Schools for Conflict Or for Peace in Afghanistan


Book Description

Dana Burde shows how aid to education in Afghanistan bolstered conflict both deliberately in the 1980s through violence-infused, anti-Soviet curricula and inadvertently in the 2000s through misguided stabilization programs




Peace Education


Book Description

There is a huge volume of work on war and its causes, most of which treats its political and economic roots. In Peace Education: How We Come to Love and Hate War, Nel Noddings explores the psychological factors that support war: nationalism, hatred, delight in spectacles, masculinity, religious extremism and the search for existential meaning. She argues that while schools can do little to reduce the economic and political causes, they can do much to moderate the psychological factors that promote violence by helping students understand the forces that manipulate them.




Educating for Peace in a Time of "permanent War"


Book Description

Little is done in schools at the formal and informal levels to address war and peace, especially in relation to what can and should be done to bring about peace. This volume seeks to provide a range of policy, pedagogical, curriculum and institutional analyses aimed at facilitating meaningful engagement toward a more robust and critical examination of the role that schools play in framing war, militarization and armed conflict.




Teaching Peace and War


Book Description

This comprehensive volume on teaching peace and war demonstrates that our choice of pedagogy, or the way we structure a curriculum, must be attentive to context. Pedagogical strategies that work with one class may not work in another, whether over time or across space and different types of institutions, regardless of the field of study. This book offers insight on how to address these issues. The chapters contain valuable information on specific lessons learned and creative pedagogies developed, as well as exercises and tools that facilitate delivery in specific classrooms. The authors address a wide range of challenges related to broader questions on what teachers are trying to achieve when teaching about peace and war, including reflections on the teacher’s role as a facilitator of knowledge creation. This collection offers a valuable reference for scholars and instructors on structuring peace and war curricula in different global contexts and pedagogical strategies for a variety of classrooms. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal Peace Review.




How Children Understand War and Peace


Book Description

How Children Understand War and Peace If we had a better grasp on how children and adolescents develop ideas of war, conflict, and peace, would it be possible to consciously influence these concepts toward more peaceful orientations? Would it then be possible to integrate these psychological findings into educational programs throughout the world? How Children Understand War and Peace is a landmark book that examines these two vital questions and provides a solid framework on which to build answers. Written by an international panel of experts in the fields of developmental, social, and educational psychology, How Children Understand War and Peace presents a collection of the most current thoughts and insights into how children and adolescents develop an understanding of war, conflict, and peace. Based on research studies done in Australia, Canada, Finland, Holland, Israel, Portugal, Northern Ireland, Sweden, and the United States, this comprehensive volume presents evidence that perceptions of war and peace formed during childhood relate directly to adult perspectives on these critical issues. The contributors present persuasive evidence that our knowledge about how youngsters from around the globe develop and form worldviews can be used to create educational programs that teach children peace education, conflict management, and conflict resolution. How Children Understand War and Peace is an indispensable guide for psychologists, educators, and anyone concerned with building a solid foundation for a more peaceful world through knowledge and education. What Children Can Teach Us and What We Can Teach Children How Children Understand War and Peace offers an international perspective on how the concepts of war and peace develop in children and how, through overt teaching of conflict resolution and peacemaking skills in schools, a more peaceful world could be created. "I welcome this important new book. The editors and contributors have given us a new and valuable account of how young people understand the essential issues of war and peace. Not only is this a large step forward in the study of child and adolescent social cognition, but, in addition, the knowledge base in this book suggests ways to educate the younger generation toward more peaceful resolutions of dangerous social conflicts."—William Damon, professor and director, Stanford Center on Adolescence "The first comprehensive overview of current research on children's understanding of peace, conflict, and war, this book shows the richness of children's understanding in its sociocultural context. It challenges us to think deeply about the connections between human development, war, and peace and about how to educate for a culture of peace."—Michael G. Wessells, professor of psychology, Randolph-Macon College "This comprehensive book discusses research on how peace, conflict, and war are interpreted by youngsters from different cultures and how such knowledge can help educators contribute to building peace. Anyone interested in peace and conflict, child development, and education will find many useful insights and a wealth of diverse approaches for working with children in this important new book."—Åke Bjerstedt, professor emeritus of education, Lund University, Sweden "This landmark book will help open the way to advances in research on the development of children's conceptions of peace and on the practice of peace education." —Milton Schwebel, editor, Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology




School Choice Myths


Book Description

Are there legitimate arguments to prevent families from choosing the education that works best for their children? Opponents of school choice have certainly offered many objections, but for decades they have mainly repeated myths either because they did not know any better or perhaps to protect the government schooling monopoly. In these pages, 14 of the top scholars in education policy debunk a dozen of the most pernicious myths, including “school choice siphons money from public schools,” “choice harms children left behind in public schools,” “school choice has racist origins,” and “choice only helps the rich get richer.” As the contributors demonstrate, even arguments against school choice that seem to make powerful intuitive sense fall apart under scrutiny. There are, frankly, no compelling arguments against funding students directly instead of public school systems. School Choice Myths shatters the mythology standing in the way of education freedom.




Education for Peace


Book Description

This book deals with the everlasting problem of war and peace. In it, the author argues that mankind must be predisposed for peace by the right kind of education and he discusses how to devise methods of education which will prevent war.




Transforming Education for Peace


Book Description

Currently, peace education remains marginalized in our education system, however, a united front can be formed and powerful paradigms can empower educators to play a critical role in peace building through scholarship, practice and activism. Indeed, educators around the world are developing effective strategies to transform education as a powerful force for global peace. The diverse array of contributors in the book demonstrate that educators as peace makers can be and have been instrumental in transforming social forces, the self and others for the construction of global peace. The book aims to broaden the educational discourse in order to make room for new visions to educate future generations for peace. Local and global efforts to build a long-lasting peace are presented through the lens of education. The timeliness of peace education surely renders this book relevant to educators and the general public alike as individuals, communities, and organizations struggle to find pathways to peace in a global world. In other words, this book will interest scholars and the general public concerned about the building of global peace. The book can be source book for educators at elementary, secondary, and postsecondary institutions to explore multiple ways to conduct effective peace education at all levels of education. The book may also be used as a textbook by instructors of multicultural education, of comparative & international education, and of undergraduate and graduate peace education courses.




The United Nations and Higher Education


Book Description

In this book, Kevin Kester details how the United Nations promotion of higher education for peace and international understanding sometimes unintentionally contributes to the reproduction of conflict and violence across diverse cultures. He shows this through an indepth examination of peace curricula, pedagogy and policy in one United Nations higher education institution, where he indicates how dominant philosophical and pedagogical models that signify acceptable peace education ultimately undermine the very goals of educational peacebuilding. Kester contends that theoretical and pedagogical training must develop beyond the dominant psycho-social, rational and state-centric assumptions that permeate the field today if higher education is to better contribute to personal and societal peacebuilding. Drawing from the fields of educational philosophy and sociology, he argues for new concepts of poststructural violence and second order reflexivity that can assist scholars in reducing conflict and building peace in lasting ways. He complements his fieldwork findings with personal reflections throughout the book to reimagine the transformative possibilities of peacebuilding education for the 21st century.




The Best Weapon for Peace


Book Description

The Italian educator and physician Maria Montessori is best known for the teaching method that bears her name, but historian Erica Moretti reframes Montessori's work, showing that pacifism was the foundation of her pioneering efforts in psychiatry and pedagogy.