Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: peace education

  • An Open Letter to College and University Presidents

    David KriegerYou are in a unique position of leadership to influence today’s youth to achieve a better tomorrow for America and the world.  I am writing to enlist your help in educating young people to understand the survival challenges that face humanity in the 21st century.

    Education is driven by values.  Young people must learn to live with reverence for life, as did Albert Schweitzer, and to support equitable and nonviolent solutions to social problems, as did Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.  Young people must be imbued with compassion, commitment and courage.  They must learn to use their imaginations to find creative and cooperative solutions to the great issues of our time.  And they must find joy in the process and take time to celebrate the miracle of living on the only planet we know of in the universe that supports life.

    Since the onset of the Nuclear Age our powerful technologies, developed by human ingenuity, have put our societies and humanity itself at grave risk.

    Albert Einstein observed, “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”  We need all elements of society, and especially college and university students who are inheriting our world and the responsibility for its stewardship, to take steps to avert such catastrophe.

    Today, we are confronted not only by the ongoing peril of nuclear devastation, but also by the threats posed by climate change, pollution of the oceans and atmosphere, poverty, hunger, homelessness, war and other forms of violence, often senseless violence.  All of these threats are caused by human behavior and are subject to human solutions.

    Some young people are largely ignorant of these threats.  Others are apathetic.  Still others are despairing and alienated.  In this sense, they reflect the larger society.

    Young people need to be better educated on the critical survival issues that confront humanity.  They need to realize that, with social action, change is possible and there is hope for a more decent future.  With action comes hope, and with hope comes action.  It is a reinforcing cycle of change.

    We cannot wait for young people to become the leaders of tomorrow.  They must step up and fill the leadership vacuum that currently exists in solving the urgent threats of our time.  This will require education in the humanities, focused training for putting positive values into practice, and for developing the skills needed to influence the course of events in our interconnected world.

    They must come to understand that all great global threats can only be solved globally.  No single country, no matter how powerful, can diffuse these threats acting alone.  Thus, young people must form bonds across borders.

    Today’s young people have far worthier challenges than to become cogs in corporate machines.  They have the opportunity and the choice to change the world to make it more just and peaceful, a world in which all people can live with dignity and recognition of the basic human rights set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  This must be complemented with a Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities.

    Your leadership as a college or university president can influence today’s students to walk the path toward a far more decent tomorrow.  I urge you to add this to your list of responsibilities and to make your college or university a part of the solution to humanity’s most challenging problems.

    One way to begin the process would be to institute a required class for all students on “Global Survival 101,” which would cover all the great issues that confront humanity in the 21st century.  It would raise the following questions: What are the great threats that currently confront humanity?  What can be done about them?  How will each student make a difference in creating a better tomorrow?

    We also have a Peace Leadership Program at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, which provides peace leadership trainings.  A curriculum has been developed and tested at the University of San Diego and other college campuses.  You can find out more about this program at www.wagingpeace.org.

    If there are ways in which you are already addressing the issues I’ve raised in this letter or plan to do so going forward, I would be very happy to know of such initiatives.

    Thank you for caring.

    ***This article was originally published by Truthout.

  • Unusual Course Suggests: Give Peace a Chance

    A Santa Paula school offers lessons on alternatives to violence, and teaches about historic activists such as Gandhi and King.

    Marisol Candalario learned plenty about the Revolutionary War, Civil War, World War I, World War II, Vietnam War and other military conflicts.

    But in her time as a public school student, the 18-year-old learned little about the nonviolent movements that also helped shape world history.

    She had never heard of Mohandas K. Gandhi. She didn’t know that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War, or that a group of conscientious objectors subjected themselves, among other things, to medical experiments rather than fight.

    Addressing that educational imbalance is the purpose of a popular course at Renaissance High School in Santa Paula. In the class, “Solutions to Violence,” Candalario studied Gandhi and King and other peace leaders. But she also learned how to apply principles of nonviolence in her own life.

    “Before, I would confront people a lot,” Candalario said. “Now, I know that you don’t have to fight. You can just ignore them; who cares what they think?”

    Taught by Leah Wells, a peace activist and education coordinator for the Santa Barbara-based Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, the class is funded through a federal grant from the 21st Century Community Learning Center.

    Renaissance, Santa Paula’s continuation high school, serves students who fell behind or had behavioral problems at the town’s mainstream campus.

    The semester-long elective class, which meets twice a week, has resulted in “a big difference in the students,” said former Principal Fernando Rivera, who recently moved to another assignment in Santa Paula.

    “They seem to have a different perspective on things, and we have had fewer fights on campus.”

    That is the driving idea behind peace education, which is taught in a smattering of public high schools and about 70 universities nationwide.

    The movement is “in its infancy,” said Colman McCarthy, founder of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Teaching Peace, and is not without controversy.

    McCarthy, who trained Wells, said peace educators often are the target of attacks from “right-wingers saying you are a commie pinko,” or from other faculty members who “think you’re in there propagandizing the kids.”

    “Some see it as ideology, as though the study of peace is promoted only by the left,” said McCarthy, a former Washington Post columnist who teaches the same course — as a volunteer — at high schools and juvenile detention centers in Washington, D.C.

    But he insists: “Peace education is not the left wing nor the right wing; it’s the whole bird.” It’s about finding solutions to all types of violence, McCarthy said, including domestic, environmental, military, economic, and violence toward animals.

    McCarthy wrote the curriculum and two textbooks used by Wells and others around the country.

    Wells, 26, is an activist who visited Iraq three times in the last two years in an effort to raise awareness about the damage United Nations sanctions were doing to the country. Her most recent trip was in February, weeks before U.S. and British forces invaded Iraq.

    Her students knew what she had done, and it was no secret that she opposed the war.

    But several students strongly supported the invasion, creating fodder for lively class debates. Wells said she never used the class as a personal soapbox, and students said they never thought she was preaching.

