves little room for students to practice and develop emotional intelligence, a skill that’s crucial not just for personal relationships, but also for creating inclusive and supportive communities.

The Role of Technology in Education

Another factor contributing to the decline of empathy in education is the increasing reliance on technology. Digital tools and online platforms have revolutionized the way students learn, offering convenience and accessibility. However, these tools can also create distance—both physically and emotionally—between students and their peers or teachers.

In many online classrooms or tech-heavy learning environments, students are communicating through screens rather than face-to-face interactions. While technology can facilitate learning, it can also make it harder for students to practice empathy. Virtual classrooms lack the non-verbal cues and human connection that in-person interactions offer, reducing opportunities for students to understand the emotions, struggles, and experiences of others.

The Pressure on Teachers

Teachers, too, are feeling the strain of the modern education system. With increasing administrative tasks, standardized tests to prepare for, and an ever-growing curriculum to cover, many educators find themselves stretched thin. The focus is often on academic results rather than on fostering emotional growth or creating spaces where students can develop empathy.

Teachers, however, play a critical role in shaping the emotional and social aspects of education. They have the ability to guide students in developing empathy by modeling compassionate behavior, encouraging collaboration, and creating inclusive classroom environments. Yet, with the pressure to cover extensive material and improve test scores, these valuable interactions can take a backseat.

The Consequences of a Lack of Empathy

The absence of empathy in education has long-lasting effects. Without the development of empathy, students may struggle with emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, and building meaningful relationships later in life. They may become more focused on competition and individual success rather than collaboration and mutual support.

On a larger scale, this lack of empathy can lead to societal issues such as division, intolerance, and a lack of understanding across different groups. In a world that is becoming increasingly interconnected and diverse, empathy is more important than ever for fostering peace, unity, and social progress.

Reviving Empathy in Education

The solution to this problem is not to downplay the importance of academic achievement but to integrate empathy as a fundamental part of the learning process. Educators and institutions must make a conscious effort to include emotional intelligence, kindness, and social responsibility in their curricula.

Some ways to revive empathy in modern education include:

• Social-Emotional Learning (SEL): Incorporating programs that teach students to manage their emotions, build relationships, and understand the feelings of others.
• Project-Based Learning: Encouraging collaborative projects that foster teamwork, communication, and a sense of community.
• Encouraging Reflection and Dialogue: Giving students opportunities to discuss social and emotional topics, as well as encouraging self-reflection on their feelings and actions.
• Teacher Training: Equipping educators with the tools and knowledge to model empathy, create inclusive environments, and engage with students on a deeper emotional level.

Conclusion: Balancing Knowledge with Compassion

Modern education has certainly brought about significant advancements in knowledge and technology. However, we mustn't forget the emotional and social aspects of learning. Empathy is not just a "soft skill"—it’s a necessity in today’s world. By fostering empathy in our educational systems, we can nurture not only more compassionate individuals but also a more understanding, collaborative society.

In the end, education should not only equip students with knowledge but also with the tools to understand and care for the people around them. When students learn to walk in others' shoes, they not only become better learners but also better human beings. Let’s work to ensure that empathy has a place in every classroom and that it becomes as valued as academic success.

Identification in a digital age matters because it reduces complex humans to records and systems, mostly categorised by others. Consider the refugee who is given a ‘refugee identity’ by UNHCR, or a female platform worker who is identified through a scan of the national ID she submits along with her profile. The term digital identity indicates the conversion of human identities into machine-readable digital data. As noted by Nyst et al. (Citation2016, pp. 8–9), such a conversion results in schemes that allow the digital identification of individuals, as well as their authentication at various points of access and, on that basis, authorisation for them to perform given actions or access given services. Digital identity schemes are schemes in which ‘the three functions of identification, authentication and authorisation are all performed digitally’ (Nyst et al., Citation2016): such schemes are hence different, for example, from schemes where the delivery of goods or services is digital, but the identification of recipients depends on paper-based identity cards or other documents.

The relation between digital identity and socio-economic development has been made explicit across multiple works (e.g. Caribou Digital, Citation2017; Dahan & Gelb, Citation2015; Gelb & Clark, Citation2013a, Citation2013b; Gelb & Metz, Citation2018; World Bank, Citation2016). While diverse links are suggested, a common basis lies in the recognition of an identity gap (Gelb & Clark, Citation2013a; UNICEF, Citation2013), which leaves people – and especially people in vulnerable countries and regions – uncovered by civil registration. While lack of a legal identity results in denial of essential rights (Nyst et al., Citation2016), its recognition provides the basis for individuals to be entitled with rights, receive public services, or benefit from much-needed forms of social assistance. As a result, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal target 16.9 is framed in terms of reaching a ‘free and universal legal identity, including birth registration, by 2030.’

