Peace education curriculum: Programa pendidiken damai (pdf)

84-page pdf translation of the Indonesian “Kurikulum Pendidikan Damai” which “was the first of its kind to be developed in Indonesia, representing peace education from an Islamic and Acehnese perspective. It promotes a positive, comprehensive peace encompassing peaceful relations with God the Creator, with oneself, with one’s fellow humans, and with the environment. The curriculum teaches communal peace in accordance with the positive Islamic approach, namely the absence of war and discrimination and the necessity of justice in society. This manual emphasizes that peace is neither a subjugation to situations nor a passive acceptance of injustice, discrimination, and war, but rather a recognition of these problems and addressing them in a peaceful manner. The curriculum also stresses the importance of process and ends, since peace is both process and results, as reflected in active involvement of students in a system of learning by doing … The materials and learning activities were authored in such a manner to allow the students dominant roles in the learning process. The students are guided to observe, analyze, and seek for solutions to existing conflicts. We feel that this strategy can better improve the students’ knowledge on conflict and peace, build their skills in managing conflicts without violence, and actualize them all in their real life.”

Peace education curriculum: Programa pendidiken damai

92-page word document translation of the Indonesian “Kurikulum Pendidikan Damai” which “was the first of its kind to be developed in Indonesia, representing peace education from an Islamic and Acehnese perspective. It promotes a positive, comprehensive peace encompassing peaceful relations with God the Creator, with oneself, with one’s fellow humans, and with the environment. The curriculum teaches communal peace in accordance with the positive Islamic approach, namely the absence of war and discrimination and the necessity of justice in society. This manual emphasizes that peace is neither a subjugation to situations nor a passive acceptance of injustice, discrimination, and war, but rather a recognition of these problems and addressing them in a peaceful manner. The curriculum also stresses the importance of process and ends, since peace is both process and results, as reflected in active involvement of students in a system of learning by doing … The materials and learning activities were authored in such a manner to allow the students dominant roles in the learning process. The students are guided to observe, analyze, and seek for solutions to existing conflicts. We feel that this strategy can better improve the students’ knowledge on conflict and peace, build their skills in managing conflicts without violence, and actualize them all in their real life.”

Practicing peace: A peace education module for standards 4 through 6 in Solomon Islands

87-page pdf document which presents peace education for the Solomon Islands context. “The primary method used in peace education is generally referred to as a “facilitated” or “interactive” model of teaching. In this method, the teacher becomes a facilitator of learning and a co-learner with the students. Students and teachers use experiential strategies to practice skills for peace. There is a shift in the value placed on being a teacher. Using the facilitated processes of conflict resolution and peace education, teachers and students learn together and teach each other.” Covered areas include: Interpersonal skills; Understanding and accepting differences; Children’s rights; Building community and Mediation.

Practicing peace: A peace education module for standards 4 through 6 in Solomon Islands

87-page word document which presents peace education for the Solomon Islands context. “The primary method used in peace education is generally referred to as a “facilitated” or “interactive” model of teaching. In this method, the teacher becomes a facilitator of learning and a co-learner with the students. Students and teachers use experiential strategies to practice skills for peace. There is a shift in the value placed on being a teacher. Using the facilitated processes of conflict resolution and peace education, teachers and students learn together and teach each other.” Covered areas include: Interpersonal skills; Understanding and accepting differences; Children’s rights; Building community and Mediation.

Mixitup: 2008-2009 planner

50-page pdf document, “designed for teachers, counselors, students, administrators and others looking for activities and ideas to organize Mix It Up at Lunch Day, reduce social boundaries at school and promote an inclusive learning environment for all students. It includes lesson plans for early, middle and upper grades based on content standards and can easily be adapted for use in school clubs. For additional activity ideas, online polls and essay prompts, visit www.mixitup.org.”

Will you listen?: Young voices from conflict zones

28-page pdf report which accompanies “the official 10 year Graca Machel Strategic Review report … submitted to the UN General Assembly on October 17, 2007. It compiles the views and recommendations from more than 1,700 young people from 92 countries through focus group discussions … [which] included children and young people who have experienced conflict themselves, with many of the participants speaking about how their own lives have been affected. Facilitators tried to ensure a safe environment, to use the local language where appropriate and to create a certain ‘comfort level’ for the participants despite the unique challenges in each country.”

Road to peace, The: A teaching guide on local and global transitional justice

10-chapter teaching guide “that introduces students who have a general knowledge of human rights to the concept of transitional justice. Using the expertise of The Advocates’ human rights monitoring teams, who carried out work in Peru and Sierra Leone, The Advocates for Human Rights has created this teaching guide to be used with ninth grade through adult learners … The Road to Peace, as its title suggests, does not just teach about justice, but seeks to advance justice. The lessons are planned to encourage creative thinking about conflict resolution and restoration of justice, so that students feel empowered to promote justice in their own communities as well as around the world. The Road to Peace teaches about justice on a local and an international scale, asking students to make connections between instances of justice and injustice in their own lives, and in situations where justice has been or is being threatened in other countries … this comprehensive teaching guide introduces students to the concept of transitional justice through:
* Lessons on the root causes of war and conflict
* An overview of human rights and different transitional justice mechanisms
* Mock war crimes tribunal and mock truth commission role plays
* In-depth country case studies
* Individual case studies on human rights abuses
* Investigative tools to study the need for transitional justice in the U.S.
* Skill-building resources on how to apply reconciliation on a local level
* Conflict resolution and peer mediation exercises
* A transitional justice glossary
* Resources for further study and action on peace and justice.” Includes detailed glossary, organizations list and bibliography.