    “I can’t spout my beliefs,” Wells said. “If I did that, I’d be just as bad as anyone spouting their beliefs. I’m empowering them to be critical thinkers.”

    Still, many school boards shy away from such peace classes.

    “It is a controversial topic for school districts,” said Charles Weis, Ventura County superintendent of schools. “With pressure for more accountability in reading, math, science and history, few have time to divert their energy to something controversial.”

    Despite Ventura County’s generally conservative leanings, Weis said he has not heard complaints about Wells’ class. That is because she is “careful about not crossing the line” into proselytizing, he said.

    In Santa Paula, a working-class town that has suffered from gang violence, most students, teachers and parents welcome the attention to nonviolence.

    The curriculum — which includes readings, videos and essay writing — gets rave reviews, as does Wells’ easy, inclusive teaching style. Many students say the course will stand out as their favorite in their school careers.

    One day in class, Wells sat on a desk in front of about 15 students. Holding a stuffed ball made to look like a globe, she tossed it back and forth to reluctant students, urging them to share their views.

    It was near the end of the war in Iraq, and Wells led a discussion about letters that had been sent by teenagers at an all-girls school in Baghdad to the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Some included drawings that included butterflies and doves as well as American characters saying, “We want oil.”

    “What did you think?” she asked, lobbing the globe toward 18-year-old Luis Manzo.

    “It was neat to hear their perspectives,” Manzo said. He wrote a letter to one of the girls, he said, “to let them know we don’t hate them — just the government does.”

    Added Katie La France, 18: “We want them to know we’re kids, just like them.”

    Students talked about the difference between “hot violence” and “cold violence,” and “good trouble” and “bad trouble” — all part of Wells’ curriculum.

    An example of hot violence would be a fistfight; poverty is a form of cold violence, students explained. An example of bad trouble would be stealing, they said, while you could get in “good trouble” by turning in a friend who was using drugs.

    Student Michael Llamas, 18, said the class changed his perspective on the world, and got him thinking about things that otherwise never would have crossed his mind.

    “People aren’t familiar with peace, but they are familiar with violence,” Llamas said.

  • Unsolicited Advice About the Future of Peacemaking

    Originally Published by CommonDreams.org

    Why doesn’t our society see peace as a viable option? We relegate peacemakers to the footnotes in our history books and all but ignore the important role nonviolence has played throughout history.

    Many of my students think that nonviolence means just laying down or getting stepped on, a passive act rather than a powerful active stance for justice. We are taught to compartmentalize our lives, to put things in neat categories whose boundaries don’t touch. Fight or flight, we’re taught.

    Violence is a simple dichotomy: good versus evil, right versus wrong, you versus me.

    So how do we deal with that?

    By teaching young people about strategic, organized nonviolent strategy. Peace is an inside job I was recently told. It starts with taking a deep look at authenticity. Is our education authentic? Are standardized tests making us smarter and more well-equipped to deal with the real problems we encounter everyday?

    How do we feel about our career options? Is work exciting? Can we work in a way that nourishes our talents and skills and preserves the planet for the seventh future generation? Are we autodidactic?

    How do we even get to the point where we can think of how we can enjoy our lives when problems like police brutality, racism, classism, gentrification, verbal violence, environmental injustice, neo-fascism, globalization, capitalism, misogyny, structural and institutional violence, militarism and the ever-expanding academic-prison-industrial complex are rampant. Not to mention the ongoing global threat of nuclear weapons…

    It all seems so overwhelming when we stop to think about it.

    Fortunately, I received some words of comfort from a friend of mine who spent a month at the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland. She said, “Leah, there is enough of everything. Enough time, enough love, enough energy, enough resources and enough money to build and meet the needs of the entire planet.” Those words are not utopic.

    It starts with a paradigm shift. The problems we face are a result of a crisis of perception of “us” versus “them” where we retain the good qualities and they embody the evil ones. Life is not that simple. Dr. King said that there’s some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. Hate the sin, not the sinner, he said.

    For my part, I have chosen to address the injustices in the world through education. I believe in peace education because it is proactive – it is its own agenda. It is a response, not a reaction.

    Peace education corrects the version of history that deems mankind is a violent and vicious species and instead tells the stories of where the anonymous, unsung peacemakers have quietly changed millions of lives. It is the patient coursework that advocates reading the literature of peace, the words of Tolstoy and Dorothy Day, of Einstein and of Joan Baez. It is the classroom instruction that encourages students to start learning in the real world. Peace education advocates community service and a view of the world where the personal, local, national and global issues are interconnected.

    At this point, peace education is its own semester-long class where students venture daily to learn about how nonviolence applies to them. They are in a Patch Adams-style learning environment where every student is a teacher and every teacher is a student. When I am absent, my students teach the class.

    It’s more than just one class, though. Peace must be a balance between content and process, where the material students learn in every class – French, History, Science, Math – is geared at promoting peace and responsible citizenship, and where the process is also nonviolent where administrators, teachers and students share power rather than reinforcing the traditional patriarchal “power-over” structure.

    So what are you waiting for? It starts with you. Run don’t walk to get Grace Llewellyn’s book “The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education.” Grab William Upski Wimsatt’s book “No More Prisons.” Watch “A Bug’s Life” and learn about the power dynamics that keep the ‘powerful few’ in power over the ‘powerless many’ and make the connections between that film and real life.

    Talk with your friends and your enemies you probably have a lot in common. Get organized. You have power even though you might not be able to vote yet. Take back this world and make it what you want it to be.
    *Leah C. Wells serves as the Peace Education Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. She credits her high school “Issues and Themes” teacher Mr. Jackson with her love for teaching.

