Transcript
ELLIS
Welcome to Session 4 where you’ll be looking at peace among us. This relates to inter-personal peace, but we’ll be thinking about it more in terms of a community – particularly a school community, although many of the ideas are transferrable to other settings.
Communities develop shared ideas and behaviours – cultures of their own. How can we infuse that culture with peace? How can you do that in a way that encourages children and young people to be the peacebuilders in their community?
It’s useful to think in terms of a whole school approach – how does everything work together in a school community?
An example approach you’ll look at in this session is peer mediation – conflict resolution for young people by young people. Often we assume an adult has to address every conflict children encounter, and as we saw in Session 3, we teach children they need to seek an authority figure. Sometimes they will need that kind of help, but often, young people are best placed to be peacemakers in their community, given the right support. Peer mediators are one way to put this into action, not just learning about peace but putting into practice as part of community life.
You’ll also begin thinking about peace among us from the perspective of children and their rights. Lots of UK schools are UNICEF Rights Respecting Schools. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child includes the right to education, to freedom from abuse, as well as the right to play. It also crucially says children have the right to be listened to. In this session you’ll be introduced to what this means and what it might look like in a rights respecting school. You’ll start to ask questions like How do schools develop a community culture in which students not only understand these rights, but live them out? How can every member of the school community build peace in your school?