"Conflict Resolution as a Way of Life"

     Proposal:

  Envision this:  A little boy or girl, growing up, grows up in a household
where both parents know and teach conflict resolution skills.  The
parents always handle their conflicts reasonably and creatively.  This
child starts attending preschool, kindergarten or grade school with kids
all similarly endowed from their birth with such parents.

    First grade teaches two kinds of literacy:  word reading and people-
reading.  Actually, the people-reading skills are taught as a more general
"conflict resolution" or "Peace" literacy.  Skills of conflict reso-
lution are taught side-by-side with the letters of the alphabet, phonics,
and addition and subtraction, (and of course, for these days, computer
literacy).

    Every year the principles are taught with the same care and tending
as the student's ability to read the vernacular language.  By the
time the kid is a third grader, he will be so attuned to being able to 
listen and draw out from other kids the feelings that work behind their
hurts -- he will then be so attuned to thinking with the conflicting kids
about their hurts about real solutions to their emotional conflicts,
that he will likely have enought skill and, especially, honesty, to
be able to help settle as complicated as an United Auto Workers' conflict.

    (I am speaking, in part, of letting children be in on diplomatic
problems.  Adults just might tend to hold their tongues and speak truths
(rather than lies) when children are present and helping.)

    The young gentleman's or young lady's conflict resolution literacy 
training will continue through high school.  As high school students are
expected to continue using their reading skills in doing homework, they
will also be expected to practice their conflict resolution skills daily,
much like practicing the piano.

    The point of this is not to turn these growing humans into manipu-
lators, but rather to teach them the value of learning to listen to other
people, learning to help other people by being an impartial helper in
resolving conflict.  

    Our race has learned far too much about the arts of psychology and
biology to continue to depend solely upon a governmental and legal systems
to solve our problems for us, with the expense of many lawyers who make
quite a bit of money by merely doing something that some grade-schoolers
today already know how to do:  resolve conflict.  Our society today makes
federal cases out of many problems which could be far better solved by
having our society peopled with justice and conflict-resolution principles
in their hearts rather than enforced upon them by a law or a court of law.

    The prevalent nature of lawsuits is a symbol of a mean society, trying
to get as much from one-another as they can.  The myth of success fuels
so much our efforts at doing better than the next guy, that we as a society
forget what it is like to actually help the next guy come to a different
level, a different understanding, or a different kind of acceptance.  We
as a society forget that the grace of offering a helping hand to someone
struggling on some ladder, be it corporate, social, job-skill, scholastic --
we forget that the help graces not only the one being helped, but also
the helper.

    Conflict resolution is a work of a gentle people.  It is not work to
be entrusted to rudeness or guile.  It therefore is a tender thing, an
expression of a love for life, for others and for self.

						12/6/92 09:22
						--David Eisenstein
   Copyright  1992, David Eisenstein.