Peace education

Peace education is the process of

acquiring the values, the knowledge and
developing the attitudes, skills, and
behaviors to live in harmony with oneself,
with others, and with the natural
environment.

There are numerous United Nations

declarations on the importance of peace
education.[1] Ban Ki Moon, U.N. Secretary
General, has dedicated the International
Day of Peace 2013 to peace education in
an effort to refocus minds and financing
on the preeminence of peace education as
the means to bring about a culture of
peace.[2][3] Koichiro Matsuura, the
immediate past Director-General of
UNESCO, has written of peace education
as being of "fundamental importance to
the mission of UNESCO and the United
Nations".[4] Peace education as a right is
something which is now increasingly
emphasized by peace researchers such as
Betty Reardon[5] and Douglas Roche.[6]
There has also been a recent meshing of
peace education and human rights
education.[7]

Definition
Ian Harris and John Synott have described
peace education as a series of "teaching
encounters" that draw from people:[8]

their desire for peace,

nonviolent alternatives for managing
conflict, and
skills for critical analysis of structural
arrangements that produce and
legitimize injustice and inequality.
James Page suggests peace education be
thought of as "encouraging a commitment
to peace as a settled disposition and
enhancing the confidence of the individual
as an individual agent of peace; as
informing the student on the
consequences of war and social injustice;
as informing the student on the value of
peaceful and just social structures and
working to uphold or develop such social
structures; as encouraging the student to
love the world and to imagine a peaceful
future; and as caring for the student and
encouraging the student to care for
others".[9]
Often the theory or philosophy of peace
education has been assumed and not
articulated. Johan Galtung suggested in
1975 that no theory for peace education
existed and that there was clearly an
urgent need for such theory.[10] More
recently there have been attempts to
establish such a theory. Joachim James
Calleja has suggested that a philosophical
basis for peace education might be
located in the Kantian notion of duty.[11]
James Page has suggested that a
rationale for peace education might be
located in virtue ethics, consequentialist
ethics, conservative political ethics,
aesthetic ethics and the ethics of care.[12]
Since the early decades of the 20th
century, "peace education" programs
around the world have represented a
spectrum of focal themes, including anti-
nuclearism, international understanding,
environmental responsibility,
communication skills, nonviolence,
conflict resolution techniques, democracy,
human rights awareness, tolerance of
diversity, coexistence and gender equality,
among others.[13] Some have also
addressed spiritual dimensions of inner
harmony, or synthesized a number of the
foregoing issues into programs on world
citizenship. While academic discourse on
the subject has increasingly recognized
the need for a broader, more holistic
approach to peace education, a review of
field-based projects reveals that three
variations of peace education are most
common: conflict resolution training,
democracy education, and human rights
education. New approaches are emerging
and calling into question some of
theoretical foundations of the models just
mentioned. The most significant of these
new approaches focuses on peace
education as a process of worldview
transformation.

Forms
Conflict resolution training

Peace education programs centered on

conflict resolution typically focus on the
social-behavioural symptoms of conflict,
training individuals to resolve inter-
personal disputes through techniques of
negotiation and (peer) mediation. Learning
to manage anger, "fight fair" and improve
communication through skills such as
listening, turn-taking, identifying needs,
and separating facts from emotions,
constitute the main elements of these
programs. Participants are also
encouraged to take responsibility for their
actions and to brainstorm together on
compromises[14]

In general, approaches of this type aim to

"alter beliefs, attitudes, and
behaviours...from negative to positive
attitudes toward conflict as a basis for
preventing violence" (Van Slyck, Stern and
Elbedour, 1999, emphasis added).[15]
There are various styles or approaches in
conflict resolution training (ADR, Verbal
Aikido, NVC) that can give the practitioner
the means to accept the conflictual
situation and orient it towards a peaceful
resolution. As one peer mediation
coordinator put it: "Conflict is very natural
and normal, but you can't go through your
entire life beating everybody up—you have
to learn different ways to resolve
conflict".[16]

Democracy education

Peace education programs centered on

democracy education typically focus on
the political processes associated with
conflict, and postulate that with an
increase in democratic participation the
likelihood of societies resolving conflict
through violence and war decreases. At
the same time, "a democratic society
needs the commitment of citizens who
accept the inevitability of conflict as well
as the necessity for tolerance" (U.S.
Department of State, The Culture of
Democracy, emphasis added).[17] Thus
programs of this kind attempt to foster a
conflict-positive orientation in the
community by training students to view
conflict as a platform for creativity and
growth.

