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Peace education cannot be clearly separated from related disciplines such as education in democracy, human rights, third world or the environment. This is the subject of the following excerpt from Günther Gugel and Uli Jäger. It is also dedicated to the new concept of 'global learning' which is sketched out on a separate page. A further short excerpt postulates that the north-south divide is the key peace-political task of the contemporary age.
The Immediacy of Environment, Third World and Human Rights Education.
"(...) It is insufficient to relate the object of peace education to the problem of arms and security alone. Hans Nicklas and Änne Ostermann who addressed the topic at the Hessen Foundation for Peace and Conflict Research suggested systematically including at least the aspects of environmental and third world problems which imply or give rise to violence within the object of peace education.
In peace education, one special method of addressing the north-south problem is by the example of the consequences of arms exports by industrial states to third world countries. Even the causes of migration and defensive reaction in Europe or the new and expanding image of the evil of Islam are topics which can be used to approach the north-south problem using personal references and experiences. The example of addressing conflicts that are caused by ecological problems (conflict concerning essential resources such as water, for example) provides an ecological dimension to peace education.
In educational practice, there is a lot of overlap between peace education and other disciplines in what is often referred to as 'survival education,' both in relation to the contents addressed and the methods and didactic models proposed: environment and third world education. Cross-linking and cooperation will intensify in the future, because the contextual complexity of global problems is increasing.
For this reason, controversial discussion has been going on for many years about the extent to which various educational methods and experiences can be merged in order to support or reorganize learning and activity in the face of global problems and the growing internationalization of the world in which we live (for instance, due to worldwide communication technologies). What also needs to be added however, is that the resources available for educational and political counter measures are diminishing all the time, and that extended cooperation would not only be fruitful, but is also imperative in practical political terms.
Human rights education also takes a similar approach to peace education, and is mainly supported by international human rights organizations like Amnesty International. The main concern here is the communication of knowledge concerning the causes of human rights violations, and also more recently, support in dealing with the question of whether (and which) human rights can claim universal acceptance, or the extent to which intervention can be justified by human rights violations.
Another concern is the question of how this knowledge can be transformed into concrete action. 'As a consequence, effective human rights education can be measured by the extent to which addressing human rights violations is successful in expanding objective knowledge into subjective affect. (...) The encounter with human rights as a 'principle of knowing and learning' should communicate to everyone that human rights, as a political criteria for action and universal moral in one's own country (for each individual), are closely linked to their materialization in every other country (for every other individual)' (Hildegard Karig).
(...) Development education deals with the question of which and how learning concerning the 'third world' and 'north-south relations' takes place in the industrial states and provides suggestions for educational practice. In the past, an important key element of development education centered around the development of learning models for primary schools, an area which has been keenly ignored by peace education.
If one follows the discussion in development education, it is apparent that it is plagued by similar problems to peace education. Despite considerable theoretical advances, a great deal of educational material (more than two and a half thousand publications dealing with development policy teaching and work have appeared in the last thirty years!) and relatively extensive promotional opportunities, a 'crisis in development education' is being spoken of today.
This theory is founded on four observations: Development education has primarily lost its focus, because it is no longer possible to speak of the 'third world' per se due to increasing differentiation. The large volume of didactic material and the variety of methods in practice are leading to insecurity in the application of methods and a 'cultivation of the educational coincidence'. Thirdly, no tradition of theory has been created and finally, the institutionalization of development education in the whole context of educationally relevant social systems remains marginal (...).
Examples of all four problems can be found in peace education. The abdication of the ‘third world’ as the main focus corresponds to the abdication of the 'east-west conflict' in peace education, towards which a great deal of energy was focused over the past decades. However, one ought to talk of a comparable crisis at a different level, since both the development of theory and the degree of institutionalization in development education is further advanced than that of peace education
[Günther Gugel / Uli Jäger: Gewalt muss nicht sein. Eine Einführung in friedenspädagogisches Denken und Handeln. 3. Aufl., Tübingen 1997; Internetversion: Link]
Another text is dedicated to the current challenges encountered by peace education since the end of the east-west conflict, which is also linked to globalization or global learning.