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THE CHALLENGES FOR PEACE EDUCATORS
AT THE END OF A MILLENIUM

Birgit Brock-Utne

The Goals of Peace Education

This article purports to analyze the following questions: What are the great challenges for peace educators around the world at the end of this millenium? What should the goals of peace education be by the turn of the millenium?

Åke Bjerstedt (1992) as the very efficient and hard-working Coordinator of PEC (Peace Education Commission) within IPRA (the International Peace Research Association) sent out a questionnaire to the members of PEC eliciting their views on the goals, the challenges and the future of peace education. Eighty of the members of PEC answered the questionnaire. Among the questions to the peace educators was also the question of the goals of peace education:

"A crucial aspect of peace education - although too seldom discussed in detail - is what we try to achieve in terms of insights, skills, attidues, values and behavior tendencies among the students. When approaching an expert group, such as the educators and researchers in the PEC network, it seemed natural to touch upon this aspect: the goals of peace education." (Bjerstedt 1992:113)

One part of the PEC questionnaire listed seventeen expressions for possible goals or subareas within peace education. The respondents were to mark those that they felt to be relevant for peace education. If possible the three most important ones should be underlined. When analyzing the results Åke Bjerstedt found that special emphasis was placed on:

. global perspectives
. ability to generate alternative visions
. intercultural awareness
. insight into the present injustice and lack of equality in the world society
. readiness to work for justice and more equal distribution

When we make a further analysis of these five main goals, we see that the first four of them are of a more cognitive kind and can be grouped under the term education about peace. The fifth one has to do with a change of attitudes, a prepared-ness for action, with education for peace. On the basis of some of his earlier work on peace education (Bjerstedt 1990b) Åke Bjerstedt (1992) makes a slightly different division of the goals into:

. cognitive components (intercultural awareness),
. value perspectives (global ethics based on human rights)
. readiness for action (readiness to work for justice and more equal distribution)

In the last half of this article the five goals mentioned above will be discussed under the following three different headings:

. Global perspectives and intercultural awareness
. The generation of alternative visions
. The present injustice and lack of equality in the world, in micro as well as macrostructures

Under each main heading both the cognitive component - education about peace as well as the preparedness for action component - education for peace will be discussed. The challenges facing us within each of these broad goal areas will be discussed. But before we get into this discussion let us devote some more time to the distinction between education about peace and education for peace. (For a more thorough discussion of this distinction see Brock-Utne, 1994)

Education about Peace and Education for Peace

A couple of years ago Åke Bjerstedt, (1990a) asked fourteen well-known peace educators from all over the world among other questions the following one: "If you think back on your own school days, were there some aspects in your schooling that might be considered an attempt at "peace education?".

Analyzing the fourteen answers I have divided the findings into the following four points:

1. The implicit agreement of the participants on the definition of peace as the absence of all violence, both direct, physical violence and indirect, structural violence at the personal and individual level, the microlevel, as well as at the macro-level. The way the respondents defined peace, peace education was clearly a normative field of study which could not include a training in the use of violence, in the use of military force. The experience of one of the respondents, the British peace researcher Paul Smoker is illuminating:

The grammar school I went to was a boys school. It was the social-cultural norm that every boy joined the Combined Cadet Force - an Army training corps. It trained the boys to shoot rifles and introduced them into the military world. Of course I joined quite unthinkingly.

I am sure that the people who ran that school saw it as a type of peace education, because they believed in peace through strength. Then when I got involved with the peace movement, I simply left. Unfortunately at that time I was the chief cadet - I was the leading cadet - and this created an enormous upset in the school, because nobody had ever done this before. The fact that the chief cadet would leave the army corps, saying that he did not want to learn how to kill people any more came as a bit of a shock." (p.159)

Paul Smoker is aware of the fact that some people may think of military training as peace education, though according to his definition of peace - and of the other respondents in the survey - it is not.

2. The almost universal experience of having gone through a school where there was no attempt at peace education the way the respondents defined the concept. The couple of respondents who could give some examples of peace education from their school days hastened to add that the experiences they mention were exceptions, an exceptional teacher, some few lessons.

