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Basic Course 2: What does peace mean?
Peace education
can be seen as sitting on the fence between scientific theory, that is, peace and conflict research, and recipient-related practice which involves teaching peace in the classroom and beyond. Basic course two will be addressing the core terms of peace, war, violence and conflict, and investigating the findings coming out of peace and conflict research. These definitions will provide the foundation for peace education work, which is dealt with in basic course 3, and for the more practical approaches to teaching peace, which are introduced in basic course 4.
What does peace mean? - This is the title of this basic course. One of the first reactions might be: The opposite of war.
This, in turn, leads one to question how war might be defined. It is, of course, almost impossible to define war without using the the terms 'violence' and 'conflict'. And there it is, we have now defined the scope of this basic course. But is it fair to describe peace as the absence of war? What about other factors? What about security? What about the role played by justice? Is it possible to have circumstances that are both peaceful and unjust?
Given
that politicians and political philosophers have deliberated on these questions for centuries, it is impossible to address these questions in all their detail as part of this basic course. The objective of this course is to provide ideas so that people can deal with this problem area on their own. Given that it might make a lot of analytical sense to start with a continuum like the one in the following illustration rather than beginning with exact definitions of war (which would be difficult) and peace (which would be impossible), we have decided to start
as follows:
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Conflict as a fundamental part of life forms the (invisible) background of the continuum. Conflicts are part and parcel of life. The decisive question, however, is whether these conflicts are resolved
by the use of violence or not. The continuum has been divided into two halves with the civilization of the conflict forming the central pivot. War and peace represent the two extremes. The decisive factor is the degree to which violence exists: If a great deal of violence is present,
it's war. If non-violence is the the main characteristic - whatever that might mean -
it's peace. Actual and structural violence on the left-hand side are apposed by cooperation and integration on the right-hand side.
The illustration provides a first impression of how it's possible to form a relationship between the terms war and peace, violence and conflict. And it also demonstrates that it's only possible to deal with these terms in an appropriate manner when they are presented as part of a general outline and in connection to each other. Just because the individual sections of this basic course address each of these terms on an individual basis, it's important to remember that this is still very much the case.
Other sections included in basic course 2:
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"A culture of peace will be achieved when citizens of the world understand global problems, have the skills to resolve conflicts and struggle for justice non-violently, live by international standards of human rights and equity, appreciate cultural diversity, and respect the Earth and each other." – Hague Appeal for Peace, Global Campaign for Peace Education Statement |
[Author: Ragnar Müller]
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