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Why Are Children Killing Children in Our Schools?
News Release regarding the shootings at Columbine High.
For a printable version of this release, please click here.
May 1999 - "Violence comes from the belief that other people cause our pain and therefore deserve punishment." says Dr. Marshall B. Rosenberg, founder of the Center for Nonviolent Communication (CNVC). Rosenberg believes people are peaceful and compassionate by nature, however, he adds, "We have learned many forms of 'life alienating communication' that lead us to speak and behave in ways that injure ourselves and others."
Dr. Rosenberg, whose Ph. D. is in clinical psychology, believes violent action originates in violent patterns of thinking and speaking. From an early age we learn to think in terms of the wrongness or badness of those who don't act in harmony with our values. We also learn to deny responsibility for our actions and feelings by blaming others. Even though the language we have learned conditions us to think in ways that can result in anger, depression and violence, we have an alternative.
In his new book Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Compassion, Rosenberg shows us how to speak and listen to others in a way that increases goodwill. Nonviolent Communication (NVC) teaches people how to avoid using language that creates resentment or lowers our self-esteem. NVC emphasizes using compassion as the motivation for actions, rather than fear, guilt, blame, or shame. NVC also emphasizes personal responsibility for our choices.
As a child growing up in a turbulent neighborhood, Rosenberg wanted to find a way of speaking that would inspire compassion instead of violence. In 1961, as a psychologist, he set out to discover such a language -- and teach it. In 1966, he began using Nonviolent Communication to support his work mediating conflicts between civil rights activists and institutions undergoing desegregation. Dr. Rosenberg founded the Center for Nonviolent Communication in 1984 and now has 15 centers and over 60 certified trainers and coordinators in 30 countries around the world.
Through their efforts over the past 35 years, tens of thousands of people on five continents have received training in Nonviolent Communication. This training demonstrates that when we keep our attention on our feelings and needs we can sustain peaceful respectful dialogues through which we find ways to meet everyone¹s needs.
This process has helped to resolve conflicts between warring tribes, police and gangs, teachers and students, labor and management, within families and couples in crisis, and in many other types of conflict situations. NVC is taught in schools, prisons, businesses and many other organizations and institutions in Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Yugoslavia, Columbia, the U. S., and throughout the world.
Dr. Rosenberg travels extensively to mediate conflicts and to train people in Nonviolent Communication. For more information about NVC training or materials, to place an order, or to interview Dr. Rosenberg, contact CNVC at 909-893-3886, or contact Gary Baran, Executive Director of CNVC at 818-957-6493, or by email at baran@citymail.lacc.cc.ca.us.
Visit CNVC on the web at www.cnvc.org
Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Compassion, by Marshall B. Rosenberg (PuddleDancer Press, January 1999)
Available through your local book stores.
Neill Gibson or Meiji Stewart
PuddleDancer Press
619-452-1386
puddledncr@aol.com
http://www.puddledancer.com
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