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Welcome to the February issue of
The School
Mediator.
This month, in the growing shadow of the
juggernaut, we provide an exercise to explore the
relevance
of non-violent conflict resolution to the current crisis
with Iraq.
Take a moment to send along your
thoughts.
Wishing you the best, wherever you are,
Richard Cohen
Founder and Director
School Mediation Associates
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| PeaceForce Deployed to Zona
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The following scenario is based on the current Iraqi
crisis, but is set during a time characterized by near
universal understanding of the limitations of war and a
parallel commitment to utilizing non-violent methods of
conflict
resolution.
We can hope that some day, in a considerably
brighter
future, this scenario might be more realistic. With
hundreds of thousands of young people learning conflict
resolution/mediation skills every year, it is
possible. Isn't
it?
Instructions as to how to use the scenario with your
students follow below.
For decades, Bull Mono, the tyrannical leader of Zona,
had bullied not only the other nations in his region, but
his own citizens. Neither past military campaigns--Bull's
tenure stretched back to the time before people
understood about wars--nor economic sanctions had
proven effective in tempering his ways. Bull's neighbors
feared him, and the Zonan people were so brutalized and
oppressed, there was little hope that they could push for
reform on their own.
When rumors/evidence circulated that Bull possessed
weapons of mass destruction--weapons that almost all
nations had long ago forsworn--international pressure
upon him was once again increased. Independent
inspectors scoured his country for the alleged weapons.
Mono denied, obfuscated, and took only
grudging steps toward compliance. The weapons could
not be located.
Concurrently, people around the globe were increasingly
moved by the Zonan people's plight. From the diverse
outlets of the international free press, the world learned
that the country's infrastructure was in ruins, that power
was intermittent, and that clean drinking water was in
short supply.
Zonan children were faring worst of all, in
part due to unintended effects of the sanctions:
Thousands died each month (only 1 in 8 lived to the age
of 5), and fully one third were malnourished.* A growing
consensus called for rapid action to end this
humanitarian crisis.
An executive meeting of the Council of Nations (CON)
was called to address the Zonan situation. Charged with
facilitating the resolution of international disputes as well
as ensuring basic human rights for all, the CON
proceeded to interview a diverse group of expatriated
Zonan leaders
as well as recent visitors to the nation.
As a condition of joining the Council of Nations, each
member nation--and by this time, all but a handful of
nations
were members--pledged to devote resources toward the
research, development, and application of the
technology of peace equal to that devoted to the
technology
of
war. Individual nations were encouraged to decrease
their spending on war preparations. Many had. But the
reverse, spending more on war than on peace, was
prohibited.
The Zonan leaders urged the CON to empower the
PeaceForce (PF) to intervene. The PeaceForce,
comprised of over two million volunteer and professional
"soldiers" around the world, implemented CON's peace
and conciliation efforts.
The speakers acknowledged that, as always, the human
and material costs of utilizing the PeaceForce were high.
But they maintained that deploying the Force would
prevent even greater loss of life and threats to world
harmony.
In the end, CON leaders agreed, and the PeaceForce was
asked to prepare for deployment.
Members of the PF were highly trained in non-violent
conflict resolution: They carried no weapons apart from
their belief in the dignity of all peoples, their
willingness
to endure harsh conditions, and their resolve to act for
peace. As such, they held the respect and admiration of
most peoples, regardless of race, creed, or culture; even
those that didn't initially respect them often came to do
so.
The PF "soldiers" were supported by all manner of
state-of-the-art material goods: high tech equipment,
food stuffs, medical supplies, transportation, and so on.
The most elite PeaceForce members often risked their
lives in the cause of peacemaking. And none expected
the mission in Zona to be any less dangerous.
In fact, PeaceForce strategists and planners, those who
could remember, looked back on the days of primarily
military-oriented struggles as relative cakewalks. It was
much more complex to orchestrate actions that
engendered a lasting and durable peace, and that used
only non-violent means. Consider:
* Peace could not be imposed upon others. All
the PF
could do was to facilitate conditions in which parties to a
conflict could create their own peace.
* Given the PF's commitment to non-violent
peace
building, their missions often resulted in considerable
PF
casualties, especially in the early stages and most
especially when dealing with holdouts like Bull Mono and
his Zonan army, which possessed terribly destructive
armaments.
* It was difficult to anticipate the duration of
PeaceForce missions. A mission that was expected
to
last for years might lead to a surprisingly rapid and
lasting peace, while another might require PF resources
for years and years.
* Almost all CON member nations reserved the
right to
use military means for self-defense or to protect
themselves from imminent harm. The PF command, to
the very top, was entirely separate and did not answer
to the military command of CON member nations.
Nevertheless, politics could get tricky. One or
many
countries' military commands, as an example, might call
for martial action while the PF was in the midst of a slow
but steadily progressing deployment.
And so the PeaceForce's strategists set to work planning
how to utilize the considerable resources at their
disposal--human, material, financial--to bring about a
just and lasting resolution to the Zonan situation.
