Peace Education: Shaping today into a better tomorrow

By: Harshvardhan Mishra

“I think it’s naïve to pray for world peace if we’re not going to change the form in which we live” — Godfrey Reggio

The world has never been in more peril, than it has been in last few years. The two great wars not only destroyed the economy and lives of people but also left deep scars in the minds and hearts of everyone for years to come. Subsequent tensions between leading superpowers of the world often acted as a grave source of terror for everyone. But all these terrors and life threats just inspired more and more people to emphasize on promoting peace and harmony.

War and harmony have consistently been military as well as politics centered issues. Instructive frameworks are faced with extraordinary difficulties during rough clash. During such times International humanitarian laws are especially significant. Geneva Conventions are a particular reference to assurance with schooling in wartime. Wikipedia explains that peace education is essentially the method and procedure of acquiring the values, gaining the knowledge and developing the right attitudes, skills, and behaviors to live in harmony with one’s own self, with others, and with our environment. But we are not here to learn the meaning of a phrase or a word. It is highly more significant that we try to understand, what peace really means, its aspects and its utility, how the collaboration of peace education with our curriculum can change our lives. Peace has a profound effect on education. Peace implies the non-appearance of war. Peace can help achieve the right to basic quality education for all. Peace education helps young people gain the right knowledge, enhance their skills in the area of peace, and form an attitude about the meaning of peace in human life. Peace education prevents the emergence of conflicts and creates favorable conditions for peace in the world. It is essential that we understand how and when to start imparting the knowledge of Peace Education. It is absolutely true that age is just a number; But it is prudent that we teach our kids the importance of peace from a very young age. It not only gives them time to understand and imbibe the concepts but also gives them several chances to observe it in real life scenarios. Apart from this, for our elder generation, several sessions should be held from time to time so that they always remain in touch with the ideologies amid their busy lives. Peace Education is not one entity but an amalgam of several others.

It has several aspects and layers to it such as:

1. Conflict resolution training: Focuses mostly on the early social-behavioral signs of conflicts and training people to better resolve inter-personal disputes through different methods of negotiation and peer mediation.

2. Democracy education: Focuses essentially on the political activities related to conflict, and postulate that with a rise in democratic participation the chances of public resolving conflict through violence and war decreases.

3. Justice education: Teaches the next generation about the importance of crime prevention, and to better understand and address issues that can undermine the rule of law.

4. Human rights education: Focus at the level of policies that humanity ought to adopt in order to move closer to a peaceful global community.

5. Worldview transformation: Peace education should also majorly focus on the proper growth and development of human consciousness by helping people to examine and transform their worldviews.

6. Critical peace education: It involves interpreting the education as the ground of transformation where students and teachers become the transformative agents who recognize the past and present experiences of inequity and favoritism and where schools become strategically planned sites for fostering emancipatory change.

7. Yogic peace education: It is concerned with reducing the intent of personal violence.

Several other aspects of peace education are non-violence, disarmament, gender equality, environmental responsibility, and communication skills. All these aspects combined together, can show the truth and might of Peace Education and what it brings to the table. These are not present here to complicate things and make them hard for us to understand, but to breakdown a complex subject into smaller, more digestible components, for our ease.

We as humans, have a tendency to seek profit in every thing that we do. Therefore, it is completely natural for you to ask that why should we go out of the way to implement something that probably is just common sense. But then again, our splendid history would be more than happy to prove us wrong. Schooling harmony is likewise identified with the formation of qualities and aptitudes that help us accomplish totality a day to day existence that grasps all individuals. Harmony showcasing is attempting to impact social conduct, change perspectives, propensities, and not to the promoting individual, however to the advantages of society by and large. To sum it up, peace and education, in today’s scenario, cannot be treated as separate entities. They are two complementary things. One cannot exist without the other.

We all are aware of the current situation. The world had never been more despair and in need for a messiah. Corona hit us hard and at the very place it hurts. It not only started preying upon our loved ones but also took away our freedom. But as it is rightly said, desperate times call for desperate measures. This measure being, sending the message of Peace Education loud and clear to everyone. Peace education will motivate people to develop compassion and sympathy for fellow human beings. Currently, another issue we are dealing with due to the pandemic is living in closed quarters with your cohabitators for a long time. Peace education will help us keep the peace and resolve conflicts at home easily. It will inspire us to go beyond our comfort zones and look out for each other and most importantly, the feeling of happiness, optimism and gratefulness that inner and outer peace caves a path to, is all we need to get through these troubled times and come out stronger.