  • Peace Educator Finds Ways to Better World

    Published in the Ventura County Star

    I grew up in a farm family where hard work, industriousness and resourcefulness were highly valued. Our seasonally governed lives meant more than just calendar changes. From an early age, I internalized the planting and harvest patterns of corn and soybeans. The Farmer’s Almanac taught me to discern the stages of the crops, as well as humans’ inextricable connection to the land and to nature.

    My entire life, much of my learning took place outside the classroom; I viewed school as a steppingstone to extracurricular activities like Model U.N., tennis, Student Council, musicals and classical ballet. My parents taught me to view my God-given gifts as such, to use them for the benefit of others. They cultivated in me a respect and love for fun education that transcends standardized tests, encourages asking questions and seeks out wise mentors.

    In college, I studied what I loved, taking classes that interested me, like film studies, linguistics, quantum physics and the evolution of social justice movements in the United States. Afterward, however, I had no idea where to get a job because there is really no urgent call for neurolinguist majors in the Help Wanted ads. And there was no newspaper section called Careers with a Conscience. So, I started thinking about who I admire.

    My list of heroes include Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman doctor; Indiana Jones, the fictitious archaeologist/professor/adventurer; Laura Ingalls Wilder; and my best friend Jill, an occupational therapist who has begun talking to shop and metalworking classes in high schools about how students’ skills can create useful household items for her differently-abled patients. Grace Llewellyn, one of the pioneers of the Unschooling Movement and author of “The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education,” also ranks high on my list.

    All these people have in common the goal of freeing education. Unconstrained by the boundaries of desks and classrooms, they bring learning into the open. They represent creativity, individuality, deconstructing barriers, having fun, serving others and making the most of natural talents.

    So it makes sense that I was drawn to peace education, a holistic approach to learning. Peace education means many things: conflict resolution, anger management, power with vs. power over, respect for nature, love of diversity and community service. But it is more than that; it’s teaching students about the connections between poverty, racism, technology, the environment, politics, economics, religion and education. I have learned from my students they most value authenticity. Tired of being fed prepackaged ideas through mass marketing and mindless trips to the malls and movie theaters, my students keep telling me they believe there’s more to life than Nike and Coca-Cola.

    I believe it too.

    Yet, these messages are not the standard priority of pop culture that tells us to get good grades, to get into a top school, to get the right degree so that you can get the high-paying job, the big house, the fast car and the latest look. What we neglect to tell students in their college counseling sessions is that none of these things guarantees happiness.

    We teach students to compartmentalize, that in school, English is separate from science is separate from history is separate from math. Peace education decompartmentalizes more than that, it fosters a sense of interconnectedness where each subject, each person, each decision is inextricably linked to another. It demonstrates that, in life, there is much more gray area than black and white.

    So why am I a peace educator? Because it fulfills my love of teaching, writing, learning and travel. Because it is authentic. Because I continually meet interesting people who challenge my beliefs and boundaries. Because it promotes consensus and process-oriented skills that make life more functional. Because I can work locally on issues such as peace education and PictSweet; nationally on issues such as juvenile and restorative justice; and internationally on issues such as Iraq and Aceh.

    It feels good to do good when no one’s watching. It feels good to be a part of a larger cause. It feels good to make even a small difference. It feels good to be in solidarity with people struggling for their right to learn, to work, to live. It feels good to teach peace.
    *Leah C. Wells of Santa Paula is Peace Education Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Secretary of State Powell’s Visit to Indonesia Can Help

    Published in the Ventura County Star

    I participated in facilitating student workshops sponsored by Nonviolence International on peace education in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, last month.

    In discussing the chapter entitled “We Love Peace,” the students made important distinctions between active and passive peace. They said, “It’s easy to stand outside the conflict and claim that you’re being nonviolent — that’s passive peace. What we want is active peace. Standing up for ourselves and our communities. But in Aceh,” they warned, “that’s dangerous.”

    Aceh, a lush jungle and mountainous region on the northernmost tip of Sumatra, is home to a vicious civil conflict between armed Indonesian forces and guerrillas seeking Acehnese independence. A team of peace activists looking for a proactive lasting solution to the violence that has plagued their province for the last three decades developed a peace curriculum for high schools — the Program Pendidikan Damai — a peace education curriculum rooted in Qu’ranic peace teachings and Acehnese culture.

    The students are right — it is dangerous for civilians in Aceh, much less a tenacious peace team trying to promote active peacemaking and nonviolence in high schools.

    Case in point: One day leaving the peace education training, I saw firsthand a 23-year-old student, Muhammad Iqbal, shot in the head by a police officer at lunchtime in broad daylight on one of the busiest thoroughfares. His crime? He’d accidentally bumped the officer’s vehicle as he was riding by on a motor scooter.

    The Indonesian military issued a flaccid apology the next day.

    This year alone, more than 600 civilians have been killed in Aceh. Everyone has a story and no one is untouched by the violence. My friend and guide in Aceh reported that Muhammad Iqbal was once his student and frequented the coffee shop next to the school where he teaches.

    One woman activist pleaded: “You must tell the United States that the Indonesian military must be stopped. You must help us.” Acehnese and Indonesian human rights groups both claim that the Indonesian military (TNI) acts with impunity.

    Many people in the community expressed doubt that the officer allegedly responsible for the slain student’s death would be brought to justice.

    Unfortunately, her plea may fall on deaf ears. Aug. 5 looms, the date set for deciding whether to impose martial law or a state of civil emergency in Aceh. The Indonesian military leader in Aceh says that he needs 3,000 additional troops to control the violence in this province.

    This would mean disaster for the traumatized Acehnese population who are already living in constant fear, even to go out after dark.

    Another friend I met at Syiah Kuala University in Banda Aceh told me of his brush with death walking home from making a phone call just after dusk a few months ago. He saw a shadowy figure slink behind a building, so quick he thought he had seen a ghost. Moments later, an explosion nearly knocked him down as gunfire began to pepper the air. Dodging a falling power line, he barely escaped unharmed.

