Defining Peace and Peace Education
Defining Peace and Peace Education
Two senses of peace
- Negative peace: the absence of war and direct violence.
- Positive peace: the presence of justice, fairness, and repaired relationships.
Peace education, in one line
Teaching knowledge of peace-building, plus attitudes of tolerance and empathy, plus skills in cooperation, conflict avoidance, and conflict resolution.
Two scholarly emphases
- Knowledge-based: peace as an academic and moral subject across disciplines.
- Skills-and-attitudes: Cremin (1993) stresses what learners can do and how they relate.
The three aims
Knowledge, skill, attitude. Strongest together, not one alone.
Peace is easy to name and hard to define. Most people picture it as the end of fighting, but stopping a war does not build a fair or settled society. Peace education starts by widening that picture, then asks what a school can actually teach so learners are able to live at peace with others.
What Peace Means
Johan Galtung, one of the founders of peace research, drew a widely used line between two kinds of peace. Negative peace is the absence of direct violence: no war, no fighting, no open clash. Positive peace is harder to reach. It is the presence of justice, fair access to resources, and repaired relationships between groups. A ceasefire can deliver negative peace overnight; positive peace takes the slower work of removing the causes of conflict.
This matters for a school. A quiet room is not proof of peace if some children are excluded, treated unfairly, or observed being bullied. Peace has to be built, and it can only be built once someone notices that it is missing.
Two groups of students who used to fight have signed a truce and now ignore each other, but the unfair treatment that started the fights has not changed.
Which kind of peace best describes their situation?
What Peace Education Is
Peace education is a broad term for any teaching that focuses on building peace and helps learners grow the attitudes and skills to live peacefully with others. One widely cited definition describes it as all educational activities that promote knowledge of peace-building and develop, in the learner, attitudes of tolerance and empathy along with skills in cooperation, conflict avoidance, and conflict resolution, so that learners gain the capacity and motivation to live in peace with others, on their own and together.
Two ideas sit inside that definition. First, peace does not appear by itself; it is built. Second, the goal goes past knowing about peace. Learners should also want it and be able to keep it, in person and online, where conflict also happens.
Negative peace is the absence of war or direct violence. Positive peace is the presence of justice and repaired relationships.
A ceasefire creates negative peace quickly. Positive peace takes the longer work of removing the causes of conflict.
Two Ways Scholars Frame It
Writers on peace education do not all stress the same thing. One approach is knowledge-based. It treats peace education as a multidisciplinary academic and moral search for solutions to the problems of war and injustice, aiming to build the institutions and movements that support a peace grounded in justice and reconciliation. On this view, peace can be taught inside any subject at any grade level.
A second approach puts more weight on skills and attitudes. Cremin (1993) is often cited for this emphasis: what learners can do, and how they relate to others, matters as much as what they know. In practice, most teachers draw on both, at the moment each one fits.
The Three Aims
Across these approaches, peace education is usually built around three aims: knowledge, skill, and attitude. Knowledge covers what a learner understands about conflict and peace. Skill covers what a learner can do, such as listen well or negotiate. Attitude covers how a learner regards themselves and others. A programme that leans on one aim alone tends to fall short, so the three work best in step.
| Aim | What it develops | Classroom example |
|---|---|---|
| Knowledge | Understanding of conflict, its causes, and how peace is built | Naming the likely cause of a playground dispute |
| Skill | What a learner can do to prevent or resolve conflict | Restating another person’s point before replying |
| Attitude | How a learner regards themselves and others | Showing respect for a view they disagree with |
A lesson can carry all three at once. Students might learn what causes a conflict, practise listening to the other side, and come away more willing to accept a different view.
A teacher wants a peace lesson to change how students treat a classmate they have been excluding, not just what they know about fairness.
Which aim of peace education is she mainly working on?
Attitude is usually the slowest of the three to shift, because it means changing how a student feels, not just what they can recall.
Knowledge, skill, and attitude.
Knowledge is what a learner understands about conflict and peace, skill is what they can do to prevent or resolve it, and attitude is how they regard themselves and others. Programmes work best when the three are taught together.
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