Procedimientos de trabajo

6.2.2.1 The Need for Peace Education in Schools

Many project workers are concerned about current situations in schools, in which children’s learning and growth are often affected by bullying and conflicts in their daily lives:

‘Because there are bullying and conflicts in the lives of the students in the school, they can’t learn so effectively, they are losing some of their opportunities, because they aren’t fully concentrating on their studies. They have to deal with these emotional things that are getting in their way.’

‘If you have unresolved conflicts either at home or in school or in the community, children don’t achieve their potential because they’re so unhappy with whatever goes wrong at home. So when they come to school, they don’t learn anything because their thoughts are occupied by that.’

‘There are too many conflicts in classroom and playgrounds, which make children’s learning inefficient due to the emotion and disruption involved. When children learn ways of solving conflicts, the classroom becomes a place to learn.’

In particular, one project worker pointed out that children’s behavioural problems are often rooted in their emotional problems:

‘There are many children who have difficulties in dealing with their strong emotions such as short temper, anger, fear, anxiety, frustration and irritation, which are caused by various reasons. Such emotions can be shown as their aggressive, self-centred, destructive or disruptive attitudes in schools. As a consequence, many schools face children’s behavioural problems including bullying, physical fighting or arguments among children in the classroom and playground.’

The same project worker also mentioned other problems that children face, including negative views on themselves and others, and a lack of communication skills:

‘Many children have negative views on self and others, such as a dislike of someone, a lack of self-confidence or low self-esteem, and a lack of respect for others. Some children also have poor communication skills with either aggressive or passive attitudes. Other children are self-centred without thinking of others.’

Considering these issues, several project workers stressed the importance of creating a good school environment, where children can learn, build self-esteem, and fulfil their potential:

‘I think that for schools it’s time to build the ethos that promotes growth and self-esteem in children….if they can push aside these difficulties, they can concentrate on their academic work. That’s really why peace education is needed so that people have a good start.’

‘If you want children to learn, you need a safe and peaceful environment. I think that schools should be safe places where the children feel safe and secure so that they can fulfil their potential… and they will be able to build their self-esteem. If you have peaceful and enjoyable playtimes, you’re more likely to come into the lesson being much more receptive to learning.’

One project worker introduced an example of how peace education can help children learn to deal with difficult situations:

‘Schools often have problems of name-calling, people feeling left out of the group, somebody might have been picked on and they might feel that they are not accepted by the group. When you do activities, sometimes children put down other people but they never use the word, put-down. So, you explain the term, put-down, and they learn the term, what it is and also the effect that has on somebody... They are getting skills for life and I think that the relationship skill is more important than an academic side.’

However, this kind of learning may not be prioritised in schools, as pointed out by another project worker:

‘These social skills have been squashed out from the National Curriculum due to the pressure of keeping on the target.’

Another project worker addressed the need to nurture the strengths of each child:

‘I think that it’s important to focus on a child’s individual reality and gifts that each child has and to recognise what their strengths are, not worrying too much about their weaknesses until a little bit later on. But nowadays, everyone has to learn at the same speed. That’s not right.’

6.2.2.2 The Need for Peace Education from WMQPEP’s Viewpoint

Considering the needs of school above, WMQPEP thinks that its peace education can help to improve the current situations in school:

‘The Peace Maker Project intends to offer a solution to the current situation in schools where bullying or conflicts in playgrounds or classrooms are everyday life, and a small argument often escalates into a bigger problem. The Peace Maker Project aims to help schools to become places where people feel secure enough to grow in whatever way is appropriate for them.’ (WMQPEP, 1998)

In particular, children seem to have difficulty in building good relationships. Some project workers explained why children nowadays lack the opportunity to learn social skills, while also concerning that children are often exposed to the situations in which people resort to violence or aggression:

‘I think that, in today’s society, a lot of children are growing up in quite dysfunctional or isolated family units. So they are not actually having the experience of dealing with a conflict in non-violent ways even between siblings, and they are lacking experience of social skills. So they are going straight to conflict zone, instead of seeing other ways of solving problems. Children used to interact with a wider range of people, and people weren’t always moving into violent or aggressive mode, whereas it becomes so much part of what they see, they see people driving aggressively, and they see their older brothers and sisters maybe using aggression as a form of social interaction. I think they are surrounded by it.’