Approaches of this type train participants

in the skills of critical thinking, debate and
coalition-building, and promote the values
of freedom of speech, individuality,
tolerance of diversity, compromise and
conscientious objection. Their aim is to
produce "responsible citizens" who will
hold their governments accountable to the
standards of peace, primarily through
adversarial processes. Activities are
structured to have students "assume the
role of the citizen that chooses, makes
decisions, takes positions, argues
positions and respects the opinions of
others":[18] skills that a multi-party
democracy are based upon. Based on the
assumption that democracy decreases the
likelihood of violence and war, it is
assumed that these are the same skills
necessary for creating a culture of peace.

Human rights education

Peace education programs centered on
raising awareness of human rights
typically focus at the level of policies that
humanity ought to adopt in order to move
closer to a peaceful global community.
The aim is to engender a commitment
among participants to a vision of
structural peace in which all individual
members of the human race can exercise
their personal freedoms and be legally
protected from violence, oppression and
indignity.

Approaches of this type familiarize

participants with the international
covenants and declarations of the United
Nations system; train students to
recognize violations of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights; and promote
tolerance, solidarity, autonomy and self-
affirmation at the individual and collective
levels.[19]

Human rights education "faces continual

elaboration, a significant theory-practice
gap and frequent challenge as to its
validity".[20] In one practitioner's view:

"Human rights education does

not work in communities fraught
with conflict unless it is part of a
 comprehensive approach... In
fact, such education can be
counterproductive and lead to
greater conflict if people become
aware of rights which are not
realized. In this respect, human
rights education can increase the
potential for conflict"[21]

To prevent these outcomes, many such

programs are now being combined with
aspects of conflict resolution and
democracy education schools of thought,
along with training in nonviolent action.[22]
Worldview transformation

Some approaches to peace education

start from insights gleaned from
psychology which recognize the
developmental nature of human
psychosocial dispositions. Essentially,
while conflict-promoting attitudes and
behaviours are characteristic of earlier
phases of human development, unity-
promoting attitudes and behaviours
emerge in later phases of healthy
development. H.B. Danesh (2002a, 2002b,
2004, 2005, 2007, 2008a, 2008b)[23]
proposes an "Integrative Theory of Peace"
in which peace is understood as a
psychosocial, political, moral and spiritual
reality. Peace education, he says, must
focus on the healthy development and
maturation of human consciousness
through assisting people to examine and
transform their worldviews. Worldviews
are defined as the subconscious lens
(acquired through cultural, family,
historical, religious and societal
influences) through which people perceive
four key issues: 1) the nature of reality, 2)
human nature, 3) the purpose of existence,
4) the principles governing appropriate
human relationships. Surveying a mass of
material, Danesh argues that the majority
of people and societies in the world hold
conflict-based worldviews, which express
themselves in conflicted intrapersonal,
interpersonal, intergroup, and international
relationships. He subdivides conflict-
based worldviews into two main
categories which he correlates to phases
of human development: the Survival-Based
Worldview and the Identity-Based
Worldview. It is through the acquisition of
a more integrative, Unity-Based Worldview
that human capacity to mitigate conflict,
create unity in the context of diversity, and
establish sustainable cultures of peace, is
increased—be it in the home, at school, at
work, or in the international community.
Critical peace education and
yogic peace education

Modern forms of peace education relate

to new scholarly explorations and
applications of techniques used in peace
education internationally, in plural
communities and with individuals. Critical
Peace Education (Bajaj 2008, 2015; Bajaj &
Hantzopoulos 2016; Trifonas & Wright
2013) is an emancipatory pursuit that
seeks to link education to the goals and
foci of social justice disrupting inequality
through critical pedagogy (Freire 2003).
Critical peace education addresses the
critique that peace education is imperial
and impository mimicking the
'interventionism' of Western peacebuilding
by foregrounding local practices and
narratives into peace education (Salomon
2004; MacGinty & Richmond 2007). The
project of critical peace education
includes conceiving of education as a
space of transformation where students
and teachers become change agents that
recognise past and present experiences of
inequity and bias and where schools
become strategic sites for fostering
emancipatory change.[24][25][26][27][28][29]
Where Critical Peace Education is
emancipatory, seeking to foster full
humanity in society for everyone, yogic
peace education (Standish & Joyce
2017)[30] in concerned with transforming
personal (as opposed to interpersonal,
structural or societal/cultural) violence. In
yogic peace education, techniques from
yogic science are utilised to alter the
physical, mental and spiritual instrument
of humanity (the self) to address violence
that comes from within. Contemporary
peace education (similar to all peace
education) relate to specific forms of
violence (and their transformation) and
similar to teaching human rights and
conflict resolution in schools critical peace
education and yogic peace education are
complementary curricula that seek to
foster positive peace and decrease
violence in society.

