Knowledge as an Aim of Peace Education
Knowledge as an Aim of Peace Education
Core knowledge for peace
Self-awareness, the nature of conflict and peace, the causes of conflict, and nonviolent ways to resolve it.
Three common causes of conflict
- Feelings: hurt, frustration, or fear.
- Resources: something scarce that more than one person wants.
- Values or beliefs: a clash over what people hold to be right.
Wider knowledge
Rights and responsibilities, interdependence between people, awareness of cultural heritage, and recognising one’s own prejudice.
You cannot settle a problem you do not understand. The knowledge aim of peace education gives learners the ideas they need to see conflict clearly: what it is, where it comes from, and how it can be resolved without force.
What Learners Need to Know
Knowledge for peace starts close to home and widens outward. A learner first needs self-awareness, an honest sense of their own needs, because it is hard to understand others before understanding yourself. From there the knowledge reaches out to the people nearby and then to the wider world.
| Level | What the learner comes to know |
|---|---|
| The self | Own needs, feelings, and prejudices |
| Conflict | Its nature, its causes, and nonviolent ways to resolve it |
| Others | Rights and responsibilities, cultural heritage, and how people depend on one another |
| The process | How mediation works, and how peace is built and kept |
You cannot understand others until you understand your own needs and reactions.
Learners start by noticing their own feelings, needs, and prejudices, then widen out to understand other people, the causes of conflict, and how peace is built.
One item deserves attention: recognising prejudice. Everyone carries some. Arriving at a disagreement with your mind already made up blocks any fair resolution, so learning to spot your own bias is part of the knowledge aim, not a separate lesson.
Before a mediation lesson, a teacher asks students to write down what they already assume about the group they are in conflict with.
Which part of the knowledge aim is she building?
Understanding the Causes of Conflict
A clear knowledge target is understanding why conflicts start. Most disputes trace back to one of three sources.
| Cause | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Feelings | “I felt hurt or frustrated, so I reacted.” |
| Resources | “You have something I need, and there is not enough for both.” |
| Values or beliefs | “We hold opposite ideas about what is right.” |
A useful outcome is that learners can look at a dispute in their own school and name a likely cause, then explain their reasoning. Real conflicts are often messier than the list suggests, and one dispute can carry more than one cause at once. Spotting that is part of the analysis.
Two students argue because both want the only working computer during the same period.
Which cause of conflict does this best illustrate?
Naming the cause is only the start. Once learners can say why a dispute began, they can look for a fix that removes the cause rather than papering over the argument.
Feelings, resources, and values or beliefs.
Feelings cover hurt or frustration, resources cover something scarce that more than one person wants, and values cover clashes over what people hold to be right. A single conflict can have more than one cause.
Knowledge Beyond the Classroom
Peace knowledge also reaches past the school walls. Governments cannot do all the work of social change alone, so learners gain from knowing which non-governmental organisations operate around them, what those groups do, and whether their work holds up. Alongside this sits knowledge of grassroots efforts, both local and worldwide, that have kept peace or repaired it.
Force tends to plant the causes of the next conflict.
Peace work aims to settle disputes without violence, because violent means usually damage relationships and leave grievances behind that lead to more conflict later.
Two more ideas round out this outward-facing knowledge. Restorative justice asks how justice that has broken down can be rebuilt, drawing on how different communities have done it. Nonviolence explains why peace work avoids force in the first place, since violent means tend to seed the next conflict rather than end the current one.
One approach to justice asks what was damaged, who was affected, and how things can be put right, instead of only assigning punishment.
What is this approach called?
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