‘Sometimes schools are concerned about the fact that children don’t get on with each other

‘One of the problems I have now when I watch TV as a peace worker is not just a news report of violence and the way that we become a little bit immune to that, but it is also main scale TV, stuff like East Enders which I know that youngsters love and relate to.

When I am doing peace education, I know that 9 year olds are watching it. It’s a point of contact and discussion. And often in things like that, they see adults solving a problem by resorting to aggression or bullying… these are images that they are bombarded with on an almost daily basis.’

Considering these situations above, one project worker said that peace education can offer children alternative experiences to fighting:

‘It’s very worrying that there are some children who think that the only way to deal with things is to just fight because it’s the only thing that they’ve got the experience of.

Whereas if we open their experience wider, they have experience of dealing with conflict without fighting and they realise there is an alternative to fighting.’

Many project workers think that peace education is needed in order for children to learn the skills to develop peaceful relationships, which are useful throughout their lives:

‘Peace education gives them the skills to deal with things as they go through their lives. So if they’ve got the skills of anger management, co-operation and mediation, they can use those skills all through their lives, whether it’s in their workplace, in their homes or in their community.’

‘Peace education tries to promote more peaceful and healthy institutions. It’s to do with developing peaceful relationships within the school between children, between children and adults, and hopefully between adults. It’s important to give children the opportunity to learn about and understand the nature of peaceful relationships.’

‘Peace education is needed because children need to know how to resolve their conflicts and if you learn it in a primary school, it’s a skill you’ve got for life. You can apply it all the way through your life. Teachers haven’t got the skill to teach it because they haven’t been taught in training colleges. So teachers are sometimes taught by WMQPEP at the training days.’

One of the project workers introduced a situation in which these skills could be useful:

‘They do encounter some unpleasant situations in the workplace. If they’ve got the skills, they can overcome those and get on with their work. But if they can’t overcome those problems, they may have to leave their work or they get themselves in difficulties. They might fight or find themselves dismissed from their work. It’s very important that they are able to cope with the changes…. Peace education helps people to cope with change…

These are life skills.’

Another project worker suggested introducing peace education into middle-class schools, not only into schools where problems are more noticeable:

‘It’s a shame in one way that often peace education finds its way into more difficult schools where they know they’ve got problems with their classes, and they know that relationships are not working, and often the children have got quite disastrous home lives.

But I would like to see peace education finding its way into more middle-class areas and more stable areas as I would like to see it as standard practice in schools.’

The same project worker explained why peace education is practised less in middle-class schools:

‘Because peace education generally happens where those schools have already identified and perceived that their children have got difficulties through their teachers. They are often more switched on to social difficulties and social inequalities that their children are experiencing than nice neat middle-class areas where they don’t perceive that they’ve got problems. I would say that there are absolutely few schools in this country where they don’t have bullying problems of some degree or the other. But some schools still choose really not to acknowledge that they’ve got an issue. I think the more middle-class school is less willing to acknowledge that they’ve got difficulties that they can’t really cope with internally.’

In relation to the need for peace education in any schools, another project worker mentioned the government’s recent scheme, SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning), which aims to promote social skills and emotional literacy in primary schools:

‘It seems to be now there is a box that the government has made, called SEAL, which is about emotional literacy in primary schools. It’s not compulsory yet but the government’s got the same sort of activities that we do in the WMQPEP. So they are beginning to think about it but also there are other problems like some head teachers or teachers were saying that, “When can we do it? We don’t have time to fit it in as we have a lot of other things that the government told us to do.”