Session 5: Peace in the world
Introduction
Hope is a concept that can help people engage positively and constructively with the complexities of the wider world. This session begins from the concept of hope in exploring how children and young people can learn to take a non-violent stand when managing the conflicts that arise from inequalities and injustices.
By the end of this session, you should be able to:
- understand the essential role of hope in peace education
- understand how young people might be supported to become non-violent upstanders
- consider the role of the adult as a peace educator
- know where you might go for resources and support in developing young people’s engagement with peace in the wider world.
Watch this video where Izzy introduces Session 5.
Download this video clip.Video player: Video 1
Transcript: Video 1
IZZY
Welcome to Session 5, peace in the world. We’re going global we’ve reached the outer layer.
So far on this course, you’ve reflected on what peace is, then started working out through those layers of Peace. We hope you’ve started to notice how the layers connect and complement each other. In this session, you’ll look at how peace education helps people engage with global issues, to become ethical informed citizens of their countries and the world.
A lot of what you’re going to learn is how people stand up for justice using alternatives to violence. You’ll think about how you can bring their stories to life in ways that enable children and young people to see themselves making their own stories as change agents and peacebuilders.
An exciting area which you’ll look at is non-violence which you can think of as both a set of values, but also a strategy for change. Non-violence means rejecting fighting, but it’s also a force for change that has transformed the world time and again. As you’ll see, it might even be more powerful than violence. You’re going to try out education activities where you reflect on what nonviolence means, exploring ethical and critical reasoning.
Stories are a powerful way both to explore global issues and to highlight upstanders. In particular you’re going to look at the Tale o’ the Glasgow Girls, who stood up for their friend’s human rights, and the story of Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan activist whose story was brought to life by primary school students also in Glasgow.
Stories can bring us inspiration, but they are also rich with moments of uncertainty, dilemmas, and ethical questions. You’ll have a chance to think about the stories you want to share as a peace educator, and how children and young people can become storytellers themselves.
We’ll explore how peace educators can address controversial issues, using different teaching stances to broaden students’ understanding, and build up a sense of shared humanity. Global issues can be a source of disagreement in the classroom, and yes conflict but as peace educators, you’ve already learnt that conflict doesn’t need to be scary.
Before all that though, you’ll start with the concept of hope. Children and young people will experience anxiety about some global issues like armed conflict or climate breakdown. Such anxiety is pretty rational – I feel it sometimes. But ignoring the big issues is not a strategy for reducing anxiety. As peace educators we work practically with hope and it is useful to think how we can empower young people with hope as both a value and a tool.
Video 1
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