PONDERING HARD QUESTIONS

Ian M. Harris, co-convener

IPRA’s Peace Education Commission

As this bloody century draws to a close, it’s tragic to countenance the death and destruction that have ravaged our planet during the past one hundred years. Paradoxically, this period of time has also seen the growth of formal peace education. It’s encouraging to know that classrooms have peace education curricula, institutions of higher education have peace studies programs, and peace educators are illuminating the paths to peaceful coexistence.

At this key juncture in human history peace education proponents face many challenges in getting their curricular solutions to the problems of violence universally acknowledged. Learning to be peaceful is extremely complex. We can change a person’s perspective on a factual matter about war, but can we teach people to become more forgiving, compassionate, and reflective? Do we know how to construct in children’s minds positive images of peace or do we still depend upon negative peace paradigms?

What will peace education look like in one hundred years? Will it continue to be marginalized or will become a central part of all educational endeavors? The answer depends upon your ability to answer these hard questions.

PEACEBUILDING

Volume 3, No 1, January 2001

Editor: Ian Harris

Peace Studies

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

P.O. Box 413, Mil. WI 53208 USA

imh@csd.uwm.edu

Subscriptions: $30.00 for 2 years

2 editions every year

Peacebuilding, a publication sponsored by the Peace Education Commission (PEC) of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA), seeks to facilitate international cooperation among individuals interested in peace education and research related to peace education at various levels.

PEACE EDUCATION COMMISSION COUNCIL MEMBERS 2000-2002

C0-CONVENERS:

Ian Harris USA

Veslemoy Weise Norway

Members:

Azril Bacal Sweden

Branislava Baranovic Croatia

Kathy Bickmore Canada

James Collinge New Zealand

Verdiani Grossi Switzerland

Irma Ghosn Lebanon

Frank Hutchinson Australia

Sara Horowitz Argentina

Yaacov Iram Israel

Soon-Won Kang Korea

Syed Sikander Mehdi Pakistan

Mitsuo Okamato Japan

Olga Murdzeva-Skaric Macedonia

Janet Powers USA

Deena Soliar South Africa

Mireia Uranga Spain

Werner Wintersteiner Austria

VESLEMOY WIESE APPOINTED CO-CHAIR OF PEACE EDUCATION COMMISSION

Veslemoy Wiese, a 53 year old research fellow/assistant professor at the College of Telemark, helped coordinate the 2000 Peace Education Commission of the International Peace Research Association, where she was selected to co-chair PEC during the next two years with Ian Harris.

A long standing member of the Peace Education Commission, she joined in the 70's. Her first meeting with Peace Research was through Prof. Johan Galtung, then a Professor of Peace and Conflict research at the University of Oslo, who engaged her to be his assistant on a UNESCO project on "Measuring non-formal education". Through this project she was invited by Magnus Haavelsrud, now professor of education and former executive of PEC, to join a conference of World Council of Curriculum and Instruction, a landmark in Veslemøy Wiese’s life as she met Mario Borelli, Betty Reardon, Corrinne Kumar d'Souza and Paolo Freire.

From then on she was an active member of the commission, helping coordinate several of the PEC meetings of the V¨sterhaninge summer school and also arranging a number of seminars for Norwegian and Scandinavian educators with the Institute d'Action Culturelle on invitation Freire.

In 1976 she finished her research degree on Life Long education. Rather than joining the ranks of educational bureaucrats or teachers, she set out to further explore the concepts of 'development' and 'peace,’ and was offered to join the peace research institute in Uppsala, Sweden as a base for her further work with the "conscientization" and "dialogue" concepts and delivered twins. The twins were a gift to the North-South dialogue because while she is a Norwegian, their father is South African. They attended the 1978 IPRA summer school before she was absorbed by mothering, eventually teaching before she reappeared in PEC at the IPRA conference in 1989. Since then she has been a member of the PEC council.

While actively engaged in education, social pedagogy and education for peace as a college teacher as well as in schools, she has been an occasional writer. In 1995 she rejoined the world of peace research as a fellow of the University of Tromsø and the Norwegian Research Council, with Prof. Magnus Haavelsrud where she is now finishing her doctoral work.

Her main concern has always been participation and conscientization, the links and discourse between research, education and activism and from this perspective she has always found Peace Education Commission a place for fruitful dialogue.

BUILDING A CULTURE OF PEACE

David Adams, UNESCO

(Reprinted from "Toward a Global Movement for a Culture of Peace" (2000), Peace and Conflict, Vol. 6, #3, pp. 247–253.)

I will outline here the actions that UNESCO is undertaking to launch this global movement for a culture of peace. There are five stages in the process: (a) national endorsements; (b) media campaign; (c) partnerships for the Manifesto 2000 campaign; (d) development of a global network of local projects; and (e) global communication systems for the movement.

National endorsements have been received now from over 50 heads of state, either for the culture of peace in general or for the Manifesto 2000 in particular. Over 100 national delegations to the recent General Conference of UNESCO pledged their support to the culture of peace and the International Year for the Culture of Peace. Declarations that endorse the culture of peace have been made by international organizations and meetings throughout the world, including the Organization of African Unity and Association of South East Asian Nations.

A global media campaign was launched in conjunction with the opening day of the International Year for the Culture of Peace on September 14^th, 1999, the International Day of Peace. A television spot featuring Nobel Peace Laureates and the principles of the Manifesto 2000 was distributed throughout the world and seen by millions of people. Events were held in over 100 countries, most of them carried by national media. A synopsis of these events is now available on the Internet (www.unesco.org/iycp). The television and radio spots will be continued throughout the year 2000 to sensitize public opinion that the movement is underway. They are available to any organization that agrees to be a partner for the Year. In the United States these requests for partnership should be addressed to the Office of UNESCO at the UN in New York.

