FOUNDATIONS OF THE CONFERENCE

When we began thinking about the makeup of the project, a question arose--What is peace, really?

The word peace we all use, and it perhaps is one of the most written and heard word in the media. In order to know its exact definition we consulted a dictionary. Interesting enough, we found a multitude of meanings ascribed to this word.

The concept of peace according to children

If we must construct a plan to teach children about peace, it seemed interesting to us to understand what children themselves believe the definition of peace is.

We asked children from ages three to six what the word peace meant to them. The educator gave us the closest literal meaning that the children gave.

Para la misma sencillamente se les preguntó que quería decir para ellos la palabra PAZ y el educador anotó la respuesta “lo más literal” posible.

82% OF THE CHILDREN RESPONDED THAT PEACE MEANS NOT TO HIT.

In addition to that response, a multitude of definitions of peace came up. Among the multiple definitions can be found the following:

WHEN THERE IS NOT BLOOD (Mexico)
MY MOTHER (El Salvador)
SPEAKING WITHOUT SHOUTING (Argentina)
WRITING A LETTER TO THE POLICE SO THAT THEY PUT IN ROBBERS IN PRISON (Argentina)
NOT TO SAY UGLY THINGS (Peru)
NOBODY DYING (Colombia)
THAT PARENTS DO NOT SMOKE BECAUSE OTHERWISE THEIR LUNGS BECOME BLACK (Spain)

The concept of peace for adults

We made up a series of questions that were sent by email to centers located in more than twenty English and Spanish-speaking countries. We asked these adults, 'What is peace for you? and How would you approach teaching the concept of peace to small children?'.

Responses were received from the twenty countires. Interesting enough a multitude of nuances detected previously appeared in the responses without a correlation between the type of response and the situation of the respondent's county of origen.  We did find a slight tendendy in the responses of the educators in religious schools, where we found some rasponses that linked peace to religion.

When asked the completely open question, 'What is peace for you?,' only 9% of those surveyed responded that it was the ABSENCE OF ARMED CONFLICTS. The great majority related the concept of PEACE with an interior state that was subsequently transmitted to the rest of society. The items mentioned by more than 5% of respondents were:

38% interior harmony and welfare of the person
36% respect for one's neighbor
22% tranquility
16% living together in harmony
13% tolerance for others
11% loving others
9% absence of armed conflicts
8% understanding others
8% establishement of a just society
5% dialogue among persons
5% solidarity among peoples and persons

In practically all of the responses, PEACE is associated with what we have always known as VALUES, that is, RESPECT, TOLERANCE, UNDERSTANDING, HELP,  and so on.

Educating values

Education for Peace consequently must be an education of values.

Arguing from the premise that when children are born they are not cognizant of the roles, norms, standards of conduct, and the moral and social values of their community, educational agents are converted into facilitators of experience and relations that facilitate their progressive socail maturity.

We can define a value as a real, desireable, objective, and convenient element for human beings who interiorize it through individiual experience, and which is converted in a moral norm of conduct.

Children thorugh their experiences select, choose, and make their own a system of values that help them to development a moral conscience and to acquire the individual commitment of organizing their conduct and put it into practice.

Education must offer a conduct guide to children from thier early childhood, promoting the internal maturity necessary for adquisition of an autonomous conscience.

These small people in the first stages of development are opened to a knowledge of themselves, to a world that surrounds them, and to the people in their environment in which they live. This environment must offer role models who transmit positive values accepted by the community, helping them to distance themselves from negative values and destructive forces..

In order to learn to live together, it is necessaty to instuct from early childhood the norms that govern or should govern living together.

The fundamentall achievements of personality development in early education consist of the formation of self-conscience and of subordination and hierarchy of motives. Thanks to this children acquire a rather stable interior world that allows them actively and consciously to participate in the world that surrounds them. It also imprints on them a determined tendency in all their conduct.

The fundamental condition that allows us to speak of personality formation at this age is that their comportment is foreseeable, which implies a defineable direction of behavior. The main point of this formation is the observance of rules of conduct that are socially acceptable. These are norms that children assimilate in their activity and in communication with adults and the surounding world, and that allow them to regulate their conduct more effectively in subsequent stages.

From this point of view, values take shape in the process of development of the individuals from their earliest stages.