3. Some of the respondents were primarily concerned with the subject matter taught, the what questions. What was taught? This is an empirical question, here studied through the recollection of a group of well-known educators from all corners of the world. Implicitly they also give some tentative answers to the normative question: What should have been taught? We may say that the respondents quoted deal with education about peace.

Søren Keldorff from Denmark starts answering Bjerstedt's question by mentioning that what comes first to his mind when he thinks about his own school days is a geography teacher (a previous member of Haslund Christensen's expedition to Afghanistan) who opened his pupils' eyes to the values of other cultures' lifestyles by his lively way of telling stories. Then he adds:

" But apart from that it was war and the supremacy of the Western culture that were the dominant subjects." (p.82)

Stig Lindholm from Sweden answers the question this way:

"No, I don't think so. On the contrary, I was "brought up for war" as Eva Moberg likes to put it. There was a lot about Charles XII and Gustavus II Adolphus. I cannot remember any orientaton towards peace. The history instruction we got was pathetic."(p.94)

Lennart Vriens from Holland answers:

"No, almost nothing really. I don't remember any special things that were peace education. I had a great interest in history myself, and many things that I learnt there were rather education against peace." (p.177)

4. Other respondents held that the method of teaching peace education, the how question, cannot be separated from the subject matter taught. For them peace education seems primarily to have to do with creating a certain type of participatory, non-authoritarian, non-competitive and sharing learning experience in the classroom. They deal more with what is termed education for peace.

This is for instance the answer of Anima Bose from India to Bjerstedt's question:

"No, I cannot think of anything that was close to peace education. Peace was not an emphasis. Competition was emphasized: you must win, you must do well in life, you must come first in class and so on."(p.9)

Robin Burns from Australia answers this way:

"No, I think it was intensely violent. It was a private girls' school dominated by rules and structures and I hated it." (p.39)

Virginia Floresca-Cawagas from the Philipines tells that she had religious education in the school she attended as a youngster. This education was intended to provide moral education.

"There were also other activities called character education in the lower levels and ethics in the tertiary. All these were intended to make the schoolyouth peaceful and peaceloving. But because the teaching was dogmatic and non-participative, the methods were rather unpeaceful, quite contrary to the pedagogy for peace education." (p.69)

Riitta Wahlstrøm from Finland tells that there was very little that might be considered attempts at peace education in her school-years:

"In general our teachers were quite authoritarian and we were confronted with a lot of black-and-white attitudes, for instance, in subjects like religion and history. In this way, we were subjected to an education that tended to foster attitudes quite contrary to those favoured in peace education."(p.189)

Peace education, like the concept peace itself, is a contested concept.3 It faces a lot of the same analytical problems as the peace concept does and also meets some additional ones. The whole field of peace education is extremely difficult to treat in a scholarly manner because the term is open to so many different political interpretations. For political reasons - to reach consensus on a definition of peace education to be used in the international community or in the official school curriculum guidelines - the term is intentionally made to be open to various interpretations and to accomodate various viewpoints.

The division of peace education into various subfields like human rights education, disarmament education and development education may be looked at as an attempt to make the unwieldly peace education field somewhat easier to handle analytically. Roughly speaking, those who place most emphasis on the structural violence part of the peace concept would also like to see development education as the most central part of peace education. In another article I have tried to relate the concepts disarmament education, development education, and human rights education to each other and to peace education, which I see as the generic umbrella for all the different disciplines.(Brock-Utne,1988). I shall also here take peace education to include development and human rights education.

Betty Reardon, one of the leading experts on peace education in the United States and a long time member of PEC has analyzed more than hundred peace curricula guides in current use in the US to-day, from Kindergarden through high school. She concludes:

"There are as yet no clear and precise limits to, nor standards for, what is to be included in peace education. (Reardon,1988b,p.xix)

Through her analysis she identified nine topical areas that constitute the foci of contemporary peace education curricula in the United States. These areas include conflict resolution, cooperation, non-violence, multicultural understanding, human rights, social justice, world resources and global environment. All of these areas have a cognitive component as well as an attitudinal and behavioral one.

