Educating Students in a Culture of Peace

Zaldy Carreon De Leon Jr.

Education is a great avenue towards the study and application of peace. While radical leaders are eager to destroy each other, and war is at every edge of possibility. As if faith cannot do anything on it – for sometimes, faith itself is the reason why there are deaths and killing. We are surrounded by a dangerous time and the only reason to stay is to get reach of every good opportunity until the hours of darkness reveal itself to us. Since the time of Plato where the teacher himself is the school and the students are their master’s intellectual slaves, to the time when studying should be formal within walled corners of an academic hall where professors were almost hailed as demigods of wisdom and the students were slaves of the system, there is only one thing in common, alongside the vast differences – man’s urge for knowledge is permanent and exclusive rights of man; and their labor to accomplish the golden age of politics is nobler because of peace in the industry of humanity and compassion.

It is nature’s endowment. And with the rise of man’s effort to make his natural world made known to him, is the rise for man’s dignity that no other multicellular organism has able to summit. Thus, with the world’s obvious multiples of thinking machines and with man’s powerful brain, we will be able to attain the glory that Plato, or even his teacher Socrates, has had dreamt and imagined around 2,500 years ago. For them to attain wisdom, ideology is firm on its foothold. Peace cannot be attained without the total cooperation of everyone. For how could that be if peace is not taught in a scholarly and practical manner? Only that some problems kept on rising that curtailed what should have been an almost instantaneous and progressive educational system, or should I say, literacy rate, in the true meaning and essence of the word. These problems are the consequences of man’s irresponsibility, greed, power play and envy against each man’s role, status or position. It has been history’s over written account of heroes and culprits, martyrs who were killed because of man’s greed and envy, prophets who were murdered because of ideologies and spiritual rumors, good men and educated people who were buried deep on the earth of innocence just to make them silent. However, intellectual people cannot be silent, their seeds are the waters of yet another scholar, and their bones would yet be the bones of today’s sages. It is not impossible then that in our University will one day rise a name that would crown her fortitudes. Our great Rizal once said,

“Go forth, and then the sacred fire

Of thy genius to the laurel may aspire.”

With this dictum rise the questions on the function of the school and how can we relate or find its innate relationship to the various social science theories of education – consensus and conflict, and structural functionalist and interaction theories. In these derivatives, can peace be attained? If the GenX today, though not everyone, but in general, appeal not towards excellence, what will happen tomorrow? If Rizal’s admonition is not justified by today’s generation, who would? In attaining the culture of peace, can education contribute a solution?

These are the problems I’ve been talking about. The school should communicate the value of peace in its students. While, in thinking less of things much ado of nothing, they create significance with their own lives. School therefore should promote peace. In fact, peace should be identified as one of the core values of an educational institution. In our time when too much troubles and conflicts are in the world, even in the locality, peace should enter as an academic discussion. Before we go through my elaborations, let me tell you what a pastor Professor at my Seminary at Thy Word International Bethel Bible College at Balanga City, once told, he quotes from Taylor (2006), “Some would say that a successful ambitious apologetics strategy must prove or demonstrate that Christianity is true or at least that God exists…. This would be a case of “overwatering.” This overwatering is detrimental to the “plants,” and it is not necessarily for their growth…” With this “exaggerated” essay as many of my classmates would remark upon visual stipulation only, they would brand me differently. But I suggest that in a University, everyone capable is trained to be either a sage or a saint, as Confucius wrote in Di Xi Gui manual, should hasten the culture of peace instruction among their students and scholars. With that I comply to the duties and relevant suggestions of the scholars before me.

First, I believe that, on the time being, your good office, has a very good reason for a Take Home Exam to be a work and labor of love. Second, this is a training ground for our creativity and ingenuity as students who would one day be Masters and Doctors of Education. Thus, to quote Schwartz, ‘although the year is not academically reliable, but I find the gems I need to beautify the crown. For example, I’ve been looking hard for a book about peer or group facilitation, until I found the book and it really guided me in doing my non-salary volunteerism, which is otherwise worth it.’ Thus, he also relays that group facilitation is a process in which a person who is acceptable to all of the group, substantively neutral, and has no decision-making authority intervenes to help. Fourth, the questions are so good and luscious I cannot follow or mimic the ways of mediocrity, I would spike the ball outside the field and goal.

