Peace Education

Lesson objectives:
1. Define Peace Education
2. Identify concepts and principles of Peace Education
3. Identify its historical developments and global perspectives
4. The role of education in promoting peace and social justice

What is peace?
 Peace is being quiet inside.
 Peace is calm and relaxed state of mind.
 Peace is when people get along and don’t argue or fight.
 Peace is having positive thoughts, pure feelings, and good wishes.
 Peace begins within each one of us.
 Peace is more than the absence of war.
 To stay peaceful requires strength and compassion.
 World peace grows through non-violence, acceptance, fairness, and communication.

Peace is the main characteristic of a civilized society.

Peace is not only for children but also adolescents and adults, peace is not just the absence
of war, it is the practice of love.
In a peaceful society people would work together to resolve conflicts,develop morality , treat
each other with justice, satisfy basic needs, and respect each other.
Peace has been defined as “absence of violence”. Peace is not only absence of war, but also
violence in all forms, such as conflicts, threat to life, social degradation, discrimination,
oppression, exploitation, poverty, injustice and so on.
Freedom from civil commotion and disorder; public order and security.
Freedom from disturbance or perturbation.

Levesl of peace
Scope/Levels Of Peace Education
1) Individual or self-development level,
2) School or community level,
3) National level, and
4) Global level

Peace Education
Education is the only defence against war.
Education for Peace has a two-fold purpose:
a) to empower individuals to choose the path of peace rather than the path of violence; and
b) to enabling them to be peacemakers rather than consumers of peace.

Peace Education is an essential component of holistic basic education that aims at the
comprehensive development of persons.
Education for peace involves developing values , skills, and attitude that are conducive to
building peace. Peace education fields would be considered part of education for peace
includes:
International education (or global education) , multicultural education, and environmental
education.

Concept of Peace Education

 Peace Education is both a philosophy and a process inclusive of skills, attitudes and
knowledge to create a safe world, to build a sustainable environment and to bring social
change ( Harris & Morrison, 2003).
 Peace education can be considered as the attempt to provide values education and skills
that would reinforce positive group interactions among vastly different cultures and
countries ( Gutek, 2006).
Fran Schimdt and Alice Friedman, 1988:
“Peace education is holistic. It embraces the physical, emotional, intellectual, and social
growth of children within a framework deeply rooted in traditional human values. It is based on
a philosophy that teaches love , compassion, trust, fairness, co-operation and reverence for
the human family and all life on our beautiful planet.”
“Peace education is skill building. It empowers children to find creative and non-destructive
ways to settle conflict and to live in harmony with themselves, others, and their world....
Peace building is the task of every human being and the challenge of the human family.”