A global campaign is underway to gather signatures on the Manifesto 2000 with a goal of presenting 100 million signatures to the summit conference of heads of state that took place at the Millennium Assembly of the UN in the fall of 2000. This is being done through a wide range of partnerships at both international and national levels. At the international level, a partnership agreement has been sent to the 341 NGOs associated with UNESCO (organizations such as Education International, the World Organization of Scout Movements, etc.). At the national level, a manual has been sent to all 180 UNESCO National Commissions, 60 field offices, and 150 UN national coordinators asking them to serve as focal points and to engage national organizations in the campaign. Mailings have been sent as well to 6,000 universities and over 1,000 cities. Just to give some idea of the scope of the campaign, 6 million leaflets have been distributed in Algeria and 800,000 in Barcelona and the Paris suburb of Saint Denis alone. Pledges of 5 million signatures have been received from the UNESCO Club movement of Africa, 1 million from the UN Association of the UK, the national focal point in that country, and 1 million from Japan. Organizations are invited to link their Internet Web sites with that of Manifesto 2000 (www.unesco.org/Manifesto2000) so that people can sign directly on the Internet. Already by the beginning of the year 2000, Algeria and Brazil had registered over one million signatures each.

On a national level, partnership agreements are being established with NGOs, schools, universities, cities, parliaments, media organizations, and enterprises. In addition to the signature campaign for the Manifesto, each partner is asked to dedicate at least one major event to the International Year—hence developing a global calendar of events. They are also requested to provide information on local projects that promote one or another aspect of the culture of peace, which will be posted in the Internet.

A social movement, above all, is a process of collective consciousness development. It gains strength and achieves its goals to the extent that this consciousness development is shared and reinforced by communication at a mass level. Unfortunately, because of its close ties to the culture of war and violence, the mass media cannot be relied on to provide this communication, but the movement must develop its own independent and alternative communication systems. This is a lesson we have learned in mass movements of the past; for example, the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, and the revolutions in the Philippines, South Africa, and Eastern Europe in more recent years.

We are developing two such communication systems, both relying heavily on the Internet. The first was mentioned earlier (www.unesco.org/iycp). The accumulation and exchange of information on local projects for a culture of peace should develop throughout the next decade. Each local project will be asked to provide information on what it is doing, what it needs, and what it can provide to others. This methodology has been worked out over the past few years for environmental groups belonging to an Internet network called Planet Society.

The second system is more ambitious: to develop a global network of Internet sites in various languages that will provide up-to-date information from around the world on news events and media productions that promote the various aspects of a culture of peace and nonviolence. This Culture of Peace News Network relies on the visitor to write repots and provides for the training of large numbers of volunteer "Culture of Peace Moderators' who work with the visitor to make their reports correspond to the "rules of the game," at which point they are put online. Each partner Web site agrees to send one moderated report a week to a central pool and to take one from that pool to put on their own Web site, translating them in and out of the language of their site. This will enable a global, multilingual system that is constantly updated.

The momentum developed during the International Year for the Culture of Peace (2000) will be continued into the Decade for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World (2001 to 2010); in fact partners for the Year are invited to participate in the preparation of the program of action for the Decade.

UNESCO PEACE EDUCATION PRIZE AWARDED TO TOH SWEE-HIN

One of PEC’s long-standing member, Dr. Toh Swee-Hin, has just been awarded the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education for the Year 2000. The Prize is awarded annually to an individual or organization for contributions over an extended period of time to education for peace and related fields such as human rights and international understanding. Toh was designated as the winner of this year’s prize on the unanimous recommendation of an international jury that met on September 11 and 12 at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris. Born and raised in Malaysia, Toh is an Australian citizen and a permanent resident of Canada. His candidature to the UNESCO Peace Education Award was submitted by the Philippines. He is currently a professor at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, after over a decade of teaching in an Australian university. He was a founding member of the Australian Peace Education and Research Association.

In nominating Toh to receive this year’s prize, the jury sought to reward “the candidate’s exceptional contribution to the promotion of the ideals of peace and nonviolence and for his practical action in favour of peace through the education of a wide range of social actors.” A professor and researcher, Dr. Toh has helped to promote peace education in many countries – such as Australia, Canada, Uganda, South Africa, Jamaica, Japan and the Philippines – especially in Mindanao, a site of long standing armed, social and cultural conflicts.

As Director of the Centre for International Education and Development in the University of Alberta from 1994 to 1999, Toh was able to integrate peace education into several bilateral educational projects in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. He has always been very active in numerous international associations, networks and agencies that promote peace education, including the Peace Education Council of IPRA, the International Institute on Peace Education, and the World Council for Curriculum and Instruction. Since 1995, Toh has contributed to UNESCO’s Culture of Peace Program through international forums and workshops. In 2000, he is involved in national and local committees to commemorate this year as the International Year for the Culture of Peace. He has written several books, articles, and teaching modules in Peace Education.

Previous winners of the Prize include the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (1982), Pax Christi International (1983), International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, (1984), Paulo Freire (1986), Dr. Robert Muller & the International Peace Research Association (1988), Rigoberta Menchu Tum & the World Order Models Project (1990), Ruth Sivard (1991), Mother Teresa (1992), and the Venerable Prayudth Payutto (1994).

PEC REPORT (cont. from p.1)

designed and implemented high school or university peace education programs and the problems they were facing. There was discussion of conflict resolution programs, peer mediation, non-violence education, and bullying.

