Peace Education

1
Peace Education

• Philosophical Principles as Pedagogy for Social
  Change
• Mary Lee Morrison

2

• you will teach me first, my students,
• the character of my indifference
• and the dark confusion of being young.
• I will teach you then my students,
• a hope that lies beneath the surface,
• a love inherent in the nature of things.
• follow the course of it to the end of knowing
• gather the thread of it line by line.
• Poem by Michael True, in Ordinary People Family
  Life and Global Values.

3
What is Peace Education

• Peace education is the pedagogical efforts to
  create a world at peace.
• By peace, we mean more than the absence of
  violence (negative peace) (Galtung).

• Peace in its most positive aspects embraces ideas
  of justice, global sustainability and the
  eradication of structures that promote
  insecurity poverty, hunger, malnutrition and
  lack of access to resources

4
Peace Education rests on 2 assumptions

• Conflict is ubiquitous
• There are ways to transform it

• Education for peace assumes peace in education
  (M.Haavelsrud)

5
Peace Education Holds Both Philosophical
Principles and Processes (Skills)

• Peace education is visionary and inherently moral

6
Philosophy of Peace Education Involves

• Nonviolence
• Love as the basis for transformation-translated
  into caring classrooms (Noddings, Martin)
• Reverence for the environment and for all life

7
Processes of peace education Include

• Skills of conflict resolution (transformation)
• Attitudes
• Values
• These rest on the ethos of having enough for
  all to sustain life

8
Betty Reardon has defined peace education as

• the attempt to promote the development of an
  authentic planetary consciousness that will
  enable us to function as global citizens and to
  transform the present human condition by changing
  the social structures and patterns of thought
  that have created it. The transformational
  imperative must be at the center, both in
  knowledge and values. (Comprehensive Peace
  Education)

9
The root of education

• Is educare
• To lead out
• Peace education seeks to draw out from people
  their own best instincts to live more peacefully
  with others.
• This implies working from within, starting the
  transformation of society beginning with each
  individual.

10
Peace education

• Seeks to build on the philosophy and the
  processes of nonviolence to help us understand
  the role that conflict and violence have played
  in our own lives, seeking ways to transform them.
  
• Peace educators point out both the value of and
  the risk of conflict and social change.

11
Peace education

• Appreciates the richness of the concept of peace
• Addresses fears
• Provides a futures orientation (imagination)
• Teaches peace as both a process and philosophy

• Promotes peace as a concept alongside justice
• Promotes the care of and love of the Earth and
  respect for all life
• Teaches nonviolence as a way to settle differences

12
Peace education is practiced throughout the world
in many settings

• All have in common the idea of transforming
  conflict into something positive and sustainable
  so that our world will continue to turn.
• Peace education seeks to make and build peace
  through pedagogy.
• Peace education rests on the assumptions that
  morals and ethics cannot be separate from the
  classroom.
• The concept of responsibility, both individual
  and shared, is embedded in the philosophy.

13
How is it done?

• An educator teaching peace will use conceptual
  elements of the philosophy and the processes to
  structure formal, informal and hidden
  curricula,

• including classroom climate, tolerance, respect
  and those teachable moments that can transform
  classroom interactions and learning.

14
Some elements of the curricula

• An understanding of war and its causes
• An understanding of violence and its causes
• Knowledge of the military and its structures
• An understanding of some principles of world
  order, including the United Nations system
• An understanding of the role of citizen
  participation

15

• Knowledge of NGOs and their impact on social
  change
• Knowledge of world-wide and local grass-roots
  initiatives
• Principles of restorative justice
• Listening and dialoguing
• The importance of nonviolence

16
Elise Boulding, a founder of the peace research
movement has said

• There are certain characteristics that optimize
  young people growing up to be peacemakers-those
  who will seek to shape their societies toward
  peace (Building a Global Civic Culture).
• These include genetics, cognitive maturational
  processes, modeling and reinforcement, knowledge
  stock, cultural values and beliefs, family
  influence, peers, the media, community inputs.
  Models are key.
• The important function of education cannot be
  underestimated.

17
Who Has Gone Before?

• Montessori in 1937-our hope for the future lies
  not in the formal knowledge that we pass on, but
  in the normal development of the new man (sic)
  (Education for Peace).

