(1989). A "Race" between Education and Disaster: Curriculum for the Survival of the Species. The world is in crisis, and the future survival of humankind is in question. Technology encourages communication in terms of speed and efficiency, and it is the task of educators to rediscover alternative languages. While the global crises of peace, the environment, the economy, and education are prominent, the opportunities are also great if understanding can be achieved of what these mean in terms of educating for a more peaceful future. For teachers it will mean enlarging perspectives from the national frame of reference to the global. This implies that teachers need to face up to the planetary crises without becoming overwhelmed; that the concept of security needs to be broadened to include economic and environmental, as well as national, security; and that the old habits of domination must be thrust aside to make room for a new emphasis on humanity. Modifications in curicula in response to the global crises include shifting from specialized to integrated knowledge and from…
(2012). Storytelling among Israeli and Palestinian Children in the Era of Mobile Innovation. Educational Media and Technology Yearbook Existing literature in educational technology and media has tended to overlook the larger role educational institutions play as socializing forces, which instill children with national identities and values. Recognizing the important role schools play in forming children's characters and perspectives on social problems, this article advocates a research agenda that focuses on how educational technologies serve as tools to combat larger social issues such as peace, health, and poverty through innovative approaches to traditional curricula and schooling. Focusing specifically on the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this article specifies a model for global, mobile stories that strive to develop cross-border awareness and promote a sense of global identity. This study presents findings from the collection of 185 stories from Palestinian youth, and suggests avenues for future research at the intersection of education, technology, and innovative approaches to solving social problems…. [Direct]
(2012). Youth, Life, and Politics: Examining the Everyday in Comparative Politics. PS: Political Science and Politics, v45 n2 p285-290 Apr. The traditional way of introducing comparative politics to freshmen, which is through the study of institutions, is contrasted with an alternative approach. An everyday-politics approach compares the daily struggles of global youth–how they cope in times of peace and war, and with issues of wealth and poverty, identity, education and employment, and citizenship and immigration. This approach contains four elements: juxtapositions, recognition of the vicissitudes of growing up in a more complex world, the use of stories, and social action in our daily lives. This combination \gently\ introduces the concepts of comparative politics but with an emphasis on how politics affect the lives of other young people. These stories also show the various forms of political participation and political resistance in different countries. An everyday-politics approach, while still experimental, seems to yield some positive results in helping students care about politics, gaining an understanding of… [Direct]
(1996). Culture Shock in Your Own Backyard: Initiating Multicultural, Global, and Peace Education. Mosaic: A Journal for Language Teachers, v3 n3 p1,3-8 Spr. This article presents an interesting way to focus on diversity in second-language instruction and methods classes. The method involves taking students on field trips to such events as cultural fairs; observing holidays, such as the Chinese New Year; and visiting homeless shelters, foreign restaurants, and houses of worship for different faiths. (11 references) (Author/CK)…
(1993). On the Creative Principles, Message and Thematic Content of a Peace Museum. Peace Education Miniprints No. 49. The struggle for peace is a story filled with action, drama, and heroism that should be presented in a peace museum based on a careful selection of themes and the events, individuals, and movements within each theme. An outline provides 18 possible major themes to be addressed in the content of a peace museum in order to present a comprehensive picture of the history and evolution of peace: (1) the unity and fragility of the globe; (2) the experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; (3) the anti-nuclear weapons movement; (4) wars and weapons of the post-1945 world; (5) oppositional movements to the military threat and the militarisation of society; (6) the idea of peace in antiquity and in the world's religions; (7) the faithfulness to the pacifist doctrine of heretical sects in the Christian world in the Middle Ages; (8) the enlightenment and the growth of the peace sentiment; (9) following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815; (10) the development of the organized peace movement in… [PDF]