All presenters included information about the social and cultural context in which these programs are to be housed. Several presenters raised awareness of cultural heritage and values. One showed the use of visual art in peace education activities, another showed posters made by young children, and a third gave an overview of peace museums. Further, the issue of upcoming virtual peace universities and distance learning was addressed. In contrast to face to face learning, distance learning needs to deal with missing affective/ emotional aspects.

While the commission worked according to a fairly traditional academic concept of presentation – discussion, convergent in thinking, there were more free wheeling discussions about a summer schools based on a 1976 Västerhaninge IPRA Summer School, the ”Strategy of Global Change in Various Local Settings.” PEC hopes to hold another Summer School in 2002.

Members of the Peace Education Commision meeet in Finland

While there are different structural and cultural challenges facing local educational systems, a common thread of ”conflict resolution” seems to link peace educators at the moment. How, can we understand why our well developed schools nevertheless are breeding grounds of racism and exclusion, fostering bullying and school crime? When children bring arms to schools, what is the cause?

We need to look more closely at schools as mirrors and metaphors of the society surrounding it. We also need to look at which identities schools foster and negate, and which modes of socialization are encouraged or overlooked. What if peace education as it is presently implemented is in fact harmonization education, relegating into the invisible depth of personalities, experiences and traumas, generating wounds in which simmer revenge? What does it mean to give ”voice” to the learning needs of students? Does not peace education require making adults as well as the children?

While peace education has often concerned itself with the micro dimension in classrooms, it seems appropriate that we concentrate our analytical efforts in future towards environmental issues in a conprehensive sense: towards peace as an emotional climate, peace as a cultural process on ongoing conflict resolution and peace as a mode of individual and structural conflict transformation towards justice. There are close links between sustainability and democracy, empowerment and conscientization, resistance and recognition which members of the Peace Education Commission will have to address more closely in future. Mediation is fundamentally dialogic, at the cultural as well as the individual level. More than reinforcing the need for third party intervention, we need to look at modes of creative self-regulation and of building a pedagogy of hope for suffering students.

As our readers will perhaps know, the Peace Education Commission is not only a working group, but a separate organizational entity governed by its own council, whose memberrs are listed on the second page of this newsletter. The conveners of the Peace Education Commission for the next two years will be Ian Harris, USA and Veslemøy Wiese, Norway.

The Hague Appeal for Peace launched a "Global Campaign for Peace Education". It was proposed that PEC should endorse this campaign and help it in possible ways. The PEC participants present decided to follow this proposal and hand over any possible follow-up questions to the PEC Council.

SCHOOL MEDIATION IN HESSEN, GERMANY

Helmolt Rademacher, Germany

With the beginning of the nineties the idea of mediation became more accepted in Germany. In fact, it is experiencing a kind of a 'boom.' These tendencies inspired Kurt Faller, at the time director of the "Jugendbildungswerk " (an educational institution for minors) in the city of Offenbach to develop a systematic conflict management concept for nursery schools, youth institutions and schools. Starting from and building on the experiences in Offenbach, the project "Mediation und Schulprogramm" is being realised in Hessen since school year 1997/98. The term 'Mediation' stands for the idea of constructive management of conflicts; and the word 'Schulprogramm' signifies the long-term process of school development. In the state of Hessen about 150 of the approximately 2000 schools have mediation programs. One hundred twenty schools participate in the project "Mediation und Schulprogramm”

Background

In most schools conflicts were and are still resolved by using power or by referring to rules and laws. Rarely do school officials allow all the conflicting parties to express their positions, needs and interests. Historically, when dealing with conflict, teachers take sides with one of the parties. Not taking sides with one or the other party nor prescribing any result, is rarely found. Because schools do not have a culture of constructive conflict management, the conflicts escalate and end up in verbal attacks and even in violence.

Our main intention when applying mediation is not to produce visible, clear-cut solutions, e.g. in the form of contracts. Our attention is much more dedicated to the process of conflict management. That means that our main focus is to change the attitudes of those involved in a conflict. Accordingly an important point of reference for us is the idea of 'transformative mediation.'

In opposition to this approach there are isolated activities such as implementing peer-mediation without checking out the preconditions and the probable acceptance in a given school and thus without carefully reflecting on how sustainable the activity can be. The danger of this 'popular' approach is that highly motivated and committed teachers build up a peer-mediation group, without asking what responses the group may meet in their school, and without asking how durable the group will be. Sometimes such an activity may work out quite positively: the success of the peer-mediators may motivate other teachers to promote of the idea. But very often this kind of isolated activity finds no support at all, and finally the students find themselves with only very few mediation cases, or the whole program comes to a complete (and sudden) end as soon as the initiating teacher leaves the school. Some teachers hope to realise the idea of peer-mediation as quickly as possible, without consideration of the efforts and time needed to make it a success. Another difference between the isolated activities and the systematic approach is that the systematic approach aims at changing the entire school's culture in the sense of developing a culture of constructive conflict management.

Realisation of the project in school

The realisation of the project usually starts within the school with an information unit, e.g. with a pedagogical conference. The purpose is to offer information about the general idea of mediation, then comes training for teachers (24 hours) and different programs for students (for the 5^th and the 7^th grade) . These programs aim at creating awareness about constructive ways to deal with conflicts and a positive attitude towards mediation (20 to 80 hours). The last step is to implement a training of peer-mediators (40-80 hours). The whole process takes at least 3 to 5 years.