• Montessori has often been quoted as saying
  establishing peace is the work of education all
  politics can do is keep us out of war.

18
John Dewey

• Deweys philosophical ideas involved concepts of
  educating for peace.
• He saw the necessity of teachers loving their
  students- love through common self-sacrifice to
  reach the common good (found in Simpson and
  Jackson article in Educational Foundations-taken
  from Dewey MW5).

19
Dewey and other progressives were concerned about
the growing militarism of America

• Dewey connected ideal education to one involving
  values of peace
• Began the Outlawry of War campaign

20

• Horace Mann hoped that common education could
  free humankind from the ever present danger of war

21
More Modern Educators

• Neo-Deweyan Maxine Greenes understanding of
  education is releasing persons to be
  different-inherently reflecting concepts of
  freedom and choice-, listening and dialoguing in
  order to view things as they might be.
• J.R. Martin-schools as homes
• The importance of nurturing

22

• Sara Ruddick-maternal love giving rise to
  maternal practice can promote peace
• hooks-teaching to transgress-only happens with
  adequate nurturing. No dichotomy between
  education and social change. Healing of the world
  can happen if teachers know themselves and their
  students

23
Parker Palmer has written

• The goal of knowledge arising from love is the
  reunification and reconstruction of broken selves
  and worlds. (To Know as we are Known Education
  as a Spiritual Journey)

24
A Brief History of Peace Education

• Contemporary view on peace education reflect the
  evolution of its concept from the beginnings of
  the peace research movement-40s and 50s

• However its roots go back much further
• Reformers such as Addams and Fannie Fern Andrews

25

• IPRA (The International Peace Research
  Association)-1965 and COPRED (Consortium on
  Peace, Research, Education and Development)-1970
  were outgrowths of the work done by the Womens
  International League for Peace and Freedom

• The relational and transformative elements of
  peace education arose partly out of the 2nd wave
  of the womens movement
• Peace began to be seen as including concepts of
  relationships-interpersonal, inter-communal and
  inter-global.

26
Thus our modern concept of peace education rests
on those values and attitudes often associated
with women

• Peace as a concept, and thus peace education,
  cannot be separated conceptually from networking,
  connecting people in mutually productive,
  constantly interacting processes of teaching and
  learning.

27
The Earth Charter as a Paradigm of Education for
A Sustainable, Peaceful World

• The Earth Charter is a declaration of fundamental
  principles laying out what is needed for to build
  a just, sustainable, and, ultimately, peaceful
  world
• 4 interconnected themes
• Respect and care for the community of life
• Ecological integrity
• Social and economic justice
• Democracy, nonviolence and peace

28

• We are now at the mid-point of the UN designated
  Decade for a Culture of Peace
• We have just begun the Decade for Sustainable
  Development

• From the Hague Appeal for Peace (2001)

29

• A culture of peace will be achieved when citizens
  of the world understand global problems have the
  skills to resolve conflicts constructively, know
  and live by international standards of human
  rights, gender and racial equality, appreciate
  cultural diversity and respect the integrity of
  the Earth. Such learning cannot be achieved
  without intentional, sustained and systematic
  education for peace.

30
Peace Education in Action

• A Visit to Costa Rica

31
The University for Peace
32
(No Transcript)
33
Visit to Two Schools Implementing the Precepts of
a Culture of Peace

• With cooperation and support of the University
  for Peace and the Ministry of Education for Costa
  Rica

34
(No Transcript)
35
Three Themes

• Peace with self
• Peace with others
• Peace with nature

36
Why do we do what we do?
37
(No Transcript)
38
From the Preamble to the Earth Charter

• We stand at a critical moment in Earths history,
  a time when humanity must choose its future. It
  is imperative that we, the peoples of the Earth,
  declare our responsibility to one another, to the
  greater communiy of life and to future
  generations.

• We urgently need a shared vision of basic values
  to provide an ethical foundation for the emerging
  world community.

39
To End

• My country is the world-to do good is my
  religion (Thomas Paine)
• We must not only prepare our children for the
  world-we must prepare the world for our children
  motto of Curbstone Press, a CT based 501 (c )
  (3) organization http//www.cunepress.com/cunemaga
  zine/news/articles/curbstone.htm