Attitudes and the Case for Peace Education
Attitudes and the Case for Peace Education
Attitudes peace education builds
Self-respect, a positive self-image, tolerance, acceptance of others, respect for differences, and awareness of one’s own bias.
Self first, then others
Respecting and accepting others is hard for someone who does not first respect themselves.
Peace is every teacher’s job
Not the task of one subject teacher. It can be taught in any subject, at any grade.
Roots
Early voices include Montessori (1937), John Dewey, and Horace Mann. Formal peace research grew from the 1940s and 1950s.
Knowledge and skills only reach so far if a learner does not want peace. The attitude aim of peace education shapes how a person sees themselves and others, because that outlook decides whether the knowledge and skills ever get used.
The Attitudes Peace Education Builds
Attitudes are the settled ways a learner regards themselves, other people, and difference. Peace education works on a familiar set of them.
| Attitude | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Self-respect and positive self-image | Valuing yourself and believing you are worthy |
| Strong self-concept | Holding to your own principles and values |
| Tolerance and acceptance | Getting along with people who differ from you |
| Respect for differences | Treating other views and cultures as valid |
| Respect for rights and responsibilities | Knowing that rights come paired with duties |
| Bias awareness and fairness | Noticing your own leanings and hearing all sides |
The order matters. Self-respect, a positive self-image, and a strong self-concept come first, because tolerance and acceptance of others rest on them. A learner who does not value themselves finds it harder to value anyone else. Only once the self is steady does respecting difference become natural.
People who respect themselves find it easier to respect and accept others.
A positive self-image and a strong self-concept come first. Tolerance, acceptance, and respect for differences tend to grow out of them rather than the other way round.
Two attitudes round out the set. Respect for rights and responsibilities reminds learners that a right sits beside a duty, so life cannot be lived by claiming privileges and skipping obligations. Fairness asks people to notice their own bias and to make sure every side is heard, since one person’s view of an issue can differ sharply from another’s.
A student who thinks little of themselves struggles to accept classmates who hold different views.
Which idea from the attitude aim best explains this?
Peace as Every Teacher’s Work
Peace education is not the job of one subject teacher, such as a religious-studies or moral-education specialist. Because peace runs through daily school life, it can be taught in any subject and at any grade. The idea is an old one.
Maria Montessori, writing in 1937, held that “establishing peace is the work of education,” while “all politics can do is keep us out of war.” For her, hope rested less in the facts a school passes on than in how it helps a new generation grow. John Dewey argued that young people learn peace mainly by experiencing it, and that a teacher’s genuine care for students drives that learning. Horace Mann hoped that widely shared basic education could free people from the constant danger of war.
Lasting peace is built by educating the next generation, while politics can only prevent open war.
She argued that hope for the future rests less on the facts schools pass on than on how education helps a new generation develop.
Later thinkers extended the theme. Maxine Greene described education as releasing people to become different, through freedom, choice, and dialogue. Jane Roland Martin put forward the idea of schools as homes, stressing the nurturing that children first meet long before they reach a classroom. Sara Ruddick argued that the caring practice associated with mothering can be a model for building peace. And bell hooks, in “Teaching to Transgress,” held that real learning, including learning to question a teacher, depends on that same nurturing.
Where Peace Education Came From
Peace education as a field grew from the peace research movement of the 1940s and 1950s, when scholars began to study what conflict is, why it starts, and how peace can be kept from one generation to the next. Its roots reach back further, though earlier records are thinner. Conflict was not new; careful study of it was.
Reformers laid groundwork earlier still. Jane Addams and Fannie Fern Andrews worked on peace and education before the research movement took shape. Formal bodies later gave the field structure: the International Peace Research Association (IPRA) formed in 1965, and the Consortium on Peace Research, Education, and Development (COPRED) followed in 1970. Both grew out of the earlier work of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Treat these dates as historical markers of how the field organised itself.
IPRA (1965) and COPRED (1970).
The International Peace Research Association and the Consortium on Peace Research, Education, and Development both grew out of the earlier work of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.
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