Criticism
Toh Swee-Hin (1997) observes that each
of the various streams of peace education
"inevitably have their own dynamics and
'autonomy' in terms of theory and
practice". "Salomon (2002) has described
how the challenges, goals, and methods of
peace education differ substantially
between areas characterized by
intractable conflict, interethnic tension, or
relative tranquility".[31]
Salomon (2002) raises the problem and its
consequences:

"Imagine that medical

practitioners would not
distinguish between invasive
surgery to remove malignant
tumors and surgery to correct
one's vision. Imagine also that
while surgeries are practiced, no
research and no evaluation of
their differential effectiveness
accompany them. The field would
be considered neither very
serious nor very trustworthy.
Luckily enough, such a state of
affairs does not describe the field
of medicine, but it comes pretty
close to describing the field of
peace education. First, too many
profoundly different kinds of
activities taking place in an
exceedingly wide array of
contexts are all lumped under the
same category label of "peace
education" as if they belong
together. Second, for whatever
reason, the field's scholarship in
 the form of theorizing, research
and program evaluation badly
lags behind practice… In the
absence of clarity of what peace
education really is, or how its
different varieties relate to each
other, it is unclear how
experience with one variant of
peace education in one region
can usefully inform programs in
another region."

According to Clarke-Habibi (2005), "A

general or integrated theory of peace is
needed: one that can holistically account
for the intrapersonal, inter-personal, inter-
group and international dynamics of
peace, as well as its main principles and
pre-requisites. An essential component of
this integrated theory must also be the
recognition that a culture of peace can
only result from an authentic process of
transformation, both individual and
collective."[32]

News about Peace Education

Up-to-date news about peace education
initiatives is provided by the Global
Campaign for Peace Education on their
website[33]. Another source is the Culture
of Peace News Network, which is
dedicated to education for a culture of
peace[34]. See especially the CPNN section
Where is Peace Education Taking
Place?[35]

See also

Play media

Children's Peace Pavilion

 CISV International
Culture of Peace News Network
El-Hibri Peace Education Prize
Institute for Economics and Peace
Building Blocks of Peace program
International Year for the Culture of
Peace
Peace
Peace psychology
School Day of Non-violence and Peace
Teaching for social justice
UNESCO Prize for Peace Education
University for Peace