(2006). Teaching under Fire. Penn GSE Perspectives on Urban Education, v4 n2 Fall. Civic education, democratic principles, peace and war are tangled together in many ways. When teachers teach children to be citizens, they inform them of processes and practices in which they can and should engage; they inform them of the relations they are to have with their state through its proper institutions; they teach them what they can expect of their country, and what it can expect from them. When democratic stability is threatened by external perils such as terror attacks and conflict, and by the correlating internal responses such as suspension of rights and the narrowing public agenda, civic education becomes an even more crucial factor for the preservation of a stable democracy. In times of war, the boundaries of the political are redrawn. The conceptualization of citizenship is reformulated, and the relations between individual and state change their contents to express different expectations. The education system, with its teachers, administrators and other… [PDF]
(2020). The Role of Education in Peacebuilding: Learner Narratives from Rwanda. Journal of Peace Education, v17 n1 p107-122. This paper examines the role of education in post-conflict recovery and peacebuilding, because there is a limited evidence base, specifically from the learners' point of view. The findings from Rwanda, where education was used for discrimination and marginalisation throughout its history and is now a pillar of national unity and reconciliation in the post-genocide education reforms, contribute to the literature on education and conflict. They have highlighted two unique roles of education in peacebuilding: providing cognitive rewards and transforming the values of learners, which enables humanisation…. [Direct]
(2008). The Social Impact of Research at the University for Peace. International Social Science Journal, v59 n191 p35-41 Mar. The University for Peace (UPEACE) was established in 1980 within the UN framework, with the mission to undertake postgraduate education, training and research on issues related to conflict prevention, security and peace. The Department for Gender and Peace Studies at UPEACE is motivated by the idea that peace, gender equality and gender equity are inextricably linked. Through gender mainstreaming, the Department aims to inspire decision-makers to use a gender perspective as an instrument of analysis to avoid gender-based discrimination, injustice and inequality and to take advantage of the particular qualities that men and women possess when working to prevent violence, transform conflicts or influence post-conflict environments…. [Direct]
(2011). Viewing the Reconstruction of Primary Schooling in Southern Sudan through Education Data, 2006-2009. Prospects: Quarterly Review of Comparative Education, v41 n2 p283-300 Jun. After one of the longest wars in the history of Africa, Southern Sudan accomplished one of the world's quickest education reconstruction programmes. Once the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed in 2005, the international donor community and the government and people of Southern Sudan united under a common goal: to increase access to education for both children and adults. Southern Sudan's experience leads to three lessons. First, countries entering a post-conflict situation should anticipate and plan for the possibility of a large and rapid influx of new students immediately after hostilities end. Second, after a prolonged conflict, an alternative education system is critical to allow children, and the young adults who were previously deprived of education, the opportunity to acquire the skills they need to earn a living. Finally, donors must respond rapidly, demonstrate considerable flexibility, forgo extensive planning and documentation before acting, and be willing to… [Direct]
(2020). The Concept of Peace, Conflict and Conflict Transformation in African Religious Philosophy. Journal of Peace Education, v17 n2 p161-185. This article explores the African religious, cultural and philosophical dimensions of peace, conflict and conflict transformation. It seeks to examine African traditional religious and philosophical ideas as resources for the promotion of peace and justice and their implications for intra-state and inter-state conflict resolution activities. Specifically, it examines how the cultural dimensions of peace and conflict and its nonviolent resolution as expressed in the traditional religious and philosophical oral texts (the documented proverbs and symbols) of the Akan people of Ghana can contribute to our understanding and mechanisms for conflict transformation and peacebuilding strategies in Africa. It argues strongly for the promotion of some of the understudied positive elements in the religious and philosophical traditions of Africa for finding solutions or 'cures' for contemporary conflicts in Africa such as electoral disputes and internal ethnic conflicts, and their peaceful… [Direct]
