Relevance of Peace Education

EDUCATION, 14 Apr 2025

Dr. Surya Nath Prasad – TRANSCEND Media Service

Paper based on a keynote speech delivered at the National Convention of International Association of Educators for World Peace (IAEWP) on the theme: Relevance of Peace Educationon 8 Feb 1991 at Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India.

Peace Education has a great relevance today because gruesome war in the gulf “has caused us deep anguish”. Neglect of this discipline, and introduction and teaching of war education in educational institution and beyond the four-walls have made people war-minded. Army and education, barracks and schools, military ranks and academic degrees are contradictory concepts for any country of the world to live and let others to live in peace. Peace Education in schools, colleges, universities and out-of-campus curriculum is essential for peace within and between the nations of the world.

The basic problem of the whole world today is establishment of peace. The way of nonviolence leads to peace. Masses of the world are victims of physical and structural violence both. Physical violence is present when weapons of war prevent people’s needs being satisfied. Structural violence is when people’s needs are not being satisfied because of the way society is organized.

Education, broader sense, is not confined only within four-walls. But it is extended to beyond the campuses also as it has agencies like family, religious institutions, state including educational institutions. Elders of these means of education narrate, dictate and dominate youngsters of their respective institutions thinking that they who are parents, preachers, rulers and teachers, are only in possession of things and property, religious enlightenment, power and authority, and knowledge respectively while sons and daughters in the family, devotees in religious institutions, masses or citizens in the state and taught in educational institutions are dispossessed in their respective homes. They dominate, oppress and exploit them with their possessions. This state of affairs in the seed of violence present in the structure of all these types of agencies of education.  Structural forms of violence can be seen in the shape of concerns like apartheid, economic depression, and discrimination against minorities including women, the denial of human rights and exploitation of the poor by the rich. These less obvious and therefore, not immediately visible forms of violence are built into our social, political and economic structures. Structural violence can easily lead to physical violence. Thus there are four common peace obstructers for all nations. These are: violence, injustice, poverty and environmental damage.

Hence peace education deals with conflicts arising out of aggression or war situations, and also arising out of injustice or exploitation. Peace education is a Science which studies the basic needs of men and women and the true nature of society in which these needs are to be satisfied and aware the people towards human rights and structurally violent and non-violent societies. It enables the young people and masses to free oppressors and oppressed both. Thus peace education is education of creation of non-exploitative, non-oppressive, non-violent and just society, and perpetuation of it. Then Director-General of UNESCO, Amadou Mahtar M’Bow defines peace education as synonymous with receptivity to this world as it is and with initiation in the realities, cares and hopes of mankind as a whole.

Peace education is a far reaching concept introduced for the first time in the early ‘80s in an International College at Wales in the UK…the United World College of Atlantic. The form of teaching is more important than the content of the course in Peace Education. But really Peace Education is a learning concept. Because teaching is violence, learning is peace. Teaching makes a few minorities the possessors of knowledge and majority in number dispossessed of it as Paulo Freire also observes that the teacher knows everything and students know nothing, the teacher, the teacher thinks and the students and are thought about; the teacher The teacher talks and the students listen meekly; the teacher chooses and enforces his choice and the students comply; the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher; the teacher chooses the program contents, and the students, and the students (who are not consulted) adapt to it; the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his own professional  authority, which he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students; and the teacher is the subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects. The teaching does not help the students and masses in making them aware and serves the purpose of oppressors while learning makes them aware and it serves the purpose of oppressed, and liberates the oppressed and oppressors both.

So, Mathetics, not Pedagogy, is needed in learning peace. The term ‘mathetic’ is derived from the Greek ‘Mathesis’ (from mathein, to learn), and ‘mathet’ means pupil – he who learns. Mathetics is accordingly the science of learning just as pedagogy is the discipline in which attention is focused on the School Master’s behaviour while teaching. The term ‘Mathetics’ is coming into use to denote the transition from teaching to learning. Now learning process is replacing the teaching process. Problem-posing method, not problem-solving strives for the emergence of conscious and critical investigation in reality. This method is used and effective in learning peace. To learn peace through dialogue, the teacher- of- the students and students of the teacher cease to exist and new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers as Paulo Freire is also in favour of this concept as method. Nobody teaches any one. But men learn from each other. In other words, no one is the teacher of any one, but all are learners. The new development in the field of learning has primarily been contributed by Carl Rogers by emphasizing the importance of nurturing self-direction and fulfillment, Bruner by stressing the importance of autonomy and self-reward and discovery as the main way of learning, and Paulo Freire by his emphasis on conscientization as the main goal of education. The shift in emphasis can be seen from coping behaviour to expressive behaviour (using the terminology of Bruner) or from prescriptive to liberating behaviour (using the terminology of Paulo Freire) or from direct influence to indirect influence using the concept developed by Flanders.

Thus Peace Education involves the principles of problem-posing curriculum and dialogical form of participatory decision-making for learning peace for non-violent, non-oppressive, non-exploitative and just society.

International Association of Educators for World Peace recognizes the necessity of peace education. It has been enriching it since its inception in 1969 for people’s peace which protects all within the nation and around the world by developing and searching peace ideas, conducting peace research and doing the peace activities.

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Dr. Surya Nath Prasad, Former President, Executive Vice President & Secretary-General of the International Association of Educators for World Peace (IAEWP); associate professor of education emeritus, the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University, Republic of Korea. Founder and editor-in-chief of Peace Education: An International Journal. dr_suryanathprasad@yahoo.co.in

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 14 Apr 2025.

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