In attaining the principle, the United Nations (U.N.) released a conceptual framework on the instruction of peace and thus cleaning the society with a culture of peace in its core. In Learning the Treasure Within, the report of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-First Century, chaired by Jacques Delors, and published by UNESCO in 1996 provides new insights into education for the 21st century. It stressed that each individual must be equipped to seize learning opportunities throughout life, both to broaden his/her knowledge, skills and attitudes, and adapt to a changing, complex, and interdependent world. The International Commission on Education for the 21st Century advocates four pillars of education” as follows:

In Learning to Know, that is, acquiring the instruments of understanding. As educators, teachers, and scholars, the study of peace can be understood in terms of understanding each participant in the society. In a classroom set-up, there are differences and to some extent, the presence of radical students is a challenge. Yet still, understanding each other will set a condition for unity and conformity. These words are allies of peace. People engaged as a unified body, understand each other; as well as people who conformed with each other has higher possibility of success than a ‘house divided in itself’ as Lincoln said.

The Learning To Do follows the lead so as to be able to act creatively in one’s environment. The second thing to learn education providers should impose is that the students should apply the theories they learned into a living action. In the Taxonomy of Learning, the highest form is creating. Obviously, creating something would not be feasible if not done into an active work or activity. Students must not just accept peace culture but be able to do something about it. An immersion that allows the students to do a culminating activities that would keep awareness on peace essential or gift-giving activities that render joy to the bereaved members of the community.

This was followed by Learning To Be so as to better develop one’s personality and to act with even greater autonomy, judgment and personal responsibility. Once understanding and application of peace education is set not just in school but in their immediate community. The teacher must pursue the students to be so – that is, let the students establish peace in their daily lives. I remember the Daily Lama said in one of the interview that if all eight years old students are taught to meditate (a peace concept), the world would be at peace. Eight years old seems to be the age when students are ready to really engage in scholastic activities. Educators, teachers, and scholars must research and further study how the imposition of peace can be so.

Furthermore, in Learning To Live Together so as to participate in and cooperate with other people in all human activities. In this, the students learn to blush off their differences, conflicts, and other enemies of unity. When people ‘live together’, they must act according to the rule. Here, conformity to the law of the land or virtues of faith, and divine truth should be accomplished by all. At this point, one’s belief is no longer an issue because one learns to respect each other so to they can thrive peacefully. In the absence of this principle, peace will be understood only in the local and national level at most, but in the international scene, each other’s differences will be an issue and a brand for conflict. Therefore, there should be an international effort to understand peace. If so, in its presence religious bias, moral differences, and moral beliefs are only things of personal matter than an issue that is deadly and as lethal as a poison. Therefore, peace education should be taught on schools for the unification and understanding of all people in all levels of the society.

Lastly, in Learning to Transform, peace education ends with a person who is dedicated in pursuing the ideology of peace for others as well. He learns about peace and its consequences, how to work on attaining it not just for the self but for other people as well. He practices in his daily life and learns to live with other people. At the end, his task is to let others people to be educated with the culture of peace. In that way, the pillars become effective in the realm of education. On this ground, these Pillars should be made known to all individual. Our students should understand these things even at the early age. We are not expecting a lot from ourselves, but given the chance to develop it in our person, then why not? We must take what’s good for everyone – otherwise we would be uneducated individual based on the concepts. Secondly, these pillars are crucial to peace and mutual understanding. They emphasize the value of education as a manifestation of the spirit of unity. This stems from the will to live together as active members of a global village and contribute to attainment of a culture of peace. Many people today were superfluous of their intention for peaceful living. They were not ready to admit that their ideologies cannot be forced to others. Then, as the story goes, unbelievers should be killed and murdered with their “holy” ways. As a seminary student, I condemned these happening in todays’ world. Therefore, how can we develop or establish peace if our actions do not culminate around it? Have you heard about hypocrisy? For, a starter, hypocrisy is an international language – it is a tower that needs to be destroyed, or else, more and more people would learn its diphthongs and vowels. Most of the time, hypocrisy starts when a person learns to give worth to himself, out of pride, out of esteem, out of money, and out of intelligence. The result of which is dangerous not just to the person but to the community where he or she is involved. In this pamphlet, let me strive to tell you this human nature that even religion is so intolerant that Jesus Christ himself had it on his teachings.

Notice the following verses, in Matthew 6:1-2, we read: “Be careful not to display your righteousness merely to be seen by people. Otherwise you have no reward with your Father in heaven. Thus whenever you do charitable giving, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in synagogues and on streets so that people will praise them. I tell you the truth, they have their reward.” The Bible is not silent about it. Words and words, verses after verses, the Bible will open our eyes to the fact that there is really a hypocrite. It says, “Be careful…” This command is of two perspective, it is a direct order from an authority, and it is a warning for people who might encounter the following scene someday. On the first point, Christians are thoroughly reminded of the virtue of humility. We don’t have to look like wealthy people in front of our brethren. We don’t have to look like geniuses when we talk at our ministers. We don’t have to look like we are different from them in some way or another. But the hypocrites act and think like this to themselves. It continues, “…not to display your righteousness merely to be seen by people.” This is an outrage! A Christian is not supposed to display his righteousness in front of other people. He knows when he’s displaying or not; other people may say he is, but the truth prevails: God know the deepest secret in our hearts.

