To Kill A Mockingbird - Chapters 22-31: Before You Read

What does it mean to "put yourself in another person's shoes"? What personal qualities are necessary to be able to see things as someone else does?

To "put yourself in another person's shoes" is to look at things, people and situations in others' perspectives and truly understanding them. In order to be able to see things as someone else does, we need to have the 16 Habits Of Mind, especially listening with understanding and empathy, thinking flexibly and remaining open to continuous learning. All the other Habits Of Mind are also important in other ways like expressing our viewpoints clearly. By remaining open to opinions and listening to them with a flexible and understanding mind, we would not limit ourselves to only one perspective of things. By listening to the opinions of others, we are able to consider the validity of a certain opinion and then decide for ourselves what is the acceptable truth.

Describe a situation in which you learned something by putting yourself in another person's shoes. What made it possible to adopt a different perspective? What was difficult about the experience?

Although the following might not be an example involving me putting myself in another person's shoes, I looked at the situation from different perspectives. On a few occasions while I was a packed bus, there was an empty seat and there were students crowing round it. Commuters were boarding the bus but were unable to squeeze in. However, none of the students sat down and instead blocked the seat since the bus was packed and they had no means of moving somewhere else. At the same time, other commuters were also unable to sit at that seat. My immediate thought was that those students were very inconsiderate in their behaviours. By not sitting down and leaving the seat empty, one or two fewer commuters were unable to board the bus and could possibly be late for school or work. On the other hand, I understood the perspective of those students. They wanted to leave the seat empty for other commuters like pregnant mothers or the elderly. After considering different perspectives, I felt that a pragmatic approach would be the best. In this scenario, we have to consider that if one of those students had sat down, more commuters would be able to board the bus and thus increase efficiency and productivity as compared to blocking the seat, which only led to inconvenience and unhappiness of the commuters trying to board the bus. Thus, in this scenario, although it is a morally right thing to let other commuters with certain needs to sit down, it would not be as beneficial as compared to sitting down.

As I was also a student, I could understand the students' thoughts for not sitting down and the reasons for not doing so. What was difficult was that I had to be open to different perspectives and not only think that mine is the one and only correct opinion. I had to comprehend the information and scenario available and make use of the different perspectives to come up with an opinion that was as fair as possible. This is also applicable to other types of scenarios.