Rethinking Peace Education

Peace education encompasses the key concepts of education and peace. While it is possible to define education as a process of systematic institutionalized transmission of knowledge and skills, as well as of basic values and norms that are accepted in a certain society, the concept of peace is less clearly defined. Many writers make an important distinction between positive and negative peace. Negative peace is defined as the absence of large-scale physical violence–the absence of the condition of war. Positive peace involves the development of a society in which, except for the absence of direct violence, there is no structural violence or social injustice. Accordingly, peace education could be defined as an interdisciplinary area of education whose goal is institutionalized and noninstitutionalized teaching about peace and for peace. Peace education aims to help students acquire skills for nonviolent conflict resolution and to reinforce these skills for active and responsible action in the society for the promotion of the values of peace.  

Therefore, unlike the concept of conflict resolution, which can be considered to be retroactive–trying to solve a conflict after it has already occurred–peace education has a more proactive approach. Its aim is to prevent a conflict in advance or rather to educate individuals and a society for a peaceful existence on the basis of nonviolence, tolerance, equality, respect for differences, and social justice. 

The main need behind the implementation of the project is to promote the peace education among youth workers and equip the youth workers to reach out young people through educational activities for post-pandemic era for tackling with the social divide raised due to inequalities within time of the pandemic and preventing conflicts that are highly visible in the society in current times. Thus, the project focuses on increasing the youth workers competences and qualifying them as peace educators to reach out young people in the local communities.  

The objectives of the project: 

- To contribute the development of social peace in Europe which harmed due to the inequalities derived during the pandemic

- To prevent marginalization and extremism among young people in post-pandemic era

- To inform youth workers about peace education and to gain competence on implementing educational activities with young people

- To strengthen the competence of youth workers on facilitating educational activities with young people

- To contribute to the spread of the concept of peace throughout Europe which became highly relevant due to the issues raised pandemic era