The Spirit
of Ma’at Vol 1, No 10
with Priscilla Prutzman
Co-author of The Friendly
Classroom for a Small Planet
by Sun Mi Kim
During
the civil unrest of 1972, an organization was formed to train marshals and
peacekeepers in nonviolent techniques to maintain peace during protest marches
and anti-war demonstrations. Based on the philosophies of the Quakers, Martin
Luther King, Jr., and Mohandas K. Gandhi, this organization grew into what is
now known as Creative Response to Conflict (CRC).
Realizing
that the seeds of hate and hostility are planted at a young age, four teachers
from this group of peace activists were asked to create a program to teach
tolerance and peace-keeping skills to children. Seasoned with
conflict-resolution skills gained during the protests, they formed Children's
Creative Response to Conflict, or CCRC. Priscilla Prutzman was one of those teachers.
Today,
with nearly three decades under its belt, CCRC continues to address the issues
of violence in our homes, schools, and communities through their workshops in
cooperation, communication, affirmation, bias awareness, mediation, and
creative problem-solving.
As
King, Gandhi, and the other great minds of our world knew, global peace begins
with individuals. One school at a time, CCRC aims to guide each individual
toward making peaceful choices.
More
about CCRC.
Sun:
What kinds of nonviolence workshops do you do?
Priscilla:
Our viewpoint is really a preventive one. We're really trying to prevent anyone
from even thinking about harming others, so we try to create an environment in
which people want to cooperate with each other and want to feel positive about
themselves and others. That's what a lot of our very basic work speaks to
directly, as does our bias-awareness work, which aims to get everybody to
appreciate differences rather than isolate others because of them - to examine
how we can benefit from learning more about differences.
Our
bias-awareness work starts out by cultural sharing and appreciating the
different cultures that are present in the group. By examining different kinds
of bias, we are operating on an assumption that everybody has felt bias at some
time in his or her life. By listening to each other's stories, a lot of empathy
gets developed and people realize that everybody's got a similar issue on some
level. Then we bring it all back to the conflict resolution skills that we
learned in previous sessions, and we respond to bias from a conflict resolution
perspective.
Sun:
Can you give me a specific example?
Priscilla:
We might start off by brainstorming the word ''culture,'' for example, just
charting how the children define that in a very broad sense. And then we would
break into small groups and do a sharing, asking each other their ideas about
what's on the chart: how they identify their own culture, what they like about
it, if there's anything they don't like about it. They share their thoughts
with each other.
Then we
might brainstorm the types of bias that exist. We might examine the kinds of
bias that transforms into personal, cultural, or institutional forms. And after
brainstorming, we would do another small-group sharing of times that each
individual had experienced bias directed against himself or herself.
Sun: As
this project has been in place for a while now, have you gotten any feedback on
how these workshops may have influenced the children when they got older?
Priscilla:
One thing that we've definitely seen is the rise in self-esteem for those
students who have learned to become mediators through the program. As peer
mediators, they apply these skills throughout the rest of their school years.
Though there have been some studies, we haven't done any extensive tracking of
pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, though we do have some tracking within
elementary schools, where it's really easy to tell which children have had
mediation training.
We get
a lot of feedback from schools where only some of the classes have had the
training. In those schools, the classes that have learned conflict resolution
really stand out, because when they get on any topic about conflict, they just
have a huge vocabulary about it, and they see lots of options open to them.
If you
haven't done a lot of conflict resolution, you kind of react to conflict by
either fighting or running away. But when children - and adults, too - have had
conflict resolution training, they begin to see an almost unlimited number of
ways of responding to conflicts and problems. And that's something we've gotten
a lot of feedback on.
Sun:
You mentioned that prevention is more your approach. What if you go into an
environment that's already full of hostility?
Priscilla:
Actually, those are the kinds of environments that we went into originally -
almost always. Many years ago, when people thought of conflict resolution,
nobody wanted to admit that they had a conflict, whereas everybody admits that
readily now.
Of
course, there are still some school systems that say, ''Well, we don't really
have any problems here. We don't have any bias here. Everybody's happy.'' And
that's kind of a flag, because that's never the case, really. When we hear
that, we know that the kind of conflict that exists in that area is not being
addressed, and that the primary mode of dealing with it is to ignore it. And
when students get the idea that that's the way it's handled, our job then
becomes really to get the critical mass of teachers, staff, and students to
accept conflict resolution itself - to accept the idea that dealing with
conflict in a positive way is important.
We
often have been called into situations because the need is great and the
environment is hostile, but we'll still give everyone prevention skills so that
when the conflicts come up in the future, as they will, they have more skills
to deal with them.
Sun:
Have you ever gone into a situation where you haven't been able to achieve the
critical mass of teachers and parents?
Priscilla:
Yeah. A lot of studies out there indicate that the principal of a school really
has to buy into it. Quite often the parents didn't buy into it at first, but
that's not as true now because everybody understands that we have to do
something. It's gotten out of hand in so many incidents.
But
it's also important to realize that actual violence among young people is
decreasing. We hear about these localized incidents, but the actual number of
incidents of violence is decreasing.
Sun:
Interesting.