PRINCIPLES OF PEACE EDUCATION

World Federation of Teachers Unions working group in Prague (1983), adopted following
principles of peace education-
1. The education for peace should compromise of two aspects: one, explain the necessity and
the possibility of peace, and two, take action in favour of peace.
2. Children, youth and adults should be made to understand the real causes and
responsibilities for past and future conflicts, the economic and political process that led or
which can lead to wars.
3. They should be made aware with inter-dependence of the problems existed in the society
such as racism, sexism, religionism and colonialism
4. Citizens should individually and collectively take responsibility for the prevention of war, by
taking action against arms race and should support disarmament. Passive attitudes and
fatalistic views on war and peace and the concept that war forms part of the human nature
needs to be combated.
5. Reactions and the refusal to think of war must be avoided as unimaginable needs to be
made imaginable. The consequences of the use of existing nuclear, chemical and biological
weapons should be understood.
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE OF PEACE EDUCATION
 Historically, already the earliest human societies attempted to avoid violence and
appreciate the best aspects of human nature by teaching each other about strategies for
peace.
 The modern concept of peace education in western civilization has been developed by
the contribution of many scholars, theologians, philosophers, practitioners (Harris &
Morrison, 2003), such as Plato, Desiderius Erasmus, Comenius, Immanuel Kant,
Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Maria Montessori, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John
Dewey, Teilhard de Chardin, Johan Galtung and others.
 One of the first Europeans who used the written word to espouse peace education was
Jan Amos Comenius(1642/1969), the Czech educator who in the seventeenth century
saw that universally shared knowledge could provide a road to peace. This approach to
peace assumes that anunderstanding of others and shared values will overcome
differences that lead to conflict. The ultimate goal of education was a world in which men
and women would live in harmony with acceptance of diverse cultures.
 The growth of PE reflects on the developments of peace movement and has changed in
response to changes in the social, economic, and political environment.
 The peace movement waves in the 19th century resulted in the formation of peace
organizations and peace societies in both Europe and the United States (U.S.) followed
by the lobbying of governments against war and international peace congresses in the
20th century.
 Montessori emphasized the socialization of the young child, the power of education to
effect social changes and education as a means of eliminating war once and for all.
Values such as global citizenship, personal responsibility, and respect for diversity, she
argued, must be an essential part of education (Montessori, 1943).
 The origin of ‘peace studies’ (including conflict resolution and conflict studies) as an
academic discipline can be traced back to the late 1940s, and the field has been
developing steadily since then.
 The first academic peace studies program was established in the U.S. in 1948. Soon
thereafter, the field of peace research developed as a “science of peace” in the 1950s to
counteract the science of war (Harris, 2008; Steinberg, 2006).
 Betty Reardon, Ian Harris, and Johan Galtung in the 1960s and 1970s worked within the
context of the civil rights, women’s rights, and anti-war movements.
 In the 1980s, the threat of nuclear war prompted peace educators all around the world to
warn of impending devastation.
 Reardon (1988) emphasized a new paradigm of integrity and wholeness along with the
central role of ecology in peace education. She argued that the core values of schooling
should be care, concern and commitment, and the key concepts of PE should be
planetary stewardship, global citizenship, and humane relationships.
 Ian Harris (1988, 2008) stressed a holistic approach to peace education that could apply
to community education, schools, as well as universities. The key ingredients of such
pedagogy are cooperative learning, democratic community, moral sensitivity, and critical
thinking .
 Strongly influenced by Gandhi, Johan Galtung sees the value of action, compassion and
the importance of the search for openings, for possibilities of transcending those trends
(Galtung, 1980). The expansion of peace education towards the end of the 20th century
points to an important symbiotic relationship between peace movements, peace
research, and peace education.

The role of education in promoting peace and social justice

Objectives of Peace Education
 To foster changes in order to make the world a better and more human place
 To develop values and skills to assist the students in striving the fullness of life
 To help students develop a rich vision of peace to work for a viable global society
 To create constructive behaviours for dealing with problems so as to minimize and
eliminate conflict
 To explore peace both as a state of being and as an active process for the promotion of
positive human relations
 Understand the nature and origins of violence and its effect on both victim and
perpetrator
 Equip children and adults with personal conflicts resolution skills, so that when they are
faced with conflict, they will choose to be peaceful
 Educate every new generation of students to become peacemakers and to devote their
talents, capacities and energies towards the creation of civilization of peace based on the
twin pillars of a culture of peace and a culture of healing
Peace education in school
 Develop a more humanistic management approach.
 Improve human relations between, teacher-student, teacher- teacher, student-student
etc.
 Help develop good attitudes in students and teachers as well, e.g. co-operation, mutual
respect.
 Help healthy emotional development in students.
 Facilitate socialization through participation in interactive and cooperative learning
activities.
 Improve students’ discipline and moral behavior.
 Develop creativity both in students and teachers.
 Improve standard of quality of teaching and learning.
The Philippine historical accounts show that Indigenous Peoples (IPs) in the Philippines have
long been suffering from discrimination and lack of access to Education.
The IPs comprise about 10% to 20% of the Philippines’s 102.9 million total populations. The
Philippine educational system’s neo-colonial background creates injustice on some cultural
minorities who can attend school.
For example in the Dumagat communities in the provinces of Nueva Ecija and Aurora in the
Philippines.
“We, Indigenous Peoples, cannot dream of a professional career. We are disadvantaged by
the policy of using English as the medium of instruction in Higher Education Institution (HEI).
The absence of an entrance examination tailored fit to our socio-cultural milieu and
experiences among HEIs prevents us from entering and experiencing university life. Today,
all HEIs are using examination instruments based upon majority cultural experiences and
standards of which we are not fully aware we will surely fail in the exam something has to be
done”. (Interview with Emmanuel B. Domingo,June 16, 2019)

