Peace Education

• Education "about" peace captures much of the substance of the learning.
• Education "about" peace invites reflection and analysis on the conditions of sustainable peace and how to achieve them.
• Education "about" peace also involves understanding and critically examining violence in all its multiple forms and manifestations.
• Education "for" peace orients peace education towards preparing and cultivating learners with knowledge, skills, and capacities to pursue peace and to nonviolently respond to conflict.
• Education "for" peace is also concerned with nurturing inner moral and ethical resources that are essential to external peace action.
• Peace education takes place in many contexts and settings, both inside and outside of schools.
• Peace education is considered most broadly, education can be understood as the intentional and organized process of learning.
• Integrating peace education into schools is a strategic goal of the Global Campaign for Peace Education, as formal education plays a fundamental role in producing and reproducing knowledge and values in societies and cultures.
• In other words, peace education seeks to nurture dispositions and attitudes that are necessary for engaging in transformative action for peaceful change.
• Peace education is particularly futures oriented, preparing students to envision and build more preferred realities.
• Peace is not the absence of war, nor is it the opposite of war.
• Defining peace as the absence of war reduces peace to an empty, passive, incomplete and far-away vision.
• Peace is a perpetual weaving of warm, neighborly relations based on the human values and creativity of all sides to overcome difficulties, clashes, and one's own frustrations.
• Peace is a solid, enduring relationship of harmonious living together, based on respect, serenity, cordiality, and mutual understanding.
• Peace is founded as much on the heart as on reason.
• It is through human warmth that we can transcend violence.
• Therefore, peace is both the absence of personal/direct violence and the presence of social justice.
• Peace requires a positive dynamic participatory process where dialogue is encouraged, and conflicts are resolved in a spirit of mutual understanding and cooperation.
• Negative peace is understood as ‘the absence of violence or fear of violence — an intuitive definition that many agree with, and one which enables us to measure peace more easily.
• Positive peace is defined as the attitudes, institutions and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies.
• Positive peace is also associated with many other social characteristics that are considered desirable, including better economic outcomes, measures of well-being, levels of inclusiveness and environmental performance.
• Concept of Peace

  • Positive peace
  • Negative peace
• Personal level refers to the development of inner harmony or inner integration characterized by such qualities as self-respect, self-confidence, ability to cope with negative feelings (fear, anger, insecurity, and shame), and developing positive attitudes such as cheerfulness and optimism.
• Interpersonal level is manifested by the relationship of an individual with one another.
• The interpersonal level peace can be shown in terms of respect to one another, concern for others, cooperation, and humility.
• Social/National level is concerned with addressing issues that affect society and its social, political, and economic components.
• Social/National level, for example, addressing the issue of social injustice such as land grabbing, forest degradation, water pollution, and others that have a societal impact.
• Global level is similar to the social and national level peace, global level peace is concerned with attaining related issues that have global impact or scale such issues include among others the issue of unfair trade relations, racial discrimination, terrorism, militarization, environmental degradation, and others.
• Violence is a complex concept.
• Violence is often understood as the use or threat of force that can result in injury, harm, deprivation or even death.
• Violence may be physical, verbal, or psychological.
• The World Health Organization (WHO) defines violence as "intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation".
• Direct/physical violence refers to physical harm or damage caused by a person or group to another person or their property.
• Direct/physical violence involves direct, intentional actions that cause immediate harm or injury.
• Direct/physical violence

  • physical assault
  • homicide
  • sexual assault
  • property damage
• Structural violence refers to a form of harm or violence that is embedded in the social, economic, and political structures of a society.
• Unlike direct violence, which involves immediate, physical harm caused by a specific individual or group, structural violence is often more subtle and pervasive.
• Structural violence results from systemic inequalities, discriminatory policies, and unequal distribution of resources that create conditions for harm and disadvantage certain groups of people.
• Structural violence

  • poverty
  • social injustice
  • racism
  • hunger
  • unequal distribution of wealth and power
• Following a proposal made by UNESCO, the United Nations General Assembly in 1998 (resolution A/52/13) defined the Culture of Peace as consisting of values, attitudes and behaviors that reject violence and endeavor to prevent conflicts by addressing their root causes with a view to solving problems through dialogue and negotiation among individuals, groups, and nations.