Within the broader picture of a link between legal identity and essential rights, digital identity emerges as a means putting technology at the service of socio-economic development (World Bank, Citation2016). In its diverse manifestations (Gelb & Metz, Citation2018), digital identity uses technology to guarantee the legal identity that makes people visible to providers as holders of rights, whether they are undocumented poor in urban slums or displaced persons fleeing war and persecution. As noted by the World Bank (Citation2016, p. 2), identification systems have three overarching development goals, framed as (a) inclusion and access to essential services (such as healthcare, education, voting rights, financial services and social safety nets); (b) effective, efficient and transparent administration of public services; and (c) greater accuracy in measuring progress on key development indicators, e.g. reductions in maternal and infant mortality. By strengthening existing identity systems and developing new, reliable ones where these are absent or weak, digital technology affords the possibility to build development through robust identification.

And yet, the so-constituted orthodoxy of ‘digital identity for development’ presents multiple issues.

Research highlights the importance of unpacking links between benefits attributed to digital identity schemes and their costs, firstly in terms of exclusion of legally entitled recipients (cf. Drèze et al., Citation2017; Khera, Citation2019; Muralidharan et al., Citation2016, Citation2020; Ramanathan, Citation2014). Determined at the stages of registration, authentication or assertion of identity (Hosein & Whitley, Citation2019), exclusions result in denial of essential services and may be associated to highly grave outcomes. In India, hunger deaths have been associated to digitally enforced exclusion from food security schemes (cf. Singh, Citation2019). In Kenya, migrants and refugees are barred from essential social assistance as a result of misrecognised IDs (Weitzberg, Citation2020). In addition, there is disproportionate impact on women because they often feel (heightened by socio-cultural norms) that they cannot justify the need for ID as compared to men (Bailur et al., Citation2019). This is particularly problematic in the case of digital gig economy work, which is seen as attractive for women, but where analogue infrastructures may not support their online work. For example, they may be paid for their work online but may not have a bank account or mobile money account, resulting into money being paid into their husband’s account (Caribou Digital, Citation2020).

There is also a component of how identification (a static process) captures one’s dynamic identity in a fairly immutable way which makes it much more challenging to change later. This is problematic for all, but impacts on those whose identity necessarily is fluid at the time, such as children, refugees or migrants. Caribou Digital’s research with UNICEF on children, identification and identity in Brazil, Kenya, Lebanon and Thailand illustrates how children and youth, born into identification systems, may not understand or struggle with fixed identities, exacerbated in the digital age (Bailur & Smertnik, Citation2020). They illustrate this with the case of Paul, in Kenya, who uses his brother’s national ID and M-Pesa account to get a small loan from the mobile loan app Tala but who is not aware of the repercussions for his brother if he does not pay that loan (Smertnik & Bailur, Citation2020a). Similarly, in Brazil, youth struggling to change their name and sexuality on their birth certificate and other credentials face numerous obstacles (Bailur et al., Citation2020), and young Syrian refugees in Lebanon feel their identity is so much more than a ‘refugee,’ but feel their identity as captured as such in digital identity systems only shows one side of them (Smertnik & Bailur, Citation2020b). Thus, identification while enabling human freedom in one sense can also restrict it, depending on who is doing the identifying.

For migrants and refugees, being labelled is problematic. Caribou Digital’s research in India (Caribou Digital, Citation2017) illustrates how migrants within India struggle with their ‘fixed identification’ when moving between states, a challenge that was further apparent during the COVID-19 crisis in 2020 when migrants with ‘Mumbai’ as residence on Aadhaar cards could not take certain trains back to their home states because they were not considered as belonging to those states (Vaktania & Sharma, Citation2020). Janmyr and Mourad (Citation2018) illustrate how Syrians fleeing to Lebanon resent labels are imposed on them of ‘registered refugee,’ ‘labourer’ or other exogenously determined categories, detailing how such labels impact on them. This runs the risk that increasingly open digital platforms for identification may lead to the monopolisation of identification categories through network effects that force more stakeholders to use the same static categories, when these are actually fluid categories (Janmyr & Mourad, Citation2018). This is evident particularly in the link of identification to financial sectors, such as credit ratings, where a user may not be in control of what information is revealed about them or be able to explain it. The Black Mirror episode Nosedive always comes to mind as an illustration of how a woman’s life unravels because she is rated by strangers on everything she does.