Peace Culture - Education for peace



Peace Culture

Aim: Stimulate reflection about the characteristics of a society of a culture of peace versus a society of a culture of violence. Furthermore, the exercise will make the students think about what the concept of peace really contains.

Equipment: Pen and paper

Time: 1 – 2 school hours

Level: Middle, youth and advanced

Content:

Divide the class into groups of 5 – 7 people. Half of the groups are given the following task: imagine that you are social anthropologists coming from another planet and you are arriving the earth to do research on different societies. You want to find cultures or societies that rest on peace culture. Make a list over the elements you will look for in these societies that make them peace cultures. Point to visible characteristics.

The other half of the group is social anthropologists searching for cultures of violence. Thus their task is to identify visible characteristics of cultures of violence. The students are given 20-25 minutes to complete the task. Ask one of the students to present their findings for the rest of the class.

The teacher has to make sure that the students are working with a precise and specific approach. For instance it is not enough to say that in a culture of peace human rights are not respected. How does a society look like when human rights are respected? How does it look like when people show each other respect? Visible manifestations of peace culture in society could be few police officers in the streets, police without guns, no high fences outside people’s houses and few locks on the doors. A clear sign of freedom of speech in society would be a wide range of newspapers to choose from in the shops. In the same way, cultures of violence would be characterised by fear and weapons.

Let all the groups present their characteristics for peace cultures and violent cultures before the discussion in the class begins:

Relevant questions as a starting point to the discussion:

- What are the characteristics of a culture of peace?

- What are the characteristics of a culture of violence?

- What is peace? Sometimes peace will mean absence of war, other people would use human rights as a measurement for peace. Is it possible to reach an agreement in the class on a common definition of peace?

- Can a country of conflicts be called a country of peace culture? Are there positive conflicts? In that case, in which way are these conflicts positive?

If you have time, you can look at which of the characteristics of peace culture that exist in your own society.

Source: The idea is from the book by Erik Cleven called: “Human rights – an introduction. Teacher manual.” Humanist Forlag 2000.

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