Peace education is a philosophy and practice that aims to equip learners with the skills and behaviors to enable them to become peaceful citizens capable of resolving the conflicts faced in their communities and beyond and working to establish a culture of peace through dismantling systems that contribute to prejudice, violence, and hatred. This chapter argues that peace education is an alternative to the culture of violence that dominates many societies around the world and provides a discussion of important authors and scholars. These notions of peace education are then explored through the stories of four peace leadership education endeavors. Utilizing integral peace leadership as a guiding frame, these educational endeavors explored the ways to create cultures of peace in communities and schools. The chapter concludes with a commitment to use integral peace leadership as a vehicle for promoting a more peaceful culture committed to social change and overcoming the hindrances to local and international peace.
TopIntroduction
The political situation around the world is, unfortunately, grim. Millions of people are experiencing insecurity and fear due to the rise of postwar conflicts, terrorist attacks, post-pandemic challenges, structural violence, ethnic cleansing, and economic challenges (Institute for Economics and Peace, 2014; 2020). A recent report by UNICEF (2021) revealed that more than 2.3 billion people were unable to secure year-round access to adequate food in 2020. Similar findings were reported by the UN Refugee Agency (2021) stating that 35 million children below 18 years of age were forcibly displaced in 2020, 4.4 million people sought asylum, and 26.6 million lived as refugees. Amnesty International’s 2020-2021 annual report highlighted how the COVID-19 pandemic has blighted Sub-Saharan Africa countries with 3,600 rape cases recorded in Nigeria during the lockdown, 1,000 people stranded on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and 60 cases of conflict-related sexual violence in Cameroon. The political outlook in the United States is equally grim, with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reporting that 67,000 people died in 2017 due to violence-related injuries (CDC, 2020).
These staggering statistics demonstrate that there is an intense need to address these worldwide violent challenges and research has demonstrated that nonviolent approaches are often most successful (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011). Therefore, leading scholars, researchers, and educators worldwide call for nonviolent approaches as means to address these needs. With this in mind, educational institutions, both formal and informal, became increasingly aware of the need to play a role in shaping a new approach to learning by preparing students to become productive and responsible citizens (Castro & Gallace, 2011). This led to the emergence of peace education, which provides insights into how people around the world resolve disputes without resorting to militarism and force and bring people together to achieve common goals (Misra, 2020).
Peace education stems from a philosophical tradition rooted in a belief that humans are naturally peaceful and nonviolent (Synott, 2005) or, in fact, wired for peace (Chappell, 2013). Galtung (1976) believed that the purpose of peace education should not be limited to ending violence but also to promoting nonviolence as the basis for a just future. The potential roles that education could play in peacebuilding have resulted in advocacy for the implementation of peace education curricula. Peace education scholars believed that schools could be areas of transformation that equip students with skills that would help them resolve the conflicts they face nonviolently, which, in turn, could help transform structures of violence and create a more peaceful world (Bajaj, 2015; Harris & Morrison, 2003; Reardon, 1988).