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What? Why? How? When? Why again?
Peace education aims to change an existing paradigm—a culture of acceptance of war as a method of solving international problems—to a new paradigm—one in which human rights, social justice, sustainable development, and creative diplomacy are promoted as effective paths to national and international security. Peace education helps children see themselves as integral parts of one human family and as capable actors for positive social change on a local and global stage. It is a long-term process, yielding a harvest that is often unseen. Seen or unseen, we must sow the seeds today for a harvest of peace. Why
teach for peace?
Without
missing a beat, Irwin replied, “We work for the unseen
harvest.” Why again? Hypotheses for teaching for peace:
1. Adolescents, while egocentric and self-absorbed, have more anger and fear about social injustice, international relations, global security, and issues of war and peace than we think they do, and these fears undermine their academic and social success. 2. Media bombardment does not help them evaluate information effectively. They need guidance to become informed and to help them think critically about historical and current events. And, they need the opportunity to express their fears and their hopes in a safe and supportive environment. 3. We do not properly educate young adolescents without teaching them about—and giving them opportunities to become—exemplars of nonviolent, courageous action for peace and justice. Often, this means supplementing textbooks that overemphasize military heroes and military approaches. For example, allowing middle school students to speak the words of Nobel Peace Prize laureates, to discuss and debate nonviolent prevention of deadly conflict, and to develop and implement social action projects on the local and global level will help them envision peaceful solutions to problems, help build cultural competence, and will make them feel powerful in the face of ongoing danger in the local and global community. 4. Teaching critical thinking, cultural competence, and moral action—teaching children to think, care, and act—at the middle school level is key to the development of future leaders able to peacefully and productively serve their fellow citizens. In
the book How Children Understand War and Peace, numerous
research studies affirm what peace educator Ian Harris asserts, “Youth
who are frightened cannot focus on their lessons. Children will learn
better when their teachers use some of these different types of peace
education to directly address the many forms of violence that scare
them.” Teaching for peace can improve the classroom and school
climate as well as the local and global culture. It can positively
impact students' lives in the present and the future as well. Shouldn't
we be teaching for peace every day? Susan
Cannon came to teaching through the stage door. After graduating from
Antioch University, she co-founded Golden River Puppets. For seven
years she and her husband toured theatres, schools, and colleges with
rod, hand, and giant puppets, creating original shows for adults and
children. Deciding she wanted to teach, she earned her Masters Degree
from Harvard University, concentrating in moral development, social
skills training, and moral education. Born in Philadelphia, PA, Susan
has lived and studied Sufism in Sri Lanka and has researched her family
heritage in small villages in Ukraine. She is a mother of two grown
sons and lives in the Philadelphia area. An avid kayaker, she also
studies Tai Chi, Sufism, and Quakerism. Susan Cannon aims to inspire
students to think critically about important issues, to care about
solving problems, and to act positively to change the world for the
better! |
What is peace education, and how does it differ from plain, old-fashioned
good teaching? Indeed, there are similarities. Peace education is
multi-dimensional, encompassing a wide variety of curricular content,
from subject areas to areas of socialization. Peace education complies
with numerous content standards, and is applicable to all ages of
students. So, how does it differ? Teaching for peace takes a leap
of imagination. To teach for peace is to teach young people to
think, care, and act.
Psychologists Amiram Raviv, Louis Oppenheimer, and Daniel Bar-Tal
describe the urgency of teaching for peace in their book, How
Children Understand War and Peace: “Knowledge about peace,
conflict, and war is acquired during childhood and applied to the
understanding of interpersonal and intergroup relations. This early
learning is often the foundation upon which new beliefs and perceptions
are formed…Education toward a culture of peace, however, is
not an easy undertaking. Peace is considered a ‘second-order’
concept derived from the ‘first-order’ concept of war…,
a passive concept which makes it extremely difficult to formulate
activities which relate to peace. Whereas children have no problems
when asked to ‘play war,’ a total lack of activity and
blank stares are observed when children or even adults are asked to
‘play peace.’” Part of teaching for peace is to
help students experience and understand peace!
We do this by teaching our students to think, care, and act.
Helping our students think critically—especially
in the face of constant media bombardment—will provide them
with what scholar Noam Chomsky calls “intellectual self defense.”
We teach them to care about their classmates, and
to know them on a deep rather than superficial level. But we also
teach them to be citizens of the world: embracing what Nobel Peace
Prize winner Jane Addams called in 1906—lacking a better term—“cosmic
patriotism.” But it’s not enough for our students to think
and care, we must also teach them to act positively,
honorably, and effectively to create the change they wish to see in
the world—locally and globally. 
Think. Care. Act. This is my attempt to change the culture of war
to a culture of peace. I grew up listening to the nightly screams
of my father, a man who had endured and perpetrated the horrors of
war as a combat infantry soldier. I am a wife and the mother of two
sons of military age. And, I teach eager young children, whom I believe
can change the world. As I wrote these pages, the wind was raging
in icy blasts. Yet tiny, yellow and purple crocuses and brilliant
blue scilla flowers were in bloom, in spite of the cold wind. I took
these flowers as symbolic of our efforts to cultivate the beauty of
peace that can thrive in our chilling climate of war. 
Irwin Abrams is a new friend of mine, an internationally recognized
historian and biographer of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates. Distinguished
University Professor Emeritus at Antioch University, he has been researching
the field of peace education since conducting his doctoral work at
Harvard University in the 1930s. At 93, he continues to write, lecture,
and travel in the cause of peace, and in the course of my research,
I sought his advice. I shared with Irwin my quandary over the slow
pace of peace education. It’s such a long-term solution to an
imminent problem. “What do I answer those who criticize peace
education as being too slow to be effective?” I asked. “What
do I tell myself?” is what I really wondered.
An inspiration for me has been the book and video, A Force More
Powerful, in which several non-violent peace and social change
movements are documented. In March 1930, Mohandas Gandhi launched
his campaign of civil disobedience against the British with a 240
mile march to make salt from the sea. Seventeen years later, India
gained independence from Great Britain. In December 1959, Reverend
James Lawson began training young black college students in methods
of non-violent social action. The students began a campaign of sit-ins
at segregated lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee, in February,
1960. Four months later, Nashville lunch counters were desegregated.
Whether the results come slowly or quickly, those who work for a just
cause must not lose hope, must be well organized, and must continue
to strive for the harvest of peace, justice, and common good. Gandhi
said, “If we are to reach real peace in the world, we shall
have to begin with the children.” Let's begin today.
As a middle school teacher and a student of moral development, I make
the following assumptions in my work to devise a peace-promoting curriculum
in my middle school classes. Many of the same assumptions can be made
for younger and older students:
Susan Gelber Cannon is an American educator with over 25 years of
experience in elementary and middle school classrooms. Her special
fields of interest are moral, global, and peace education: developing
teaching methods to help children to think, care, and act honorably
and globally. She teaches history and English, as well as debate,
peacemaking, and other elective courses at The Episcopal Academy,
a college preparatory independent school near Philadelphia, PA, in
the United States. Cannon has also taught middle school students and
trained teachers in China and Japan. She and her husband (J. Kadir
Cannon) initiated a two-month collaboration with Asian artists and
educators on peace projects during April and May 2006, in Japan and
China, and have made presentations together on peace education strategies
at conferences and in classrooms in the United States, Japan, China,
Canada, and Denmark. (Articles and a blog about theses peace education
initiatives are posted below.)  |
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