… EDUCATION FOR PEACE …

An article from Education International

The third meeting of the Pedagogical Movement renewed the cohesion and agenda for the future of education in Latin America, with a plan to strengthen the influence of the trade union movement on public policies.

The meeting was held in San José, Costa Rica, between 1 and 3 December, and was attended by 500 people from 18 countries and 34 education trade unions in Latin America, as well as international guests from the United States, Norway, France and Sweden.

Hugo Yasky, Chairman of the Regional Committee of Education International for Latin America, indicated that the path that the Pedagogical Movement has to embark on represents a new stage  in which all trade unions have to assess the school experience together with the teaching experience and practice, in step with the social struggle and movements. “We have to advance to include other social sectors in the practice, move forward and seek a common cause with representatives from sectors involved in the grass-roots movement of the peoples of Latin America. This construction of alliances is key,” Yasky argued.

The declaration which resulted from the meeting cited the Pedagogical Movement as a platform for meeting and collective construction, determined to embody a contrasting vision of society in the field of education to that which is imposed by the dominant force, by the economic, media, financial and military power.

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(click here for the French version of this article or here for the Spanish version)

What is the relation between peace and education?

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Against the commercialisation and privatisation of education

One of the key themes of the meeting that the affiliated organisations of EI debated concerned the strategies used by multinationals to privatise education. Thus, Antonio Olmedo, researcher at the University of Roehampton in the UK, illustrated the topic with his lecture “The Education privatisation and commercialisation process.” He analysed the approach of large companies to impose their mercantile proposals on governments, thereby contributing to insecurity about the quality of education and teaching. “We have to think of other solutions, because neoliberalism is like a chameleon and is more regulated than the public sector itself,” he reassured.

Similarly, Professor Luiz Fernandes Dourado, of the Federal University of Goiás, Brazil, underscored that privatisation is a sophisticated process and, as a result, leads to the weakening of the trade union movement and breaks with democratic management in schools. This runs counter to the vision of the Latin American Educational Movement, which sees education as a social right.

Inspiration behind the international campaign

David Edwards, Deputy General Secretary of Education International, pointed out that the new worldwide campaign conducted by his organisation against the business of education promoted by multinational corporations and multilateral organisations drew inspiration from Latin America. The campaign is a new tool to defend public education and to show the real intentions behind privatisation.

“At the Ottawa Congress, we were instructed to launch a campaign against the privatisation of education and to unmask those behind it. We started the campaign to analyse what is happening in other parts of the world. In education, the world market amounts to more than 3 billion and the governments in certain countries are facilitating access to this ‘booty’ for private groups. We are trying to show citizens what these multinationals are really doing,” Mr Edwards said. 

(Thank you to Janet Hudgins, the CPNN reporter for this article.)

EDUCATION FOR PEACE .

An article from Aqui Acontece (translated by CPNN)

The Commissions of Culture and Education of the House of Representatives today (8 October) held a public hearing to discuss educational experiences focused on culture of peace. The debate was suggested by Jandira Feghali (Communist Party of Brazil – Rio de Janeiro) and Aliel Machado (Communist Party of Brazil – Paraná ).

Click on photo to enlarge

Jandira Feghali says there is a culture of “systemic violence” in schools in Brazil. “Children, adolescents and adults suffer daily from direct violence (assault, bullying, etc.) and indirect violence (lack of school material conditions and surroundings),” she says.

The congresswoman recalls that culture of peace issues are already widely promoted by international bodies like the United Nations and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

“In Brazil, Peace studies has emerged in various universities, generating quality arguments, and dozens of cities have developed everyday projects of education for peace, generating changes in the focus of coping with violence by learning nonviolence or peace, “said Mrs.

The parliamentarian also quotes the National Education Plan (PNE), which provides policies to combat violence in schools, “including the development of actions aimed at training educators to detect the signs of the causes of violence, such as domestic and sexual violence, favoring the adoption of adequate measures to promote the construction of a culture of peace and a school environment with security for the community. ”

Representative Aliel Machado says that even with that provision in the PNE, it is necessary to deepen the discussion and propose “effective actions and long-term in schools as part of their planning and daily school practices”. “Schools should incorporate daily practices of education for peace,” he suggests.

(click here for the original Portuguese version of this article)

Peace Studies in School Curricula, What would it take to make it happen around the world?

Guests invited to the debate included:

– The special advisor to the Ministry of Education, Helena Singer;

– coordinator for the implementation of prevention actions for public safety of the Department of Policies, Programs and Projects of the Ministry of Justice, Priscilla Oliveira;

– Professor of the Department of Education and the Program of Graduate Studies in Education of the Brazilian Federal University of Ceará (UFC), Kelma Socorro Alves Lopes de Matos;

– Professor at the Federal University of Bahia (UFB) and founder and director of the National Institute of Education for Peace and Human Rights (Inpaz), Feizi Masrour Milani;

– Professor of the State University of Ponta Grossa (UEPG-PR) and coordinator of the Center for Studies and Teacher Training in Education for Peace and Coexistence of UEPG, Nei Alberto Salles Filho; and

– The founder of the Organization for Relational Intelligence and Master in Social Psychology at the Psychology Institute of the University of São Paulo (USP), and visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara (USA), João Roberto de Araújo.