Holy books (of whatever religion) advised us to be humble. Why? Because humility is the antedote for hypocrisy. If we learn humility, it follows the context of peace; but as Mother Theresa of Calcutta, we shall see Christ in all of them – no matter his social, intellectual, and financial status. A true Christian should belong to God. And God can only own him if he learn to be virtuous – not vicious. Thus, in verses 3 – 4, we read: “But when you do your giving, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your gift may be in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you.” If this culture of peace will be advocated in schools, regardless of religion, as all religion advocated peace, then such is an encouragement to lift the Pillars of Education to the minds and hearts of the students. Is this not one of the pillars of education in the accomplishment of peace of the world? This displays one of the many vanities of humanity. If we can only understand God in His Most marvelous way – He will never want to induce death to other men (conflict) but to consign with them the Truth. When we talk about Religion and religious differences, there will rise another heavy and myriad conflicts. In this another essay entitled On Inseparability, states that neither Christianity nor Islam and any other religions that man established with all their laws, traditions and doctrines is found by the researcher to be most fitted to be serve man’s salvation. There is not a religion in this world that can save man from the destruction and the coming Great War!

In relation to this, religion is just an elementary thing of spirituality. That, if man would not be able to get out, will malign his proper value on God. But given that that religion be worthy of humility and faith, that religion blooms like a tree so fruitful and lush. That is true when religion realize the true meaning of its creation – to guide man from his relationship to God. If a religion cannot do this thing, then that religion is worthless and is in vain. For a true religion is relationship. We should not Sunday Christian or lips-worshipper. Otherwise, we abandoned the true essence of faith and worship. We become hypocrites, and that starts the destruction of love in our hearts and soul. Until, one day, when we call upon the Lord, He would ask us who we are, and obviously that is the result of a wrong religion and a wrong relationship with God! But there is still a way. God has a plan – a great plan indeed! But only through God and His son Jesus Christ that salvation can be found. Thus, in reflection of the authority of the Bible as a standard and proven guide for man’s yearning for understanding, my studies will use the Bible as a holy scripture enough to warrant answers to the questions of physical and absolute realities. Quotations from various holy books will also be absorbed as dissolve sectarian bias – and to prove that wisdom is generic. That is, Bible or Koran, as God is absolute His wisdom will be reflected to all of these ancient writings throughout the ages. Otherwise, we need not fear Him for that god does not exist. This research works upon the presumption that the relationship between God, nature and man in general perspective cannot err. For it was these three elements that the perfection of everything we know and understand in cosmogony and theology are based upon. When we talk about immateriality, it was God. When we talk about materiality, it was nature and man. But in this perfect system, linked together by the spiritual supremacy of God, the unison of the material and immaterial are most splendid. That is, when God is immutable, materiality and immateriality does not exist. Materiality exists because of the immaterial influence, and so the same with immaterial where it exists in the material domain. This is possible for God – as He is supreme and has the only power to do so.

There is, according to faith, a perfect system in the kosmos that we have not yet known of, if not incapable of, total understanding. But in the shadows of that perfect system lies many scattered clues how we can know a little of it. How that perfect system shows itself to us indirectly and why it is concealed to us. From that mathematical studies on fractals and the geometry of the planetary cosmogony, our knowledge of the hidden truth is very literal and in the lowest plane. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of the Christians, said that His wisdom is higher than human wisdom, and His “foolishness” is the highest of man’s. As an illustration, the truth begins after man’s absolute height of his knowledge. When man’s knowledge ends, God’s wisdom starts. That may be one of the reasons why we do not understand the totality of Truth – in fact, we cannot wholly grasp the wisdom which is God’s most sacred reality if such is the case. In the underlying foundation of peace is the intervention that comes not only from the side of humanity alone, but also from the intervention that comes from the divine. Although secular education does not permit religious biases but secular virtues; although to apprehend peace at its purest state, educational institutions push values integration in all the lessons in the curriculum even mathematics!