    With the possibility of increased support from the United States, the Indonesian government is becoming more resolute in seeking a military solution to the ongoing conflict. The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee voted to lift a decade-old ban on military training initially imposed based on human rights abuses that occurred there in the early 1990s and appropriated $400,000 in funding.

    As U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell visits Indonesia, he should not presage U.S. support for the Indonesian military, nor Indonesia’s participation in a proposed “School of the Americas-style” Southeast Asian military training institution to open in Hawaii. Powell should strongly encourage the Indonesians to demilitarize the conflict, withdraw its troops and support humanitarian aid, education and development assistance.

    Further militarizing Aceh would make the existing peace initiatives almost impossible to continue. The Acehnese have resourceful, good ideas, differing from the rebels’, about ameliorating their situation, but they need support. One group is currently traveling to neighborhoods and villages at great personal risk to capture cultural stories and local lore about conflict resolution and peacemaking to incorporate into a curriculum for grade-school students. Their ability to travel would be further circumscribed and thus their peace work thwarted if the area came under more stringent military control.

    U.S. agencies and citizens should increase support for forces of peace in Aceh, through groups like the Human Rights Coalition of Aceh and Women Volunteers for Humanity, and through international groups like the Henri Dunant Center, which has been brokering peace talks between the Indonesian military and GAM rebels in Geneva, such as Peace Brigades International, which does vital third-party accompaniment for human rights workers whose safety is threatened, and agencies like UNICEF and Oxfam whose humanitarian contributions attempt to stabilize the weakening educational and health conditions in Aceh.
    *Leah C. Wells of Santa Barbara serves as Peace Education Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Islamic Peace Education in Aceh

    In response to more than 25 years of violence and armed struggle in the province of Aceh, Indonesia, a group of academics and activists have undertaken the task of creating a peace education curriculum grounded in the core Islamic peace beliefs and rooted in the Acehnese social and cultural values.

    Islam, derived from the word salam, peace, is at the core of its very name, a religion of peace.

    Many times miscalculated as a religion of vengeance and retribution, Islam on a global scale has received defamatory attention in recent times. Yet its truest practitioners continue to quote the Qu’ran as a book of peacemaking directives.

    Inequity, violence and a highly traumatized population serve as the backdrop for this curriculum and the accompanying teacher and student trainings. Many rural Acehnese are under-educated, while the city of Banda Aceh is experiencing a rapid rate of urbanization. These factors contribute to a level of dissatisfaction with the centralized Indonesian government, and cause the Acehnese to become further entrenched in the separatist movement.

    In the past year alone more than 600 people have been killed in Aceh. Nearly every Acehnese has a story of witness to violence. Few are untouched by the bloody struggle.

    For the past three decades, violence has been the modus operandi for resolving conflicts in Aceh. The GAM (Free Aceh Movement) and Indonesian military routinely and aggressively perpetrate acts of violence which often catch civilians in the crossfire. Like many international conflicts, the blame and frustration is so deep and the feelings so hot that this power struggle has assumed a life of its own.

    Young people angry at the disparity of wealth and inaccess to better education and thus a better life have taken up arms to ameliorate their situation. Admittedly they recognize that weapons are a quick fix and permit no long-term solution, but are good tools for getting revenge and perpetuating the conflict.

    Recognizing that violence only perpetuates more violence, the curriculum team began developing a peace education program for high school-aged students as well as teachers, and over the past year has conducted trainings and workshops which have reached both private and public schools throughout Aceh.

    Thus far, the Acehnese academic community, including students, teachers, administrators and government officials, have embraced this peace initiative with open arms. Led by Director, Dr. Asna Husin, supported by UNICEF, AusAID, and the Washington, DC-based non-profit Nonviolence International, this curriculum seeks to bring an active, dynamic peace perspective to Aceh so that future generations of Acehnese need not live under the same threatening conditions that currently exist.

    Six basic principles form the foundation for the curriculum: Introspection and Sincerity, Rights and Responsibilities, Conflict and Violence, Democracy and Justice, Plurality of Creation, and Paths to Peace. Embedded in the lessons in these chapters are crucial Acehnese proverbs that have superficial as well as deeper meanings for bringing about peace and justice.

    Central to the curriculum is the teaching that Allah desires peace. It is not enough to have peace just between the individual and Allah, however. If there is injustice or inequality among humans, then Allah is not satisfied. Moreover, Islam teaches that peace is not a receptive, passive condition where only self-interests are served. Rather peace is a dynamic which must be continually refined, redefined and struggled to achieve.

    In achieving peace, humans must examine our wants and needs. We all experience social, spiritual, physical and psychological needs, all of which must be kept in a rough balance to maintain peace. Our excessive wants, however, are often the cause of conflict and violence because this means that others needs are not being met.

    The peace paradigm this curriculum espouses is one where Allah encompasses the realms of peace within, peace in the community, and peace with nature. The Aceh peace education curriculum teaches that in Islam, nature is meant to serve our needs  not our wants.

    Therefore, to have peace with Allah and peace between human beings, we must also respect the peace that exists in nature and not take advantage of natural resources which bring great wealth to a few and great poverty to many. It is the economic injustices that are perpetrated at a structural level which cause tremendous personal violence on an individual level.

    In Aceh, peacemaking is not a theory or hypothetical question to be answered with leisure. It is an inventive means for proactively addressing the systemic, militaristic and interpersonal violence which disrupt every corner of society.
    *Leah C. Wells serves as Peace Education Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. She is currently in Aceh contributing to the student nonviolence trainings.

  • Teacher Training Follow-Up Workshop

    On April 27th, a 5-hour teachers training workshop was held at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation for people interested in pursuing a career in Peace Education.

    As an issue of global significance, peace education is a powerful engine of social change that has been widely ignored by the public school systems and politicians. Leah Wells, the facilitator and organizer, introduced the advantages of studying peace as a permanent part of high school and college curriculum, and revealed the necessity of peace education to local educators, community members and activists.

