Education for Peace

EDUCATION, 10 Nov 2025

Surya Nath Prasad – TRANSCEND Media Service

History of Peace Education

Today, there are several universities in Europe and US, and also in some parts of Asia, where separate peace research institutes and centres have been established. However, peace education has a long history

In 1919, The Peace Association of Swedish School was founded. The early tendencies of peace education in Sweden are to be seen as an emanation of the peace movement. Several teachers – many of them women – were engaged in peace movement, propagating for the inclusion of elements of peace ideas in school education. In 1920s and 1930s, the main concern of the teachers involved was to strengthen support of the League of Nations and to counteract tendencies of Fascism and Nazism by intensified instruction in democracy. At the beginning of 1980s, peace education was once again on the agenda in Sweden.

In Australia, the International People’s College at Helsingør, Denmark was founded in 1921 by Peter Manniche as an experiment in peace education, “a miniature League of Nations”. More than 50,000 students have participated in the college courses, and in 1988 the college was designated a “Peace Messenger” by the United Nations.

Adult education for peace was started just after World War II by trade unions and women’s organizations in Japan. But in fact, the development in all parts of the country began in 1970s. The contents of adult education for peace were enlarged from the middle of the 1980s.

Peace studies as a major subject at the university level in the United States was first offered by Manchester College in Indiana starting in 1948. It was at least 20 years later before the so called “academic” peace studies began to emerge in the more secular universities in the United States as a response to the Vietnam War, and especially as a response to the killing of four student demonstrators at Kent State University in the late spring of 1970. Peace studies courses and programmes mushroomed during the 1970s, but tapered off toward the end of the 1970s. Peace studies received a new lease on life in 1980s. A recent survey of this field has been provided by Wien (reported in 1984 in the book Peace and World Order Studies: A Curriculum Guile) which includes over 100 course syllabi and a review of over 40 programmes. Today over 200 campuses in the United States have degree programmes in peace and conflict studies.

The University for Peace founded by United Nations on an initiative of Costa Rica at the end of 1970s started working in April 1981.

In India in some selected universities peace studies have been introduced in the discipline of Gandhian Studies. Besides this, Gujarat Vidyapeeth and Jain Vishwa Bharati University also provide M.A. and Ph.D. level courses and studies in peace and non-violence. Recently Jawaharlal Nehru University has created Rajiv Gandhi Chair for Studies in Peace. And the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) and University Grants Commission (UGC) are working for the inclusion of human rights education at the school and higher levels respectively. They may strive for peace education which includes human rights education also. Peace Education An International Journal was founded in 1975 by the author of these lines Dr. Surya Nath Prasad in the Honor of UN Year of Women in 1975, and the inaugural issue of the Journal was on the Special theme: The Role of Women in Peace Education in Dedication to all Women of the world in their Honour. But I failed to meet the deadline of its publication of inaugural issue due to the Journal not getting its registration due to emergency in the country. Hence, it was started its publication in 1977, when the Emergency in the country was over, and the Journal got its Registration. Every issue of this Journal is on the special theme of peace education, which has enriched this new emerging discipline: Peace Education.. Besides this, the author has completed Seven Series in Peace Education with different titles of Peace Education.

Apart from this, educational institutions, several non-governmental organizations throughout the world are teaching and learning about peace. International Association of Educators for World Peace (IAEWP), since its inception in 1969 has been conscientizing the students, teachers, educators, parents, different professionals and the people towards peace and encouraging them for the creation of peace ideas, for conducting peace researches and for doing peace activities through its chapters in 100 nations of the world. The IAEWP works as per its motto Ad Pacem Per Sapientiam, which means: To Peace through Wisdom. For this noble cause of peace, in 1987 the IAEWP was designated as a “Peace Messenger by the United Nations”.

Need and Importance of Peace Education

Education for Peace is essential for human survival. It is needed for individual, national and global peace. In the world of physical and structural violence, peace education has a great importance because the form of peace education has to be compatible with the idea of peace which excludes both direct and structural violence. Peace education has relevance also in this age of exploitation because it teaches about justice Peace education is also a necessity in this era of selfishness because it teaches about altruism. Peace education is also significant in today’s world of xenophobia and intolerance because it teaches tolerance, respect for diversity, and acceptance of differences At present peace education is in great demand in the world of violation of human rights everywhere because it conscientizes the learners towards their total situation, and enables them to fight for their liberation.

