Teaching relational skills

Jim Kenney

Jeff, your note about our discussion group having been quiet recently,
reminded me that I haven't shared my latest reflections about this subject
that has captured a major portion of my (hopefully) creative thinking lately.
Since I have a tendency to stay far too much in the abstract realm, I
recently volunteered to become an "adult friend" for one third grade student
in a mid-city school here in Kansas City. I was intrigued by the fact that
in the past 30 years since I first worked with adult one on one
participation with grade school students, the focus has shifted from
"tutoring" to being a friendly adult presence, with the primary focus being
to get to know the students and become interested in what's important to
them. I think (and hope) we'll get further than when we were more task
oriented.

In keeping with my thinking that our society now has the opportunity and
need to become more intentional about teaching relational skills, since an
ocean of cognitive data is suddenly available to most anyone over the
internet, my interest has become focused on the topic of bullying. Long
before I became a Quaker, my attention has been riveted on the question
posed in James 4:1, "What causes wars, and what causes fightings among you?
Is it not your passions that are at war in your members?". I've always been
impressed with the Quaker's valiant attempt to respond to that query by
their most notable failure, in creating penitentiaries, in the hope that
silence and time for reflection would work the same magic on the rebellious
that it has on seekers.

The thing I like most about the recent interest in the topic of bullying is
that more and more programs are being developed that seem to work. As
you've heard me say, I'm a dedicated pragmatist. I like to do what works.
Someone will have to help me with the statistics, but I remember reading
recently about a study where something like 2 out of 3 prisoners studied had
been identified as bullies in grade school. Our AFSC group here in KC has
been having good success with the HIP (help increase the peace) program for
Jr. & Sr. Hi School students. They are now working on more accurate ways to
measure the positive results that are being reported.

The particular aspect that fascinates me is that the focus has rather
rapidly shifted from originally working with prisoners (as in the Quaker
Alternative to Violence program) to recognizing we need to teach relational
skills at an ever younger age, to where the formalized programs now start as
young as kindergarten, with even some significant work being done with
expectant mothers with the belief that coping skills are being imprinted
even before birth.

Reck, your continuing challenge to be attentive to the "external agenda" in
your "ecology of learning" leads me to the rather awesome conclusion that
the time may finally have come when Quakers have the chance to redeem
themselves from their most embarrassing failure, when we tried to answer the
challenge posed in James 4:1 by inventing the concept of penitentiaries.
Such a dream is certainly a large enough one to capture the hearts of
Quakers everywhere, if only there is someone in our group with the calling
and the skills to communicate the dream to the larger Quaker community.
Teaching ever more successful conflict resolution skills within the context
of successful programs springing up all over our country would certainly
bring us much closer to our central Quaker goal of a more peaceable world.

Jim

added 10/31/2000

The more I reflect on the theme of bullying, the more I wonder if it might
not become the rallying cry of the next decade, just as injustice was of the
60's. I can think of nothing near and dear to the hearts of quakers that
doesn't perhaps better fit into the category of bullying than of injustice,
from war, ethnic cleansing, pollution, discrimination, domestic violence,
child abuse. The list goes on and on. Use your imagination. The adult
forms of bullying are just more sophisticated and harder to track to the
source, especially institutionalized forms of bullying.

The thing I like about using the term "bullying" is that it draws a roadmap
to a more peaceable resolution to the problem instead of the 60's practice,
still widely used, of out bullying the bullies with mass protests and the
like. It also invites us to work on the problem at very young ages, (like
starting in kindergarten, or even in pre-natal care). I think I mentioned
earlier in this on going conversation, the greatest gift the State of
Missouri ever gave to our grandchildren was their "Parents as Teachers"
program, where they taught parenting skills to our limit testing younger son
and his wife.