References
1. Page, James S. (2008) Peace
Education: Exploring Ethical and
Philosophical Foundations. Chapter 1.
Charlotte: Information Age Publishing.
ISBN 978-1-59311-889-1. Chapter details ;
and Page, James S. (2008) 'Chapter 9: The
United Nations and Peace Education'. In:
Monisha Bajaj (ed.)Encyclopedia of Peace
Education. (75-83). Charlotte: Information
Age Publishing. ISBN 978-1-59311-898-3.
Further information
2. Peace Day 2013 Countdown
3. Other examples include:
Constitution of UNESCO, adopted 16
November 1945.
Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, Section 26.
Recommendation Concerning
Education for International
Understanding, Co-operation and
Peace, and Education Relating to
Human Rights and Fundamental
Freedoms, Section 18.
Convention on the Rights of the Child,
Article 29.1(d).
Vienna Declaration and Programme of
Action – World Conference on Human
Rights, Part 2, Paragraphs 78–82,
which identify peace education as
part of human rights education, and
which identifies this education as vital
for world peace
Declaration of Principles on
Tolerance, Articles 1 and 4.
Declaration and Programme of Action
on a Culture of Peace, Articles 1/4
and B/9.
A World Fit for Children, Articles 5 and
20
 United Study on Disarmament and
Non-proliferation Education, Article
20.
4. Matsuura, Koichiro. (2008) 'Foreword'.
In: J.S.Page Peace Education: Exploring
Ethical and Philosophical Foundations.
Charlotte: Information Age Publishing.
p.xix.
5. Reardon, Betty. (1997). 'Human Rights
as Education for Peace'. In: G.J.
Andrepoulos and R.P. Claude (eds.)
Human Rights Education for the Twenty-
First Century. (255-261). Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press.
6. Roche, Douglas. (1993). The Human
Right to Peace. Toronto: Novalis.
7. United Nations General Assembly.
(1993) Vienna Declaration and
Programme of Action (World Conference
on Human Rights). New York: United
Nations. (A/CONF. 157/23 on June 25,
1993). Part 2, Paragraphs 78-82.
8. Harris, Ian and Synott, John. (2002)
'Peace Education for a New Century' Social
Alternatives 21(1):3-6
9. Page, James S. (2008) Peace
Education: Exploring Ethical and
Philosophical Foundations. Charlotte:
Information Age Publishing. p. 189.
ISBN 978-1-59311-889-1. Chapter details
10. Galtung, Johan (1975) Essays in Peace
Research, Volume 1. Copenhagen: Eljers.
pp. 334-339.
11. Calleja, Joachim James (1991) 'A
Kantian Epistemology of Education and
Peace: An Examination of Concepts and
Values'. Unpublishd PhD Thesis. Bradford
University.
12. Page, James S. (2008) Peace
Education: Exploring Ethical and
Philosophical Foundations. Charlotte:
Information Age Publishing. ISBN 978-1-
59311-889-1. Chapter details
13. See Groff, L., and Smoker, P. (1996).
Creating global-local cultures of peace.
Peace and Conflict Studies Journal, 3,
(June); Harris, I.M. (1999). Types of peace
education. In A. Raviv, L. Oppenheimer,
and D. Bar-Tal (Eds.), How Children
Understand War and Peace (pp. 299-317).
San Francisco: Jossey- Bass Publishers;
Johnson, M.L. (1998). Trends in peace
education. ERIC Digest. ED417123; Swee-
Hin Toh. 1997. “Education for Peace:
Towards a Millennium of Well-Being”.
Paper for the Working Document of the
International Conference on Culture of
Peace and Governance (Maputo,
Mozambique, 1–4 September 1997)
14. See Deutsch, M. (1993). Educating for
a peaceful world. American Psychologist,
48, 510-517; Hakvoort, I. and
Oppenheimer, L. (1993). Children and
adolescents' conceptions of peace, war,
and strategies to attain peace: A Dutch
case study. Journal of Peace Research,
30, 65-77; Harris, I.M. (1999). Types of
peace education. In A. Raviv, L.
Oppenheimer, and D. Bar-Tal (Eds.), How
Children Understand War and Peace (pp.
299-317). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Publishers.
15. Van Slyck, M.R., Stern, M., and
Elbedour, S. (1999). Adolescents' beliefs
about their conflict behaviour. In A. Raviv,
L. Oppenheimer, and D. Bar-Tal (Eds.),
How Children Understand War and Peace
(pp. 208-230). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Publishers.
16. Jeffries, R. Examining barriers to
effective peace education reform.
Contemporary Education, 71, 19-22.
17. U.S. Department of State Bureau of
International Information Programs. (n.d.).
The culture of democracy. Retrieved
January 13, 2003, from
http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/wh
atsdem/whatdm6.htm
18. Quoted from CIVITAS BiH, a program
of democracy and human rights education
in primary, secondary and tertiary schools
of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
http://www.civitas.ba/nastavni_planovi/in
dex.php
19. Brabeck, K. (2001). Justification for
and implementation of peace education.
Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace
Psychology, 7, 85-87.
20. Swee-Hin Toh. 1997. "Education for
Peace: Towards a Millennium of Well-
