Peace education for an equitable and sustainable world

Abstract

Peace is not only the epicenter of the global geopolitics but it has also been one of the most consistent and cherished desires of mankind in every époque. Violence as a discursive method and a mouthpiece of antagonistic epistemologies and hierarchies of value, from youth/gender violence to international warfare, designates peace an imperative task for today’s education. With the aim to synthesize an interpretive instrument for a co-existing, interdependent, and complex system of peace concepts, this paper (1) models an ecology of four peace conceptualizations: Negative peace, Positive peace, Homeostatic peace, Futuristic peace; (2) situates these conceptualizations within peace education and SDGs discourses; and (3) provides theoretical structure for integrating peace and peace education studies in the fields of comparative-international and sustainability education. This theoretical analysis is based on the premise that the purpose, content and scope of peace education for an equitable and sustainable world greatly depend on a concept of peace in the minds of education stakeholders.

Introduction

The theme “Improving Education for a More Equitable World” of the 2023 Comparative and International Education Society conference is both thought-provoking and timely. The armed conflict in Europe and its ensuing global crises in food and energy security have only exacerbated the socioeconomic and political instabilities of the pandemic. The world we contemplate today seems to move in opposite direction of the global agenda-action for a more equitable and sustainable world. The humanity might well be witnessing the end of a romanticized globalization and a beginning of a brave new era of balkanization, a world divided into hard blocks. In this context, peace and education for peace constitute an important if not the most important inquiry cluster in the field of education. Furthermore, peace remains a global imperative in its own right in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (UN, 2015). The present paper offers a theoretical frame cum discussion on peace and education for peace in the fields of comparative and international education, and sustainability education. For the purpose of this analysis, the terms ‘peace education’ and ‘education for peace’ are used interchangibly troughout the paper.

Peace is not only the epicenter of the global geopolitics but it has also been one of the most consistent and cherished desires of mankind in every époque. Violence as a discursive method and a mouthpiece of antagonistic epistemologies and hierarchies of value, from youth/gender violence to international warfare, designates peace an imperative task for today’s education. With the aim to synthesize an interpretive instrument for co-existing, interdependent, and complex system of peace concepts without identifying the fittest or embracing any particular one, this paper (1) models an ecology of peace conceptualizations; (2) situates these conceptualizations within peace education and SDGs discourses; and (3) provides a theoretical structure for integrating peace and peace education studies in the fields of comparative-international and sustainability education. This theoretical analysis is based on the premise that the purpose, content and scope of peace education greatly depend on a concept of peace in the minds of education stakeholders.

It would be inaccurate to say that the global aspiration for peace has been barren. Through political negotiations and public education of diverse kinds, the international community has effectively developed pro-peace organizations (e.g., the League of Nations) and regional/local movements toward peace. Such actions are not new in history; they have lexically been recorded as ‘Pacifism’ (Eng) ‘Pacifismo’ (Spa) in the Latin heritage, and ‘Irenismo’ (Spa, Ita) or ‘Irénisme’ (Fr) from its Greek root εἰρήνη (eiréne). They consistently sought recognition and concord among groups of people, openness and acceptance others (Park, 2009).

The paper discusses different concepts of peace under the assumption that every concept is linked to a moral philosophy in its political and religious dimensions. As such, each concept of peace has an intrinsic dimension (e.g., how a person perceives a stranger), as well as an extrinsic dimension (e.g., acquaintance with a stranger). The paper is organized by describing, analyzing, and discussing a concept of peace followed by an outline of the corresponding idea of education for peace. The four concepts, which are analyzed and discussed in this paper are: Negative peace, Positive peace, Homeostatic peace, and Futuristic peace.

Negative peace

The first concept is negative peace, and it is as concise as the absence or avoidance of war. It is an immediately apparent and simple concept, yet it has been the most common and widespread one in the context of international relations and geopolitics (Montoro, 1986). Blanket rejection or refusal of war, however, does not warrant a sustainable peace since some wars are considered justifiable if not necessary (e.g., defending against an invasion) (Walzer, 2006). Furthermore, there is a score of classic and modern discourses that assign positive values to war, that is, war as a way to achieve justice and, not without paradox, peace. Chinese Antiquity’s Sun Tzu considered war as an art and a way to rule whereas the best way of winning is to defeat without fighting (2003). In the Western Antiquity, Heraclitus considered war as the origin of all extant things and the essence of justice. Machiavelli regarded war as a supreme principle of politics in the Middles Ages (2010). In the Modernity, Hegel considered war as a judgement of God and the ultimate recourse of rulers when they are unable to understand each other. In the East, Mao, perhaps by emulating military writings by Trotsky and Engels, viewed war as the highest form for advancing revolutionary power (Montoro, 1986).

