Georgopoulos, A., Kirkine, E., Mavrommatis, G., Paida, S.
Peace and Education
Abstract
Financial growth has long been considered to be the solution to problems such as poverty, hunger and so on. However, instead of solving those problems, it has, along with overpopulation and the shrinkage of natural resources, led to a vicious cycle of even greater competition for even less materials, resulting in friction between countries or communities, with an increased risk of war a possible outcome.
Nationalism, which over the last two centuries targeted the formation or integration of nationally or linguistically homogenous nation-states, seems nowadays obsolete. Nevertheless, the construction of national myths and the perception of the past through them is still the most common procedure for the formation of national identity. National education systems are the main agents of national identity formation.
Racism as a procedure of classifying people and social groups, occurs on the basis of specific characteristics. In the past, this was usually on biological grounds, whereas today it is more likely to be on cultural grounds, and is accompanied by arguments concerning the validation of this taxonomy in order to legitimize this inequality. Violence as a means of social change does not seem to be effective. Add to this the fact that means strongly influence aims, none of the armed movements which emerged after World War Two managed to construct democracy. On the contrary, non violent ways of conflict resolution, provided their structure and the attitudes and behaviours of the people involved are studied, have the potential to transform those conflicts towards more peaceful directions.
Therefore, for the “teaching” of the aforementioned issues, a new type of experiential education, through an elaboration (not exclusively cognitive) of real life problems, is suggested. The content to be examined is the very same world with its political and financial structures which usually aims at domination and exploitation. Factors such as the compatibility of means and aims, the empathy shown by teachers to the pupils, the effort to promote communication, cooperation and positive self-esteem among children, along with the interrelation between the personal, socio-political and global components, should permeate this educational philosophy.
Introduction
War is probably the most frequent tool used for conflict resolution. That is the reason why peace studies have proved to be more than ever, useful and necessary especially in the light of recent wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. We are among the educators believing that war culture can be transformed towards a peace culture and this transformation can, at least partially, be achieved through education. The following article strives -given the complexities and difficulties related to the examination of the above named issues- to describe some aspects of the issue of conflict and to demonstrate the role that education can play in either avoiding or resolving conflict. Consequently it is focused on the exploration of areas in which conflict emerges (i.e. the model of financial development, nationalism and racism), it suggests ways of interpreting these issues and hypothesises the causes of these conflicts. The political, economical and social dimensions of conflict are also examined. Finally, this text suggests ways of conflict management, focusing on the arguments against violence, on non-violent conflict resolution and last but by no means least, presents the key role education has to play in this matter.
1. Development
The term “underdeveloped countries” was first used to describe the planet’s poorer countries by the USA president Harry Truman in 1949, justifying the western idea that all nations move in one and only orbit, that of economic development. Ahead of this movement towards progress and civilisation (where progress and civilisation equate to material production) stood the USA, followed by the rest of the countries and the poor South bringing up the rear.
So the image that the West held for itself was projected worldwide, while development was, and is still, considered as a panacea against disease, hunger and poverty, in spite of the fact that up until today it has not managed to solve the problems that it was supposed to cure. There is a dual criticism against this model of development. It is a huge waste of raw material and energy which results in the pollution of the Earth, and this ecological destruction is followed by a deep cultural transformation of ideas, habits, ways and working practices, social relations and so on which were conceived as obstacles to development. As Sachs (1993) put it “all cultures that had not been organized according to the (capitalist) accumulation race, started dismantling”, driving South an ever increasing subjugation of social life to the type of economic model which was earlier experienced in the North. It also appeared that the “third world societies became underdeveloped, only when their economies started developing” (Modinos, 1998), since prior to that the aborigines lived in a state of non-development, but with plenty of free time, being indifferent towards accumulation, with a production procedure that might seem “irrational” but maybe with no more social injustice than today’s regimes.
The economic theory that responds to the aforementioned development model is not particularly interested in the context of that development. It is not concerned with the kind of products or the kind of industries that produce them. Its primary concern is to promote such procedures that increase the Gross National Product (GNP), without examining whether the product has anything to do with the basic essential needs of the humans or the planet (Trainer, 1995).
The consequence of such a way of thinking is that governments favor the kind of economic activities which produce goods that satisfy the needs of the richer social classes and not the urgent needs of the poor. A clear example of this reasoning is the huge area of land in the Third World used for growing agricultural products for export (cash crops) and the vast amounts of cereals produced which will not end up on the table of hungry local people but will be used to feed domestic farm animals in the rich world and, somewhat ironically, adding to the increasing epidemics of obesity and heart disease in these regions. A direct result of this practice is the global increase in poverty and economic inequality, despite the common fallacy of the “diffusion” of financial benefits (trickle down effect) from the upper to the lower classes (Trainer, 1989).
Some statistics to strengthen our contention that development, poverty and food production are connected. According to the Newsletter of the European Anti Poverty Network, 1997, there were 57 million poor people in the EU in the mid nineties, and of that number thirteen million were children. In that same period, according to UNDP in 1991 and 1994 the income of the richest 20% in comparison to that of the poorest 20% went from a ratio of 30:1 in 1960 to 45:1 in 1990 (UNDP, 1991 and 1994).
