Life-Enriching Education

by Marshall B Rosenberg

  One way to differentiate between the protective and punitive use of force is to examine what the person using force is thinking. A person using the protective use of force is not judging the other person in a moralistic way. Instead his thinking is focused on protecting the well-being of himself and/or others.

  For example, if a young student is running toward the street, the thinking of the teacher who uses the protective use of force is solely directed to protecting the student by physically restraining him from running in the street. This can be done without using the punitive use of force, which might take the form of hitting the child or psychologically attacking him by saying something like, “What’s the matter with you, how could you be so stupid?” or “You should be ashamed of yourself!”

  Punitive action is based on the assumption that people do things that harm themselves and/or others because they’re naughty and, as they grow older, downright evil. A corollary of this way of thinking is that to correct the situation we have to make the wrongdoer see the error of her ways, repent, and change, through some punitive action. But it rarely works this way in practice. Punitive action, rather than leading to the sought-after repentance and learning, frequently leads to the wrongdoer feeling resentful and hostile, and she may become even more resistant to changing her behavior.

  The protective use of force is based on the assumption that people do things that harm themselves and/or others out of ignorance. This ignorance might be in the form of not knowing how one’s actions are affecting others, ignorance of how to meet one’s own needs without violating the needs of others, or culturally learned ignorance that justifies violating the needs of others (for example, to justify one’s belief that others deserve to suffer for what they have done).

  Another way to differentiate between the protective and punitive use of force is by examining the intention of the person using the force. The intention of someone using the protective use of force is to prevent injury or violation of someone’s rights. The intention behind the punitive use of force is to cause individuals to suffer for their perceived misdeeds.

  Exercise 7

  Protective Use of Force

  vs. Punitive Use of Force

  A key distinction between the protective use of force and the punitive use of force is that the sole intention of the person using protective force is to protect, while the intention of the person using punitive force is to punish (by threatening or carrying out physical punishment or by attempting to induce shame or guilt). In the following situations, circle the number in front of any action taken by the teacher that is a clear example of the protective use of force.

  At lunch recess, the teacher sees one student hit another student. The teacher is afraid someone will get hurt so she tells the student she saw hitting to go immediately to the principal’s office until she can come and talk with him.

  A teacher asks a student a question and the student does not answer. The teacher thinks: How rude! I’ll show you! and tells the student he has to stay after class.

  A parent has come to the classroom to show slides of their family’s trip to Brazil. During the slide show, one student makes loud noises that attract others’ attention even after the teacher has asked him to stop several times. The teacher, feeling frustrated and wanting the rest of the class to pay attention to the slide show, tells the student to go sit in the hallway until the slide show is over.

  4. When a teacher notices that a group of students are poking each other with sticks, she tells them: “Stop right now before someone gets hurt. I want you to come sit down until you come up with a safe way to play together!”

  A teacher says to a student: “All week I’ve been telling you to stop throwing the ball at other students, but I still see you doing it. You will spend the next two breaks in the classroom cleaning the chalkboard.”

  A teacher leaves the classroom for five minutes and returns to find the students running around instead of reading at their desks as she asked them to do. She says, “You don’t seem to know how to stay in your desks so you will practice by staying at your desks for the first ten minutes of lunch recess.”

  A teacher says to the class that she’s very disappointed in the number of low scores on the recent standardized test. She then returns the tests, announcing each student’s score as she hands them their test. When she returns the tests with the lowest scores, she shakes her head disapprovingly.

  A student is running very fast down the hall and bumps into a teacher along the way. The teacher stops him and asks him to sit down. She then explains the reason for the rule against running inside the school building, citing the injuries that had been caused by someone running in the hall.

  Here are my responses for Exercise 7:

  If you circled this number, we’re in agreement that the teacher in this situation is most likely using her power to protect, not to punish—assuming that she trusts that the principal will not punish the child.

  If you circled this number, we’re not in agreement. The thoughts of the teacher reveal the kind of judgment that usually is associated with an intent to punish.

  If you circled this number, we’re not in agreement that this is a clear example of protective use of force. It is not clear to me what the intention of the teacher is given the information provided.

  If you circled this number, we’re in agreement that this is an example of the protective use of force.

  If you circled this number, we’re not in agreement. It is not clear to me what the intention of the teacher is given the information provided. I would assume that the intent was to punish.

  If you circled this number, we’re not in agreement. As in the previous situation, the teacher’s intentions are not clear. I would assume that the intent was to punish.

  If you circled this number, we’re not in agreement that this is an example of the protective use of force. By publicly announcing the test scores and continuing to express her disappointment with the students who had low scores, I would interpret that she is attempting to punish these students by inducing guilt.

  8. If you circled this number, we’re in agreement that the teacher’s thinking is in harmony with the protective use of force.