    As the Peace Education Coordinator, Leah has been an influential advocate of Peace Education being implemented in school curriculums nation-wide. She teaches Solutions to Violence, a nonviolence curriculum developed by Colman McCarthy at the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington, DC, in two local high schools, including a private Catholic school and one continuations school. Twenty people attended this teacher training workshop, including educators, writers, documentarians, students, activists, and local non-profit leaders.

    One of the goals of the workshop was to discuss methods of teaching students how to be peacemakers on an individual, local, state-wide, national, and global level. The most important element of peace studies is that it is not only a worthwhile academic endeavor but also a way of life. The group discussed methods of confronting some of the problems that implementation of peace education faces, like lack of funding and viewing nonviolence as a credible and plausible response for addressing personal, local, national and global issues.

    Those who attended the workshop learned about the different philosophies of giving grades and how to encourage students to assume responsibility for their education, as well as concrete lesson plans and nonviolent teaching techniques which can be implemented immediately in any classroom!

    A crucial issue concerning students and potential educators is the under-representation of Peace Studies in high school, college and university curricula, as well as the lack of credential programs for future peace educators. Because of this, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has begun to consult with educational institutions on beginning Peace Studies programs across the country.

    Due to the infectious enthusiasm of the attendees and their desire to further explore certain critical issues, a follow-up workshop has been scheduled on June 15th, 2002 at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation to discuss other classroom strategies, lesson plans, and, more importantly, ways of taking action to promote Peace Education. In addition to the follow-up workshop, the NAPF Peace Educators Network was formed out of the need to assemble and communicate with others involved in peace education.

    Those who attended received a list of resources including recommended reading lists, internet websites, and a contact list of teachers currently teaching peace nation-wide. If you are interested in attending the follow-up workshop or have questions about how to take action, contact the NAPF Peace Education Coordinator Leah Wells at 805-965-3443, or via email at education@napf.org.

  • We Say, They Say

    They say Peace Education is dangerous and subversive and teaches students to be rabble-rousers.

    We say Peace Education empowers students to live happier, healthier and more productive lives. It teaches them the value of contributing to society and to their community. It teaches them that creating positive change is not up to someone else, it is up to them! Peace Education provides tools for better communication, for better relationships and more healthy interactions with the people in the students’ daily lives – their parents, their teachers, their friends and their community. Peace Education provides a context for students to develop compassion, better listening skills and tangible conflict transformation techniques which will help them throughout their lives.

    The “Solutions to Violence” class explores peacemaking through the eyes of Gandhi, Dr. King and a host of other famous peacemakers whose lives and teachings are revered worldwide. The class promotes thoughtful discussion, respect, creativity and critical thinking and writing. Students become better writers and articulators during the semester and often take on special projects outside of class which contribute to a more peaceful community, like organizing canned food drives, becoming part of youth resource councils for their cities and writing grants for renewable energy resources, to name a few.

    They say Peace Education should be extra-curricular, not a part of the regular school day.

    We say that Peace Education must be a part of the standard curriculum so that students can learn the legitimacy of nonviolence and peacemakers throughout history. If Peace Education is relegated to a “once-a-year” event, it will not receive the credibility and thoughtful study which it requires to internalize peacemaking. If we want our young people to go out and become the peacemakers of the world, we must give them the classroom instructional time to develop those skills. We would not expect them to grasp all the finite details of Algebra in a one-day seminar – why would we expect the same about peacemaking?

    Many schools have Anger Management groups, Peer Mediation and Leadership classes. “Solutions to Violence” is special because it examines peacemaking from a historical perspective and makes the material relevant to students’ lives in a meaningful way. Students report healthier and happier attitudes and behaviors after taking “Solutions to Violence.” Their grades tend to improve in their other classes, as well. This class is important because it follows the Patch Adams philosophy – that every teacher is a student and every student is a teacher.

    They say there is not enough time in the school day to address peacemaking. Teachers are already too busy!

    We say teachers *are* too busy to add extra lesson plans. They have so many needs and requirements with the advancement of placement tests, standardized tests and teaching students to take these tests and pass them! One of the goals of peace education is to partner with colleges, universities and credentialing programs so that teachers are being trained to teach peace education in schools as a permanent part of the curriculum.

    “Solutions to Violence” explores many kinds of violence in our world – like hot and cold violence, structural violence, interpersonal violence and academic violence. Academic violence is particularly relevant to students who have been continually let down by our educational system and who have grown to distrust teachers, administrators and school in general. There are students for whom tests are daunting and depressing, and after each multiple-choice exam feel like failures. There are teachers who feel stifled and offended by the trend toward standardized testing which limits their creative license as a teacher and human being.

    The strategy of implementing “Solutions to Violence” as a standard part of high school curriculum works in tandem with training teachers to fill the needs of schools utilizing this semester-long class. Eventually, student teachers will be able to teach “Solutions to Violence” in preparation for teaching future classes.

    They say it’s too difficult to fund Peace Education.

    We say it is far more costly not to fund Peace Education. What will be the cost to future generations who grow up without knowing the fundamental skills necessary to be peacemakers?

    We must believe that Peace Education is worthy of receiving funding through grants, through permanent teachers’ salaries, and through community-based initiatives. Where we spend our money gives clues to where our priorities lie. Therefore, we must find creative and permanent ways to compensate teachers for teaching the most important subject in school: Getting Along With Others.