Your Assignment (or an assignment for your
middle
school-aged or older students):
First: If you were the Director of PeaceForce
Planning,
what sort of campaign would you devise to facilitate
positive change in Zona? And how do you guess it would
turn out? Note that your campaign does not have to
end successfully.
Second: What, if anything, have you learned
from this
exercise that is relevant to the current crisis with Iraq?
And what have you learned about your ideas, hopes and
fears concerning the use of non-violent approaches to
international conflict resolution?
If you were the Director of PeaceForce
Planning,
what sort of campaign would you devise to facilitate
positive change in Zona? And how do you guess it would
turn out? Note that your campaign does not have to
end successfully.
Second: What, if anything, have you learned
from this
exercise that is relevant to the current crisis with Iraq?
And what have you learned about your ideas, hopes and
fears concerning the use of non-violent approaches to
international conflict resolution?
Please
send your scenarios and related thoughts to
us for posting in next month's issue.
*True facts about Iraqi children. From Carol Bellamy,
Executive Director of UNICEF, as quoted during radio
interview, 2/21/03.
To find out more about one real organization that
is
beginning to deploy non-violent peace forces around the
globe, visit the link below.
Nonviolent Peaceforce |
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| Response to "Wherefore Art Thou, Administrative Support?"
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Below are a few of the comments we received in
response to last month's newsletter, which bemoaned
the ongoing struggle to win administrative support for
peer mediation programs.
It is so funny that I read this newsletter today because
my colleagues and I were just discussing this very thing:
getting the administration involved in our peer mediation
program. We were also talking about why teachers are
not sending referrals. We still have teachers who are
quick to write up detentions rather than send students
to mediation. I have 16 mediators in our school who are
so bored that they complain to me about doing
mediations. I tell them to go out on the playground and
be ready to mediate. I know I need to go to
administration and keep telling them that I have 16
mediators who are eager to mediate and you are not
helping us to meet our goal, which is 20 mediations a
quarter.
Andrica Johnson
Fresno, CA, USA
andrica_j@yahoo.com
After many years of training mediators and having a peer
mediation program, I can truly say that our
administration supports us and refers students to us on a
regular basis. Teachers and students refer students as
well. Our mediators did more mediations in the first
semester than we have ever done in a whole year. Our
school is 9-12 (2,200 students) and very urban. We also
have a group of peer mediator leaders that have a class
with me daily. They have been trained to teach conflict
resolution skills to the younger students and do this
regularly. Our administration believes in us and has great
respect for our program.
Thanks for working on this newsletter - Keep up the
good work!
Elaine Plummer,
Wellness Educator/Peer Mediation Coordinator
Antioch High School
Nashville, Tennessee, USA
Elaine8642@aol.com
I set up peer mediation programs in Vancouver,
Washington and Portland, Oregon. I have experienced
this lack of administrative support and have a couple of
remedies.
First of all, it is useless to just train 20-30 kids in peer
mediation without in some way addressing the skills and
knowledge of the rest of the school. As much as possible
I lobby for a whole school approach. "Systemic change" I
call it. The most successful programs (30 mediations a
month) have been where we were able to train the entire
staff in at least the listening skills that accompany the
mediation process. We were also able to get the
mediation coordinator on the weekly "staffing" meeting,
presenting mediation as an on-going option for problems
that arose.
But there is still the problem of changing the habits of an
administration that, under duress, falls back on the same
old patterns of response. And the administration in a
middle school is ALWAYS under duress.
In talking to one principal, who swore by mediation but
was still not able to break his habits, we decided he
needed a visual aid to remember when Johnny and Frank
were sitting in his office, pectorals flinching, that he
could call in the peer mediators. We made two signs, one
on big white poster board, the other on a sticky note
and put them on the wall over the students' chair and
one on his computer that read variations of "Have you
tried peer mediation today?" We also put them on the
wall of the assistant principal and counselor, and moved
them from time to time to keep them seen. This school
went on to win numerous awards for how much the
systemic mediation program changed the climate and
reduced the number of suspensions and altercations in
the school.
Marcia McReynolds
Listen, Inc.
Vancouver, WA USA
Marciamcr@aol.com
Re. Administrative support: Actually here at Newton
North, my main referral channel has been the
administration and that includes the principal and
housemasters. My thrust has been to try to recruit
student self-referrals, but that has not happened yet.
The other day, we mediated two separate mediations
concerning racial issues. The referring housemaster
asked to attend one of the mediations, which he did. He
later reported back as to how impressed he was by the
session and now understood the process better. He may
be a candidate for subsequent training. Also,
administrators have commented that the school
atmosphere has improved and
credit some of that to the mediation program.
While there is still much to be done, mediation yields
tremendous benefits to the mediators, disputants and
school climate.
Best wishes.
Jeanne White
Newton North High School
Newton, MA, USA
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| About Us
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| For almost twenty years, School Mediation Associates
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mediation in schools. SMA's mission is to transform
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