Being". Paper for the Working Document
of the International Conference on Culture
of Peace and Governance (Maputo,
Mozambique, 1–4 September 1997)
21. Parlevliet, M. (n.d.). Quoted in Pitts, D.
(2002). Human rights education in diverse,
developing nations: A case in point –
South Africa. Issues of Democracy, 7
(March). Retrieved January 12, 2003, from
http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itdhr/030
2/ijde/pitts1.htm
22. Kevin Kester. 2008. Developing peace
education programs: Beyond
ethnocentrism and violence. Peace Prints,
1(1), 37-64.
23. Danesh, H. B. (2006). Towards an
integrative theory of peace education.
Journal of Peace Education, 3(1), 55–78.
Danesh, H. B. (2007). Education for peace:
The pedagogy of civilization. In Z.
Beckerman & C. McGlynn (Eds.),
Addressing ethnic conflict through peace
education: International perspectives. New
York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Danesh, H. B. (2008a). Creating a culture
of healing in schools and communities: An
integrative approach to prevention and
amelioration of violence-induced
conditions, Journal of Community
Psychology.
Danesh, H. B. (2008b). The education for
peace integrated curriculum: Concepts,
contents, effi cacy. Journal of Peace
Education.
Danesh, H. B., & Clarke-Habibi, S. (2007).
Education for peace curriculum manual: A
conceptual and practical guide. EFP-
International Press.
Danesh, H. B., & Danesh, R. P. (2002a). A
consultative conflict resolution model:
Beyond alternative dispute resolution.
International Journal of Peace Studies,
7(2), 17–33.
Danesh, H. B., & Danesh, R. P. (2002b).
Has conflict resolution grown up? Toward
a new model of decision making and
conflict resolution. International Journal of
Peace Studies, 7(1), 59–76.
Danesh, H. B., & Danesh, R. P. (2004).
Conflict-free conflict resolution (CFCR):
Process and methodology. Peace and
Conflict Studies, 11(2), 55–84.
24. Salomon, G. (2004). "Comment: what
is peace education?" Journal of Peace
Education, 1:1, 123-127.
25. Mac Ginty, R. & Richmond, O. (2007).
"Myth or Reality: Opposing Views on the
Liberal Peace and Post-War
Reconstruction,", Global Society 21: 491-7
26. Bajaj, M. (2008). Encyclopedia of
Peace Education. Charlotte: Information
Age Publishing
27. Bajaj, M. (2015). 'Pedagogies of
Resistance' and critical peace education
praxis. Journal of Peace Education Vol.
12(2): 154-166.
28. Bajaj, M. & Hantzopooulos, M. (Eds)
(2016). Introduction: Theory, Research,
and Praxis of Peace Education in Peace
Education: International Perspectives.
New York: Bloomsbury (1-16).
29. Trifonas, P. P. & Wright, B. (2013).
"Introduction," in Critical Peace Education:
Difficult Dialogues. New York: Springer,
(xiii-xx).
30. Standish, K. & Joyce, J (2017).
(Forthcoming) Yogic Peace Education:
Theory and Practice. Jefferson: McFarland
and Company.
31. Salomon, G. (2002). "The Nature of
Peace Education: Not All Programs Are
Created Equal" in G. Salomon and B. Nevo
(eds.) Peace education: The concept,
principles and practices in the world.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Quoted
in Nelson, Linden L. (2000). "Peace
Education from a Psychological
Perspective: Contributions of the Peace
and Education Working Group of the
American Psychological Association Div.
48."
32. Clarke-Habibi, Sara. (2005)
"Transforming Worldviews: The Case of
Education for Peace in Bosnia and
Herzegovina". Journal of Transformative
Education, Vol. 3 No. 1, pp. 33-56.
33. http://www.peace-ed-
campaign.org/category/categories/news/
Global Campaign for Peace Education:
News & Highlights
34. http://culture-of-
peace.info/vita/2011/journal_peace_educ
ation.html Education for a Culture of
Peace: The Culture of Peace News
Network as a Case Study
35. http://cpnn-world.org/new/?p=6439
Where is Peace Education Taking Place?

Further reading
"Peace Education, Principles", Berghof
Glossary on Conflict Transformation
(PDF), Berlin: Berghof Foundation, 2012

"Peace Education, Methods", Berghof

Glossary on Conflict Transformation
(PDF), Berlin: Berghof Foundation, 2012

Uli Jäger (2014), "Peace Education and

Conflict Transformation", Berghof
Handbook for Conflict Transformation,
Online Version (PDF), Berlin: Berghof
Foundation
External links
Canadian Centres for Teaching Peace
Center for Peace and Justice Education,
Villanova University
Culture of Peace Programme Canada
Global Campaign for Peace Education
Peace Education Center Columbia
University
Wilmington College Peace Resource
Center
US Association for the University for
Peace
UN Peace Education Website
Culture of Peace Online Journal
 On Earth Peace
Peace Education Foundation
Peace Education System Pakistan
Fundación Educación para la Paz
The Strange War - Stories for Use in
Peace Education in 22 Languages

Retrieved from
"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Peace_education&oldid=823646583"

Last edited 4 months ago by Adams…