The challenges to IP/ICC students are associated with the cost of transportation, board and
lodging, need for sub-sistence allowance, as well as the discriminatory treatment of
mainstream society. The use of English as a medium of instruction in most IP curricula is a
blatant disregard to the policies respecting IP culture. It is a form of cultural invasion within the
framework of the right to Education.

The right to education is not only of those who can afford to pay for a good education but by
anyone regardless of the language or religion, whatever the color of skin and circumstances
of birth or social origin, notwithstanding opinions, political inclinations, and economic
condition.
The right to education of IPs/Indigenous Cultural Communities (ICCs) is promoted and
protected in the Philippines. Numerous laws, statutes, and policies were forged to make
Education accessible to vulnerable groups such as the IPs. This indicates that the Philippines
is aware of the needs of its marginalized communities and are creating policies that are
responsive to it, especially in the aspect of social rights, with the right to Education being
among it.
The IPs deserve holistic Education. Education that represents their beliefs, feelings,
principles, and general ideas that share a family resemblance (Forbes, 2003; Hare, 2010).
According to Hare (2010), Education that focuses on the whole person both cognitive and
affective. In this connection, an IP education is described by Section 28 of the IPRA of 1997,
as one that provides comprehensive system of education relevant to the needs of the children
and young IPs/ICCs through the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP).

As Education International commits to the promotion of IP rights to self-determination,

preservation of their cultural identity, and the right to learn through the use of their own
language, it likewise acknowledges the vital role of educators, education support personnel,
and other organizations in the sector of Education in ensuring that their commitment is
realized.

 In spite of numerous global initiatives to make Education accessible to IPs, much is to be

desired in terms of observance and implementation in the Philippines. One significant
implication of this data is that call for change agents to start the process of moving the IPs
toward reflection and action so that a higher level of protection and appropriate promotion of
their rights to education may be realized.

Goal Of Peace Education

It aims to promote social change through attitudes and inner transformation (Harris &
Morrison, 2003).
Or to develop peace behaviour.
Peace Education defines its major goals as follows:
1) Preventing and resolving violent conflicts;
2) Promoting post-conflict stability and development;
3) Increasing peace building capacity, tools, and intellectual capital worldwide;
4) Proposing world peace and reduction of international tensions that result from tensions
caused by nationalism, chauvinism and ethnic stereotyping.

Need For Peace Education

 To develop skills, attitudes, and knowledge with co-operative and participatory learning
methods and an environment of tolerance, care, and respect.
 Students take responsibility for their own growth and achievement while teachers care
for the wellbeing of all students.
 Is an opportunity to promote the total welfare of students, advocate for their just and
equitable treatment of youth, and promote individual and social responsibility for both
educators and learners.
 Through pedagogy and social action, peace educators demonstrate that there are
alternatives to violence.
 Peace education aims not to reproduce but to transform.

Conclusion
Peace education is multidimensional and holistic in its content and process.
We can imagine it as a tree with many robust branches.
Peace education in comprised of many themes and forms that have evolved in various parts
of the world.
It reflects the growth of progressive education and social movements in the last five decades.
“To reach peace, teach peace.”

21 September marks the International Day of Peace.

The Peace One Day initiative, launched twenty years ago at London’s Globe Theatre by
United Nation, is a campaign to make The International Day of Peace, 21 September, a day
that is truly without war. If peace can be achieved in some places where war once reigned, as
in Western Europe for example, then there is no reason why it cannot be achieved in all
places. One day of peace may not be much. But it is a start that would show that world peace
is possible