VIENNA KONSERVATORIUM

Seminar

Peace Education

Subject: Psychology
Mentor: prof. Ji-Sun Kim

Student: Igor Frntic

What is Peace Education?

Since wars begins of minds of men, it is in the minds of men
that the defenses of peace must be constructed.
- Preamble of Constitution of the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO)

Peace education is the process of gaining the values, the knowledge and
developing the attitudes, skills, and behaviors to live in harmony with oneself,
with others, and with the natural environment. Peace education is currently
considered to be both a philosophy and process involving skills, including
listening, reflection, problem solving, cooperation, and conflict resolution.

Violence in our world may be seen in its various forms from domestic abuse to
militarism, which has been defined as The result of a process whereby military
values, ideology and patterns of behavior achieve a dominating influence over
political, social, economic and foreign affairs of the state. Militarism comes
from values, opinions and social organizations which support war and violence
as legitimate ways to manage human affairs. Military traditions salutes,
parades, war movies, paramilitary societies, and other militaristic rituals are
deeply rooted in minds throughout the world and contribute a global
predicament where nuclear warheads imperil human civilization, where arms
races gobble up precious resources, and where political elites use military forces
to protect their privileges.
Social violence and warfare can be described as form of pathology, a disease.
Few people would be satisfied with simply treating the symptoms of a severely
debilitating or life threatening disease. Yet, we continue to respond to most
forms of violence by preparing for the continued incidence of social violence
and the repeated outbreak of warfare, rather than trying to eliminate their causes.

2
 Peace education provides not only a way to promote such a desire for
peace within the human mind but also knowledge about peacemaking skills so
that human beings learn alternative, nonviolent ways of dealing with each other.

Peace educators approach problems of violence at three different levels.

These are peacekeeping, peacemaking and peacebuilding.

Models of Peace Education

In its negative meaning, peace implies stopping some form of violence,

but peace also has positive connotations, involving following standards of
justice, living in balance with nature, and providing meaningful participations to
citizens in their government.

Paul Smoker and Linda Groff have described several different types of peace,
which are: International system (peace is not just the absence of war, but it also
represents a balance of forces.), Holistic system of peace (its focused on unity
and diversity), Intercultural peace (exists when different religious and ethnic
groups live together harmoniously.), Civic society (when country is not at war,
and there is not structural violence at the macro level), the micro level (sharing
material resources to put an end to exclusion, injustice, and political and
economic oppression.), a sixth type of peace concerns the way human beings
relate to the Earth and is achieved when human beings live sustainably on this
planet. The final form of peace has to do with inner peace that is achieved
through the psyche. There are philosophers and religious leaders, such as Dalai
Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh, both from Buddhist Tradition who maintain that
inner peace and outer peace are interrelated. (Personally I think that inner
peace and understanding is the base for outer peace.) Once the fighting has
stopped, peacemaking strategies can be used to get the parties together to try to

3
work out their differences. Peacekeepings aim is to respond to violence and
stop it from escalating. Peacemaking has as its aims the teaching of skills to
resolve conflicts without the use of force. In order to prevent conflict,
peacebuilding strategies are used to create a culture of peace that does not
celebrate violence, but rather promotes nonviolence as a way to avoid the horror
of war.

Picture: Peace Education Methods

4
Strategies for Peace

In addition to the above mentioned group of three strategies for peace, an

additional way of categorizing involves the following, these are: 1. Peace
through strength (if you desire peace, prepare for war. Military regimes go to
war in order to provide peace for their citizens. At the same time, this helps to
secure the privileges of those who hold structural power within a given society.),
2. Pacifism (Peace through transformation. Pacifism literally means to make
peace. Thus pacifism should not be equated with being passive. Active
nonviolence seeks to break the cycles of violence.), 3. Institution building
(Peace through politics.), 4. Peace through sustainability ( That is the way the
world ends; not in a bang but in a whimper. Peace educators hope to get humans
to think of the Earth less as a resource for profit and more as a home that needs
to be carefully maintained. The task for peace educators is, among other things,
to foster a view that negates the short term and focuses on longevity.), and 5.
Peace education ( As previously noted, it is both a philosophy and is inclusive
of skills and processes. One assumption behind peace education is that if
citizens have more information about dangers of violence and war, they will
abjure the ways of violence.

Peace educators need to become familiar with different approaches so they can
present their strengths and weaknesses to students who may, in turn, decide for
themselves the best ways to achieve peace.

5
Maria Montessoris Contribution to Peace
Education

Averting war is the work of politicians; establishing peace is the work of educators.
Maria Montessori

Maria Montessori is most typically associated with child-led learning. By

this, she believed that human beings are natural learners and that if students
(often far younger than traditional methods dared) were immersed in
environments rich with puzzles and problems to explore, they would learn
instinctively. In her model, the teacher facilitates the students learning, but the
students passions and imagination are what lead, as she details in Education
and Peace. Similar to seminal American educator, John Dewey, her results were
astounding; children thought to have significant mental challenges were
successful learners. As most educators know, her methods birthed a movement
in education that thrives globally today, with thousands of Montessori Schools
throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia. She is, however,
popularly known as a founder of peace education, though this is not universally
accepted. She argued that education is the only genuine means of eliminating
war once and for all. Without explicit and intentional moral and spiritual
education, mankind would inevitably revert to its habit of war. That is why she
said: The child is the promise of mankind, because if you teach the children of
peace and if you put the seed of wisdom into the childs mind that would
influence other children around him and create Fibonacci sequence
(1,2,3,5,8,13,21 and so on) more and more people will be affected with proper
thinking and wars will be less. People should also go back to ancient psychology
wisdom and learn how to hear right personality and react without ego

6
personality, but because of natural law of selection there will always be ones that
will make others unhappy, which is law of polarity.

References:

1. Learning the Way of Peace, a Teachers`Guide to Peace Education, United

Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, New Delhi
(2001);
2. Page, James S. (2008) Peace Education: Exploring Ethical and
Philosophical Foundations;
3. Harris, Ian and Synott, John. (2002) 'Peace Education for a New
Century' Social Alternatives.