Breaking the Cycle of Violent Conflict

(Peace Education)

Peace is both the absence of personal/direct violence, and the presence of social justice.
Peace is probably what everyone wants in life. We keep trying to find it, make rules for it, and
even make wars to achieve it. Conflict is one of the reasons why we can’t attain peace and
usually this result to violence because according to the speaker Johan Galtung, professor of
peace studies in Transcend University, “Whenever there is violence, there is unresolved
conflict.”

In the focus of the subject, peace education, Johan Galtung emphasized that if you don’t
like violence, try to solve problems. He gave three guidelines of stages in trying to solve
problems and this is what we called the role of mediation. These three stages are mapping,
legitimizing, and bridging. Mapping is where you assess what are the goals of the people
involved in conflict and this is the point you make them comfortable by sharing their side while
you listen to them attentively. Legitimizing on the other hand is where you look at the goals and
see if they are legitimate. According to the speaker, you can know if any goal is legitimate by
knowing the law and human rights. And lastly, bridging is about the art of intuition.

I’ve learned so much from the video that we watched and there’s so much knowledge and
information you can learned from the speaker. The words of wisdom from Mr. Galtung can be
applied in our own personal lives. Whenever you encounter people in the midst of conflict, never
rush into conclusions. You listen to them and understand the conflict first and see if they have
legitimate goals. After assuring that, bridge them by designing a project that is conflict sensitive,
respecting the legitimate goals of both sides in order to reconcile them. This can also be applied
to my own as well. Whenever there is misunderstanding, I should have compassion and ask the
opponent because maybe the reason why there is conflict, it’s simply because I forgotten to ask
them. I might see them as problematic but there is a reason behind it. We should be open-minded
in understanding the side of others because it may change us. There side may give us a new
perspective in life.

This is the beauty of peace education, you’ll able to understand the real problem and
know how to attain peace because as quoted by Loreta Castro, "Peace Education is called
transformative education because it seeks changes – in people’s mindsets, attitudes, values, and
behaviors that, in the first place, have either created or exacerbated violent conflicts." Peace
education seeks changes and we must not be afraid of changes because according to Mr. Galtung
“You have to go beyond the present reality into something new. One of the reason why
Americans are not good internationality is conservatism. They don’t want anything new, they are
afraid of something new. You should enjoy it.” Therefore concluded, peace education is
important and a must most especially if we want to attain peace.

“To reach peace, teach peace.” – Pope John Paul II