[ What if all our schools required training in skilled,
non-violent conflict resolution as a form of peace literacy and moral
awareness for their students. Would that not be one of the most useful
education skills for life that we could give them?]
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PEACE LITERACY: EDUCATION FOR LIFE  
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H Patricia Hynes
September 1, 2022
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_ What if all our schools required training in skilled, non-violent
conflict resolution as a form of peace literacy and moral awareness
for their students. Would that not be one of the most useful education
skills for life that we could give them? _

Students of the AFSC Peace Education Program. The Peace Education
Program also works in partnership with other local area groups and
organizations to organize events and actions that call attention to ,
the human and economic costs of war and promote diplomatic solutions
to the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine and other
parts of the world.

 

Philadelphia is awash in guns
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More people were shot there in 2022, hundreds fatally, than in larger
cities including New York and Los Angeles.  In this “country’s
poorest big city,” most shootings take place in neighborhoods
shattered by multiple forms of racial discrimination and endemic
poverty. The market in legal gun sales is also booming in
Philadelphia, the culture of fear driving citizens to carry guns for
safety.  Further complicating solutions is the disagreement between
the progressive district attorney and the chief of police over models
of crime enforcement in the city

 

On the other side of our country, a miraculous alternative to the
seeming nihilism of West and North Philadelphia neighborhoods breeds
hope.  The winter 2022 Boston College magazine carries the story of
Fr. Gregory Boyle who began working 34 years ago as a pastor in the
poorest neighborhood in Los Angeles, one with the highest gang
activity; “shootings morning, noon and night;” and many teenage
burials.  He started a school at his church for youth dropped out or
expelled from their schools, offering a growing number of services.
Beginning with Homeboy Bakery, he initiated nine more businesses
employing youth from rival gangs under the umbrella of Homeboy
Industries.  The program, which helped lower the gang-related
homicide rate in LA, is “the largest gang intervention, rehab and
reentry program in the world.” 

 

A simple wisdom infuses Fr. Boyle’s success: “I’ve learned that
kindness is a universal language…Seemingly small acts like visiting
people in the hospital or juvenile hall are never forgotten. I’ve
also learned that violence is often sparked by a lethal absence of
hope…At Homeboy, we seek to cherish the wounded…because making
someone feel cherished often leads them to the best version of
themselves.”

 

Many studies and lived experiences, like Fr. Boyle’s, refute the
prevailing perception that violence–whether male violence against
women, gang violence, or war between countries–is inevitable.
 Among those challenging the inevitability of human violence is West
Point graduate, Iraq war veteran, and now peace activist Paul
Chappell, who has dedicated his life to incorporating peace literacy
into educational curricula. In his book _Soldiers of Peace_ Chappell
observed that he had 12 years of math through Calculus II, yet uses
few of his math skills in daily life; but he graduated from high
school illiterate in peace, a literacy he desperately needed.

 

As a mixed race, Korean/African-American/white child growing up in
Alabama, he felt himself a racial outcast. By high school, he was full
of rage.  He reflects with irony and regret that “the education
system had not given me a single hour of training to help me
understand the nature of rage… In fact, much of what I learned in
school taught me to suppress my empathy and conscience and to view
purpose in the narrow context of accumulating material wealth.”  

 

Peace literacy is as crucial as learning reading, writing and
mathematics, and it cannot be left only to parents, Chappell cautions.
Schools must teach the history of strategic campaigns that won civil
rights and women’s rights; the arts of listening, asking questions
to achieve clarity and understanding, cultivating empathy and mutual
communication; the skills of disciplined resolution of conflict and
recognizing verbal and advertising manipulation. As Gandhi avowed,
“If peace schooling were taken as seriously as military schooling,
our world would be a much different place.”

