Fostering Altruism in Elementary School

Abstract

Altruism is an important factor in maintaining the continuity of social life in society, especially in high diversity communities such as Indonesia. Research shows individuals tend to show altruistic behavior in other people who have similarities with them, such as gender, ethnicity, religion, and race so that altruism in a multicultural environment tends to be difficult to be formed. Therefore, altruism needs to be developed early in school. The right age to develop altruism is at the age of 11-12 years or in the fifth grade of elementary school. So it can be assumed that the effort to develop altruism will be more effective if done in elementary schools. This article was written to explore various efforts to develop altruism that can be done at the elementary school level based on the theory of Batson's altruistic empathy hypothesis. This is because the helping behavior carried out on the basis of empathy can certainly be included in the altruist category.