When we try to analyze more closely the difference between the more cognitive, fact-oriented, and formal approach to peace education found in the term education about peace and the broader approach found in the term education for peace, we discover that not only do the two prepositions differ in the two juxtapositions, but so does the seemingly same word "education". Depending on the preposition, education may mean the more limited, formal learning of subject matter, acquisition of knowledge (education about) or the broader informal learning of attitudes, values and behaviour (education for). In both cases we have to do with a normative type of education, a certain subject matter which is regarded by peace educators as the best to further peace or a certain way of organizing the learning environment judged as conducive for the fostering of the peaceful person.

Betty Reardon defines the purpose of peace education this way:

"The general purpose of peace education, as I understand it, is to promote the development of authentic planetary consciousness that will enable us to function as global citizens and to transform the present human condition by changing social structures and the patterns of thought that have created it."(Reardon,1988b,p.x)

There is a normative element in all education. The German educator Leo Friedrich (1987) maintains that the educational process is geared at aims and follows norms which cannot be readily deduced from that what is already given. The educational process is supposed to lead to an aim which has not been fullfilled yet for the person in question.

Knowledge vs. Attitudinal and Behavioral Change

The task of the educator had been much easier had there been a clear correlation between the knowledge one is exposed to and the attitudes that develop. Such correlation is hard to find. But a certain level of knowledge is often a prerequisite for an attitude change. The UNESCO Institute of Education located in Hamburg, FRG, some years ago made a study of the attitudes towards certain social questions and knowledge about the same questions among elementary and secondary school students in several of the member states of UNESCO. In a Swedish report from the project the conclusion is drawn that there was no clear correlation between the knowledge level of the students and their attitudes. To raise the level of knowledge without making other changes in the classroom situation did not have any significant effect on the social attitudes and values of the school children.

In his research on the effectiveness of contemporary issues curricula (in these "issues" he includes global education and also peace education which he equates with nuclear war education) James Leming (1992) has computed the ratio of achieved outcomes to desired outcomes. The ratio was computed for knowledge, attitudinal and behavioral outcomes across all the curricular areas reviewed. It was found that, with regard to knowledge goals, the outcomes were achieved in 66.6% of the cases. (20 of 30) If the 3 of ll success rate of global education is removed, 89% of the studies remaining reported achieving knowledge-level outcomes. In 32.6% of the cases (27 of 82), desired attitudinal outcomes were achieved; in 27.5% (11 of 40) desired behavioural outcomes were achieved. If the findings of cooperative learning strategies are removed from the data on behavioural outcomes, however, the desired outcomes were achieved in only 10% of the cases (3 of 30). James Leming concludes:

"The changing of student attitudes and behaviour associated with the goals of contemporary issues curricula appears to be a much more formidable task for school curricula than the teaching of knowledge regarding those same issues. Given that no clear relationship between increased knowledge and changes in attitudes and behaviour was detected, the overall educational and social significance of the knowledge gains achieved must be questioned." (Leming,1992,p.146)

To this we may add that even if only a third of the participants in a peace education programme changed their attitudes or behavior that may also be looked at as a good result. This third may influence others and in this way have a multiplier effect.

The Method of Teaching, the Organization of the Educational Climate

For peace educators it will not be possible to separate the "what to teach" from the "how of teaching." Wolfgang Klafki (1958) points to the fact that specialist literature has repeatedly pointed out that the search of method must be the final, albeit necessary, move in good instruction preparation and is, in a manner of speaking, the crowning element. This division is difficult for a peace educator to accept. Like Gandhi we may say that there is no way to peace. Peace is the way. The methods must be congruent with the aims. It is of no help if the subject matter taught is of a critical nature selected to further democratic values and the character formation of individuals if the methods used to convey the subject matter are authoritarian, do not engage the students and do not appeal to their emotions.
Proclaiming to adhere to some values in one setting and behaving according to other values in another setting is contrary to feminist ideology. According to Marilyn French:

