PEACE EDUCATION:

A Transformative Response
to Major Societal
Challenges
 “ The greatest
resource for building
a culture of peace
are the people
themselves”
A Holistic Understanding of
Peace
 The power of our own
understanding and views of peace
both as a condition and as a value
cannot be underestimated.
 It is because our ideas shape our
feelings and our actions, as well
as how we live and how we
relate with others.
 The simplest and the most
widespread understanding was
that of absence of death and
destruction as a result of war and
physical/direct violence.
 This holistic definition is shown in the
diagram below:
PEACE
Negative Peace Positive Peace
Absence of direct/physical violence Presence of conditions of well-
being and just relationship :
social, economic, political,
ecological
Direct Violence
E.g., war, torture, child and
woman Structural Violence
E.g., poverty, hunger

Socio-cultural violence
E.g., racism, sexism, religious
intolerance

VIOLENCE Ecological Violence

E.g., pollution,
Figure 1. Defining Peace
overconsumption
Figure 2. Levels of Peace

Personal
Peace
 Types of Violence
Level Personal Interpersonal National Global
Form /Community
of Violence
Direct/Physical *Suicide *Domestic *Civil war *Conventional
Violence *Violent war
*Drug abuse *Violent Crimes *Nuclear war
Crimes *Human rights *Human rights
abuses abuses
Structura
 an alternative view started to emerge H
beginning with late 1960s. Attention
started to shift structural violence irect to
indirec ways aich people suffer from
violence built into a society via its social,
political and economic systems (Hicks
that it was not only war and direct 1987).
It was realize iolence that caused death
and disfigurement. Structural violence lso
led to death and suffering because of the
conditions that There is now a consensus
 Types of Violence Betty Reardon, a peace
educator who has made significant
contributions to the field, defines
violences "humanly inflicted harm
(Reardon, n.d.) Peace Education as
Transformative Education Peace education
or an education that promotes a culture
peace, is essentially transformative. It
cultivates the knowledge base, skills,
attitudes and values that seek to
transform people's mindsets, attitudes and
 Educating for peace, will give us in the
long run the practical benefits that we
seek. As stated earlier it is expected to
build a critical mass of people who will
demand for and address the needed
personal and structural changes that will
transform the many problems that relate
to peace into nonviolent, humane and
ecological alternatives and solutions Peace
education challenges the long-held belief
that wars cannot be avoided. Often this