The passive character of the negative peace concept makes it inherently insufficient, for instance, an absence of war does not imply social stability and well-being. A peace education under this concept would be focusing on the prevention of violent struggle for power, resources and ideologies (Katz, 1965). It is under a comparable definition of peace that Delors and others from UNESCO (1996) outlined their Learning to Live Together as a pillar or fundamental principle for reshaping education and suggested a teaching non-violence to eliminate the possibility of self-destruction that mankind faced in the 20^th century. This account of peace prescribes an education that aims at the coexistence of people easing out multilateral differences, disagreements, emotional/physical reactions, hard convictions on social/global hierarchical structure while discouraging what Tönnies calls Kürwille, that is, “rational or arbitrary or calculating will” (2001, p. 96). These are to be countered with rational accord instead of physical struggle.

Under the negative peace concept, peace education would instill in learners an anti-war and nonviolence sentiments and attitudes. The related pedagogies would require balancing facts and memories, which “help students understand the love–hate relationship people maintain with war and the forces that manipulate their attitudes” (Noddings, 2012, p. 141). Extrinsically, the related peace education could also aim at collective pacifist movements such as anti-war activism. Delors’ Report suggested a double learning process: “gradual discovery of others,” i.e. a mutual recognition, and perhaps a more challenging “experience of shared purposes throughout life” (Delors & UNESCO, 1996, p. 92). More importantly, an education for peace with a negative concept tends to develop critical thinking skills in learners so as to allow them to grasp the many nuances of peace including the incredibly complex process of justification of war and the inextricable reality of just war.

Under the negative peace concept, a few targets of the UN Agenda 2030, SDGs Goal 16 “Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions” (UN, 2015) needs to be incorporated into peace education curricula: Significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates (16.1); end abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children (16.2); and, since financial might is a ‘hard power’ (Nye, 2004), significantly reduce illicit financial and arms flows, strengthen the recovery and return of stolen assets and combat all forms of organized crime (16.4).

Positive peace

A second concept of peace is the positive peace. A fourth century Neoplatonist in a hugely belligerent Mediterranean Africa who surely experienced in person the evil of social chaos cum violence, Augustine of Hippo (1958) defined peace as tranquillitas ordinis (Lat. ‘tranquility of order’). According to Augustine, when everything and everyone is in the right place and time, and performs what they are meant to do, then the resulting state of affairs is to be called peace.

This positive peace concept might appear archaic at first sight, but it actually remains refreshingly current because its main tenet is relational and dialogical. It includes not only a social and political well-being but also the state of a healthy natural environment. A modern re-interpretation could be as follows: A situation of poverty or dilapidated state of material well-being of people almost always lead to conflicts among them, therefore, such situations should be alleviated or eradicated through the positive peace and its means.

Hence, achieving the positive peace requires, among others, general social progress through community development; an excellent system of justice; fair governance, not always but usually with the rule of law; eunomy-security binary; and, a sustainable environment. Peace education under this definition would intrinsically foster autonomous and self-reliant developers of the social-whole with rationality, freedom and capabilities (Sen, 2002; Sen & Universiteit van Amsterdam., 1985). The related pedagogies would be skill-oriented, particularly those soft skills that transform workplaces into a more flexible, less corrupt and amicable, hence welcomed by a globalizing world. Extrinsically, peace education under the archetype of the positive peace emphasizes grooming citizens with Functionalist assumptions, so to speak, on the society and individuals, construction of a public so as to make them to effectively and efficiently partake in social and political life (Dewey, 1927/1954; Dewey & Archambault, 1964).

Under the positive peace concept, higher number of targets of the Goal 16 “Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions” of the UN Agenda 2030 (UN, 2015) could be incorporated into peace education curriculum: Promoting the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all (16.3); substantially reducing corruption and bribery in all their forms (16.5); development of effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels (16.6); ensuring responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels (16.7); broadening and strengthening the participation of developing countries in the institutions of global governance (16.8); providing legal identity for all, including birth registration (16.9); ensuring public access to information and protecting fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements (16.10); strengthening relevant national institutions, including through international cooperation, for building capacity at all levels, in particular in developing countries, to prevent violence and combat terrorism and crime (16.A); and, promoting and enforcing non-discriminatory laws and policies for sustainable development a robust and fair system of justice, as well as social institutions (16.B).