Resistances during the process of realisation

Though the project is just beginning, there are signs of resistance – not necessarily among the participating colleagues, but in the close environment. Resistances and obstacles could be observed on the following levels:

* among the convinced 'followers' of mediation; evidenced by hesitating behaviour

* among teaching colleagues; performanced through indifferent behaviour

* among teaching colleagues shown by negative, disapproving behaviour

* among the headmasters or -mistresses of the school

What can be observed in the actual starting phase among teaching colleagues is not a loss of motivation, but a reluctance to take the necessary steps to put the concept in practice. On the one hand, many of the teachers, despite having been trained, don't really dare to apply mediation, because they don't feel secure enough and they fear they will make mistakes. This feeling outweighs an awareness that practice makes perfect.

On the other hand, some teachers show a reluctant attitude to learn by doing – that ends up with a continuous need for external support, "You demonstrate to us, how it works. We prefer to observe for the time being!" These words express a consumer's attitude. Even though only a few teachers hold such attitudes, they can make the realisation of the program more difficult.

Also problematic are those teachers who praise the mediation concept with an almost missionary zeal; they tend to forget their environment and not to realise that they ask too much from their colleagues, or to not realise that they are mostly eager to acquire status for themselves instead of giving space to others. That is why it is so important to – in a gentle manner – include as many colleagues as possible and to convince them slowly and carefully rather than overrunning them. It is also helpful if an external expert presents the concept of mediation, because there are schools where "the prophet has no honor in his own country."

Teachers within a school who have an indifferent attitude towards mediation, can slow down the process of implementation severely, if you don't manage to integrate them constantly into the project. It is not that all colleagues participate in the project with the same intensity, but it is important however to make sure that they all are at least convinced of its value. What good is it to have a group of peer-mediators, if the teachers remain sceptical towards the concept and refuse to send their students to get their conflicts solved with a mediator's help? The consequence will probably be that peer-mediators won't be able practice their skills.

Concerning the class programs the easiest way to convince indifferent teachers will be practical action. The successful realisation of project days, the improvement of the social climate within a class – those are indicators that can persuade hesitant teachers to try it. However in these cases we expect these teachers to fulfil the qualification by having followed a 'basic training' before, as a precondition to have them participating in the continuously offered further training.

In the schools participating in the project, there is a small number of disapproving teachers, because the decision to start with a 'basic training' is usually shared by a significant majority in the teaching staff. There are two possibilities to deal with these disapproving colleagues: You can either persuade them through a successful program, or you cannot persuade them at all. Therefore it is more advisable to let them participate in the practical action instead of arguing with them in long, 'ideological' debates. Nevertheless it is necessary to avoid a split between 'professional mediators' and the rest of the teachers within a school.

The participation and support from the headmaster's or headmistress's side is crucial. We are always eager to make sure that the school's administrators commit to the project from the very beginning and that they participate in all decisions. If possible, one member of the school administration should participate in the 'basic training.’ There is a tendency to leave all practical experiences to the teachers and feel – as a member of the school administration - only responsible for the more 'general tasks and questions.’ This inclusion is critical, because another manner of dealing with conflicts needs to be tested, and it requires the participation of all relevant persons within the school.

After the institutionalisation teaching staff are confronted with the question, which conflicts should be managed by the peer-mediators and which conflicts should not? Even though many teachers in the beginning welcomed the setting-up of peer-mediation, because it is actually a relief for them; the procedure as a whole signifies a loss of power for the teachers, and this fact will have to be 'digested.’ This point may be behind some of the resistance, because it is unusual to address the question of (loss of) power in an open and direct way.

What is striking, too, is the observation that in schools that have already established mediation, for the management of conflicts that appear to be more complicated, e.g. conflicts between two members of the teaching staff, mediation is not used. Instead people revert to the 'old-fashioned' measures of order, even in cases where mediation would be applicable. Hopefully, the future will show that the longer a school community experiences the benefits of mediation, the more the actors will be ready to give up their traditional ways to end conflicts. It shows however that building trust in the mediation procedure requires a long-term perspective.

Summary

According to our experiences we can now draw the following conclusions:

· Successful conflict management programs have to count on a long-term and continuous commitment, because there is no such thing as short-term recipes for the settlement of destructive conflicts. Instead, the development of a new school culture of peace requires a lot of time.

· Free spaces (especially with respect to time) have to be provided, in order to be able to take the time to work on conflicts, so that they are not going to constantly reappear and/or escalate. Because we live in a period of stress, and teachers usually have to do 'three things at the same time,’ what is needed is a process of 'de-speeding', of slowing down.

· Since a school's administration and teachers are its key actors, as many of them as possible have to be trained, because the mediation concept can best be realised, if it is supported by the greatest possible number of actors.

· External support, both with respect to human and financial resources, is needed when conducting long-term projects. Institutions that can provide know-how in constructive conflict management, as well as institutions of teachers' training or sponsors that can guarantee continuing external support, have turned out to be especially helpful in this respect.

SEVEN CONCEPTS IN THE EVOLUTION OF PEACE THINKING

Linda Groff, USA

The seven types of peace, organized in three broad categories, are briefly as follows:

(A) War Prevention (Focusing on the Elimination of Physical Violence and War and the Maintenance of This Situation by the International System)

1. Peace as Absence of War

2. Peace as Balance of Forces in the International System

(B) Structural Conditions for Peace (Added to the Elimination of Physical Violence and War):

3. Peace as No War and No Structural Violence on Macro Levels

4. Peace as No War and No Structural Violence on Macro AND Micro Levels (Adding Community and Family Peace, as also essential, along with National, International, and Transnational Peace) (Feminist Peace)

(C) Holistic: Complex Systems Models and Views of Peace (that focus on unity and diversity include positive as well as negative definitions of peace in multiple areas and on multiple system levels--from the macro to the micro including inner peace)

5. Intercultural Peace

6. Holistic Gaia Peace

7. Holistic Inner-Outer Peace

Note that holistic Inner-Outer Peace thus includes all the previous types of outer peace, while also adding inner peace as an essential component of peace.

