Chapter 5: Peace Education and the Concept of Mankind

Peace is a persistent topic of educational theory and practice. It does not enjoy a steady level of attention and interest, yet it is present all the time, and sometimes it comes to the fore more than at other times. When a war or a violent conflict comes into public perception or even into direct touch with a society, the topic dominates educational debates.

Peace is a key term for education, because it pertains to the basic conditions of human existence, of our being part of life as such, of our societal and political embedding, and of our relatedness to God. Each attempt to define “peace” demonstrates the extensive and pervading character of this concept, which no definition can fix. Sometimes, peace educators start a lesson by asking children to note their associations with this term, and a multitude of associations comes up. Peace can be seen as a behavior; it can be regarded as an attitude; it can be conceived as a specific relation among people; it can be defined negatively by its opposite, which might be identified as violence; it can be understood as the quality of relations among states and nations; it can be described as an inner and even hidden state of the soul. Each effort to understand the meaning of peace for the life ofhumans and nations reaches out to the basic problems and also to the basic values of human existence on this planet: to poverty and wealth, to justice and injustice, to ecology and the preservation of nature, to the relation of the sexes, to health and disease, to education and rationality, to hopes and to mankind’s destiny, to the genius of humankind and the ruthlessness of men, to the conscience as an inner voice of all humans, to homeland and alienation, to secularness and faith, to the respect of life and power over life, to love and hate.