    It is important to be thinking about funding Peace Education, to be partnering with peace and justice groups, with school districts, and with organizations whose donors believe in teaching peace. There is no right or wrong way to approach funding for peace education. Many communities have anti-violence grants which never get spent. Many district have student needs which go unfulfilled due to the lack of funding. It is up to us to be resourceful and to make sure that Peace Education is on the radar screen in our lifetime.
    *Leah C. Wells serves as the Peace Education Coordinator at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Nonviolence 101

    Conversations pertaining to work often begin like this:
    “What do you do?”
    “I’m a high school teacher.”
    “What do you teach?”
    “Peacemaking.”
    “Huh?”
    And then it takes a moment to register. The follow-up question usually is, “Is that a real class in high school?”

    And thus begins the story of how classes on nonviolence wind up in high schools.

    I tell people about the various chapters, how we start out at the beginning of the semester with personal peacemaking and nonviolent responses to assault. Students always want to know how a pacifist would respond if he or she were to be attacked by a random stranger leaping from the bushes or from behind a dumpster in a dark alley. So I ask them how many of them have ever been physically hit by a random stranger in any way at any point in their lives. Maybe one or two people. Then I ask them how many people have ever been physically hit by a member of their family or someone they know at any point in their lives. Nearly every hand goes up. We worry about the boogeyman and abandoned buildings but fail to address some of the most conflict-ridden arenas, the places where we usually go like home, school and work.

    That’s how the semester begins, by examining our own personal lives. This first chapter introduces students to nonviolence, the myths, the truths and the power of responding with nonviolent force to our precarious lives. We create a working definition of peace, of violence, conflict and of nonviolence. We explore where we need to create spaces for peace in our lives, in our communities, in our state, in our nation and in our world. We start to learn about consensus, following a process and taking turns. We begin to disarm our disbeliefs, our doubts and our misgivings about peacemaking. We start to let our defenses down in order to let peace in.

    After establishing a baseline for conceptualizing nonviolence, the class learns about historical figures who usually get the short end of the stick in traditional high school classes. Primary sources are a must in Solutions to Violence, the name of the course which I teach and which my mentor, Colman McCarthy, founded. We study Gandhi in his own words. We watch A Force More Powerful, the video series by York&Ackerman which aired on PBS in October 2000. We read Dr. King in his own words, and learn about the civil rights movement, hassle lines and nonviolence trainings. The class begins to understand the structure and discipline which nonviolence requires. We then read Dorothy Day, learning about intentional communities and communal living. The students I teach are accustomed to mass marketing, consumerism and capitalism, so Dorothy Day’s commitment to generosity, hospitality and precarity tends to shock them. That chapter demonstrates a very exciting learning curve.

    Next we read Gene Sharp, Tolstoy’s “Patriotism or Peace”, Daniel Berrigan and a very articulate piece by Joan Baez which examines a dialogue between a pacifist and a skeptic. We learn about the humanitarian crisis in Iraq as a result of the economic embargo, about the School of the Americas Watch movement, about Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, about sweatshops and maquiladoras, about child labor and child soldiers, about economics and the Pentagon and about the environment and animal rights. By the end of the semester, the Students in Solutions to Violence know how to find alternative news and pacifist perspectives on the Internet from websites like Commondreams, Indymedia and the Nonviolence Web.

    What students really learn…

    “This class made a difference in my life. I see things in a whole new way now that I didn’t see before. I’m not saying this class changed my whole viewpoint on life, but it did help me to be a little more open-minded. I’m seeing a little more color these days than just black and white. I don’t think this class is about learning a bunch of stats and info. It’s more than that. I’ve learned to be a little more positive than negative. I hope that the class becomes required in the future.”

    I hope that my students learn the specifics of nonviolence, that they learn to tell the stories of nonviolence and that they grow in their understanding of key nonviolent figures both past and present. Even more than the facts, though, I hope that they learn about themselves. About halfway through the semester, I ask the class what they think my goals are in teaching Solutions to Violence. Items from the following list invariably arise each semester in their responses to that question:

    Compassion. Compassion is a difficult skill to teach. Everywhere around them in the world, they learn to be tough, not to show their softer side and that kindness is a weakness. Perhaps the best place to start is teaching with compassion. My mentor, Colman McCarthy, gave me some good advice about how to do this. He told me that before every class, he reminds himself to listen more than talk. He says that good listeners have many friends and poor listeners have many acquaintances. Many people like to talk just to hear their heads rattle. The skill of being a good listener is perhaps the most important one in the teaching profession.

    I have learned many things from my students just by listening. In fact, even if I just show up to class and don’t say a word, the students will create their own dialogue because they so often need a forum to vent their emotions and share their experiences. When we study Gandhi and review the nine steps for conflict transformation, “Work on your listening skills” is one of the toughest on the list. I ask my class if, when they’re having a conversation or argument, if they are truly digesting the words of the other person, or if they’re planning in their heads what to say next, letting the other person’s words go in one ear and out the other. We so desperately want to be heard and understood, but have little experience in truly listening with patient hearts.

    Compassion also comes from empathy. I always hope for my students that they make other people’s experiences a part of their own, whether they live in the same town or around the globe.

    Ownership of their learning. Students have very little opportunity to exercise their natural creativity in school in no small part to the reliance on standardized testing and multiple-choice exams. These brain-numbing techniques lull the students into a passive state of receiving information without truly testing the measure of its worth, without examining it for relevance and truthfulness. Standardized tests stratify students into categories that teachers, administrators and colleges are comfortable with, but have little bearing on what students have actually learned.

    I am interested in students learning. I want them to assume responsibility for their own education, and become partners with the school and their teachers in an active pursuit of knowledge. In Solutions to Violence, students have the opportunity to grade themselves, and each semester they report that this is the toughest assignment. The class writes about what they are learning, how they are learning and how it is affecting them in their daily lives. Then they must assign a comparable grade so that the administration is satisfied. Learning ought to be a cooperative process. Sharing power with the students demonstrates respect and attentiveness to their autonomy and gives them the opportunity to demonstrate what they have learned. It is also tremendously valuable insight for me to know what parts of the curriculum reach the students and what elements of truth they have gleaned from the stories, videos and discussions.

