Elle Feig's blog

Based on this introduction, what benefits can you imagine peace education bringing to your classroom, school, or community?

The college where I teach is incredibly diverse; we have students from Iraq, Pakistan, India, Korea, Africa, Europe, Latin America and Asia. These students all have very unique belief systems that have been built by their society, their culture and their parents. Each student has been molded into a person that has morals and values that may be set. One of the most important roles that I can play as an educator is to open the eyes and minds of my students to new cultural and societal beliefs; peace education (when defined broadly) can help educators do exactly this. A wonderful example of the benefits of such a curriculum occurred during an Advanced Diversity Weekend that I was a faculty advisor for. We brought together 50 students from diverse cultural, social, gender and religious backgrounds. Each student entered the room with their own predefined ideas. We placed the students in small groups of ten and then proceeded to ask specific questions in order to faciliate their own analytical process - what do they believe? why do they believe these things? how do these beliefs cut them off from others? how do these beliefs cause conflict? how can they change or alter these beliefs? By the end of the dialogue, students who had never spoken were engaged in conversation; this is a tiny example of how peace education can work.