  Creating Sustaining Teams

  Most Americans are well aware of the inequities and deficiencies in our public schools that seem to keep our “underprivileged” exactly that, schools from which students graduate unable to read, unemployable, destined for poverty and/or criminal activity, if they graduate at all. The cries for educational reform rise and fall, and have seldom been louder than at this moment.

  Now, one of the mistakes I’ve made historically was to assume that if we had a school where students learn more academic skills and more quickly, where there is less violence and more cooperation, that’s all there would be to it. The whole world would say, “Hey, look at that program; that’s all we have to do!”

  Once we have created programs such as those described in this book, we may need to create teams that allow them to survive. Life-Enriching classrooms and schools are likely to be struggling within school systems whose purpose is unfortunately not supportive of them. In any Domination system the goal, unwittingly or otherwise, is to perpetuate the status quo—an economic system in which a few people maintain their wealth and privilege while others remain permanently in or near poverty.

  Such systems are not going to respond positively in the long-term to the kind of educational innovations that I propose. It may be possible to launch new educational programs, but unless we organize ongoing teams of people to sustain them, the schools are likely to soon revert back to their original structures and procedures.

  If you read Michael Katz’s books (The Irony of School Reform in America is one of them) you will see why. If we only try to change the educational system, we’re not seeing the bigger picture. We will simply be repeating what he says reform movements have done since the beginning of public education in the United States: they create new programs that work be
tter than the old ones, but they’re gone in five years.

  Katz says that the problem with such educational reformers is that they are starting from the assumption that it is only the educational system that needs reforming. They’re not sophisticated politically. They see what’s wrong with the schools but they don’t see what’s right with them, which is that they are accomplishing what they set out to accomplish: 1) to maintain a caste system (children from privileged classes come into the learning situation much better prepared and therefore much more likely to succeed), 2) to teach students to work for extrinsic rewards (to work for grades rather to examine whether what they are learning is supporting their lives, so that later they will work for salaries), and above all 3) to maintain the vision of obedience to authority.

  Ask as many teachers as I have, “What’s the basic way you are evaluated?” and they answer, “Quiet classrooms. Order in the classroom.” That’s the number one objective, and second is, “Attractive bulletin boards.” Lately we have heard the cry for more accountability, for improved proficiency test scores, but the majority opinion is still that this goal can be accomplished only in quiet classrooms with attractive bulletin boards.

  So all reformers, regardless of their educational philosophy, have been evaluating school programs from the perspective of educators. Lacking a political perspective, they failed to see that public education in the United States was established to educate people to adjust and conform to the Domination economic and governmental organizations that controlled the schools. Any reform that does not recognize this underlying truth is not likely to succeed.

  The importance of building a team whose function was to sustain a Life-Enriching School was evident in a school project in which I was involved in Rockford, Illinois. It was the first time I had the opportunity to contribute to the creation of a Life-Enriching School.

  As I described in the introduction, a visionary and courageous principal and superintendent of schools dreamed of creating such a school as a pilot project to demonstrate its advantages over more traditional ones. Then having shown its effectiveness, the plan was to create Life-Enriching Schools throughout the school system.

  Shortly after the school project was initiated resistance to it arose. The community was not used to a school based on such values. The superintendent and principal were frequent subjects of harsh criticism and attempts were made to get them to resign. Fortunately the project was able to continue because a team of parents and teachers organized to support the superintendent in his project. I was invited by the team to offer training to the teachers and to the team of parents to support their efforts.

  By educational standards, the school was highly successful. Academic achievement increased, vandalism and other forms of school violence decreased. Yet, in spite of the school being successful, four people were elected to the next school board who campaigned to get rid of the school. The people in the community were apparently unable to understand a school functioning so radically differently than the schools they had attended.

  The team of parents that worked to support the creation of the school now saw that it would be necessary to continue working together to sustain the school. They planned a meeting with the school board, in the hopes of helping them better understand the principles of the school.

  It wasn’t easy for the team to arrange the meeting. It took ten months. The president of the board refused to answer telephone messages from the team or respond to letters. Fortunately a member of the team knew a woman who was in the same social circle as the president of the board. The parents explained the school to this woman, and she was subsequently successful in getting the president of the board to arrange the proposed meeting. And the meeting achieved its desired result: the board agreed to sustain the school even though they had been elected by campaigning to get rid of it. But without the team of supportive parents, the school would surely have perished.

  I was at that meeting. One of the board members, a physician, a well-educated man, and I were trying to get clear about why he was so upset about the school. He told me he had been disturbed by his observation that “The kids went from classroom to classroom but not lined up with the teacher leading.” I asked for another example, and he added, “In one of the classrooms I saw the kids playing a game.” And then he said some words that I have heard over and over again throughout the years. He said: “Schools are not for enjoyment. You can’t learn anything if you’re just playing and having fun.” It was so different from what he had understood schools to be. It took some understanding on both our parts to reach the point where he was willing to support this different sort of school.