"Such a split between pronounced value and actual value, between what is said and what is done, is not acceptable to feminists." (French,l986,p.477)

She scorns what she terms "patriarchal language" which calls lethal weapons "peacekeepers" and an invading force backed by elite monied interests, "freedom fighters". She stresses that the feminist movement is not aimed at overthrow of any particular government, but rather at the displacement of one way of thinking with another. "This means that the tools of feminism are naturally non-violent". Radical feminism is in a state which French calls "blessed" because its ends and means are identical.5
Peace educators strongly favour a pedagogy that encourages and incorporates action, dialogue, involvement, cooperation and participation both because such an approach is more congruent with the message of peace and non-violence and because it is, in itself, a way of teaching both about peace and for peace.

Yet such an approach is difficult to use in the normal school setting where the teacher has the power over pupils by setting grades and sometimes even having to distribute them according to a normal distribution curve (a good example of structural violence).

It is difficult to teach peace in a setting where children are taught to compete against each other. It is difficult to teach about equality between states large and small when there is so little equality between teachers and pupils, to teach about the equality of the sexes when the boys in the class are allowed to dominate the girls. In a discussion of this dilemma I have elsewhere raised the question:"Is it at all possible to teach democracy in an authoritarian school or university? (Brock-Utne,l989,p.157.)

Johan Galtung discusses the same dilemma and asks:

"Will it not merely sound hypocritical? - or, even worse, remain empty words that are nullified through the much stronger message of verticality and dominance being normal and acceptable, conveyed through the structure itself?" (Galtung, l975, p.81.)

This dilemma has to be dealt with as well by peace educators teaching in school as by feminist teachers. Both adhere to principles of conscientization, connectedness, cooperation, dialogue, of conducting learning experiences together, starting with our daily experiences. (see e.g.Weiler,1988) Yet this pedagogy is often almost impossible to practice in schools.

Here many adult educators may praise themselves lucky. They are often in settings where the genuine interest for learning guides both the student and the educator. It is probably no matter of chance that the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (1970) developed his pedagogy for the oppressed in a setting of adult workers learning to read but not having to pass exams.

I have often been asked by students whether I find it totally impossible that peace education could occur within a formal university education. I think this question needs to be debated.6 It is certainly more difficult to work with peace education in a setting where the work students do is to be graded, where students are part of a competitive system and where cognitive abilities count more than emotions and actions. To me a prerequisite when working with peace education in a formal setting like the university is an analysis by students and teachers of the system they are working in, of the structural inequalities and competition built into it, an analysis of the "why" of the curriculum as the Norwegian expert on didactics puts it.(Gundem,1992,p.68)

In the final document from the UNESCO World Conference in l9727 adult education is described as "an instrument of conscientization" and of "social transformation that wishes to create a society that is aware of the values of social solidarity" . The aim of adult education is here described as an education in regarding a social being in a holistic manner. These aims come close to the aims of transformative peace education from a feminist perspective.8 After this discussion of cognitive, attitudinal and behavioral components of peace education we shall return to the three main headings for a discussion of the goals of peace education which we introduced in the beginning.

Global Perspectives and Intercultural Awareness

The Cognitive Component

The rapid development of communications both for travelling, listening and keeping in contact which is going on in the last part of this millenium has made other parts of the globe accessible to us in an historically unparallelled way. Within some hours we can physically visit any place on the globe - provided of course that we have money to travel. If we don't, we can at least meet people from other parts of the planet indirectly but in our living-rooms daily through television. If they and we are linked to Internet, we can communicate cheaply and swiftly.

But those who say that the rapid development of communications have made us all into a global family often forget to add that this is a capitalist and patriarchal family where the power is very unevenly distributed. Some are the creators of the news, some the receivers. Some have ample publishing opportunities, others hardly any.9 Some move to other countries as tourists, on business or live there for some years in a privileged position as socalled "experts" while others move to other countries out of necessity and have to seek any job they can get.

