Peace is not pas­sive; it is an extreme­ly proac­tive force that must be taught and learned. Peace can serve as a par­a­digm for per­son­al and col­lec­tive orga­ni­za­tion. Learn­ing to take bet­ter care of our­selves and our plan­et will fur­ther instill the prin­ci­ples of peace into every­day practices.

“Moth­ers, chil­dren, grown-ups and elder­ly must dream very strong­ly and high­ly, tak­ing the point of view of the heav­ens, of the stars, of the sun, of the moon, of the clouds and of the birds. And our dreams of a peace­ful, weapon­less, beau­ti­ful and good world for all those admit­ted to live on it will come true.” — Robert Muller

A cos­mic per­spec­tive will con­tin­u­al­ly reveal that all peo­ple occu­py one shared envi­ron­ment for which we are all respon­si­ble. To keep in mind of this often for­got­ten truth, edu­ca­tion offers the path to knowl­edge, knowhow, and enlight­en­ment. The process of learn­ing serves to ignite ideas and strength­en com­mu­ni­ties. In this respect, edu­ca­tion­al mod­els con­struct­ed around peace will help estab­lish pos­i­tive rela­tion­ships on local and glob­al scales.

“The deep­est ser­vice that almost any of us can do in peace-build­ing is to real­ly listen.”
— Scil­la Elworthy

A les­son-plan built around learn­ing from sur­vivors of vio­lence is an inte­gral com­po­nent to revi­tal­ize com­mu­ni­ties suf­fer­ing from trau­ma and neglect. Dr. Scil­la Elwor­thy, a three-time Nobel Peace Prize nom­i­nee for her work with Oxford Research Group, is work­ing on tools for cre­at­ing and keep­ing peace in geopo­lit­i­cal con­flict zones through dia­logue and medi­a­tion. Notably, she has worked to devel­op effec­tive dia­logue strate­gies for com­mu­ni­ca­tion between inter­na­tion­al nuclear weapons pol­i­cy-mak­ers and their oppo­nents. Elworthy’s 2017 book, The Busi­ness Plan for Peace: Build­ing a World With­out War, offered twen­ty-five strate­gies for pre­vent­ing war that have worked in the past, and can con­tin­ue to be employed, to pre­vent armed vio­lence world­wide.²⁵ Peace is attain­able, as long as those involved in con­flict under­stand that their con­flict is tem­po­rary. To locate com­mon ground and work toward agree­ments, peo­ple in con­flict must be able to voice their oppo­si­tion, lis­ten, learn from each other’s per­spec­tives, and find their way through con­struc­tive conversation.

For peace to flour­ish, the foun­da­tion­al rela­tion­ships between diverse peo­ple with­in, and between, soci­eties must be sol­id. Cul­ture and edu­ca­tion offer two all-encom­pass­ing areas in which pub­lic engage­ment con­sis­tent­ly requires sta­bil­i­ty to func­tion. Peo­ple are most equipped to build sta­ble rela­tion­ships when they’re feel­ing well and gen­er­al­ly hap­py with the con­di­tions in which they live. Edu­ca­tion offers an are­na in which to cre­ate con­di­tions for hap­pi­ness. In Japan, the Soka Schools sys­tem — devel­oped in the 1970s by Daisaku Ike­da, a Bud­dhist philoso­pher, edu­ca­tor, and author — con­tin­ues the edu­ca­tion­al phi­los­o­phy of Tsunesaburō Makiguchi based on the idea of stu­dents achiev­ing hap­pi­ness through their edu­ca­tion in order to cre­ate val­ue.²⁶ Soka schools range from kinder­gartens through post-grad­u­ate pro­grams. They put increased empha­sis on peace, human rights, sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, and ecol­o­gy. We believe that this inte­gra­tion of envi­ron­men­tal­ism, with empa­thy and the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness, offers a com­pelling approach for glob­al edu­ca­tion­al standards.

“In the final analysis…the main func­tion of edu­ca­tion is to make chil­dren hap­py, ful­filled, uni­ver­sal human beings.” — Robert Muller

The World Core Cur­ricu­lum envi­sions prin­ci­ples for edu­ca­tion that can be adapt­ed to any envi­ron­ment on Earth. Devel­oped by Robert Muller, known as the “father of glob­al edu­ca­tion”, the four strands of the World Core Cur­ricu­lum include: “One­ness with the plan­et”, “Uni­ty with peo­ple”, “Har­mo­ny with self”, and “Evo­lu­tion through time”²⁷. In 1989, Muller was the Lau­re­ate of the Unesco Prize for peace edu­ca­tion. In his accep­tance speech, he spoke of numer­ous dreams for peace edu­ca­tion. Muller’s third dream states, “all schools and uni­ver­si­ties of this Earth will teach peace and non-vio­lence and will become schools and uni­ver­si­ties of peace.”²⁸ We feel that this is the kind of integri­ty of ideas that needs to be imme­di­ate­ly incor­po­rat­ed into edu­ca­tion­al prac­tices to encour­age world­wide social and envi­ron­men­tal responsibility.

To ensure a sus­tain­able future, teach­ing peace and plan­e­tary stew­ard­ship must be an inte­gral com­po­nent to edu­ca­tion. Val­ues of respect, empa­thy, flex­i­bil­i­ty, and a love of learn­ing will be cru­cial to the sup­port of con­flict res­o­lu­tion, from child­hood to more com­plex adult sit­u­a­tions. Find­ing ways to acti­vate the joy in learn­ing will con­tin­u­al­ly facil­i­tate path­ways to peace. In that spir­it, fol­low your pas­sion. Go where curios­i­ty leads. Com­mit to mak­ing sense of what might seem either too com­pli­cat­ed or impos­si­ble to con­ceive. For too long, the idea of “world peace” has seemed out of reach. Yet, if we can main­tain peace­ful rela­tion­ships with­in our homes, schools, work­places, and com­mu­ni­ties, sure­ly we can also extend our per­son­al­ized pro­grams of peace-build­ing to larg­er areas of human civilization.