  Transforming Our Schools

  Though the road to educational innovation is not easy, I see it as a powerful way to ever achieve peace on this planet. If future generations can be educated in schools structured so that everyone’s needs are valued, I believe they will be better able to create Life-Enriching families, workplaces, and governments.

  There are many resources in our society that support individuals in their efforts to transform their lives. I would suggest to you that schools and other organizations can be similarly transformed—through the process and underlying principles of Nonviolent Communication. We can create a Life-Enriching system where all of us are given the chance to do what at heart we enjoy more than anything else: making life more wonderful for ourselves and others, meeting each others’ needs. No matter what has happened in the past in a school or school system, if students and teachers and parents and administrators learn to connect in a Life-Enriching way, it is inevitable that they will start to create Life-Enriching communities.

  I have seen it happen, time and again, and when it does, it’s too beautiful for words.

  Bibliography

  Albert, Linda. Cooperative Discipline. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service, 1996.

  Albom, Mitch. Tuesdays with Morrie. Doubleday, New York, 1997.

  Bebermeyer, Ruth. “I Wonder” (LP album). La Crescenta, CA: Center for Nonviolent Communication, 1971.

  Bebermeyer, Ruth. “Given To.” La Crescenta, CA: Center for Nonviolent Communication, , 1972.

  Benne, Kenneth D. “Authority in Education,” in Harvard Educational Review. Vol. 40, No. 3. Cambridge, MA, August 1970.

  Bernanos, George. Quoted in Civil Disobedience: Theory and Practice. Hugo Adam Bedon, ed. New York: Pegasus, 1969.

  Buber, Martin. A Believing Humanism: My Testament, 1902-65. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967.

  Child Development Project. “Start the Year.” San Ramon, CA: Developmental Studies Center, 1991.

  I like the way the Child Development Project describes the classroom as a community. They say it is a place where “care and trust are emphasized above restrictions and threats, where unity and pride (of accomplishment and in purpose) replace winning and losing, and where each person is asked, helped, and inspired to live up to such ideals and values as kindness, fairness, and responsibility. [Such] a classroom community seeks to meet each student’s need to feel competent, connected to others, and autonomous. Students are not only exposed to basic human values, they also have many opportunities to think about, discuss, and act on these values, while gaining experiences that promote empathy and understanding of others.”

  Child Development Project. “Ways We Want Our Class to Be: Class Meetings That Build Commitment to Kindness and Learning.” Oakland, CA: Developmental Studies Center, 1996.

  Instead of creating concrete rules, this project suggests discussions about the “ways we want our class to be” and how that can be made to happen.

  Chuang Tzu, The Way of Chuang Tzu. N.p., n.d.

  Clark, Edward T. Jr. Designing and Implementing An Integrated Curriculum. Brandon, VT: Holistic Education Press, 1997.

  Clark advocates a functional literacy in which “teachers and students are working cooperatively to insure that every student who graduates is functionally literate, that is, they are prepared to respond deliberately and
creatively to the demands of economic necessity, enlightened and informed social responsibility, and qualified planetary citizenship;” (p. 51) “functional literacy must include the capacity to consciously and deliberatively create personal and collective visions of desired futures and the competencies necessary to make those futures manifest.” (p. 52) In discussing operating principles for living systems, Clark states, “Interdependence is the unifying principle operative in all systems. As the first principle of ecology, it defines the nature of the complex web of relationships that exist among the individual parts of a system and between those parts and the system as a whole.” (p. 100) “Interdependence is a universal characteristic recognized as being fundamental to the success of all social, economic, and political systems. Once a child understands what interdependence means, he or she is able, through the transfer of learning, to operationalize the concept in a virtually limitless number of applications.” (p. 101)

  Clark, Kenneth. Dark Ghetto. New York: Harper & Row, 1965.

  Combs, Arthur W. “Seeing is Believing.” ASCD Annual Conference Address, 1958.

  Covaleskie, John, F. “Discipline and Morality: Beyond Rules and Consequences.” Educational Forum, 1992. vol. 56, 173-83.

  “A program that teaches children that they are expected to obey rules, even legitimate and properly established rules, fails the children and the larger society.” Dalai Lama, Message from the Dalai Lama, Central Tibetan Administration, Department of Information and International Relations, 2000. Along with education, which generally deals only with academic accomplishments, we need to develop more altruism and sense of caring and responsibility for others in the minds of the younger generation studying in various educational institutions. This can be done without necessarily involving religion. One could therefore call this ‘secular ethics’, as it in fact consists of basic human qualities such as kindness, compassion, sincerity, and honesty.