The power to define the news and our images lies with a small group of white people, mostly men in the affluent countries of the North. The market economic principles this group adheres to and has forced the whole world to adopt make the rich richer and the poor poorer. The UNDP Human Development Report of 1994 reports the following distribution of income for the years 1960 and 1991:

 
1960
1991
The income of the 20% Richest people in the world
as percentage of total income.
70%
85%
The income of the 20% poorest people in the
world as percentage of total income.
2,3 %
1,4 %

We shall return to this distribution when we discuss the present injustice and lack of equality in the world. It is difficult to create intercultural awareness when people from some cultures are more likely than people from other cultures to belong to the 20% richest people in the world and thus being able to define concepts and to define their culture as the leading culture.

When creating intercultural awareness we shall have to be beware of the tendency of the West to claim universality for values that are particular to western history and culture. Yash Tandon (1995), former minister in Uganda, now living in Zimbabwe, in a recent article criticizes the way the concept human rights has come to mean civil rights embedded in western liberal and individual expression. To create intercultural awareness, we need to acknowledge that the universality of values should not be taken for granted. Yash Tandon writes about the tendency of the West to claim a universality for their definition of human rights and worse applying them as conditionalities for aid. In doing so

"the West commits the classic error of transposing its values on weaker populations who pretend to share those values for the sake of aid or development assistance." (Tandon 1995:11)

The Action Component

It is not so easy for us who live in the affluent West to start questioning our own values, our own behavior and to approach the culture of other people with an open mind and a willingness to learn from them. How much are men willing to listen to and learn from women? How much are we in the West willing to listen to the indigenous peoples of this world? John P.Synott (1994) states that indigenous peoples could well claim that their knowledge is as marginalised by the peace education movement as by any other group.

"Omission and silence are strategies of oppression as much as active oppression, as well the feminist movement has shown us." (Synott 1994:75)10

In his article on the Australian aboriginal constructions of humans, society and nature John P.Synott (1994) explains the Tjukurppa - the holistic knowledge system of the Australian Aboriginal people. He shows how the indigenous people of the world whose societies the West continues to oppress and destroy are struggling to preserve and assert the very values and form of social organization which peace educators are trying to promote.
It is important that African peace educators do not derive their theories mostly from Western peace educators but search in their own heritage for an African way to deal with conflicts. The African Association for Literacy and Adult Education, which is a pan-African association, has outlined a three year research project in peace education. Among the main objectives we find the following:

. To research into the African concepts and terms of conflict, as well as into African methods, techniques and processes of conflict prevention, managment and resolution.
. To establish and articulate a philosophy, principles and world outlook which underline African concepts of conflict, conflict prevention, management and resolution.
. To promote and generate public interest in African concepts of conflict, and methods, techniques and processes of conflict prevention, management, and resolution as a resource for managing and solving contemporary conflicts.
(AALAE 1994:19)

The action component of intercultural awareness would be a training in listening to and learning from people from other cultures.

The Generation of Alternative Visions

The Cognitive Component

In his book called "Learning for the Future" Åke Bjerstedt (1986) discusses what he sees as prerequisites for the generation of alternative visions. He finds that the self-concept, the personal sense of security and the ability of an individual to cooperate adequately are essential ingredients in peace education and in the development of what he calls the "egofuturem" (our conceptions about our ability to function in the future). He cites a couple of successful and creative men who feel that their own school-days were destructive and counterproductive. He also admits that a teacher is no magician and that there are unpeaceful structures in school that are difficult for the teacher to change. Yet he finds that the teacher must always pose her/himself the following questions:

. Do I as a teacher do whatever I can to help my pupils gain a feeling of self- security and self-esteem?
. Do I do whatever I can in order for my pupils to wish to go on studying and learning?
. Do I do whatever I can so that they shall feel capable of handling problems and challenges in the future?" (Bjerstedt,1986,p.89, my translation)

He finds that most schools of to-day with their constant comparisons of achievements, competitions and ranking easily make many students lose all self-confidence and feeling of self-worth. They make youngsters in their most formative years feel like failures and good for nothing. The teacher must strive to counteract the hidden messages of schooling, messages devaluing the students and giving them little hope for the future, creating a low "ego-futurem". I see three ways of doing this:

1. By teaching students about the structures that are built up in the world and also in the class-room, for instance the relative ranking scale used by grading exams.
2. By giving students opportunity to develop their own interests and have these acknowledged in school. A teacher teaching for peace has to find traits in her/his students to praise and encourage in order to build their self-confidence
3. By training the capacity in students to imagine a transformed society, to describe to themselves and others what a better, more humane global order might be like.

