Working Group 10: Renewing Peace Education
Chair: Prof. Reijo E. Heinonen (reijo.e.heinonen[at]jippii.fi)
Coordinator: Jani Lassila (jani.lassila[at]helsinki.fi)
This working group noted that national cohesion, a condition of stability, is not assimilation. Cohesion is the complementarity of diverse elements of society in mutual trust and an ethically sound sense of community, where diverse cultures and languages can thrive and prosper. In order to achieve a sense of national cohesion, a healthy sense of local community and citizenship is necessary. If achieved and felt at the local level, this concept is more readily transferrable to the national level.
Teachers were cited as being potentially central agents of social change at the local level. Teacher training aiming at such change would include essential elements of peace education, interfaith dialogue, and cultural diversity. Such education–driven progress in villages and localities could act as piloting examples whose experience could then be utilized within a broader process of social development in the country. Women’s participation was also noted as a crucial factor in building peaceful societies. Peace education, for example, should aim to raise awareness of the potential role and contributions of women to peacebuilding efforts.
Many grassroots-level initiatives as well as ongoing UN-based projects exist within the interfaith dialogue and cultural diversity movement. The problem is, however, the lack of well-organized citizen information channels of such projects and their results. Better grassroots-level information dissemination channels would help in building bridges between people from different cultures and promoting peaceful dialogue.
- Proceedings by Jani Lassila and Partow Izadi