The Protective Use of Force in Schools

I’d like to describe how some students and I used protective force to bring order into a chaotic situation at an alternative school. This school was designed for students who had dropped out or been expelled from conventional classrooms. The administration and I hoped to demonstrate that a school based on the principles of NVC would be able to reach these students. My job was to train the faculty in NVC and serve as consultant over the year. With only four days to prepare the faculty, I was unable to sufficiently clarify the difference between NVC and permissiveness. As a result, some teachers were ignoring, rather than intervening in, situations of conflict and disturbing behavior. Besieged by increasing pandemonium, the administrators were nearly ready to shut down the school.

When I requested to talk with the students who had contributed most to the turbulence, the principal selected eight boys, ages eleven to fourteen, to meet with me. The following are excerpts from the dialogue I had with the students.

MBR:	(expressing my feeling and needs without asking probing questions) I’m very upset about the teachers’ reports that things are getting out of hand in many of the classes. I want very much for this school to be successful. I’m hopeful that you can help me understand what the problems are and what can be done about them.
Will:	The teachers in this school—they fools, man!
MBR:	Are you saying, Will, that you are disgusted with the teachers and you want them to change some things they do?
Will:	No, man, they is fools because they just stand around and don’t do nothin’.
MBR:	You mean you’re disgusted because you want them to do more when problems happen. (This is a second attempt to receive the feelings and wants.)
Will:	That’s right, man. No matter what anybody do they just stand there smilin’ like fools.
MBR:	Would you be willing to give me an example of how the teachers do nothing?
Will:	Easy. Just this morning a dude walks in wearin’ a bottle of Wild Turkey on his hip pocket plain as day. Everybody seen it; the teacher, she seen it but she’s lookin’ the other way.
MBR:	It sounds to me, then, that you don’t have respect for the teachers when they stand around doing nothing. You’d like them to do something. (This is a continued attempt to fully understand.)
Will:	Yeah.
MBR:	I feel disappointed because I want them to be able to work things out with students, but it sounds like I wasn’t able to show them what I meant.

The discussion then turned to one particularly pressing problem: that of students who didn’t want to work disturbing those who did.

MBR:	I’m anxious to try to solve this problem because the teachers tell me it’s the one that bothers them the most. I would appreciate your sharing whatever ideas you have with me.
Joe:	The teacher got to get a rattan (a stick covered with leather that was carried by some principals in St. Louis to administer corporal punishment).
MBR:	So you’re saying, Joe, that you want the teachers to hit students when they bother others.
Joe:	That’s the only way students gonna stop playing the fool.
MBR:	(still trying to receive Joe’s feelings) So you doubt that any other way would work.
Joe:	(nods agreement)
MBR:	I’m discouraged if that’s the only way. I hate that way of settling things and want to learn other ways.
Ed:	Why?
MBR:	Several reasons. Like if I get you to stop horsing around in school by using the rattan, I’d like you to tell me what happens if three or four of you that I’ve hit in class are out by my car when I go home.
Ed:	(smiling) Then you better have a big stick, man!
MBR:	(Feeling certain I understood Ed’s message and certain he knew I understood, I continue without paraphrasing it.) That’s what I mean. I’d like you to see I’m bothered about that way of settling things. I’m too absentminded to always remember to carry a big stick, and even if I remembered, I would hate to hit someone with it.
Ed:	You could kick the cat out of school.
MBR:	You’re suggesting, Ed, that you would like us to suspend or expel kids from the school?
Ed:	Yeah.
MBR:	I’m discouraged with that idea, too. I want to show that there are other ways of solving differences in school without kicking people out. I’d feel like a failure if that was the best we could do.
Will:	If a dude ain’t doin’ nothin’, how come you can’t put him in a do-nothin’ room?
MBR:	Are you suggesting, Will, that you would like to have a room to send people to if they bother other students?
Will:	That’s right. No use they bein’ in class if they ain’t doin’ nothin’.
MBR:	I’m very interested in that idea. I’d like to hear how you think such a room might work.
Will:	Sometimes you come to school and just feel evil: you don’t want to do nothin’. So we just have a room students go to till they feel like doin’ somethin’.
MBR:	I understand what you are saying, but I’m anticipating that the teacher will be concerned about whether the students will go willingly to the do-nothing room.
Will:	(confidently) They’ll go.

I said I thought the plan might work if we could show that the purpose was not to punish, but to provide a place to go for those who weren’t ready to study, and simultaneously a chance to study for those who wanted to study. I also suggested that a do-nothing room would be more likely to succeed if it was known to be a product of student brainstorming rather than staff decree.

A do-nothing room was set up for students who were upset and didn’t feel like doing schoolwork or whose behavior kept others from learning. Sometimes students asked to go; sometimes teachers asked students to go. We placed the teacher who had best mastered NVC in the do-nothing room, where she had some very productive talks with the children who came in. This set-up was an immense success in restoring order to the school because the students who devised it made its purpose clear to their peers: to protect the rights of students who wanted to learn. We used the dialogue with the students to demonstrate to the teachers that there were other means of resolving conflicts besides withdrawal from the conflict or using punitive force.