Concerning the corresponding peace education pedagogies, it would be important to discuss with learners their views on the complexities inherent to the positive peace. For example, although positive peace is a slower and harder pathway to avoid war, it might be the best and the most sustainable one; thus, it could prompt learners to answer the question, “Is positive peace the ideal way of achieving the negative peace?” Learners' understanding that the positive peace achieved in centuries can be quickly destroyed by armed conflicts may lead them to realize that there is nothing more crucial for civilizations to cherish and promote the positive peace.

Homeostatic peace

A third concept proposed here is the homeostatic peace. Under this concept, peace is viewed as a state of equilibria among international powers, a status quo with pull and push maneuvers over a limited amount of power keep a balance—homeostasis—among contestants. Under this account, peace is not achieved by a ‘common effort towards’ but, rather, it reaches an equilibrium vis-à-vis.

Peace appears thus as a system with entropies but not entirely impossible to sustain. Nationalism and militarism are not incompatible with the homeostatic peace. The kind of peace among international superpowers with nuclear arsenals is conceived in this manner. The small number of ‘G-club’ states do not usually welcome a new superpower because they see it as a risk to the incumbent power balance. Among the 'G-club' participats there is an unsettling mixture of sense of superiority as well as fear of others. The most common currency of the homeostatic peace is a compromise and its main method, negotiation. Education with this notion of peace would intrinsically foster self-assertiveness and nationalism with utilitarian and pragmatic values. Extrinsically, such peace education would be aligned with maintenance or growth of the ‘power here,’ if needed, even at the expense of others and the overall peace.

Under the same paradigm, the logics of homeostasis are also applied to the relationship between nation-states and the natural environment. Given the rapid speed of exploitation of natural resources by most of the nations, there exists a tacit ideology that the Nature will somehow recover its original state by itself, and resources offered by the nature are for grabs by the powerful (Hickel, 2020). Under the homeostatic peace notion, the Nature is only ancillary to national and entrepreneurial interests to achieve balance of power with other states.

Arguably, the homeostatic peace is one of the most prevalent ideology of modern nation-states. Its main tenet is that only balance of power can achieve avoidance of war, that is, a state of the negative peace. The homeostatic peace is, according to this political narrative, the only realistic and feasible path to the negative peace. A peace education under this concept alone is likely to be embedded in the curricula of a score of subjects such as civic education, moral education and, in some countries, patriotic education.

Futuristic peace

A fourth and the last concept to be considered in this paper is the futuristic peace. This concept is eminently intrinsic, and with eschatological (Greek root ‘eschatos,’ beyond the present time) and spiritual connotations. This construct has a sine qua non condition of an inner and personalized attitude and disposition toward peace. Hence, it could also be called the dispositional peace. In this view peace- any peace- starts from within, with diverse mental and spiritual states such as ‘peace of conscience,’ ‘inner peace’ and ‘peace with one-self.’

Furthermore, under the paradigm of the futuristic peace, human beings are considered as wayfarers in the world where we will perhaps never see a day of total peace. As the narrative continues, it becomes increasingly demanding and all-encompassing—only inner concord and the good will of all people could bring an authentic peace. As the term indicates, the futuristic peace can only be materialized in future whereas future is essentially undetermined or, according to Protestant ethics, totally predestined. The futuristic peace can only be constructed first in conscience within oneself and, only then, to project outwardly and upwardly into important others: Family circles then toward the larger community and all the way to the global community.

Peace education under this paradigm would emphasize intrinsic character formation, fostering excellence in character (Gk. αρετή), and stressing specific values (i.e., axiology), for example, struggle against one’s own lowliness or ignorance. The futuristic peace is thus about a state of the beyond, hence, it is also an eschatological project. Extrinsically, the futuristic peace calls for a peace education curriculum and pedagogy that would articulate and implement learning and practicing virtues of justice, temperance and fortitude moderated by the Golden Virtue, practical wisdom or phronesis. Medieval theology in the West categorized them together as the Cardinal Virtues (Pieper, 1965). Under the futuristic peace frame, a peaceful community can only be built upon efforts and continual practice of virtuous acts such as mutual care, solidarity, compassion, forgiveness, and the very basic openness to dialogue that makes people more humane, whose identity is considered to be construed via dialogue and shared narratives (Park & Bae, 2017).

Discussion

The suggested four concepts of peace are not mutually exclusive. Furthermore, none of them is perfect and all-encompassing. Nor they constitute the only conceivable notions of peace—consider for instance ‘social peace,’ ‘interior peace’ and ‘profound/superficial peace.’ Instead, the foregoing four concepts together constitute an ecology of peace conceptualizations.