    This semester, one student said the following: “Why can’t you just give us grades, Miss Wells? I mean, if you gave us grades then we could just be angry with you if we didn’t like them. If we give ourselves grades, we have to live with what we have done and either be angry or happy with our own effort. Can’t you just do our grades for us?” For me, this says it all. Students are too far-removed from the processes by which we measure them. Perhaps we don’t trust them to give honest evaluations of their work. Perhaps it ought to be part of the teacher’s job to evaluate the students independently. But I believe that empowering students to grade themselves is one of the best privileges to bestow on them. They must assume responsibility this way.

    Occasionally, students will respond with less-than-honest recommendations for their grades. So we review what they have written as a part of their evaluation, and use their overestimated grade as a jumping off point. What I have realized all too often, though, when a student grades himself or herself higher than I would have is that I have not accurately measured what that student has learned, and upon closer inspection, I learn that indeed that student has assumed a great deal of responsibility for taking back his/her education. Sometimes it takes a while to know what you know, though, and test-centered accountability does not take into account this gestation period for knowledge to develop.

    Knowledge about the world. Most students do not read the news section of the newspaper. Many students read the sports section, but that is just not comparable. Solutions to Violence teaches them how to dissect the newspaper, learn about the places in the stories and try to connect with the lives of those impacted by international events. We talk about letters to the editor, discuss news items and read through articles, point to places on the map and follow up with case studies about places that interest the students, like Palestine and South Africa.

    But Solutions to Violence is more than just encouraging students to be more informed. It is giving them the tools to take action and create change in their lives, in their school, in their community and in their world.

    In the past few semesters that I have been teaching in California, my students have incorporated their theoretical knowledge about how and why nonviolence works into practical action to address current needs in the community and in the world. For example, in response to learning about the mushroom workers’ struggles to win a contract for fair pay, better health and retirement benefits, the students organized a school-wide canned food drive to benefit the farmworkers. This particular action impressed me because it was during the last week of school and coordinated primarily by the seniors in the class, people who had tuned out of nearly every other subject and had their minds only on graduation.

    Nonviolence is not only about changing the world. Students begin to learn about how their hearts and minds can be transformed by considering peacemaking a legitimate skill. We read a selection from Thich Nhat Hanh’s book Peace is Every Step, learning to be mindful of our breathing and to recover ourselves and refocus when our attention turns to anger and potential violence. Many times my students have reported that in a tense situation, one where they were ready to loose their cool, they remembered the conscious breathing exercises we do in class, concentrating on naming our in-breath and out-breath. When they were in control of their own emotions through mindful breathing, they felt less likely to react violently. It is this exact personal transformation which makes me believe that Solutions to Violence is a worthwhile class that ought to be a part of any standard high school curriculum.

    It teaches them how to be better friends, better children, better students and better people. It helps them define their talents, articulate their thoughts and cooperate with each other.

    I, too, am transformed each semester, impressed with the level of life experience and wisdom my students bring. I learn from them as much as they learn from me.

    Teaching peacemaking in school is the most logical non-reactive component to ending intolerance, racism, ageism and all other forms of personal, structural and institutional violence. I am hoping that more people will recognize this and that the movement to teach peace will be the saving grace for the sake of our young people, our communities and our world.
    *Leah Wells is a high school teacher and the Peace Education Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. This article was initially published in the spring edition of Peacebuilding, the newsletter of the Peace Education Commission.

  • NAPF Response to the August 2001 Session of Study on Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Education

    Contemporary definition of disarmament education and training: An American perspective

    Very little comprehensive education on disarmament and non-proliferation of weapons exists for students prior to entering college. Considering the natural audience of high school and the importance of reaching students at a young age, a focused curriculum for high school students would best serve the goal of creating a good foundation for lifetime commitment and involvement in these areas.

    In order that there be fuller participation in disarmament and non-proliferation from a wider variety of ages, races, classes, etc., the participants must be able to take ownership in the issue. This means that the terminology, access to information, and input credibility must exist in a more user-friendly version. The reason that younger generations are less invested in non-proliferation, disarmament and abolition is their lack of exposure to peace-oriented education. The standard American high school curriculum for history is chronicled from war to war, general to general, and battle to battle with little coverage of the pacifist contingency nor the strides made for humankind by nonviolent activists. In fact, they are generally dismissed as dangerous or destructive rather than principled, disciplined individuals trying to create dynamic changes toward equality and justice.

    Those with the greatest potential for power, our young people, are not treated as viable candidates in the process of peacemaking. Peacemaking itself is an afterthought, a hopeful goal once the objectives ridding the world of nuclear weapons, civil conflicts, and chemical and biological warfare have been attained. Peacemaking can no longer be viewed as tangential to disarmament, but must become the sustenance which propels the disarmament and non-proliferation movement. Nonviolence and education are not the goals at the end of the road; they are the road.

    Assessment of the current situation of disarmament and non-proliferation education

    Access to information on disarmament and non-proliferation is limited to a specific group of people, namely college and post-graduate students whose academic interests focus primarily on these topics. A program for educating a wider audience through high schools is limited in existence. Yet education on disarmament and non-proliferation should not be limited to the academic elite, but should be available to the rising voters and general public, because fundamentally the topics concern everyone. The well educated have a responsibility to widen the circle of public involvement in eliminating the threat of weapons proliferation, and this task mandates dialogue with young people. The nongovernmental organizations and academics must utilize high school venues and assist in classroom education for both teachers and students, being mindful of the current trends in American public education.