This holistic view of peace is:

* multifactored--looking at many different substantive aspects and dimensions of peace;

*multi-levelled--dealing with multiple system levels, from macro to micro (in the outer world) and to inner peace;

It also:

* defines peace not only in negative terms--what one wants to eliminate, but also in positive terms--in terms of positive, and multicultural visioning of what peace could ideally look like in each area;

* includes not only six aspects of outer peace, in the world, but also now inner peace as an essential component for creating a peaceful world in the 21st century; and

* honors unity AND diversity, interdependence AND pluralism, of the world’s peoples, races, cultures, ethnic groups, nations, and religions. It proposes that peace in the next century will require that we note both the pole of our unity and interdependence and the pole of our diversity and differences.

We will now look at each of these seven types of peace in a bit more detail. [This section comes partly from an earlier article by Paul Smoker and Linda Groff, “Peace--An Evolving Idea: Implications for Future Generations,” Future Generations Journal (Malta), No. 23, Issue 2, 1997.]

A. Peace Thinking that Stresses War Prevention

The first two types of peace both deal with war and how to prevent it, and the need to do so if any peace is to be possible in the world.

(1) Peace as Absence of War

The first perspective, peace as the absence of war, focuses on avoiding violent conflict between and within states--war and civil war. This view of peace is still widely held among general populations and politicians in most countries, and there are good reasons why this is so. Everyone knows the ravages of World War I and World War II, as well as those occurring during the so-called “Cold War,” where superpowers often intervened in local conflicts, such as Vietnam and Afghanistan. Wars, mostly of the internal or civil type, continue to rage around the globe, and the lives of millions of people are daily threatened by the specter of war. Under these circumstances, peace is seen as the absence of war—at least until the killing stops and it is possible to ask for more out of life than avoiding death in war. In fact, all seven definitions of peace discussed here include absence of war in their definition of peace, but only this first view defines peace as just the absence of war.

(2) Peace as Balance of Forces in International System

Peace is a dynamic balance involving political, social, cultural, and technological factors, and that war occurred when this balance broke down in the international system. The international system includes the overall pattern of relationships between states and International Governmental Organizations (IGOs) and domestic public opinion within a state--the community level of analysis. Any significant change in one of the factors involved in the peace balance would require corresponding changes in other factors to restore the balance. For example, Robert Oppenheimer, the much misunderstood “father of the atomic bomb,” insisted on continuing to develop the bomb so that a global political institution, the United Nations, would have to be created to help control the new global military technology.

B. Peace Thinking that Stresses Eliminating Macro and/or Micro Physical and Structural Violence

The next two types of peace each deal with and add social-structural dimensions of peace--including macro international and transnational levels, and then micro community, family, and individual levels--to the efforts at eliminating physical violence and war (noted under A above).

(3) Peace as Negative Peace (No War) and Positive Peace (No Structural Violence) on Macro Levels

Negative peace is the absence of war. Positive peace is the absence of “structural violence.” Thus if people starve to death when there is food to feed them somewhere in the world, or die from sickness when there is medicine to cure them, then structural violence exists since alternative structures could, in theory, prevent such deaths. Peace under this rubric involves both positive peace and negative peace being present in the global economy, which is influenced by non-state actors, such as International NonGovernmental Organizations (INGOs), and multinational corporations (MNCs).

(4) Feminist Peace: Eliminating Physical and Structural Violence on Both Macro and Micro (Community. Family. and Individual) Levels

During the 1970’s and 80’s, a fourth perspective was ushered in by feminist peace researchers, who extended both negative peace and positive peace to include eliminating both physical and structural violence down to the individual level. The new definition of peace includes not only abolishing macro level organized violence, such as war, but also eliminating micro level unorganized violence, such as rape in war or in the home. The concept of structural violence includes personal-micro and macro-level structures that harm or discriminate against particular individuals, ethnic communities, or groups. This feminist peace model came to include the elimination of all types of violence (physical and structural) at all levels, from the individual and family up to the transnational level, as a necessary condition for a peaceful planet.

C. Peace Thinking that Stresses Holistic Complex Systems

The last three types of peace all deal with holistic systems that are complex, and that see diversity as a strength. Intercultural peace celebrates the diverse cultural forms human beings exhibit on this planet, and Gaia peace honors the diversity of life forms and their interdependencies in the single living system Earth. These two types of holistic peace focus on the external world. The last type of peace adds inner peace to all the forms of outer peace, and is thus the most holistic, complex definition of peace.

(5) Intercultural Peace: Peace Between Peoples

The interaction between cultures has accelerated dramatically during recent centuries and decades, and too often the militarily stronger or economically more powerful culture has subdued or eliminated the militarily weaker or economically poorer one. While cultural violence has become a global phenomena, and a focus for peace researchers, relations between cultures can also be refrained from negative (cultural violence, cultural wars) to positive conceptions, such as “intercultural peace”--between different ethnic, racial, cultural, and religious groups. This stresses not only what we want to eliminate, but also what we want to create in a positive sense. Thus, intercultural peace requires the positive co-evolution of cultures at both macro and micro levels. The whole diverse global cultural mix is seen as a cause of strength for humanity, in the same way that the rich diversity of plants and living creatures are seen as a strength for the ecosystem.