The American peace educator Betty Reardon (1988b) puts it this way:

"Thinking about how the world might be and envisioning a society characterized by justice are the essence of conceptualizing the conditions that comprise positive peace. If we are to educate for peace, both teachers and students need to have some notion of the transformed world we are educating for." (Reardon, 1988b, p.25)

She finds that we must keep the development of this capacity paramount among our learning objectives.

The Action Component

I have already mentioned the types of activities youngsters may undertake in classroom to analyze the type of structural violence going on in the school-system. They can also be trained in envisioning a school without structural violence.

In a recent book the American peace researcher and peace educator Elise Boulding (1995) claims that it is possible for educated Westerners to train their social vision through participating in special seminars. She tells about some seminars in visionary thinking that she conducted with Warren Ziegler in 1981-1982. Participants included scientists, teachers, ministers, artists, community workers, and students ranging in age from late teens to 80s. They were asked to discover a viable social order that functions without weapons. Since that xperimental year trained workshop facilitators have continued to carry on workshops. In an article on Image and Action in Peace Building Elise Boulding (1995:93-117) briefly outlines the methodology of the workshops. The methodology is based on the concept of a "breach in time" a drastic discontinuity between present and future that can nevertheless be encompassed by the human imagination. Participants must step, in fantasy, into a future very different from the present, and report back from that future on their observations of a society which they must then analyze in terms of the social institutions that could sustain it. Subsequently, they must account for that future by an imagined history of the society. Elise Boulding states that

"this is very demanding work, drawing alternately on fantasy and on analysis, and requiring suspension of pessimism and disbelief". (Boulding 1995:100)

The workshop takes participants through a series of steps, from an initial "wish list" for the future to a final action plan in the present. In a Swedish account of the same methodology Elise Boulding (1986) states that the social or natural scientists in the seminar groups must be asked at the outset to forget their accumulated knowledge as it could block new and visionary thinking.

The Present Injustice and Lack of Equality
in the World, in Micro a well as Macrostructures:

The Cognitive Component

In the above-mentioned UNDP Human Development Report of 1994 we saw how the discrepancy between the "haves" and the "have-nots" in this world is getting bigger and bigger. It is an important task for peace educators to follow up statistics like those published by UNDP.

In the most recently independent country in Africa, the Republic of South Africa, a policy of reconciliation between the "historically deprived population" - the majority population of blacks and the "historically advantaged population" - the minority population of whites has been adopted. This is how the Board of the South African Broadcasting Corporation was composed untill one year before Independence:

Composition of the Board of the South African Broadcasting Corporation
(SABC) 1988 - 1993:
  Black White Sum
Men 1 61 62
Women 0 1 1
Sum 1 62* 63
* Of these 57 were Afrikaaners
Source: Minty, 1993.

It is important to be aware of the fact that SABC controls 23 radio stations as well as the main television channels and is the most important form of mass communication.It is important to follow up the composition of this board after Independence. What does reconciliaton mean? Reconciliation to what? If it should mean to the status quo, this would be highly unjust. Reconciliation must have to do with repaying for the sins committed against the black population and must have to do with the redestribution of resources.

Another example of the uneven distribution of resources within the education sector in South Africa is given below:

Percentage of South African children in state-supported pre-schools:
Black
White
5 (N:5.200 000)
33 (N:500 000)
State subsidy per child in state-supported pre-schools in South Africa:
Black
White
US$ 33
US$ 520
Source: Liddel and Kemp:1995:71

In a seminar recently held within the Education in Africa seminar series at the University of Oslo11 we discussed the effects within the education sector of the reconciliation policies of Zimbabwe (which got its independence ten years ago) Namibia (which got its independence five years ago) and South Africa (which got its independence a year ago) Representatives from Zimbabwe and Namibia talked about the white resistance against a more equitable distribution of resources within education as well as when it came to land.