What is Peace Education

Peace education is a broader discipline. Disarmament education, human rights education, environmental education, education for non-violence, education for international understanding, and global education are the branches of peace education. Peace education concerns with peace ideas, peace studies and peace activities. It deals with conflicts arising out of aggression of war situations, and also arising out of injustice or exploitation. According to Christoph Wulf, peace education deals with conditions within society which foster violence including elements of violence in the family and the school system. Peace education is a science which studies the basic needs of men and women, and the true nature of society in which these needs are to be satisfied, and it awares the learners towards human rights and structurally violent and non-violent societies. Peace education enables the learners in creating a culture of peace which helps in building a non-violent and just society. We may regard Peace Education as National Defence Education. Johan Galtung considers peace education national security education.

Aims of Peace Education

The main aim of peace education is to conscientize the learners towards their total situations in which they live. Due to awareness about their oppressive and exploitative conditions they become capable of initiating efforts to eliminate structural violence which is the cause of physical violence. Magnus Haavelsrud says that conscientization efforts would creative political forces which would be instrumental in the struggle for social justice on global as well as local levels, including changes in the formal education system. The aim of peace education is also to assure the creation of culture of peace. Culture of peace protects all, including those who are afflicted with poverty, sickness, bereavement, unemployment, imprisonment, exile and oppression, and on the whole, it protects the masses from all types of exploitation. According to Christoph Wulf, the aim of peace education is to incorporate into the educational process the dangers posed to human life and human society by war, violence, poverty, and oppression. Personal liberation is the final aim of peace education as it is observed by Robin Richardson. The aim of peace education is to make everyone be friends, correcting genuine injustice or conflicts of interest between them, as is believed by Adam Curle. Betty Reardon says that the purpose of peace education is to provide knowledge to be applied to the problem of reforming and/or restructuring present human society to make it more just and less violent.

Contents of Peace Education

Some peace educators define the content for peace education in terms of international and global problems whereas others define the content in relation to everyday life situations in which the individual is an important actor. However, education for peace involves the principles of problem- posing curriculum. Hence, peace education should be constructed upon the curriculum that aims to teach justice, altruism, tolerance, principles of equity, trusteeship, non-violence, human rights, disarmament, and environmental problems and issues, including other principles of democracy.

Methods of Teaching

Education for peace is more a question of method or form of communication than of content. In fact, peace education is a learning concept, because teaching is violence, learning is peace. Teaching makes the possessors of knowledge a minority and those dispossessed of it the majority. Teaching does not help the students and masses in making them aware, and it serves the purpose of oppressors while learning makes them aware and liberates both the oppressors and the oppressed. Hence, mathetics, not pedagogy, is needed in learning peace. Mathetics is the science of pupil’s behaviour while learning, just as pedagogy is the discipline in which attention is focused on the school master’s behaviour while teaching. The term “Mathetics” is coming into use to denote the transition from teaching to learning. Now learning process is replacing the teaching process. Problem-posing not problem-solving, strives for the emergence of conscious and critical intervention in reality. To learn peace through dialogue, the teacher of the students and the students of the teacher cease to exist and new term emerges: teacher-student with students – teachers. Paulo Freire is also in favour of this concept as method. Men learn from each other. No one is the teacher of anyone but all are learners. Thus, dialogue method is useful and effective in learning peace.

UNICCO Prize for Peace Education

UNICCO has instituted UNESCO Prize for Peace Education to encourage peace educators, peace institutions and peace organizations. The amount of UNESCO Prize for peace education is 50,000 dollars. UNESCO has honoured those who have done truly significant work towards awakening the public consciousness and in-forming public opinion about the problems of war and the possibilities of peace. UNESCO, through its international juries, has been selecting laureates since 1981 from among many distinguished and accomplished individuals, institutions and organizations that have made unique and invaluable contributions to peace education.

It is pertinent to mention here that the Award of UNESCO Peace Prize has been discontinued.

The UNESCO Prize for Peace Education was discontinued / phased out in 2013. The prize, which had been awarded annually since 1981 to honor extraordinary activities for peace education, is no longer an active UNESCO award program.

UNESCO still offers other related peace prizes, such as the Félix Houphouët-Boigny–UNESCO Peace Research Prize and the new UNESCO Prize for Global Citizenship Education (established in 2024), but the original “UNESCO Prize for Peace Education” specifically has ended. 

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This article is based on the paper published in University News – A Weekly Journal of Higher Education published by the Association of Indian Universities, XXXIII, No. 25, June 19, 1995.

Dr. Surya Nath Prasad, Former President, Executive Vice President & Secretary-General of the International Association of Educators for World Peace (IAEWP); associate professor of education emeritus, the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University, Republic of Korea. Founder and editor-in-chief of Peace Education: An International Journal. dr_suryanathprasad@yahoo.co.in

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 10 Nov 2025.

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