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Paths to
Peace Bringing pacifism to schools
Editors note: Colman McCarthy, former columnist for
The Washington Post, is a pioneer in the field of peace education. He
has developed and taught courses on nonviolence at the high school and college
level since 1982 and is the co-founder of the Center for Teaching Peace in
Washington. The following is an excerpt from his latest book, Id
Rather Teach Peace (Orbis).
By COLMAN McCARTHY
By rough estimate, Ive had more than 5,000 students since
that first high school class in 1982. Ive felt blessed. With all of them,
from the brainiest third-year law students on their way to six figure beginning
salaries to 14-year-old illiterates locked up for hustling drugs, I emphasized
one theme: Alternatives to violence exist and, if individuals and nations can
organize themselves properly, nonviolent force is always stronger, more
enduring and, assuredly, more moral than violent force.
Some students opened their minds to this immediately. They
understood Gandhi: Nonviolence is the weapon of the strong. They
believed King: The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but
between nonviolence and nonexistence.
Other students have had doubts that I encouraged them to express.
They did, repeatedly. Nonviolence and pacifism are beautiful theories and
ideals, they said, but in the real world, where muggers and international
despots lurk, lets keep our fists cocked and our bomb bays open.
All I asked of the realists was to think about lifes two
risks: Do you depend on violent force or nonviolent force to create peace? Not
just peace in some vague out there, but peace in our homes where
physical beatings are the leading cause of injury among American women, or
peace in the developing world where some 40,000 children die every day from
preventable diseases, or peace in those parts of the world where more than
40,000 people die every month in some 59 wars or conflicts -- mostly the poor
killing the poor -- or peace where the U.S. Congress gives $900 million a day
to the Pentagon, which is nearly $11,000 a second and four times the Peace
Corps budget for a year.
Literature of peace
At all schools, my course was based on the literature of peace --
the writings of past and current peacemakers. I created my own textbooks --
Solutions to Violence and Strength Through Peace -- that run deep
with essays by Gandhi, Tolstoy, Dorothy Day, Gene Sharp, Jeannette Rankin, Joan
Baez, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Sargent Shriver, Jane Addams, Carol Ascher, Helen
Nearing and Daniel Berrigan, and ranged from nonviolent resistance to the
Holocaust to animal rights. The book was published by the Center for Teaching
Peace, a nonprofit my wife Mavourneen and I began in l985. With generous
foundation support, our work is to help schools at all levels offer courses on
the methods, practitioners, effectiveness and history of nonviolent conflict
resolution. In my classes, essays are read, discussed and debated. My goal was
not to tell students what to think but how to think: gather as much information
as possible about nonviolence, and then either embrace or reject it. I went
with the thought of Peter Kropotkin, the Russian anarchist who advised students
in Mutual Aid: Think about the kind of world you want to live and
work in. What do you need to build that world? Demand that your teachers teach
you that.
The students Ive been with these 20 years are looking for a
world where it becomes a little easier to love and a lot harder to hate, where
learning nonviolence means that we dedicate our hearts, minds, time and money
to a commitment that the force of love, the force of truth, the force of
justice and the force or organized resistance to corrupt power is seen as sane,
and the force of fists, guns, armies and bombs insane.
The other side
Over the years, Ive had suggestions from other teachers to
offer what they call balance in my courses, that I should give
students the other side. Im never sure exactly what that
means. After assigning students to read Gandhi I should have them also read
Carl von Clausewitz? After Martin Luther Kings essay against the Vietnam
War, Colin Powells memoir favoring the Persian Gulf War? After Justice
William Brennan and Thurgood Marshalls views opposing the death penalty,
George W. Bush and Saddam Husseins favoring it? After a womans
account of her using a nonviolent defense against a rapist, the thwarted
rapists side?
What I have surety about is that students come into my classes
already well educated, often overeducated, in the ethic of violence. The
educators? The nations long-tenured cultural faculty: political leaders
who fund wars and send the young to fight them; judges and juries who dispatch
people to death row; filmmakers who script gunplay movies and cartoons; toy
manufacturers marketing action games; parents in war zone homes
where verbal or physical abuse is common; high school history texts that that
tell about Calamity Jane but not Jane Addams, or Daniel Boone but not Daniel
Berrigan.
I cant in conscience teach the other side. Students have
already been saturated with it. No, I say, my course is the other side.
With me, they will have a chance to examine solutions and alternatives to
violence. The course is still well short of offering balance. One semester in
12 or 16 or more years of education is a pittance, not a balance.