Priscilla:
It's very interesting. I'd like to think that the conflict-resolution people
and mediation people have had a part in that. I'm sure that we have, on some
level, gotten words like ''win-win'' out there. Even corporations use win-win
solutions on commercials, whereas fifteen years ago, people didn't know what
that meant. Nobody knew what conflict resolution meant. ''Mediation'' was
frequently mistaken for ''meditation.'' That occasionally still happens, but
it's much rarer.
Getting
those words out there in everyone's vocabulary increases the sense that there
are options - nonviolent, creative options - to solve our problems. Instead of
fighting or running away or letting emotional and/or physical violence
continue, the children try to come up with a positive solution where
everybody's needs are met.
Sun:
Have you found any differences between children today and children a decade or
two ago? Many parents and educators are finding, for instance, more kids
diagnosed with ADD and some find today's children simply different or more
aggressive.
Priscilla:
On some level, I think that's true, and I suppose you could make an argument
that students know so much more from television, from news and media things
being out there. There's a certain sophistication among young people that
certainly didn't exist years ago.
On the
other hand, a lot of the problems that existed years ago are the same as the
ones that exist today: people feeling excluded, people bringing weapons to
school. Bringing weapons to school is not a new thing. At the very first
schools that we went into, in New York City, elementary children were carrying
knives. This is not new, but I think the media didn't portray it in the same
way as they are now, so perhaps we weren't as aware of it then. Unless, of
course, you were in the schools, as we were.
There's
another issue in there, and that is that most of these incidents now are
happening in suburban schools. If you listen to the news, everybody says, ''I
just can't imagine how it could happen here'' as if these suburban areas are
completely immune from the violence which is really everywhere in our society.
On some levels, urban schools dealt with the very direct forms of violence
twenty years ago, so these incidents aren't happening there as much. Urban
schools have found ways, from a variety of perspectives, to prevent them.
So the
violence is more out in the suburbs now, and people are paying a lot more
attention to it because of that. There are a lot of levels of frustration about
it related to denial, the attitude that ''We don't have any problems here so we
haven't done anything about it.''
It's
kind of remarkable that out of all the incidents we've heard about in the news
during the last five years, very few happened in urban schools. Of course,
incidents in urban schools still exist, but they're not increasing. They're
decreasing.
Sun:
What do you think causes aggression or hostility in children in the first
place?
Priscilla:
Well, I think oftentimes it's that they don't feel that their needs are being
met or that they're part of the community. A lot of times, schools are so big
that students don't feel as though they're a part of anything.
Also,
there's the element of competition - our society is very, very competitive.
Kindergartners and first-graders feel that competition, and they begin acting
very competitive with each other at that early age. Then it escalates.
But if
competition escalates, so does cooperation. As violence escalates, so do the
opportunities for being positive toward one another. And I think when people
realize that being positive to each other escalates, then people begin to
accept and buy into that and work on that.
Not
everybody buys into it. But if the critical mass of students and teachers and
staff buy into it, then real change can happen.
Sun:
Could you give me an example of the kind of mediation that you do?
Priscilla:
Mediations are done in any conflict outside of blatant violation of a school
rule such as severe violence, possession of weapons, or drugs - those really
need to go to other authorities. But any other disputes, like interpersonal
conflict, property disputes, put-downs, name calling, friendship disputes
(''This person was my friend and they agreed to go to the movies with me and
they went with somebody else.'') - these are cases for mediation. All of these
disputes are very common. And there's a lot of clique stuff. I'm part of this
group. I used to be with this group, and so on. There's a lot of that going on,
but that's been going on for a long time, too.
Sun: It
seems like the cliques are the students' way of trying to feel that they're
part of something. What kind of methods are available for helping students feel
that they are part of something bigger than a clique - like a community?
Priscilla:
That's where the teacher, and especially the principal, take a leadership role
and say, ''The goal of our school is to include everybody and appreciate
everybody.'' The teacher can say, ''The goal of our classroom is to welcome
everybody, and everybody's equal here. We want to try to find what everybody's
really good at and appreciate that special quality of each person.'' That's
something that the teacher and administrators can really reinforce. And it has
to be reinforced; otherwise, it could slip into a competitive situation where
people get mean to one another.
Sometimes
the principal and the teachers do try to provide this leadership, but then the
children go off and act out on their own at recess or when they're on the bus.
So it's important to watch where that's happening, too, and to try to create
structures that reinforce the everybody-has-some-positive-quality issue.
Sun:
What kind of structures?
Priscilla:
For instance, there are certain processes where people could work with the bus
drivers to make a real effort to say, ''We want everybody to have a positive
bus ride home and these are our expectations.'' The point is to not let the
violence escalate. Oftentimes bus drivers don't have the resources to deal with
this, and besides that, they're driving. So if they don't set the ground rules
beforehand, share expectations, or do things - like make sure they know this
person should not be sitting next to that person - potential violence could
erupt. We really need to think about that. Those are some techniques that can
make the bus ride home more pleasant and safer for everybody. When people fight
on the bus and the bus driver's in the middle of the highway - you know that's
a dangerous situation.