(6) Holistic Gaia Peace: Peace With the World and the Environment

In addition to the earlier types of peace, Holistic Gaia Peace, peace with the environment, also sees the Earth as a complex living system, of which humans are a part, and places all forms of peace between people in that context. Holistic Gaia Peace therefore requires peace between people at all levels of analysis--from the individual and family levels to the global cultural level. In addition, Gaia Peace places a very high value on the relationship of humans to bioenvironmental systems --the environmental level of analysis. Peace with the environment and responsible stewardship of the earth are seen as central to this type of holistic peace, where human beings are seen as one of many species inhabiting the earth, and the fate of the planet is seen as the most important goal.

In some cases, the Gaia concept is interpreted scientifically, in terms of a complex biochemical, energy system. When this is the case, Gaia Peace is primarily concerned with physical aspects of the environment and reality, outlined in the first six types of peace. In

other cases, the inner, spiritual aspects of Gaia are also seen as essential, and Gaia or earth is also seen as a sacred, living being, or Goddess.

(7) Holistic Inner and Outer Peace

This last type of peace includes all of the outer aspects of peace (covered above), as well as adding inner peace as an essential component and precondition for a peaceful world. Spiritually based peace theory stresses the centrality of inner peace, believing that all aspects of outer peace, from the individual to the environmental levels, must be based on inner peace. This spiritual dimension is expressed in different ways, depending on one’s cultural context.

This approach to peace elaborates on the different dimensions and levels of consciousness related to inner peace. To do this, they will have to draw on centuries of experience by spiritual masters from the East, indigenous cultures, and from some more ancient Western cultures, where such traditions of inner experience are much older, more developed, and honored than in modern Western culture. Even in the West, however, there is now much greater interest in such topics, including a greater openness to exploring such inner dimensions of consciousness and peace.

D. Summary on Evolution of the Peace Concept

The above discussion illustrates a number of important changes in the peace concept in peace research over the last fifty years. First, the idea that peace can be defined in terms of a single factor, “absence of war,” has been replaced in subsequent peace research by multifactored theories. While the absence of war remains a necessary precondition for all peace definitions, it is no longer a sufficient one. Second, there has been a shift from including just the state level of analysis, in absence of war definitions, to peace theories that include (for outer peace) multiple levels of analysis--from the individual to environmental levels. Multifactor, multilevel concepts of peace are, as a consequence, considerably more complex than simple, absence of war theories. Finally, peace has come to be defined not only in negative terms (focusing on what to eliminate, such as physical or structural violence), but increasingly in holistic, positive terms (focusing on what a peaceful world would look like in a positive sense). The latter is also essential, not just the former, if effective change is to occur.

The emergence of more holistic peace paradigms in peace research has included an increasing emphasis on positive conceptions of peace. In part, this is because of our realization that, whatever our nationality, culture or religious tradition, we are all interconnected and interdependent. Viewed from space, planet Earth is a beautiful blue-green sphere, without national borders, but with land, water, ice caps, deserts forests, and clouds visible. The Earth is clearly a whole complex system, perhaps even a living being. We as individuals and groups are but a part of the planet, as the planet itself is a part of the solar system, galaxy and universe. This whole systems mindset enables an appreciation of the interdependence of species in the global ecosystem, of particular cultural meanings in the context of the total global cultural system, and of particular faiths in the rich diversity of global religions. The whole is more than the sum of the parts, and the greater the variety of the parts, the richer the expression of the global whole.

SAKHA UKUTHULA: FACILITATING PEACE EDUCATION WITH NONVIOLENCE AND JUSTICE

Katherine D. Lane, Johannesburg, South Africa. (reprinted from Peace and Change, March 2000)

The context of South Africa arises within a history of oppression, injustice, and a struggle toward freedom. Racism and prejudice, domestic violence and corruption, apathy and fear, accusations of blame and denial of responsibility are some of the complex issues to address.

There are also hopeful factors in South Africa's favor. Having come through a peaceful revolution, we emerge with a richness and diversity of cultures to celebrate, ubuntu to draw us together as a united community, and an enormous capacity for forgiveness and humbleness. Archbishop Desmond Tutu describes ubuntu as "we are people through other people." It is a sense of collective community responsibility and connection to each other throughout humanity. Now that freedom has begun to be realized through a constitution that includes human rights and a new government, we are working together to attain the fullness of this freedom.

Peace education is a crucial tool to help rebuild and renew children and adults within South Africa's communities. Sakha Ukuthula is a peace education program of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa, based in the Central District, Johannesburg, South Africa. Sakha Ukuthula means "we are building peace" in Zulu. We work with people of all ages, from preschool children to adults, with people from a variety of backgrounds, the oppressed and impoverished, and the privileged and powerful.

One particularly important aspect of our work is exploring our racism, through workshops designed to heal the wounds involving oppressors and oppressed, disenfranchised and advantaged people together. We need to hear each other's stories, and understand perspectives and feelings, so that we can reconcile and build a country of peaceful freedom together. In the racism workshops, people have an opportunity to share stories of their experience of dysfunctional relationships. Piet, a white Afrikaans-speaking man, told us of his best friend, Dumisani, who was black. They ate together, slept together, bathed together, and played together on Piet's family's farm. When Piet turned sixteen years old, his father gave him a clap on the head (like a box on the ears) on his birthday and said, "You! FrOm now on you will no longer play with the kaffir. You are a man now and he is a boy. You must be the baas." (Kaffir has derogatory connotations like nigger, and "baas" or boss implies supremacy, like "master" from the era of slavery in the United States.)

