Based on the work of Margo Lynn Trombetta & Rosmarie Greiner
“If we are to reach real peace in the world and
if we are to carry on a real war against war,
we shall have to begin with the children.”–Mahatma Gandhi
We live in a time when the nations of the world have the power to annihilate all people on the earth 15 times. Should that annihilation take place it would, of course, take with it most plant and animal life and would destroy much of the fragile ecosystem that keeps the planet Earth a living entity. We also live at a time when violence is escalating on an international level, not just between nations but within. The victims of the violence are men, women, and children of all colors, all creeds, and of course, all ages. This is also a time when racial, religious, class and cultural intolerance is escalating into wide-spread hatred and bigotry. Violence between groups of people is increasingly found in neighborhoods, schools, and within families.
How do we raise healthy, strong children in a time like this? What do we need to do to give children the tools to find their way and to transform the world they are inheriting? How do we help young children to grow into peacemakers? Those are the questions of teachers and parents who care about Peace Education.
Peace Education is built around six age-appropriate strands. Each of these interrelated strands provides a place to help teachers develop rich and exciting curriculum. Together they comprise an integrated approach to Peace Education.
Acceptance and love of self lays the groundwork for accepting and loving others. A positive self-image lies at the root of trusting human relationships. From a sense of security and trust built in their earliest relationships, each child comes to know themselves, recognize their unique feelings and competence, and to feel valued and accepted. From this base children become aware of their interconnection with others. With age and opportunities for social interaction, children discover the benefits of cooperation, empathy, acceptance, friendly interactions and caring.
Respect for people from a variety of cultures, ages, skin colors, genders, physical and mental abilities is built from children’s natural curiosity about all that’s new and different in their worlds. Helping children gain a sense of who they are requires cultivating positive feelings about their family cultures, their home languages, their genderd identity and their ethnic/racial heritage. In addition, children need support in understanding that people who look, think or act in ways that are new or different to the child are interesting and worthy . Without support, children’s fear, misinformation and lack of experience are often the seeds of stereotypes and prejudice.
From an early age children can develop a sense of fairness and unfairness, of justice and injustice. The child’s natural gifts for empathy, collaboration & connection, are the building blocks for conflict resolution. Children can be helped to understand that violent solutions carry harmful consequences and that creative problem solving leads to friendship and community. Children experience first-hand conflict over unmet needs, things taken, attention not given and clashing of ideas. Feelings of fear, resentment, and hostility can arise when they are not helped to understand and express what they are feeling and learn ways to resolve conflicts without needing a winner and a loser. Children can be helped to express feelings in non-damaging ways and learn how to problem solve for mutual satisfaction. The “listened-to child” learns to listen.
The child’s pleasure in imagining provides a workshop in problem solving, and develops a sense of agency, power, joy and competence that will lay a foundation for a lifetime. Children are naturally intuitive, spontaneous, imaginative and creative. Creativity is the process of looking at things in new ways, trying something that one has not seen before. Imagination allows children to discover many ways of doing things. In addition, inherent in creativity is trying things that don’t work, making mistakes, finding unexpected dilemmas, and learning from them. The quality of playfulness feeds a child’s delight at being alive and gives them a natural workshop to make sense of a confusing world.
Encouraging children to respect, care for, and enjoy the natural world is the first step in teaching our responsibilities to our planet, to develop empathy and to encourages respect for all life. Understanding and feeling connected with nature starts at an early age. Children’s sensory approach to life pushes them to touch, prod, taste, pour, and physically connect with the rich environments in which they find themselves. Animals, plants, and the outdoors, attract all children. A sense of wonder, the joy of exploration, builds in the child a deep sense of connection with and responsibility for all the life forms of our world.
All over the planet people are very much the same, and yet very different. Learning to cherish both our differences and our similarities is a fundamental task of the peacemaker. Children grow up today in a world of unprecedented migration of peoples, and of technological advances that have ushered in an interdependent global village. Many young ones have family in other countries or may go back and forth between countries. Although the young child has a limited sense of distance, size, or time, they are immensely interested in what their world is like and how people live throughout the planet. At an early age children can appreciate that “Everyone sleeps. But some people sleep on hammocks, some on tatami mats, some on lofts and some in beds”.