Peace education

01What is peace education?

Peace education is educational work that enables people to settle conflicts without violence, to recognise violence and to work for peace. It stands in the tradition of peace pedagogy and peace teaching and takes place in schools, youth work, universities and adult education.

The Peace Education Service Centre in Baden-Württemberg (Servicestelle Friedensbildung) distinguishes the terms like this: peace pedagogy is the academic discipline that develops theories and models of learning. Peace teaching means the direct educational work. Peace education is the umbrella term most commonly used today.

In content, peace education ranges from knowledge about war and peace to very practical skills: listening, taking the view of the other person, settling disputes, recognising prejudice.

02What does peace pedagogy aim to achieve?

According to an article by the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb), peace pedagogy aims to outlaw war worldwide, to reduce individual, social and political violence and to deal with conflicts constructively.

The Berghof Foundation, which has worked in peace education for decades, stresses that it is about more than passing on knowledge. Peace pedagogy, it says, strengthens attitudes and abilities: empathy, seeing things from another perspective, constructive communication and participation.

Peace pedagogy often refers to the concept of peace of the Norwegian researcher Johan Galtung, who understands peace as a process, at international, social and individual level.

03May a school campaign for peace?

Peace education in schools follows the same rules as all civic education in Germany. These rules are set out in the Beutelsbach Consensus, which has formed the basis of civic education since 1976.

It has three principles: teachers must not overwhelm pupils, that is, not push them towards a particular opinion. What is controversial in academia and politics must also appear controversial in the classroom. And teaching should enable pupils to form their own judgement and to take part democratically.

For peace education this means: it does not campaign for a particular peace policy, but shows different paths and views and strengthens the ability to form a well-founded opinion of your own.

04What role does UNESCO play?

In 1974 UNESCO adopted a Recommendation concerning education for international understanding, cooperation and peace. It is regarded as a milestone because it was the first to bring peace, international understanding and human rights together in one education document.

On 20 November 2023 the 194 member states of UNESCO adopted a successor: the Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development. It updates the 1974 version and is the only global standard-setting document on this subject.

UNESCO recommendations are not binding law. But they set a standard that the education policies and curricula of the member states can be guided by.

05What does peace education look like in practice?

One example is the Peace Education Service Centre in Baden-Württemberg. In April 2015 the state Ministry of Education, the State Agency for Civic Education and the Berghof Foundation concluded an agreement to set it up. Its task is to strengthen peace education in the schools of the state.

In the classroom peace education can look very different: a project on peer mediation, a role play of a negotiation, meeting people who have lived through a war, or a series of lessons on human rights.

Outside school there are also many offers, from courses in Nonviolent Communication to international youth exchanges. What they have in common is that they do not only explain peace, but practise it.

06How do violence prevention, civic education and global learning fit together?

The Peace Education Service Centre of Baden-Württemberg describes the field as an arc across three levels. Violence prevention programmes work at the individual level, for example peer mediation, in which young people settle disputes among themselves, or the programme “Schritte gegen Tritte” (Steps against Kicks). The societal level is about civic education and living together in a democracy. Global learning deals with the international level.

The Service Centre also counts education for sustainable development among the related concepts. Peace education does not compete with these approaches, it includes them. According to Uli Jäger of the Berghof Foundation, it aims to initiate and accompany “comprehensive, holistic learning processes oriented toward the guiding value of peace”. At its core, it is meant to contribute to the capacity of people and groups to live in peace.

This includes a self-critical look at the work itself. Education does not create peace on its own. It can also support violent structures or entrench conflicts instead of working through them. As early as 1969, the peace researcher Dieter Senghaas asked: “How is an education for peace even conceivable and possible in a world of organised peacelessness?”

For teachers, this question is not abstract. They face classes in which some children have experienced war themselves while others know it only from the news. Peace education offers no ready-made answer, but it offers a framework: from one's own behaviour in a dispute to living together locally to the questions that concern the whole world.

07How do wars and conflicts enter the classroom?

War and displacement, violence, terrorism and radicalisation are topics that occupy children and young people, whether they are affected themselves or only hear about them. The Peace Education Service Centre describes exactly this concern as the starting point. This is where peace education begins: it takes up the learners' questions instead of keeping the topic out of the classroom.

For international conflicts, the Service Centre says this means learners engage actively and critically with both sides: with civilian conflict management and with military means of intervention. For this purpose, the Service Centre provides conflict analyses of individual countries and regions, also in plain and easy-to-read language and for foreign language lessons. A learning poster and an explainer video show step by step how to analyze a conflict.

The Service Centre's mandate goes beyond individual materials. It is meant to train teachers, advise them and provide them with teaching material. In addition to the conflict analyses, this includes fact sheets, games, book tips with children's and young adult books about peace and the exhibition “Frieden machen” (Making Peace).