Peace Education: Its Relation to People's Lives

By Dr. Nainobai Naimah D. Disomangcop

What is the best way to contribute to the stability and harmonious existence in this war-torn time of our lives? Each one of us has an important role to play to bring in peace not only to ourselves, but to our community as well. Each one of us wants to be a peace builder a peace maker. But how?

Peace and Education today whether formally and informally acquired is given special attention due to its profound influence in the peace and development efforts of people nowadays. Therefore, one effective vehicle is to attain this through education for peace. Education for peace means:

1. The capability to solve every problem one encounter without resorting to violence;
2. The determination to succeed in life not at the expense of other.
3. The full control of man's aggressiveness in social relations
4. The development of individual responsibility that would enable an entire nation to become self-sufficient, and
5. Promotion of cultural understanding for a better comprehension of human behavior.

Hence, education for peace requires understanding and practice, reflection and action. We must understand that conflict and violence abound in this world. Education for peace must act to create more peace and must base its action for peace an objectively understanding the causes of conflict and violence. In this case, education's role is to cultivate values and attitudes that will encourage individuals and group for social action and for building more peaceful communities, societies and eventually a more peaceful world to live in.

We must educate for peace not only in our minds but our hearts as well. Peace education as a process that when fully internalized by individual and even groups will eventually leads to the establishment of the so-called culture of peace within our community and nation as a whole. Therefore, it is the task of education to build a culture of peace. It is the most briefly, it serves as an antidote to the factors detrimental to peace, the defense of peace must be therefore be the concern of peace education.

"World peace can't realized unless individuals achieve peace in their personal life"
http://msuipdm.org/art_9_peace_relation.html