Feminist analysis of the concept of peace and of the development theories most commonly adhered to shows us the necessity of including the micro level in our analysis. (see e.g. Blumberg, 1989, Brock-Utne 1994b, Brock-Utne 1995) The destribution of resources going on at this level - the family level - will often determine the fertility rate as well as the nutritional status of the family. Such data aggregate and becomes the fertility rate for a whole community, a country.

The Action Component

A good example of a way of teaching which made the students become emotionally engaged in the question about the unjust distribution of resources in this world can be found in a Swedish book (Eriksson,a.o., 1977). In the book a story from a school in Finland is told. It happened at this school that when the secondary school students came to the cafeteria one day to get their luncheon, they were met by the delicious smell of newly prepared hamburgers with French fries. They lined up in a a cue as normal to get the tasty food. The first ones who were served got plenty of hamburgers, French fries and salad, even more than they could eat. The next ones got only French fries, no hamburgers. Some few students got only some soup. When they reached the counter, the majority of students, were, however told that there was no more food, not even soup. Those students got angry, terribly annoyed. This was really unjust. Why had so much been given to the first ones in the line so that there was nothing left for those who came a little later?

Their anger led, however, to a constructive dialogue with the ones who served the food. Do you know how resources are distributed in our world to-day? In that world only two out of ten people may eat as much as they want. Many of these people eat more than is good for them. Most people in the world get less to eat than they need, many are starving to death. Why do you not protest against this situation when you get so angry because you were among those to-day who did not get any hamburgers? After this experience the students studied the problems of the developing countries and of structural violence with a high emotonal commitment.
It seems more likely that our students will belong to the thirty percent of students exposed to peace education who achieve a change in attitudes and behavior if they get personally involved in the issue of injustice by experiencing it and analyzing it.

Notes

1. For a further discussion of the peace concept, see Brock-Utne,(1989),p.39-68 with further references to Galtung (1969) and Wiberg,(198l), Wiberg,(1990). The absence of direct violence is often termed negative peace while the absence of indirect violence is termed positive peace. In Brock-Utne (l989) we have in the category of indirect violence introduced a division between a type of violence which shortens the life span and one which reduces the quality of life, reduces the chances of self-fullfillment and enjoyment of liberal human rights. On the basis of this division, six cells have been created, two in the category negative peace and four in the category positive peace.(p.47). Peace is a state where both negative and positive peace exist and where no violence can be found in any of the six cells we have outlined.
2. We may note that the respondents under point three, dealing more with the subject matter - with the education about - are all men while the respondents under point four dealing also with the method of teaching, with the climate of the classroom are all women. They are making a case for a feminist methodology of teaching along the lines of Weiler (l988, p.57-73) The number of respondents is too small however to make this an important point. It should also be noted that male peace researchers like Johan Galtung (1973, 1975) have seen the organization of the school as a main hindrance for peace education.
3. See Brock-Utne,1989, p.39-65 for a discussion of the peace concept, especially as it relates to the world of women. For a more detailed discussion of the peace education concept see Brock-Utne,1989, p.74 - 80)
4. Samhällskunskap och samhällssyn. En internationell studie. (Knowledge about and attitudes to social questions. An international study) 1976. Skolöverstyrelsen. Stockholm: Utbildningsförlaget.
5. An application of this paradigm to the thinking on peace issues can be found in the writings of the great Austrian peace hero Bertha von Suttner (Brock-Utne,l985,p.37-45). In all her work, her many talks and writings she held that if you want peace, you must prepare for peace, not for war. To do away with weapons you must disarm, not rearm. Over and over again she argued against her friend Alfred Nobel who had earned great fortunes on dynamite and weapons and who propagated the masculine and illogical thought that you get peace by preparing for war. On one occasion he wrote to Bertha: "I am doing more for peace with my cannons than you are doing with your speeches on peace and disarmament."
6. In the book "A Pedagogy for Liberation Paulo Freire and Ira Shor (1987) discuss how one can function within a society and a school system being critical of the system while teaching inside it. Paulo Freire stresses that even when lecturing one can be very critical. The important question to ask about a lecture is: Does it critically reorient students to society? Does it animate their critical thinking or not? (Freire and Shor,1987,p.40)
7. UNESCO World Conference, 1972, the Third UNESCO World Conference on Adult Education. "Adult Education in the Context of Continued Education." Tokyo.
8. UNESCO texts, as well as historical research like that of Schmelzer (l988), point to theoretical connections between adult education and peace education.
We may also trace connections between adult education, peace education and feminist education. In her book on "Comprehensive Peace Education" the American peace educator, Betty Reardon says:

