EDUCATION, NOT INDOCTRINATION

What I shall not do in this chapter is extol the virtues of peace and deplore the viciousness of violence. To do so would be to fall into the trap in which so many attempts to educate for peace and against violence have been swallowed up. To be sure, the face of peace is most attractive and that of violence is most unattractive. However, when it comes to education with regard to these values, it is not enough to cultivate immediate emotional responses or to reiterate how good peace is and how bad violence is. Instead, we have to help children both understand and practice what is involved in violence reduction and peace development. They have to learn to think for themselves about these matters, not just provide knee-jerk responses when we present the proper stimuli.

It follows, on the one hand, that students must become much more conversant than they presently are with the meaning of such concepts as peace, freedom, equity, reciprocity, democracy, personhood, rights, and justice, even though this may bring to the surface profound disagreements about such meanings. On the other hand, it follows that students must become much more practiced in the procedures of rational deliberation, of stereotype exposure, and of prejudice and conflict reduction.

These two requirements lead to the same culmination: the conversion of ordinary classrooms into communities of inquiry, in which students can generate and exchange ideas, clarify concepts, develop hypotheses, weigh possible consequences, and in general deliberate reasonably together while learning to enjoy their intellectual interdependence.