    Education in the United States is experiencing a period of review and increased “accountability” where teachers are disencouraged to explore curricula outside the standard material and adhere to rigid testing aimed to prove that students are learning. The standardized tests are largely disliked by teachers and administrators because of the limited practical knowledge they measure; these tests are indicative of whether or not students are learning how to be good test takers, rather than common sense thinkers. This phenomenon of multiple choice testing has many effects, both for classroom learning and for societal implications. First, teachers have little time to explore creative and diverse learning styles because the standardized tests cover specific information, the majority of which does not cover multi-dimensional thinking. Second, because of the time constraints of the school year and the financial incentives offered to teachers whose students succeed, teachers must rush through all the material to be covered on the examinations. Third, the current system of schooling school does encourage character development through service to others nor does it endear students to explore other contexts outside their own experiences, like becoming involved in any social movements or positive change for society.

    Thus, for young people to become active in disarmament and non-proliferation, they must first have the opportunity to come to some understanding and awareness that these two topics are global problems with personal implications. Students are not taught to be system-oriented, seeing the world as living organism and acknowledging the web of interconnections that span the globe. If our goal is to educate kids about disarmament and non-proliferation, then our first step is getting them to believe that our world is worth saving. The military now has direct access into high schools in America through programming called Channel One, which broadcasts “news” into schools for fifteen minutes every day. ROTC recruiters are allowed onto campuses, but conscientious objectors are thrown off school grounds. Specific classes in nonviolence education are few and far between in the United States, and many teachers are too overwhelmed with their current curriculum to believe that themes of peace and justice infused into their existing lesson plans could work.

    Furthermore, disarmament and non-proliferation are at the end of a long path of exploration into issues of economic and social justice. Schools must first provide kids with the tools to handle their own personal conflicts and more importantly must make the existing subject matter, and the way it is presented, less violent. Visual media shows terrorism, civil strife and full-scale war as a real-life video game. For students to have some ownership in the problem, they need to understand where the countries obtain their weapons, who profits, and who uses the weapons. We must not treat the loss of human life as the military does, calling it “collateral damage”. Education for young people on disarmament and non-proliferation has varying implications based on where it will be implemented, i.e. gun control laws in the United States require a unique strategy, as do the problems of disarmament in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe.

    Recommendation for promoting education

    First, we must make our American schools more nonviolent institutions. Nonviolence education should be a mandatory component in all high schools, and the corporations providing the “news” to ripe young audiences should be forced to remove any marketing by the military branches. Our classrooms are not corporate experiments. Additionally, nongovernmental organizations should utilize the “news” networks to encourage coverage of peace-friendly programming to an already captive audience. Second, nongovernmental organizations should interface the existing material on disarmament and non-proliferation and compile a “user-friendly” seminar, video and worksheet questionnaire as well as a framework for allowing student participation in this issue, i.e. how to write to a newspaper, congressperson, how to create press releases and petitions, and how to engage their creativity toward a positive goal. Fourth, students must be sent on study abroad delegations to experience firsthand effects of governmental policies on other countries. Other options for field trips are visiting sites of nuclear testing as well as the companies and factories where the many different weapons are produced, and touring countries whose young people actively participate in conflict. We need to encourage students to see a more complete, real picture of the problem rather than blaming the warring parties for their reliance on weapons to settle conflicts. American students need to know that the number one export in their country is weapons and that America sponsors nearly three-fourths of the ongoing conflicts worldwide.

    Examining pedagogic methods

    The Internet can be a powerful tool to relate stories and facilitate dialogue between students in different countries. Academics and nongovernmental organizations can serve as moderators for communication between cultures on the topics of disarmament and non-proliferation. In addition, the Internet may be used to display “video diaries” of firsthand experiences from students in regions like East Timor and Cambodia to enhance the personalization of distance learning. Through these “video diaries”, students in different countries can hear their counterparts’ stories in their own voices, making a more real connection between their cultures.

    The Internet can also be used to disseminate teacher training materials and resources while providing a network of educators who have elected to participate in disarmament and non-proliferation education. Through this network, teachers and administrators can secure guest speakers, classroom activities worksheets and background materials, and an array of videos for their students. Students and teachers may also pose questions directly to the nongovernmental organizations’ educational liaisons through email and online discussion forums.

    Recommendations for the United Nations Organizations

    If peace education toward the goals of disarmament and non-proliferation is to work, then adequate funding must be provided for its implementation. First, the United Nations can exert pressure on national governments to evaluate the compensation teachers receive for the demands of their jobs. Currently, the priorities of the government of the United States focus on war making and funding programs through the Department of Defense. Cushioning the budgets of the Department of Education and ensuring adequate grants for States and Local Municipalities will increase the viability as well as the legitimacy of disarmament and non-proliferation education. Second, the United Nations can suggest that nongovernmental organizations pertaining to disarmament and non-proliferation take their messages into school board meetings and classrooms, and provide classes at the college level for teachers-in-training as a part of a Credential program. Third, textbook writers and manufacturers must accept a new version of history, and nongovernmental organizations must begin consulting with writers of world and American history texts to ensure accuracy and fair and adequate coverage of nuclear and weapons-oriented themes. To acquire authenticity in the classroom, these ideas of disarmament and non-proliferation must be written and viewed in print by students.

    Introducing disarmament and non-proliferation in post-conflict societies: Aceh, Indonesia case study

    UNICEF currently funds a peace-building educational program in Banda Aceh, Indonesia for young people who have been exposed to war throughout their lives. This experimental program combines nonviolent theory with practical applications of peacemaking and disarmament. It provides a forum for people to tell their stories and heal from their experiences, as well as create for themselves a more peaceable society. Nonviolence trainers are currently conducting teacher trainings in Aceh, and beginning in early September, the teachers will begin classes for young people in the province.

    In addition, the concept of “peacekeeping forces” must be reevaluated to incorporate more than reassigning soldiers to forcibly keep the peace in a region. Peacekeepers must be unarmed as well as trained in conflict management and crowd dynamics. The concept of disarmament and non-proliferation must grow from citizen awareness to government and military implementation of more peaceable resolutions for global problems.

    *Leah C. Wells is Peace Education Coordinator at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.