.. EDUCATION  FOR PEACE ..

An article from Canal Institucional de Colombia (translated by CPNN)

Besides supporting the peace agreements being negotiated in Havana, the Colombian society needs to unlearn all the negative forms of the inherited relationship of conflict and to learn to work collectively with new sensibilities, emotions, feelings, narrative, language, attitudes and actions. Without this, it will be impossible to build leadership required for peace.

trailer for the television program

This is the theme of the dialogue between the President of the Republic, Juan Manuel Santos Calderon and three teachers, experts in peace education, invited by the Institutional Channel for the fifth chapter of the series’s “Conversations in peace”, Sunday 27 September at 8:00 PM. The program can also be viewed online at www.canalinstitucional.tv

The dialogue participants

The participants are Maria Teresa Ramirez Cardona, Master of Education and Pedagogy; Amada Benavides, president of the School of Peace Foundation and consultant to the Global Campaign for Education for Peace; and Marieta Quintero, PhD and Post Doctoral Fellow of Social Sciences, author of “The School as a Territory for Peace” and national coordinator of the Peace Education Collective, which brings together 45 public and private institutions.

What needs to be unlearned

We are challenged to unlearn the habits of vertical and imposed leadership, seeing things as black and white, unwanted processes of the settlement of territories and the use of resources; relations of exclusion and stigmatization, discrimination against victims of the conflict and demobilized ex-combatants, and stereotypes about the values ​​and lifestyles of indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombian communities.

As the President said, we need to unlearn and to banish from our bodies negative feelings such as anger, to give up all practices that dehumanize the other as well as expressions like “rats” and “terrorists” by which we have called the “enemies” during the civil war.

What needs to be learned

We are challenged to learn outrage against atrocities, to avoid imposing dogmas or visions of society and culture, to reconstructed our historical memory, to decide collectively to take action for the common interest, to direct ourselves towards a political solution of the conflict, to value informed conversations as the social practice of citizen participation and to manage our emotions and feelings, which can be learned just as we can learn math, English or biology.

No less important is to learn to reinvent the environments, programs and educational tools of schools for the children who return from the zones of war, or for communities where victims and perpetrators live side by side, where the processes of coexistence, forgiveness and reconciliation are urgent matters.

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(Click here for the original Spanish version of this article)

What is happening in Colombia: Is peace possible?

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The practice of tolerance seems simple, but it is not. If it is done badly or misunderstood, tolerance can injure personal autonomy, encourage complicit silences, trigger perverse mechanisms of self-protection, dismiss politics as a means to resolve conflicts and homogenize and stultify the ways of thinking and acting.

In short, we need to move from teaching the brain to teaching the heart, emotions, feelings, perceptions or feelings of everyone, children and adults, teachers and pupils, governors and governed, every day, in all spaces, times and circumstances, with new narratives, with no exclusions, recognizing and respecting difference, diversity and pluralism.

Law for the Teaching of Peace

For these and other purposes the new law for the teaching of peace has been conceived and promulgated, whose legal implementation will begin in January 2016. The dialogue participants expressed some dissatisfaction and fears but also highlighted some benefits derived from its promulgation and appropriation.

Dissatisfaction because, in their opinion, the design process for the law did not involve all the stakeholders in the education system and for that reason many of the lessons that have been learned in schools and by teachers in areas marked by conflict have been ignored. Instead, the standards have established from above, without other approaches .

They feel there is no articulation with the learning of citizenship skills, citizenship training and education for human rights and many feel frustrated because there has not been a prior process of training for its implementation.

However, they acknowledge that the law for the teaching of peace has provided a context for reflection about the role of the school, debate about programs and educational tools and has led people to imagine new learning environments and pedagogical processes of peace education. What is remarkable, they say, is the growing interest about peace education in the world of the university and in academic sectors.

National Encounter on Education for Peace

To facilitate the exchange of knowledge on peace education, formal and informal, on October 1 and 2 in Bogotá, there will be a national meeting involving professionals of various disciplines, as well as grassroots and social and community organizations to develop pedagogical processes for building a culture of peace.

The meeting draws on the findings and recommendations from various different groups, collectives and platforms who have worked for more than a decade on issues of human rights education, education for democracy and citizenship, education for coexistence, conflict resolution and other issues related to peace education.

The aim is to coordinate these efforts and create a National Agenda for Peace Education, which can help overcome the various forms of direct, structural and cultural violence and allow the establishment of a culture of peace, that goes beyond ceasefires and peace agreements, ie, peace with social justice, promoting human rights, advancing democracy, solidarity and responsibility.
 
You can watch “Conversations in Peace” on Sunday at 8 pm on the Institutional TV Channel and via streaming on the Internet at www.canalinstitucional.tv

You are invited to join our Twitter account @InstitucionalTV, using the hashtags #ConversemosEnPaz and #ConversemosenlaPublicaRTVC