Understanding peace education is more important than ever, because we face a period in our history where war and conflicts cause the greatest destructions to lives and property than ever before. Violence affects people’s life, development and well-being of societies as well as armed violence and insecurity have a destructive impact on a countries’ development, affecting economic growth and often resulting in long-standing grievances among communities. Moreover, young people growing up in conflict situations experience great challenges, because violent conflicts have negative impacts on all dimensions of their lives.
There are various definitions of peace education and a vast body of literature on this field. According to Ian Harris and John Synott, peace education can be described as a series of “teaching encounters” that draw from people:
- their desire for peace,
- nonviolent alternatives for managing conflict, and
- skills for critical analysis of structural arrangements that produce and legitimize injustice and inequality.
According to Ian Harris, peace education is comprehensive, interdisciplinary in nature and embraces a wide range of programs and initiatives. It can be classified under five main headings:
- Environment Education
- Human Rights Education
- International Education
- Development Education
- Conflict Resolution Education
All the five headings are part in the same educational effort and only by combining them we can see a productive peace educational programmes.
UNICEF defines peace education as “the process of promoting the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values needed to bring about behaviour changes that will enable children, youth and adults to prevent conflict and violence, both overt and structural; to resolve conflict peacefully; and to create the conditions conducive to peace, whether at an intrapersonal, interpersonal, intergroup, national or international level”. Education for non-violence and peace includes training, skills and information directed towards cultivating a culture of peace based on human rights principles. This education not only provides knowledge about a culture of peace, but also imparts the skills and attitudes necessary to defuse and recognize potential conflicts, and those needed to actively promote and establish a culture of peace and non-violence[1].
According to UNICEF, the learning objectives of peace education may include an understanding of the manifestations of violence, the development of capacities to respond constructively to that violence and specific knowledge of alternatives to violence. Two fundamental concepts of peace education are respect and skills. Respect refers to the development of respect for self and for others; skills refer to specific communication, cooperation and behaviour skills used in conflict situations.
Another approaches to peace education are “education for peace” and “education about peace”. Education for peace is the education in order to create preconditions for the achievement of peace and education about peace involves the developmental and practice of instructions and processes that comprise a peaceful social order.
Peace education highlights the essential unity of humanity and emphasizes the importance of constantly referring to the principles of empathy, sharing and cooperation in efforts to resolve our common problems. Sowing the seeds for peace and justice through formal and non-formal education could nurture a new generation of world leaders and ordinary citizens who have a vision of peaceful and just world and who have both the skill and will to bring this vision to reality. Education at all levels is the key to building a culture of peace[2].
Developing capabilities for peace through broad based education involves behavioural, cognitive, spiritual and attitudinal components. Peace education should include instructional practices that respect developmental, cognitive and intellectual capacities. It can empower and inspire learners and bring a healthy balance and diversity to activism. Any curriculum of peace must have at its core, teaching of empathy. An infusion or integration of principles of peace into the education programmes is advocated. Discourses of empathy and reconciliation in curriculum and pedagogy are critical components of the reformation of peace education goals. Emphasis should be on critical thinking, problem solving, language and life skills as well as open mindedness, expressiveness, peacefulness, flexibility and sensitivity towards various global issues.
In addition, the term “education” in this context refers to any process – whether in schools, or in informal or non-formal educational contexts – that develops in youth or adults the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values leading to behaviour change. Peace education must address the prevention and resolution of all forms of conflict and violence, whether overt or structural, from the interpersonal level to the societal and global level.
[1][1] https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000160787
[2] https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED507654.pdf