Except for the futuristic peace, all other concepts of peace suggested in this paper are eminently extrinsic. The negative, positive and homeostatic peace concepts call for dauntingly urgent tasks: Reduction of weapons in the world; acceptance of a greener Planet Earth as a separate and equal stakeholder of its own (Savelyeva, 2019a) without presuming that the Earth would easily recover by itself from the Anthropocene (Savelyeva, 2017); elimination of poverty; and even an active degrowth, a “planned down scaling of energy and resource use to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a safe, just and equitable way” (Hickel, 2020, p. 31).

Peace education is thus as multifaceted and heterogeneous as concepts of peace it holds. A peace education follows its respective concept of peace. An example of such a connection is the relationship between peace education and Jihad. The latter is an inner condition for peace in the Islam world, and the comparable prescriptions are also present in the Christianity and Buddhism (DeWijesekera, 1960). For these major religions, the struggle against one’s own follies and worldly attachments (what else could these be but over power, ideologies and resources?) is a pre-condition to be true to oneself and to achieve peace. For peace education in these religious traditions, the homeostatic peace and futuristic peace concepts might be perfectly compatible if not complementary. Peace education in major religious traditions also rely on the negative peace or positive peace concepts. Students could be suggested to consider, for example, the foundation of hospitals during the Crusades as well as an undeniable fact that great religions have occasionally been both cause and alleviation of armed conflicts.

It is also important to note that the League of Nations, later on the United Nations (UN), was founded to prevent world wars, that is, under the discourse of the negative peace. Its founding spirit is being superseded by concerns for and prescriptions of the positive peace. The UN awakens public concern for equal opportunities, general access to education, gender equality, equity over equality, and sustainable development (UN, 2015). This is clearly reflected in the 2030 UN Agenda and all its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which “broaden the concept of sustainable development to include the more-than-human of this Earth” (Savelyeva, 2019b, p. 3).

A score of researchers have long been advocating the harmony among stakeholders of peace, including the Nature as a stakeholder of its own (Sachs, 2012; Savelyeva, 2017, 2019b). The idea that ecological movements can no longer be separated from the peace-related movements and negotiations among nation-states suggests that any types of peace education need to consider that a chief source of struggle and violence among people have historically been resources, power and ideologies (Katz, 1965). Thus, amidst a quicker than predicted climate change, environmental education and education for sustainability, are a sizable and inextricable part in any wholistic peace education initiative. Consequently, the curriculum of the related sustainability-oriented education for peace needs to include global actions to prevent conflicts over natural resources, that is, along the conceptual groundings of the futuristic peace.

Paradoxically, however, some efforts to achieve peace including some forms of peace education might justify the use of violent means, such as the discourses of post-colonialism. Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks (1952/1986) (Fanon, 1952/1986) triggered the decolonization movement in the 1960s against French colonialism. He called it ‘authentic disalienation’ (Fanon, 1952/1986, p. 5) through which locals’ identity, psyche and culture mediated by language are to be restored. This idea was further developed in his The Wretched of the Earth (Fanon, 1963). The latter starts with a chapter on the violence as a social, cultural and political currency in colonial territories. Since culture, economy and polity are entangled, violence initiated and instrumentalized by colonizers takes various forms among which cultural discrimination and dehumanization (alienation) outstand. It is within and through the violence that a particular type of new knowledge (language and humanity) with its racial and cultural hierarchical structure, engenders a new human—the colonial subject. This one-way violence does not last forever, however. Fanon argues that the colonizers’ violence is met with a counter-violence of the colonized in the manner of collective catharsis. This kind of violence would be as justifiable as a ‘just war’ discussed earlier.

Currently, the mainstream peace education scholarship mainly focus on the immediacies, in time and place, of still-hot conflicts. The works and research in the field are commonly conducted in and for refugee camps, international agencies, tent schools, truth commissions and reconciliation/truce centers. Despite these immediacy foci, the related scholarship and research point out the need for changing the contents, pedagogies, structures, and systems of peace education (Bajaj & Hantzopoulos, 2016). At the same time, peace education theories do not offer much of longitudinal curricular and pedagogic strategies (Noddings, 2012). Much of peace education efforts are to denounce abuses, suffering, uncertainties, and memory of violence in its multiple forms, and less about long-term peace building.