(2020). 'The Role of Youth Organizations in Peacebuilding in the African Great Lakes Region: A Rough Transition from Local and Non-Governmental to the National and Governmental Peacebuilding Efforts in Burundi and Eastern DRC'. Journal of Peace Education, v17 n2 p123-160. The youth is generally considered as the pillar of society. However, over the last many years, the views, power and potentials of the youth in the Great Lakes Region (GLR) have not been effectively harnessed in peacebuilding initiatives. Despite their ever-increasing numbers and influence at community level; young people are frequently overlooked in programmes for the prevention, response and transformation of conflicts. In extremely difficult conditions, some youth organizations are constructively contributing to promoting the culture of peace at community level. However, initiatives of these youth organizations are limited by the prevailing resistance to the emerging youth culture, inadequate institutional support, financial constraints and the failing post-war transition to peace. Based on a broader empirical study on the role of youth organizations in peacebuilding in the GLR; this article critically examines the lack of a smooth transition for young people from efforts at the… [Direct]
(1993). Democracy, Education, and Governance: A Developmental Conception. SUNY Series, Global Conflict and Peace Education. The central thesis of this book is that the developmental conception of democracy provides the theoretical foundation for an alternative model of school governance devoted not to efficient integration of students into a hierarchical labor force, but to development as unique human beings. This will necessitate an organizational structure that involves teachers directly in the formation of educational policy. Parental involvement is critical, and leadership must be conceived of in terms of guidance. The community must be involved, and students themselves, at least at the high school level, must become involved in governance. School-based management is vital in urban areas where participative decision making offers hope for restructuring. The experiences of Chicago (Illinois) with school reform and those of Saint Louis (Missouri) and Dade County (Florida) provide examples of school-based management and community empowerment as they are being enacted in urban schools. This approach…
(1998). Fostered to Internationalism and Peace: Biographical Notes on UN General Secretary Dag Hammarskjold. Peace Education Miniprints No. 97. This paper presents some biographical glimpses of Dag Hammarskjold's childhood and youth. It is a period of the life of the late United Nations (UN) Secretary General (1905-1961) that has been dealt with very little by his biographers. Hammarskjold's private archives at the Royal Library in Stockholm are now available for research. These sources lead to two observations: (1) his family background, the intellectual, cultural, and international environment in which he grew up and lived were important preconditions for his later career; and (2) they deepen and confirm the knowledge of his intellectual capacity and moral integrity, showing that these characteristics, as well as his religious and responsible nature, matured early in his life. Contains 6 notes and references. (BT)… [PDF]
(2012). \I and Thou\: The Educational Lessons of Martin Buber's Dialogue with the Conflicts of His Times. Educational Philosophy and Theory, v44 n9 p979-996 Nov. Most of what has been written about Buber and education tend to be studies of two kinds: theoretical studies of his philosophical views on education, and specific case studies that aim at putting theory into practice. The perspective taken has always been to hold a dialogue with Buber's works in order to identify and analyse critically Buber's views and, in some cases, to put them into practice; that is, commentators dialogue with the text. In this article our aims are of a different kind. First and fundamentally, we demonstrate the political and social ontological basis of Buber's thought; that is, we show that Buber, the philosopher of dialogue, held an authentic dialogue with his time, and demonstrate that Buber's work, in this case \I and Thou,\ holds a dialogue with its Zeitgeist; that is the text dialogues with its Zeitgeist. This approach leads us to our second aim, which is to demonstrate that Buber's thought remains relevant to our times, particularly when it serves as a… [Direct]
(2011). Building Future Sustainability and Democratic Practices: The Role of Adult Education in Post-Conflict Communities. International Journal of Training Research, v9 n1-2 p152-163. This paper documents and analyses a range of literature and policy statements that identifies issues and looks at the role which adult education plays in building communities and peace in post-conflict states. This paper explores and documents these developments in countries in close proximity to Australia which have been viewed by the former Australian government as constituting an "arc of instability". This is a term which will be critically discussed in the paper for the way in which it positions the nations of the Pacific and Australia's foreign policy as well as its aid and development policy. This paper reviews existing orthodox approaches to the region and development and discusses the criticisms that have been levelled at the status quo. (Contains 1 table.)… [Direct]