Today, almost one billion people receive insufficient food. This outnumbers the people who have lived in poverty throughout human history. At the same time, there are examples of famine and ecological destabilization[1] resulting from development choices in places we mistakenly perceive as having always being poor, e.g. India. Even more frustrating are inequalities inside the Third World countries: Malnutrition rose 14% between 1970 and 1980, whilst car ownership doubled[2] between 1970 and 1985.( and the poor people of the planet are 1.5 billions (UNDP, 2003).?) Development needs these inequalities of course. They are considered to be the moving force of history, and it responds to those inequalities with even more development, in order to alleviate them. But in fact, more development produces higher levels of inequality (Modinos, 1996). Nowadays it has become even harder to survive when poor. One needs to commute in a private car to get away from the big city, can hardly imagine life without a mobile phone, and air-conditioning is an absolute necessity given the microclimate change in the big cities.
The people in charge do not seem to realize that ongoing development (as promoted by the conventional economic theory) is nothing but a fallacy, given the diminishing availability of the wealth-producing resources of the planet. In other words the overproducing/ overconsuming life style of a Californian person cannot be transplanted to Ghana or Bangladesh because the planet would simply collapse due to the excessive demand of energy resources, minerals, wood, water, meat, seafood and so on. Since this development model cannot be accomplished, the only solution to cure social inequality is to make the necessary effort to transfer wealth from the North to the South, so that social justice will be achieved and ecological balance will be guaranteed.
This need for the redistribution of wealth tends to be achieved in contemporary times through the increasing movement of refugees and immigrants from the Third World, who come and settle in the developed North. There they cause feelings of fear to their fellow-citizens along with racism and xenophobia.
Issues concerning development
Some crucial questions regarding the aims and the consequences of development can be put forward. What is the relation between GNP and the standard of living of a society? When is development considered adequate? What is that inevitable law dictating that “the more development we have, the more we have to aim for”? (Trainer, 1995). Why is it not possible to satisfy the basic needs of the poor people of the planet despite the economic and technological means available? What are the roots of hunger and poverty nowadays? How can we relate the excessive consumption taking place in the developed countries to the poverty of people in the Third or even the “Fourth” world? (Swee-Hin, 1988).
Opposing economic growth
When economists talk about development, as previously described, they refer to economic growth. A money-centred procedure aiming to increase the GNP ( including even using inhuman procedures such as arms trading) and which has mistakenly been connected to increasing happiness (Zolotas, 1982, Hatzikonstantinou, 1988).
This procedure seems to be increasingly related to environmental protection issues (Renner, 1996) as well as to a more specific cluster of issues which (along with nationalism, racism, and gender inequality) compose the core of Peace Education. Growth (that is the continuously intensified effort for the satisfaction of human needs) in combination with overpopulation and natural resources shrinkage (both renewable and non-renewable) leads to the vicious cycle of ever more intense competition for the sharing of less and less quantities (usually downgraded) of natural resources, which results in disputes between countries or communities, which might end up as armed conflicts[3] (Suliman, 1998, Williams, 2000, Myers, 1987, Westing, 1986, Georgopoulos, 1992). It is basically a socio-political choice, which under the pretext of increasing material wealth, fights against any reasonable limitation of human economic activity and becomes “hubris” in the sense ancient Greeks referred to it. This makes it even more necessary to search for “a different kind of development, not only material, but also mental, emotional, moral”… (Moren, 1999:89).
2. Nationalism
The beginnings of nationalism date back to the Latin American elite of the 18th century. In their effort to rule effectively and to gain wealth that would otherwise be sent to Spain, they propagated the idea that the “nation” they ruled was no longer populated by Spaniards, but rather by Colombians, Bolivians and so on, thereby introducing the idea of nation in its contemporary form. From that day forward, those belonging to the same nation are considered to compose an imaginary community (Anderson, 1997), in the sense that their members not only had no real contact with it, but any possible contact is conditioned by inequalities. (One should not forget that nationalism can function as a tool which is able to coil around people and gather them close together, creating a monolithic society, usually under the threat of a (real or imaginary) danger threatening the nation-state, which results to downgrade, obscure or cover class conflicts.
The main purpose of the nation-state, was the identification of the national-political element with the cultural one. In other words “we” (the ones sharing language, religion, customs) ought to be within the same border, to function within the same national economy and to be governed by an acceptable national government. This aim was proved a fallacy, in a number of cases. One of the most characteristic is that of the formation of Balkan national countries during the 20th century, when for a number of reasons, “our people” found themselves outside the given borderline, while “others” went on living within them.
By projecting the demand for national integration, the imaginary community demands that either “we” should free our ‘brothers and sisters” who live trapped in foreign countries, or “we” should transfer “our” population to “our” country. This last option was a result of a military and political defeat of “our” community. According to that mentality, Milosevic declared that even if one Serbian had been on the Moon “we” would have gone to free him. It is believed that during the armed Serbo-Croatian conflict, there was a plan of national integration, both sides aiming at, the extermination of 1/3 of foreigners, the persecution of 1/3 and the assimilation of the final 1/3. An example of the second case is the defeat that followed the Asia Minor expedition of the Greek army (1919-1922).