Sun:
It's funny, when you came up with the example that this particular person
shouldn't be sitting next to this other one - that kind of reminds me of
conflicts between countries.
Priscilla:
Yeah, that's right.
Sun:
So, it seems as though you're taking the kind of mediation that happens between
countries and bringing that down to a more personal level.
Priscilla:
That's right. In fact, in some of the middle schools, high schools, and
occasionally in the elementary schools, we will talk about interpersonal
conflict between one person and another, cultural conflict, and then
international conflict, and we'll make the comparison between the two. You
know, a territory fight for the best seat on the bus - or what they perceive to
be the best seat on the bus - isn't all that different from the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict. That's another place where we can integrate what
we do into the curriculum.
''Curriculum''
is a really big issue in schools right now. People don't want to see conflict
resolution as an add-on program; they want us to help them integrate it into
literacy or other subjects. Right now, that's one of the big programs we're
working on with kindergarten and first grade - integrating conflict resolution
into a literacy program, so it's not just an add-on that teachers don't have
time to do. Instead, it's something that's done throughout the day, where
everybody has the skills and the vocabulary, and they're using them.
Sun:
Speaking of vocabulary, the language we use every day seems peppered with
violent phrases or metaphors like ''our school is a war zone'' or ''teachers
battle the kids.'' It seems as though our very language promotes conflict.
Priscilla:
Understanding how our language contributes to conflict is actually an activity
that we do with a lot of different ages. We'll brainstorm phrases that contain
violence or bias, and then we will try to rephrase them. It's really an
awareness activity - like the phrase, ''stab him in the back'' or ''kill two
birds with one stone'' - you could go on and on and list all these violent
phrases. We don't even hear them until we make ourselves aware of the violence
or racism or sexism in our language.
Sun: It
seems as though students would have to be constantly on guard, then, since our
language is completely saturated with these phrases.
Priscilla:
Right. That's really true. On the other hand, after you do an awareness
activity, the next time that it comes up, everybody's aware of it. It doesn't take
that much to be aware of violence in language. Racism and sexism, too - if
you've already talked about it there's a tendency to realize, ''Oh, that's what
that is - we just did it again!'' It's not that we're not going to do it again.
Of course we will, because it's our everyday way of interacting. But being
aware of it somehow helps to create a less violent language. Our unconscious
use of violence in language inspires more violence, really.
Also,
there have been some studies that show that violent video games, for instance,
definitely make people numb to violence. Apparently, some of the ways they
train people to shoot in war situations is very similar to video games. I find
that really frightening.
Sun:
Violent video games and cartoons are everywhere. What can we possibly do? It
seems impossible to fully shelter our children.
Priscilla:
I think, at least from our perspective, the best that we can do is to show that
there are alternatives, and to explore what happens when you take a violent path.
Even children who have done a lot of violence, when they begin examining that
path they realize that the violence is going to come back on them. They begin
to see that maybe it's not the best way. Previous to such examination, they may
think that not only is it the best path, it's the only path.
When
they do conflict resolution they can begin to see, ''Well, there are lots of
choices that I have here.'' It's amazing but sometimes people don't see the
choices. When they begin to see the different options, we have them internalize
these alternatives so they have them to fall back on when they face conflict in
the future.
Sun:
What do you think are some of the most important things that parents can do to
encourage their children toward peaceful behavior?
Priscilla:
Parents, teachers, and all who work with young people are in a position of
modeling. Modeling nonviolent, creative behavior is one of the best ways for
children and young people to learn.
For
example, if they see adults listening, they learn to listen. If they see that
adults are not listening, then they think that not-listening is what you're
supposed to do, you're not supposed to listen to anybody. You just compete to
get said what you want to say. That's a lesson that says the world is very,
very competitive - as opposed to the way the world could be, where everybody
gets listened to, where everybody is respected, and where we're really looking
for the positive qualities of each person.
That's
what we're trying to do with the affirmation theme, and the cooperation theme,
and the communication theme. These are the life skills we need to function in
today's world.
Priscilla
Prutzman is executive director of Children's Creative Response to Conflict, or
CCRC, and was one of its co-founders. She co-authored The Friendly Classroom
for a Small Planet, a handbook on creative approaches to living and
problem-solving for children, and has helped write a number of other books on
mediation and conflict resolution. She continues to speak at conferences and to
facilitate workshops.
CCRC's
work stretches into international terrain. In 1997, five thousand teachers
versed in the techniques of conflict resolution came together to train all
teachers from the turbulent country of El Salvador. And in 1998, the group held
a Peace Camp for a group of twenty youths ages 10 to 17 from two battling
countries of the former Soviet Union, the republics of Georgia and Abkhazi.
Within an atmosphere of positive interaction and friendship, singing, dancing,
and laughing together, the children were able to find camaraderie where their
adult counterparts could not.
Since
its inception, CCRC and CRC have spread their wings to over two dozen branches
throughout the United States. For more information, contact CCRC at: Box 271,
521 North Broadway, Nyack, NY 10960, phone: 845-353-1796, fax: 845-358-4924,
cell: 845-755-8816, or by email to ccrcnyack@aol.com. CRC's website is at
ccrcglobal.org.