Our current theme Live, Love, Learn is all about peaceful & sustainable education. Questions of peace are at the forefront of our minds right now, but what does ‘peaceful education’ mean in practice?
Our sister organisation Peacemakers works in schools to help children and staff develop the skills to understand and resolve conflict. For primary-age children the focus is often on interpersonal peace amongst peers, and this is connected to inner peace and peace in the world (including through our joint project Junior Peacemakers).
A new video shows how a school in Staffordshire that has been working with Peacemakers has embedded peace in the heart of their community:
“Initially I was really sceptical, 6 and 7 year olds talking about peace? I thought no, that’s not going to work. But just within the space of a few weeks, doing regular Peacemaker circle times I saw the difference.”
Samantha Duda Spencer, a Year 3 teacher featured in the video.
This video was produced by Quakers in Britain, and is one in a series Building Peace in Schools being released every Sunday over 6 weeks. Izzy Cartwright explains the thinking behind the videos and the challenges of producing them in a blog on the Quakers in britain website.
“I was blown away by the commitment of teachers to the role education plays in tackling injustice and discrimination. This wasn’t seen as jeopardising academic achievement, but complementary to it.”
Izzy Cartwight, Peace Education Programme Manager at Quaker in Britain
Check out all the videos as they are released, and if you’d like to discuss the issues they raise, pop into Peace Hub for a chat. If you have links to a West Midlands school that could benefit from these approaches to building peace, please put them in touch with Peacemakers.