"Most of the elements of what I now define as transformational peace education came into focus for me when I brought a feminist perspective to them...It is through feminism that I have gained my insights into wholeness and integrity. Feminism is, I believe, the most fully human current perspective on peace and peace education."
(Reardon,1988,p.10)

9. Books originating in the developing countries, especially in Africa, are higly underrepresented in the world to-day. According to the 1988 UNESCO's Statistical Yearbook Norway (with 4 million inhabitants) produced 3031 new titles which was greater than the number of book titles produced in Nigeria (1260), Tanzania (166), Zimbabwe (157), Mozambique (66), Ethiopia (227), Angola (14), Mali (160), Madagascar, (321), Gambia, (72) and Malawi (75) put together in the years 1984 to 1986.
10. An analysis of a history textbook covering the period 1850 to 1914 in frequent use in Norwegian secondary schools found that the index in the back of the book mentioned 610 names, 605 men and 5 women! Mentioned in the then journal of Norwegian secondary school education: Videregående Opplæring. No.4.1980.
A couple of years ago Åke Bjerstedt asked me to undertake an evaluation of eight books in peace education written in Swedish and in use in Swedish schools from pre-school through high-school. There is hardly any mention at all through the texts and manuals prepared for the lower grades of the fact that boys and girls are educated very differently when it comes to the use of war-toys, fighting to solve conflicts, the way aggression in a boy is enhanced and in a girl suppressed. The high school text is an anthology with excerpts from the works on peace from 23 authors. Among those there are only two women, the one as a co-author with a man. Among the 17 one-authored articles only one is written by a woman. That makes 6% of the articles in a book which on its front-page mentions the word justice.
One of the books contains recommendations for great works one peace which should be in any library. The list contains ten books - all of them written by men!
In my evaluation I had to give a brief list extracted from all the fantastic books written by women on the environment, peace and war, development and human rights. They seemed to have been "forgotten" by the authors (Brock-Utne, Birgit, 1992 )
11. The seminar series called "Education in Africa" has been running for three years (fall 1992 until the summer of 1995) - six consecutive terms with an evening seminar of two to three hours every Tuesday. Four week-end seminars have been arranged within the seminar. The first one was called "Indigenous Education in Africa" and took place on Friday 15 and Saturday 16 October 1993. A report containing the main contributions has been published.(Brock-Utne ed.1994) The second week-end seminar took place on Friday 29 April and Saturday 30 April 1994. The topic here was "States or markets? Neo-liberalism in the educational policies of Sub-Saharan Africa." A report containing the main contributions has been published.(Brock-Utne ed.1995) In the fall of 1994 we arranged a two-day seminar on Tuesday 11 and Wednesday 12 October. The topic was: Building up a new system of education after Independence. The cases of Palestine, South Africa, Namibia, Tanzania, and Somalia. Friday 24 and Saturday 25 March 1995 we arranged a week-end seminar with the title: Educational consequences of the politics of reconcilation - the cases of Zimbabwe, Namibia, South Africa. The number of regular participants vary between 12 and 20 but more than hundred people have attended the seminar at one of the evenings. A third of the participants in the seminar are Master degree students in education, another third are African students from various faculties and a last third are people outside of the University who just participate out of interest. The seminar will not be running in the fall of 1995 but will be running again from 1996 through 1998.

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