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Peace education is a key for establishing a consensual peace and maintaining it over time. There are 5 essential elements in building a lasting peace through education. First, a public education system must be established that has compulsory attendance for all children and youth, integrated so students from previously conflicting groups interact with one another and have the opportunity to build positive relationships with each other. Second, a sense of mutuality and common fate needs to be established that highlights mutual goals, the just distribution of benefits from achieving the goals, and a common identity. In schools, this is primarily done through the use of cooperative learning. Third, students must be taught the constructive controversy procedure to ensure they know how to make difficult decisions and engage in political discourse. Fourth, students must be taught how to engage in integrative negotiations and peer mediation to resolve their conflicts with each other constructively. Finally, civic values must be inculcated that focus students on the long-term common good of society.
To DISCUSS THE ESSENTIAL components of peace education, it is necessary to understand peace and peace education and discuss the two ways of establishing peace, imposed peace and consensual peace. We present an overall plan for peace education, emphasizing teaching students the competencies and values they need to build and maintain peace on a consensual basis. These include building and maintaining cooperative systems, making decisions about the difficult issues involved in maintaining peace, and resolving conflicts among the relevant parties in constructive ways, all of which inculcate the civic values needed to maintain peace. These essential elements need to be built into the ongoing, day-to-day fabric of school life so students get years of training in how to nurture a peaceful society. Peace education needs to be powerful enough to make a difference even in intractable conflicts.
Ways of Establishing Peace
Ways of establishing and maintaining peace may be classified on a dimension with imposed peace at one end and consensual peace at the other end (Clark, 2001).
Imposed Peace
Imposed peace is based on domination, power, imposition, and enforcement. High-power groups use their military and economic power to force low-power groups to end hostilities and implement the peace accords (see Figure 1). There are two...