{"id":6951,"date":"2010-08-23T00:00:02","date_gmt":"2010-08-22T22:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=6951"},"modified":"2010-08-22T00:45:14","modified_gmt":"2010-08-21T22:45:14","slug":"education-and-peacebuilding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2010\/08\/education-and-peacebuilding\/","title":{"rendered":"Education and Peacebuilding"},"content":{"rendered":"

Talk at the Japan Education Research Association, Hiroshima<\/em><\/p>\n

Dear friends,<\/p>\n

Overflying a land called Peace in my intellectual helicopter I see three territories with simple names: Past, Present, and Future.\u00a0 And next to Peace a similarly divided land called Health.\u00a0 In both lands research is going on–more at the individual level in Health, and more at the collective level in Peace–to avoid suffering, called disease in Health, and violence in Peace.<\/p>\n

And to obtain joy, bliss, total realization of the individual self and-or the collective Self, the ultimate good, the summum bonum<\/em>.\u00a0 Two simple words for that are exactly Peace and Health, also avoiding the ultimate negatives of violence and disease.<\/p>\n

Sounds important.\u00a0 But do they teach that to common people?\u00a0 Is real Health Education, and Peace Education, going on?<\/p>\n

We spiral down to Health-Present to find out.\u00a0 They divide diseases into three: “traumas” to body-mind-spirit; “contagious” diseases caused by micro-organisms; and the “modernization diseases” that are cardio-vascular, malignant tumors, and others. For traumas they teach care, first aid like stopping bleeding and mouth-to-mouth breathing against drowning.\u00a0 For contagious ills they teach hygiene, washing hands and body, protection against heat, cold, humidity and drought, and keeping distance.\u00a0 For modernization diseases the education seems vaguer, but there is much about body weight, right food, water and air, no smoking, something, not much, about stress and strain, and early warnings.<\/p>\n

When we then move on, into Health-Future, there is much about strengthening the body, with right nutrition, and with exercise.<\/p>\n

In Health-Past the focus is on living with the consequences.<\/p>\n

In short, some ideas about curative medicine, preventive medicine, and how to live with chronic diseases.\u00a0 Not bad.<\/p>\n

Informed by this excursion, we then enter Peace. In Health they try to overcome diseases and their aftermath, in Peace to overcome violence and its aftermath.\u00a0 Violence, also of various kinds, physical and verbal, to the body, mind and the spirit, direct violence caused by acts of commission, structural violence upheld by acts of omission, cultural violence legitimizing them, In Health we did not find cultural disease justifying diseases, except as a memory of olden times, disease as God’s punishment or at least His finger.\u00a0 But sometimes disease is used as a cause of health, like fever from an infection used to destroy cancer cells.<\/p>\n

The causes of violence-peace, like the causes of disease-health, are complex.\u00a0 A simple helicopter overview:<\/p>\n

* for Peace-Present the problem is unresolved conflicts<\/em>, and the name of the curative approach is mediation<\/em>;<\/p>\n

* For Peace-Past the problem is unprocessed traumas<\/em>, and the name of the curative approach is (re)conciliation<\/em>;<\/p>\n

* For Peace-Future the problem is missing projects<\/em>, and the name of the preventive approach is project building<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Put differently: for the peace problems of the present we need to learn mediation, for those of the past conciliation, and for the future project building; three aspects of peace building. The argument is not to educate everybody to become conciliators, mediators and project builders–as little as we demand training as GPs, nurses, nutritionists and physical educators of everybody.<\/p>\n

What is argued would be something more modest that can be practiced by everybody like they do in Health: ability to learn from and handle the past, simple hygiene, exercise, good food habits and the delight at sensing positive health in body, mind and spirit.\u00a0 What could that minimum be, for the field of Peace? Real peace education, today missing, not only anti-war education?<\/p>\n

Three simple, teachable rules for conflict mediation<\/em>:<\/p>\n

* learning to see conflict as a problematic relation between parties because of incompatible goals they pursue rather than as incompatible persons, parties, states with Self good-Other evil;<\/p>\n

* learning that all parties may have some legitimate goals, and means and–also oneself–some illegitimate goals and means;<\/p>\n

* learning how to bridge legitimate goals through creativity.<\/p>\n

And if it does not work, to start from the beginning, again!<\/p>\n

Simple rules, with great effects.\u00a0 The point is not only mediation but a general culture of mediation, like the basic point in Health may be not so much the health professions as a general culture of health, that health is worth pursuing not only to avoid the suffering of disease, but for ever higher self-realization–the sky being the limit.\u00a0 And the same for Peace, ever higher Self-realization for collectives like couples, social groups, states, regions, for the world.\u00a0 Worth pursuing.\u00a0 And feasible<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Equally basic are three teachable rules for project building<\/em>:<\/p>\n

* people want to cooperate, but for mutual and equal<\/em> benefit, so\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 do to others what you want them to do to you for equity;<\/p>\n

* people also want to live in harmony, suffering the suffering of their partner, enjoying their joy, so cultivate empathy;<\/p>\n

* projects do not last forever, hence renewal, even new projects.<\/p>\n

And people know that wounds from the traumas of the past may be the causes of future violence, so again three teachable rules:<\/p>\n

* think through what went wrong and what could have been done;<\/p>\n

* victims are marred by trauma and perpetrators by having caused trauma, could they cooperate to put the past behind them?<\/p>\n

* could there even be some joint project for a future together?<\/p>\n

TRANSCEND works on this 3×3 in the European Union-supported SABONA project, teaching peace at school.\u00a0 Please, join us!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Talk at the Japan Education Research Association, Hiroshima<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}