How Nonviolence Can Transform Teaching

Nonviolence Radio

During this episode of Nonviolence Radio, we hear from Mike Tinoco, public school teacher, author and committed nonviolence educator. Stephanie, Michael and Mike discuss some of the key themes of Mike’s new book, Heart at the Center: An Educator's Guide to Sustaining Love, Hope, and Community Through Nonviolence Pedagogy. Mike explores a radically holistic approach to education, one that not only teaches nonviolence content but embodies it in method as well. Mike tries to level some of the hierarchy often found in traditional classrooms which establish teachers firmly as the authorities over students. To develop an alternative way to organize a classroom, he shifts the aim of education: instead of an instrumental means of getting a good job and ensuring financial success, he sees the goal of education, in part at least, as oriented towards ‘becoming more fully human’:

I think the role of teachers and administrators is to just reflect on how we can create cultures that are really humanizing our students and ourselves and allowing us to use our power in service of the kids so that we're not having power over them…my interest is not to have any sort of control over [students], but is really to be in community with them and to use my privilege and power in service of creating conditions that maximize learning and maximize like our community strength. They respond really well to that.

This model of teaching – where learning is as much a part of the teacher’s job as the students’, where service and community are as important as individual success – allows for education to become an effective form of nonviolent resistance within a culture sometimes lost in selfishness and struggling to find meaning and purpose.