Piet cried while recounting this story. He said his wish was to find out where Dumisani was and to make sure he was okay. And to say he was sorry

Thandeka, a Zulu-speaking woman, recalled the days after the police murdered her husband. She wore black clothes to work as a sign of mourning and respect for her dead husband. Thandeka said her boss hated her and was always calling her names like kaffir and giving her the worst, smelliest jobs a cleaner could do in the Woolworth's department store. When she arrived in black, he fired her because he could not stand the sight of her in mourning clothes. With shame, Thandeka recalled that she had begged this man on her knees to keep her job. She was the only income earner in a large family, and they depended on her to survive. She remembers the hate in his eyes, the smells of the office, his face, his name, and minute details of what he said to her in this painful time. Two decades later, she wrote a letter to her former boss expressing her feelings then and now, and her forgiveness. It released a heavy burden from her heart that had been consuming her energy even so many years later.

People in South Africa are often living with the pain of the past, and part of the workshops we offer can help people come to terms with their past, and forgive and reconcile.

We also facilitate workshops that explore how we respond to society's conditioning of prejudice, which, when mixed with power, creates racism and sexism and other forms of injustice. Peace must be linked with justice issues in order for a culture of peace to be sustainable and authentic. This means that peace education encompasses a broad range of topics including awareness raising, addressing injustice, proactive prevention, and building peace. Nonviolence is a vital, skills-training portion of our workshops. The workshop participants explore violent conflicts they fear, which conflicts they experience in their lives, and how both make them feel. We then brainstorm and role play possible responses, trying to expand people's repertoire beyond the flight/submission and fight/aggression responses so natural to us. Perpetrators often expect the fight-or-flight responses, so a nonviolent or third way of responding will often take them off guard. One key factor in nonviolence is that it respects both parties involved. In order to inflict violence on another human being, the person being attacked must somehow be dehumanized in the eyes of the perpetrator. Nonviolence asserts the humanity and dignity of all people. So even when nonviolence doesn't "work," it does achieve one purpose, that of affirming human dignity.

Some of the work we have done with preschool children includes a discussion on toy guns. In an inner-city preschool called FLOC (For Love of Children), toy guns (and real guns) are not allowed on the premises. We asked the children to draw pictures of what guns do to people. They drew pictures of people afraid of guns and crying because someone had been killed. One child, Siyabonga, drew a picture of his father, who drives a taxi, being hijacked with a gun. Gun violence is a terrifying reality for many children. We asked the children to draw pictures of what life is like without guns. The children drew pictures of smiling children and happy families. One child said, 'We don't play with guns because it isn't nice to pretend to kill people."

Even preschool children can contribute to peace. There is a delightful activity called "My Hands Are for Building Peace." The children talk about all the things their hands can do: clapping, hitting, holding someone else's hand, slapping, shaking hands, helping pick up toys, etc. Then they discuss which ones help build peace and which ones do not. The children cut out a hand shape with their name on it and what their hands can do for building peaceWhat can your hands do for building peace?

Sakha Ukuthula facilitates quarterly workshops with the preschool teachers of the Central District of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa. We begin by helping the preschool teachers learn about peace education, and explore what they understand as peace. The second series of workshops focuses on self-esteem, partly because peace education can be threatening to a teacher accustomed to meting out harsh discipline and authoritarian measures to two- to five-year-old children. Making a shift from a rote style of teaching to a more cooperative style does require flexibility and a less controlling method of interacting.

The third series of workshops focuses on creative, nonviolent, proactive discipline. We looked at logical consequences as one suggested model, where the meted disciplinary measure is directly related to the behavior to be corrected. The teachers will be reporting back on their results at our next workshop. We will be exploring the challenges that still remain and the success stories of positive responses. In the future, we intend to include a segment on parenting for peace, to help the teachers begin to educate the parents of the preschool children.

Building a culture of peace is a delicate, invigorating, gentle, creative, and patient process. We must learn to respect each other and work together to build a peaceful, just society for the sake of our children and our families.

PEACE EDUCATORS IN ACTION

ADA AHARONI

(eds note: Previous interviews with peace educators have been conducted by the editor of this newsletter. This interview was provided by Dr. Aharoni and hence is written in the first person.)

My interest in peace, and in women power for peace, began when I was about 12 years old, when my grandmother invited me to serve cakes at one of her "Women for Peace and Equality" meetings. As strange as it may seem, this was in Cairo, Egypt, just after the Second World W where I was born. I was amazed to see at this meeting so many women of all ages: Moslem, Jewish and Christian women and young girls were crowded in my grandmother's sitting room, many of them sitting on the carpet, because there were no more free chairs. They had bright eyes and were enthusiastic and hopeful. Young as I was, I was caught by their spirit, and their claims for equal rights and for peace. Their message: "WOMEN OF THE WORLD UNITE AND BRING PEACE AND EQUALITY TO THE WORLD," deeply spoke to me, and it penetrated to the roots of my being. I felt I was a part of them, and their earnest cause went straight to my heart and mind. These women are with me to this day, and have influenced much of my ensuing life and peace activities.

Shortly after that, together with my Arab school friend Kadreya, we started a school magazine, called THE RAINBOW, at the Alvernia English School for girls, in Zamalek, in Cairo, where devoted Irish Franciscan nuns instilled in me a deep love of English Literature. Shakespeare, Bernard Shaw, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and so many other writers I loved and read avidly, became my teachers of democratic and peace values, and equal rights. I realize today, that THE RAINBOW, the magazine, we founded, with so much love and devotion was our way of thanking those wonderful writers for all they had given us, and our attempt at contributing back ourselves some of the values they had inculcated in us.

The motto of our "Rainbow" magazine was: "To Abolish Wars Forever." It followed the message of the British Peace Poet, Wilfred Owen, whom we studied at school, as expressed in his moving poems, such as "Arms and the Boy." Owen spoke to me directly; he strengthened the peace values I had gained at the women for peace meeting, and he opened my eyes still wider to the sheer absurdity of the very concept and the practice of war. I learned from history that all wars ended with a Peace Treaty, or a Peace Agreement, so why, I asked myself, and all my friends and family, do we not start with the Peace Treaty, before we kill our children in absurd wars?

