This morning I met with a former UPEACE student who is planning an international peace conference that will be taking place in San José in September (link: http://www.mfp-dop.org/4th-global-alliance-summit.html). I am going to be her liason at UPEACE to organize some students to attend. I am really interested in the Rasur Foundation's work, so it should be a good introduction for me.
Meanwhile, I was thinking that maybe I should write a little about what peace education means. When I was preparing to come, when I told people what I was setting out to study, I often got blank looks and the ever-pervasive question, "What are you going to do with that?"
As I'm writing this blog, part of my goal is to try to let people know what this process is, exactly.
I am going to start by borrowing the definition from Betty A. Reardon, from her paper, Peace Education: A Review and Projection:
"Peace education is the transmission of knowledge about requirements of, the obstacles to, and possibilities for achieving and maintaining peace, training in skills for interpreting the knowledge, and the development of reflective and participatory capacities for applying the knowledge to overcoming problems and achieving possibilities." Now, what exactly does this involve?
The field can be broken down into two main areas: education for peace and education about peace.
Education for peace is education that aims to create the preconditions for achieving peace. This includes international education, multicultural education, and environmental education. As a lot of conflict can arise from diversity, mulitcultural and international education aim to appreciate the differences and the positive aspects of living in a diverse world, and use conflict as a source of transformation, rather than violence. With environmental education, having a stable, healthy environment is essential for everything we do, thus having an appreciation for and understanding of our environment is important for peace.
Education about peace aims to develop the institutions and processes that maintain a peaceful social order. This includes conflict resolution training, human rights education, and the broad field of peace studies.
Right now it is hard for me to say what I am most interested in. Over the summer I've done a lot of reading on conflict resolution and nonviolent communication, which is also very much in line with studying yogic philosophy. I also am passionate about environmental education, having done my undergraduate degree in environmental studies, and having volunteered at an eco-camp for kids over the summer while in San Diego. Multicultural and international education are really interesting to me as well, having lived in many different places and loving the beauty of each experience in another culture. At this point I don't know what I will specialize in, or what I will do when I finish. But right now, it is all extremely interesting to me, I feel passionate about it, and I definitely feel like I'm in the right place, doing the right thing. I can't wait to dive into the courses!
The countdown to orientation has begun: T minus 20 hours. This week we have 3 days of orientation. Class begins on Monday. The UPEACE system is such that instead of taking 5 classes at once, you take only one class at a time for a three-week period. The first class is the foundation course, which all students at the school will be taking. It is a general peace and conflict studies course. Then I will be taking Peace Education: Theory and Practice, followed by Human Rights Education, Cultures and Learning, and Research Methods. That sums up the first semester.
The reason that the classes are 3 weeks is because there are a lot of visiting professors from around the world who cannot commit to being at UPEACE for an entire semester, so they have designed the program in order to accommodate visiting professors. It also seems like it will be nice to just focus on one class at a time, rather than be juggling 5 classes at once. We'll see how it goes!
As excited as I am, I'm also feeling a little nervous and anxious, which I suppose is normal when embarking on something new. In some ways I feel like I'm going to kindergarten: What should I wear? Will I catch the bus on time? Who will my classmates be? What is the schedule going to be? So many questions. I'd like to think I'm "above" putting too much thought into what I'm going to wear, but I'm going to be honest here - it is on my mind!
On that note, off to do some yoga to transform the nervous energy into something useful!
yay! good luck steph, it sounds like you definitely are doing the right thing for you :)
ReplyDeletejoseph campbell had it pretty well (i do love wikipedia!):
One of Campbell's most identifiable, most quoted and arguably most misunderstood sayings was his admonition to "follow your bliss." He derived this idea from the Upanishads:
Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence: sat-chit-ananda. The word "Sat" means being. "Chit" means consciousness. "Ananda" means bliss or rapture. I thought, "I don't know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don't know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being." I think it worked.[39]
He saw this not merely as a mantra, but as a helpful guide to the individual along the hero journey that each of us walks through life:
If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are—if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.[40]