Knowing the truth is one thing and understanding it is another. We know few of our friend’s name but we do not know why that’s their name. This is the stage of knowing. When we ask for its origin or history, for the sake of curiosity, then follows the stage of understanding. Many people asked me why I’m called Mark. It seems a way too far and illogical but not until I told them its history. Thus, they fill find it amusing. The same happens in all of material and nonmaterial realities. Knowing something as solid, liquid, or gas is the basic idea and concept taught to us in schools or by the experiences established in nature. But understanding their purpose is a different realm of knowledge. If such is the case, think outside the box. The society has conditioned us to believe of so many facts and information about the physical realities of almost everything on earth, but the purpose of which is not yet fully understood. That’s because we neglect the non-material reality that also exist in everything.

The primitive people worship the trees, the sun, and other objects. This kind of veneration is a sign of high intelligence. For, they analyzed reality in two forms. Unlike modern conditioning, we are either to know and not understand, or understand without the intention of knowing. We are expected to be a member of a religion, so we enter a Church. But we forget the relationship which is more important than all the formalities and created institutions of religion. However, we thought of the primitive people as backward and intellectual savages. When we don’t realize that they reached man’s highest intelligence of understanding the non-material aspect of realities. On the other hand, we neglect these aspects when we treated the beauty of nature tertiary to our needs, and cavort on man’s dignity in various discriminating and horribly savage ways. Where is civility in these acts?

The only problem with the native is that their knowledge is faulty. There are destructive notions in which ideas are reserved as real and true even without the evidence of science and human empirical validities. Whereas, modern man’s knowledge is almost flawless compared to them. The use of different methods and tests enabled us to learn more and more in our surrounding. But, the irony is that, though they have faulty knowledge, they try to understand the behavior and phenomena and explained it through assumptions. The result is wrong of course, but at least, they are able to produce ‘reasons’ based on these presumptions and untested hypothesis; and labeled it, most of the time, true, which is not the right thing to do. At the end, they produce stories that turn to legends and myths that become religion as well as traditions that become the standards of faith. They learned from faulty beginnings and ended in faulty edges.

On the other hand, what’s wrong with our present society, what they called ‘millenial’ or ‘GenX’ is that though our knowledge is high, our understanding is low. That’s why we always hear: “use your commonsense.” Our line of thought is high but the problem exists within the actual moment of its application. We know that love is a virtue but we make it a vice. For example, people ‘loves’ each other for the dignity of overpopulating the land. In other word, we mistreated elegant words with lowly definitions and mislead people of understanding the concept. We are good with our lips but actions of value are far too different from what we say. We follow a different track of thought – and most of the time, that track is differently enacted. At the end, there are much pain and sorrow above the blessings that we should have been enjoying.

While modern man is highly technical he lost his ethics for steel and machines. Similarly, the primitive man conquers his young world with ethics with less steel and machines. The result is that both the primitive man and the modern found themselves twisted together in a bulk of misunderstanding each other. There is a separate chapter for this man’s present condition. From that perspective, whereas a primitive man enjoys his surrounding by giving definitions based upon low abstraction who a modern man found wanting. And the modern man’s highly intellectual prejudices with savage ethical pronouncement redefined a primitive man’s understanding of the world. Then, there will be a war between the two – that is, a war that asks whose ideologies should reign supreme. History answered it – the modern man’s powerful hands and machinery discloses a primitive man’s ethics underground to be trampled by his warhorses. Interestingly, these wars were called missions and colonization. When the primitive people attacked on them, on the other hand, they called it barbaric, savagery and terrorism.

To wit, there is not a man from those primitive ages to the modern era who has really grasped the truth except for the chosen. These ‘few people’ are inspired by God, and they were called prophets, and people who, for the sake of reaching the highest plane of man’s intelligence and to begin with that of God’s lowest realm, has to get out of their consciousness and physical realities to grasp the Truth. That happens to only few people like Enoch, Elijah, and Saint Paul. It does not happen to ordinary men and women – Christian, Hindu, Muslim, et cetera. This will be discussed on a separate chapter. However, to impose God’s supremacy these supernatural events has to happen to calculate the truth in another segment and measurement.

By educating students in a culture of peace, educational institutions are able to impart the most beautiful of wisdom – teaching students to be fellow students, and people to be fellow people. In a world where conflicts abounded, and every hour a new problem arises that engrave a person’s relation to another, once country’s relation to another, and the multifarious sources, it is most necessary to attain conformity back to the mainstream education. It starts in the Kinder where socialization process is its priority.

At the end of all these, what is left in the society is a system based on the concept of peace. That is, however, been conceptualized before. Know about the 4 Way Test? That is, Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build Good Will and better friendship? And, Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

Teaching peace among students is a great effort to eliminate conflicts in all aspects of the society. We must be true to our ideals and excommunicate the thought of hypocrisy – that is, undoing the things that we said and believed. In dealing with peace study, educators, teachers, and scholars must endowed a culture of understanding it and a climate in which it will grow and progress.