Harris (2004) argues, for example, that any type of peace education should teach the following postulates: Roots of violence; alternatives to violence; different forms of violence; contextually sensitive nature of peace; and, the fact that conflict is omnipresent. Notwithstanding, there are efforts to come up with an integrative model of peace education by incorporating different worldviews and cultural diversity (Danesh, 2006). There is also attempts to consider peace education as a higher education research cluster for post-structural critique and in defense of structural and cultural violence denounced by thinkers such as Paulo Freire (Bajaj, 2008; Bajaj & Hantzopoulos, 2016; Kester & Cremin, 2017; Trifonas & Wright, 2013).

We argue that including theories and practices of justice in peace education curricula and pedagogy is essential, because justice and peace are inseparable as there is no positive peace without justice. The idea of building open and fair societies (Popper, 1965/2013; Rawls & Kelly, 2001) implies that justice is introduced and inculcated through education, not only as a personal and social virtue, but also as a pre-condition of peace. However, a curriculum and pedagogy of justice cannot rely solely on the concept of negative peace, because absence of war does not and cannot guarantee any of the three forms of justice, namely legal, communicative and distributive justice (Pieper, 1957).

Justice as virtue is a main task of peace education under the concept of futuristic or dispositional peace. Furthermore, any kinds of international arbitrations and negotiations could not be explicated without peace education with the concept of homeostatic peace. At the same time, the most important progress in peace education is more likely to occur under the concept of positive peace however daunting the task of equitable progress may be. There has never been a total attainment of any of known international or millennial goals in these aspects of peace, except the elimination of Smallpox.

The link between peace education and justice from the perspectives of law is the last discussion thread of this paper, and we greatly owe to an exceptional work by Professor José Delgado published by the Spanish Instituto de Estudios Jurídicos y Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (1966). We share the Delgado's aspiration that peace education under the concept of positive peace, i.e. tranquility of order, needs to include a curriculum deciphering relationship between law and peace. Law is a crucial means to achieve peace albeit it is not the only one. The attainment of peace through law is reified by regulatory and procedural mechanisms it generates and its core mission is that of establishing a ‘relational order’ in the society and among societies. The type of peace attainable through law can be referred as ‘social peace’ (Delgado, 1966). According to Delgado (1966), social peace itself is an abstract concept, and it is an amalgam of all other kinds of peace, such as laboral, religious, and state. Whereas the individual kind of peace is neither an immediate/primary goal, nor a directly achievable goal through law. Overall, any kind of peace, even individual peace represents an important goal of law because peace is one of greatest common good. It is achievable by establishing a ‘juridical order’ through law. In other words, the direct goal of law is justice, and not peace itself. Peace in this regard is considered to be the desired consequence of a social order that depends mostly on the ‘juridical order.’

Conclusion

This article is a response to the call for papers of the 2023 Comparative and International Education Society conference with the theme “Improving Education for a More Equitable World.” In light of its leitmotif of equity and educational improvement, the paper recognizes the continuos efforts of researchers in the field of comparative and international education, who project, describe, problematize, envision and utter normative statements for peace and an ideal social order. Yet, education systems around the world usually offer curricula and pedagogies that are rather vulnerable to massive social disruptions. Pandemics and wars can shatter plans, systems and outcome of education that took decades to build up.

At the core of such challenges arguably lies the problématique of human relationship and co-existence with oneself, others, and the Nature. “L’enfer, c’est les autres” (Sartre, 1955) and “Homo lupus homni” (Hobbes, 1983) are but reminders of the challenge of human co-existence and harmonious relationship. To address this problématique and build a more equitable world, implementing wholistic peace education curricula and pedagogies are paramount. Peace education requires, we argue, a multidimensional understanding of peace and international efforts to achieve it. Yet, peace education has become more complex and challenging than those three pages devoted to the Learning to live together in the Delors’ Report (1996).

Consequently, the present paper offers a theoretical frame for peace education studies by modelling an ecology of peace conceptualizations. The four concepts of peace identified and deliberated in this paper-Negative peace, Positive peace, Homeostatic peace, and Futuristic peace- are not mutually exclusive but, instead, they are co-existing and inter-dependent notions. In responding to the conference theme, we argue that there is no equitable world without peace and there cannot be global peace without broader equity and civil order under good laws—eunomy. Hence, the present theoretical framework of peace education also provides grounding for the UN SDGs. The framework is relevant not only to the SDG 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, but to all seventeen SDGs and their respective targets. It is our hope that the ecology of peace conceptualizations and the related discussions of peace education and SDGs discussed herein will inspire researchers and educators to broaden their peace-mindset for building more just, equitable, and sustainable world.