EDUCATION FOR PEACE: GUIDELINE FOR FRONTLINE WORKERS
Ranu Jain and Taha Abdul Rauf
Institute for Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution, Mumbai
January 2012
Pages 133
Price Rs 150
Reviewed by RAM PUNIYANI
The need for peace in the society has been the major concern most of the times, more so during last few decades. There are many causes of conflict, violence, which are deeper and are related to social; political and economic injustices. In many cases of violence the prevalent perceptions, myths and biases of the society play a major role in precipitation of violence and in giving it a silent social sanction. This is what creates the base on which such a violence is possible. That’s where the role of peace education comes in. Peace education should groom the generations in overcoming these perceptions which are far from truth but are deeply ingrained in the psyche of the large sections of society.
Scholar-Activist Noam Chomsky formulated the thesis of ‘Manufacturing consent’, where the state by various mechanisms creates an approval of society for its acts of violence. Similarly, one can say that the prevalence of ‘social common sense’ plays major role in the area of ethnic, communal violence. Social groups have been struggling against such perceptions. The challenge for them has been as to how to lay the foundation of critical thinking about ‘other’ communities, how to give the missing narratives which result in misconceptions, how to create respect for diversity and pluralism to ensure that proper understanding of the ‘other’ becomes possible? These are the steps which can act as cementing bond between the communities and will result in an atmosphere where the triggers planted by the vested interests do not lead to tension or violence.
The book by Jain and Rauf is an important attempt to give us the background and the prevalent models of peace studies, the UN resolutions about it, the attempts by educationists and social groups to develop their models to be effectively brought about in the understanding which can lead to peace and amity in the society. The book gives a comprehensive account of the pedagogy of peace and compares and contrasts various patterns of peace studies. The book squarely blames the pro-elite approach of the state ignoring the needs of the people, to be at the center of various factors which result in the vulnerability of the people seeking community support, resulting in community identity becoming more important. While the authors do address the problem in general, their focus is more on the communal violence which has reared its ugly head in the country during the last three decades. They see the role of education in drawing attention towards the conflicting forces and the need to build knowledge of the structures and processes enforcing conflict.
As per Jain and Rauf, education can attempt towards attitudinal changes amongst individuals making them understand the negative implications of conflict and violence, as well as the benefits of the democratic processes that build dialogue and negotiation. While violence has a lot to do with the structural inequalities, the book limits itself to give guidelines on recounting and addressing differences at individual and community level. The core of Education for Peace is ‘deconstructing the other’ and recognising members of different communities, especially those who are oppressed. It suggests the ways to understand and resolve the existing conflicts in a peaceful and mutually beneficial manner.
As such peace has been the major concern of human race, trying to strive for it through religious values to begin with, and later through legal endeavours. The culmination of these processes is reflected in the mandate of United Nations, which targets not only at prevention of conflict but to promote social amity and progress. The ‘Culture of Peace’ is a respectable objective which aims at promoting mix of identities, attitudes, values, beliefs and institutional patterns due to which people live in a mutually beneficial manner with one another. Hereby comes the concept of positive and negative peace. While negative peace aims at absence of direct violence, positive peace aims at addressing those societal issues which disturb peace or have the potential of generating situation conducive to peace.
Away from lecture mode, the recommendation is on multifaceted participatory activities. Overall it is not an easy subject to handle as it does require a holistic view of society and multi-layered nature of the issues involved. The compliment of peace education is conflict resolution which requires the ability to build relations of amity. In this part of the social endeavour, mere demystification of misconceptions is not adequate; as it needs to be further built up by an empathetic understanding of the ‘other’. Currently the peace education requires the challenging task of critically analysing the structures and process of violence from micro to macro level. In Indian context the National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT) has made commendable effort in this direction by bringing out Education for Peace (for Students) and Ways to Peace (for Teachers).
The NCERT approach focuses on values to be conveyed and the mechanism most suitable for that are stories and activities aimed at the outcome for culture of peace. The pedagogy of peace aims to ensure that the content of books overcomes biases and stereotypes in the books. The authors are appreciative of the attempt of NCERT, but here the question remains, do state educational boards follow the NCERT in a serious way. This problem has to be directed to the social workers and the political leadership to ensure that the foundations of the students are based on objective understanding of the ‘other’ communities and history in particular is presented above the biased presentation as it is today.
The book operates at various levels, from giving the interventions needed for school children to social workers, but the major focus rightly remains on the frontline workers. The idea is to demystify the images of the other community to ease the tensions and thereby defuse the violence. It also outlines various models for intervention for peace developed by social groups and elaborates some ongoing methods as samples of the possible activities, which necessarily are diverse depending on situations and participants to whom they are addressed. The book could have been enriched by giving possible horizontal and vertical integrations of different modules for different social groups.
Overall it is a valuable aid for all those engaged in the process of peace and conflict resolution. It leaves the reader much more equipped to undertake the exercises of peace building in the community.