Peace education is in its infancy. In 1988, my center gave $15,000
in seed money to a university to create a peace studies program. In the spring
of 2001, a major in peace studies was established, thanks to one professor and
some students who doggedly kept demanding, as Kropotkin counseled. The effort
took 13 years, a speed record in higher education, I was told. In the 1990s, I
needed six years to persuade officials in Montgomery County, Md. -- school
board members, curriculum committees, principals and assorted desk barons -- to
approve my text Solutions to Violence for use in schools, including the
one where I had been volunteering for 12 years. This was a supposedly
enlightened, progressive county. Once a school board member who presented
himself as politically astute said I would do well to come up with another name
besides peace studies. Studies was all right, but
peace might alarm some parents. I envisioned a newspaper headline:
Proposed peace course threatens community stability.
The cycle can be broken
As a lifelong pacifist, my early hunches are regularly confirmed.
Yes, peacemaking can be taught. The literature is large and growing. Yes, the
young are passionately seeking alternatives to violence. Yes, our schools
should be educating as much about peacemakers as peace-breakers. Yes, whether
the killing and harming are done by armies, racists, corporations, polluters,
domestic batterers, street thugs or boardroom thugs, terrorists, schoolyard
bullies, animal exploiters or others in this graceless lot, the cycle of
violence can be broken -- but only if choices are laid out, starting in the
nations 78,000 elementary schools, 31,000 high schools and 3,000
colleges.
In 20 years, Ive seen the issue of violence in the schools
surface as a major public policy debate. Solutions range from metal detectors
and police in the hallways to national conferences on youth violence. Suddenly
we are awash with experts overflowing with opinions and strategies. As a
journalist for 35 years, I dont believe half of what they say, and of the
other half I have grave doubts. As a classroom teacher, and as a pacifist, my
experienced-based belief is that unless we teach our children peace someone
else will teach them violence.
I had a student at the University of Maryland a while back who
wrote a 13-word paper that for both brevity and breadth -- the rarest of
combinations -- has stayed with me: Q: Why are we violent but not
illiterate? A: Because we are taught to read.
This student, an imaginative lad named David Allan who went on to
serve in Teach for America and is now a writer in San Francisco, didnt
know it, but he shared the genius of both Albert Einstein and Mohandas Gandhi.
Einstein wrote: We must begin to inoculate our children against
militarism by educating them in the spirit of pacifism. ... I would teach peace
rather than war, love rather than hate. Gandhi: If we are to reach
real peace in the world, we shall have to begin with the children. And if they
will grow up in their natural innocence, we wont have to struggle, we
wont have to pass fruitless resolutions, but we shall go from love to
love and peace to peace.
Peace in history
- 1909: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP) is formed to fight prejudice and discrimination; W.E.B. duBois,
Ida B. Wells and Mary Terrell are founding members.
- 1914: As World War I begins, the Fellowship of Reconciliation
is founded by a German Lutheran pastor and an English Quaker, who pledge
to keep the bonds of Christian love unbroken across the
frontier.
Resources
Peace Education International 221 Palm Ave. Miami FL
33139 (888) 672-3223 www.peaceeducationintl.com Directed by
Fran Schmidt, the Maria Montessori of childhood peace education, it works with
elementary and middle schools interested in teaching the basics of nonviolent
conflict resolution. It offers a teachers guide, student activity books
and classroom posters.
Little Friends for Peace 4405 29th St. Mount Ranier MD
20712 (301) 927-5474 An organization dedicated to teaching peacemaking
skills to children and families. It offers day camps, workshops, and training
seminars for parishes and schools. It has an excellent library and resources to
order. Internships available.
Center for Teaching Peace 4501 Van Ness St. Washington DC
20016 (202) 537-1372 Founded in 1985, it works with schools and
individuals to begin or expand academic courses on nonviolence in schools at
all levels.
Friends of Peace Pilgrim 7350 Dorado Canyon Rd. Somerset
CA 95684 (530) 620-0333 www.peacepilgrim.org An American sage
who walked her talk -- in sturdy sneakers across the roadways of America --
Peace Pilgrim left behind an educational group that distributes books and films
on the philosophy of nonviolence and pacifism.
Peace Education Foundation 1900 Biscayne Blvd. Miami FL
33132 (800) 749-8838 www.peaceeducation.com More than 5,000
teachers, administrators and education professionals have attended its regional
and on-site training programs in conflict resolution and mediation. It serves
elementary, middle and high schools.
National Peace Foundation 666 Eleventh St. NW Washington
DC 20001 (800) 237-3223 www.nationalpeace.org Efforts include
programs in schools for nonviolence, mediation and conflict resolution.
Playing for Peace c/o Sequoia Bank 1629 K St.
NW Washington DC 20006 (202) 336-7103 Founded in 1999 by Sean Tuohey,
a Catholic University honors graduate and Division III all-American basketball
player, it has established a sports and conflict resolution program in Durban,
South Africa. The purpose is to bring children together in the Durban area --
from all races -- to play basketball in the morning and study conflict
resolution in the afternoon.
National Catholic Reporter, April 26,
2002
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