Cultivating Peace in the 21st Century: Ready to Use Student Activities

This 60-page pdf is a lesson pack developed for use in Canadian classrooms. It consists of 7 distinct lessons “designed to actively engage secondary school students in the search for a deep understanding of the forces that can bring about tragedies such as the attack on the World Trade Center, and the means by which they can personally contribute to the ongoing search for peaceful coexistence. It provides teachers and administrators with concrete mechanisms for integrating peace education into the curriculum and the school environment.”

UNESCO: Mainstreaming the culture of peace

26-page pdf created by UNESCO which “defined the Culture of Peace as consisting of values, attitudes and behaviours that reject violence and endeavour to prevent conflicts by addressing their root causes with a view to solving problems through dialogue and negotiation among individuals, groups and nations. The 1999 United Nations Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace (resolution A/53/243) called gor everyone – governments, civil dociety, the media, parents, teachers, politicians, scientists, artists, NGOs and the entire United Nations system – to assume responsibility in this respect. It staked out eight action areas for actors at national, regional and international levels:” Those 8 action areas are: Fostering a culture of peace through education; Promoting sustainable economic and social development; Promoting respect for all human rights; Ensuring equality between women and men; Fostering democratic participation; Advancing understanding, tolerance and solidarity; Supporting participatory communication and the free flow of information and knowledge and Promoting international peace and security.

Strategies to prevent youth violence

92-page pdf chapter from “Best Practices of Youth Violence Prevention: A Sourcebook for Community Action,” which investigates “Social-cognitive interventions strive to equip children with the skills they need to deal effectively with difficult social situations, such as being teased or being the last one picked to join a team. They build on Bandura’s social-cognitive theory, which posits that children learn social skills by observing and interacting with parents, adult relatives and friends, teachers, peers, and others in the environment, including media role models (Bandura 1986). Social-cognitive interventions incorporate didactic teaching, modeling, and role-playing to enhance positive social interactions, teach nonviolent methods for resolving conflict, and establish or strengthen nonviolent beliefs in young people … Mentoring—the pairing of a young person with a volunteer who acts as a supportive, nonjudgmental role model—has been touted by many as an excellent means of providing a child or adolescent with a positive adult influence when such an influence does not otherwise exist. Evidence has shown that mentoring can significantly improve school attendance and performance, reduce violent behavior, decrease the likelihood of drug use, and improve relationships with friends and parents.”

Peace education: A pathway to a culture of peace

178-page pdf document which “helps the educator, whether in formal or non formal settings, to understand that peace is a holistic concept and state of being and that it can not be learned in the traditional lecture-note taking-testing framework. Indeed, peace education can be integrated into many disciplines. The culture of peace must replace the culture of violence if we and our home, planet Earth, are to survive … teaching the value of tolerance, understanding and respect for diversity among the school children could be introduced through exposing them to various countries of the world, their geography, history, and culture. At the appropriate levels, curricula must include human rights, the rules governing international law, the United Nations Charter, the goals of our global organization, disarmament, sustainable development and other peace issues. The participation of young people in this process is very essential. Their inputs in terms of their own ideas on how to cooperate with each other in order to eliminate violence in our societies must be fully taken into account. In addition to expanding the capacity of the students to understand the issues, peace education aims particularly at empowering the students, suited to their individual levels, to become agents of peace and nonviolence in their own lives as well as in their interaction with others in every sphere of their existence … We have organized the book into three sections. Part I presents chapters that are meant to help us develop a holistic understanding of peace and peace education. Part II discusses the key themes in peace education. Each chapter starts with a conceptual essay on a theme and is followed by some practical teaching-learning ideas that can either be used in a class or adapted to a community setting. Part III focuses on the peaceable learning climate and the educator, the agent who facilitates the planting and nurturing of the seeds of peace in the learning environment. Finally, the whole school approach is introduced to suggest the need for institutional transformation and the need to move beyond the school towards engagement with other stakeholders in the larger society.”

Teaching about conflict through citizenship education

18-page pdf article which examined “Through interviews and observations in case study primary and secondary schools in the West Midlands, we therefore explored what was understood by this notion of global citizenship, and under this umbrella, what it was that students and teachers thought should be learned, we found that the most outstanding concern for students was war and conflict – and in the current context, not just historically, after giving some detail of these concerns, this paper attempts to develop a typology of different ways that schools teach about conflict before making more general arguments about the importance of peace education within a citizenship education framework and the role of teachers in tackling both difference and indifference.”

Education for peace: A curriculum framework K-12

14-page pdf document which presents a “conceptual framework from which schools may devise a program comprising the transmission of universal values and enduring attitudes, and the development of skills which will enable our students to become active global citizens … the implementation of this conceptual framework recognizes the practice of peaceful relations at all levels: personal, familial, communal, inter-cultural and global, it entails a process of knowledge acquisition and skill-building which affects the behavior of individuals and groups and provides a model for the formal and informal curriculum of the school, education for Peace is a process and condition which permeates all aspects of school life, with implications for learners, teachers, and administrators and it extends beyond the school to society as a whole.”