 

Active Bystanders

Western Massachusetts has a proven model of learning peace skills, the
Active Bystanders’ Training, offered by Quabbin Mediation located in
Orange, MA. ([link removed]
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Among many who have enrolled in the training are students in grades
8-12 in both public and private schools.  Those trained gain insight
and skills needed if they decide to act when they witness something
they think is unfair, or wrong, or troubling.  The training prompts
participants to recognize those who create harmful situations, those
who are the targets and those who witness it as bystanders. They
discuss what inhibits bystanders who stay silent and then guide
participants to create action plans to overcome their silence.  The
training encourages them to examine what’s needed to become active
in addressing the harm in the situation - moral courage, inclusive
caring, responsibility for others, reciprocity - and assists
participants to discover their constructive power.  Lastly,
participants are supported in developing a variety of intervention
techniques, with the goal of analyzing situations in the future and
acting when harm doing is encountered.

 

What if all our schools required this training in skilled, non-violent
conflict resolution as a form of peace literacy and moral awareness
for their students. Would that not be one of the most useful education
skills for life that we could give them?  Good for them and good for
the society they inhabit and will impact.

 

Peace literacy correlates with larger conflicts at the country and
international level.  “Waging war is not an innate
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part of human nature…we are just as likely to be peaceful as we are
to be violent,” concludes author of _The End of War _John Horgan. 
War is relatively new, beginning about 10-12,000 years ago and is “a
very recent cultural innovation and...not something that then became
permanent in all human societies.”  Further, societies that were
once extremely warlike are now peaceful (for example, the countries of
Scandinavia and the tribes of the Iroquois; Ireland, Austria, and
Switzerland are neutral Western European countries, not members of
NATO; and Costa Rica has eliminated its military in a hemispheric
region where conflict has been rife).  

 

Post-World War II surveys found that the majority of US soldiers on
the battlefield in World War II did not fire their weapons or fired
them so as to miss a human target out of a resistance to killing.
 With these findings, a shocked Army command revamped its training
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firing rates by combat soldiers in future wars. In training, they used
human-like targets, de-personified the enemy, and engendered altruism
in killing for one’s fellow soldiers. But with boosted rates of
shooting other human beings in combat as documented in Vietnam, PTSD
increased in soldiers from the moral injury of killing other human
beings.

 

Experts who have studied the history of violent and non-violent
responses to conflict have found that violence is not the most
effective nor successful way to resolve country-level disputes. 
Recent landmark research by Dr. Erica Chenoweth and Dr. Maria Stephan
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has found that “Nonviolence is more likely than violence to defeat a
militarily superior adversary.” Their study of movements from 1900
through 2006 to overthrow dictatorships, expel foreign occupations or
achieve self-determination revealed that _nonviolent resistance
campaigns were more than twice as successful as violent insurrections
with the same goals_. And the trend is increasing even in extremely
brutal authoritarian conditions.

 

A final piece of wisdom about sustaining peace following violent
conflict comes from one who gained her expertise through innovative
conflict resolution and persistent peace building. Liberian Nobel
Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee
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brought Christian and Muslim women together in her country to end its
vicious 14-year-long civil war. According to Gbowee, interventions and
sanctions to maintain or restore international peace and security have
been most effective when they are applied as part of a comprehensive
strategy encompassing peacekeeping, peace building and peacemaking. 

 

“While the dynamics of conflict are widely publicized, the civic
foundations of creating and maintaining peace are far less articulated
or understood,” says Leymah Gbowee.   “Stopping a war does not
bring lasting peace. Whether done though community organizing,
expressing dissent, teaching peace and nonviolence, or prioritizing
more basic issues of gender equality and environmental protection,
peacebuilding is now an urgent necessity.

 

Coming full circle, what if all our schools required training in
skilled, non-violent conflict resolution as a form of peace literacy
and moral awareness for their students. Would that not be one of the
most useful education skills for life that we could give them?  Good
for them and good for the society they inhabit and will impact.

 

_[PAT HYNES, a retired Professor of Environmental Health, from Boston
University, is a board member of the Traprock Center for Peace and
Justice and a member of Women’s International League for Peace and
Freedom.  Her new book, Hope, But Demand Justice
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is available from Haley’s Publishing.]_

* Peace education
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* children
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* Violence
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* gun violence
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* guns
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* war
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* peace
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* war and peace
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