At this early period of my life, that I became a full fledged peace builder. I carried my thoughts and perceptions of peace to the youth movement "Maccabi" which I joined, and I was quickly made chief of the children section, which we called "Pioneers for Peace."

All my life, since those first formative years, "world peace", and peace education, have been a major and integral part of my life and my being. My love of peace and hatred of war deepened still more, when together with my family and the 100,000 people of the Jewish community in Egypt, of which I was part, were exiled after 1948, when the State of Israel was established. Out of the 100,000 Jews in Egypt then, there are only 90 Jews left in the whole of Egypt today. I went through the pain and deep suffering of losing all that was dear to me: my friends, home, books, school, everything, and we had to emigrate and leave all our belongings behind. We were among the lucky ones. Those who stayed on until 1956 suffered much more. My family remained in Paris, France, as we were of French nationality, but I decided that I would go to the Kibbutz in Israel, together with my group from the Maccabi, to help build Israel as a Land of Peace. I have written the story of the banning of Jews from Egypt in a novel entitled The Second Exodus.

Today, when I am a peace activist and professor of "Conflict Resolution," and research "The Arab/ Palestinian Conflict and Peacemaking," I tell my Palestinian friends and colleagues, that I identify with them wanting a country of their own, and fully understand them, because I myself underwent the tragedy of an uprooting, and the pain of not having a country that I could really call my own, as Egypt did not give most of its Jews Egyptian citizenship. However, I also tell my Palestinian colleagues, war and conflict never solve anything. They always bring pain and suffering on both sides, and violence does not help to solve conflicts but only worsens them.

After I came to Israel, four cruel wars made war my personal enemy, and peace became the main theme of my research and writing, my teaching, and my main activities in life. During the Yom Kippur War, I sent a letter and peace poem to the late President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, and was surprised and delighted, when he said on television, when he came to Jerusalem, in 1977, "let's made Ada Aharoni's poem of peace a reality." This strengthened my belief in the power of the word and literature as a vehicle of peace.

When I think about the sources of my peace values, I realize today that literature was one of their main and deepest sources, as a child and as an adult. I have been influenced by Herbert Read, whose book Education for Peace, spells out the advantages of relating peace to the arts. His premises are that the arts are the best tools for developing personal values and moral virtue. The function of the arts in society and education, Read felt, was to expand human capacities and potentialities. He criticizes the over-emphasis on science and technology, and on mainly abstract thinking at the expense of emotive wisdom, or what is termed today EQ – Emotional Quotient, versus IQ - Intelligence Quotient. According to Read, feelings, imagination and vision that can be acquired through the arts, are even more important than abstract thought and ideas, for they involve not only the mind but also the heart. For Read, aesthetic education properly conceived is also moral education, the ethical and aesthetical are intimately linked in his theory. Art, for him, is the means by which the deepest levels of the mind combine with the deepest levels of the heart, and are expressed through great works of art and literature. Consequently, he believed that the moral function of art and of aesthetic and literary education was to unite humanity in a common bond and common ideals. Read's theory and conception of the establishment of a peace culture through the arts, are especially valuable and pertinent today, and should be at the basis of the new peace culture required for sustainable global development.

Education provides an important context and channel for the respect and love of humankind and of life, and for the creation and establishment of a powerful and effective peace culture. For that to take place, a total, modern reform of the education system is needed, and a complete transformation of the methods and aims of traditional education. This entails telecommunications as an enhancement for teaching peace education and conflict resolution. Peace educators throughout the globe have established new dimensions of networks, websites, and e-mail group lists, to advance various aspects of peace education, including conflict resolution, non-violence, and concern for the environment. The growing boom and expanding dimensions of the internet and telecommunications indeed offer various new opportunities and directions for the promotion of peace education peace culture. Recognizing the importance of this new trend, in 1997, UNESCO convened a conference on "The Impact of Information and Communication Technologies on Teaching and Teachers," to strengthen international co-operation in the pursuit of peace and international understanding.

The links and partnerships that are created through such conferences and through telecommunications make it possible to integrate multicultural views, based on global understanding and cooperation. Teachers and youths participating in such intercultural projects, acquire the potential to move beyond narrow ethnic and group identities, and to assume a wider knowledge and identification as global citizens, and as promoters of peace culture.

Today, as a lecturer, teacher, writer and researcher, I wonder why literature is not more used in teaching Peace Studies in education. Probably, no area of the curriculum in peace studies is more neglected than literature and the arts. They are seldom accorded a central role in the plans of those who develop educational policies and design school and college curricula. Why is it that literature and art are such an important part of our culture and of our lives, and yet are so neglected in peace education? The use of literature as a tool for teaching peace education has received relatively little attention and it has not been researched comprehensively yet. I hope there will soon be positive developments in this direction.

From my experience as a child and as a teacher, I realize today that using literature in Peace Education and Peace Studies should become a crucial part of curricula in schools and universities, as Literature is an effective way of educating creative, imaginative, critical and self-reflective children and adults, with deep commitments to values and ethics. Literature and the arts are important sources for the promotion of ethical and liberal values, and they could become a means of fostering value consciousness, as well as sensitivity to lacks and deficiencies in our lives and our global village, together with a willingness to take creative action to build a better world beyond war. Schools and colleges are suitable forums where the building blocks of personal identity are built upon the values, culture, ideals, ethics, and world view, we acquire from books we read, films we see, TV programs we admire, and teachers we respect.