Introduction
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INTRODUCTION s language educators, we are constantly looking for engaging and meaningful topics to use in our language classrooms. Peace Education offers us topics and issues that touch the lives of our students every day such as resolving conflicts, A clarifying values, and understanding diversity. The language classroom also offers us the opportunity to help students address these issues through activities and tasks that are related to the content and that require the practice of language skills, social interaction skills, and critical thinking skills. Questions commonly asked about Peace Education and its implementation in the language classroom along with some brief answers are: What is it? Peace Education is concerned with helping learners to develop an awareness of the processes and skills that are necessary for achieving understanding, tolerance, and good-will in the world today. Educating for peace means Examining and discussing our values and attitudes towards diversity, cultural differences, tolerance, and human dignity Developing language and social interaction skills to promote peaceful relations among people, among nations, and between human beings and the natural environment; Learning to solve problems and to think critically regarding issues of conflict and violence. Why try it? Our global existence depends on learning to live together without the threat of violence and conflict. Educators have the unique opportunity to promote peaceful co-existence by bringing the processes of peacemaking and peacekeeping to the attention of their students in the classroom. Reasons for educating for peace in the language classroom are To make learners aware of the basis of conflict and how to resolve conflict in their daily lives; To prepare students to become good citizens of their communities, nations, and the world with skills to promote peace and human dignity on all levels of interaction; To use the classroom as a microcosm of a just world order, in which the global values of positive interdependence, social justice, and participation in decision-making processes are learned and practiced. How to do it? Implementing peace education in the language classroom can be achieved several ways: Using topics that raise the issues related to peace and cultural understanding in our classrooms, language teachers can give students basic information to help them develop positive attitudes and values related to "peaceful" living". Engaging in activities that encourage cooperation, consensus building, and reflective listening gives students the skills they need to meet and resolve conflicts. Confronting issues and problems related to the topics will provide opportunities for students to develop problem-solving skills and critical thinking skills along with language skills to express themselves clearly and convincingly. In this volume, learners and teachers explore the concept of peace and peace education on the personal, community, and global levels. Topics for the ten chapters of the peace education volume will include Conflict resolution The language of non-violence Cross-cultural understanding Portraits of well-know advocates for peace on earth Building social-competence skills, and Developing attitudes and structures for peace making and peace keeping. The content-based lessons will be aimed at the intermediate student with options for more advanced learners and incorporate cooperative learning, englishprograms.state.gov 1 Menu Affective-humanistic activities, Cross-cultural instruction, and Problem-solving and critical thinking skills. The activities will include building a lexicon as a basis for reading for information related to peace and peace education, followed by discussions, role-plays, and cooperative pair and group work based on the readings. The goal of the activities is to foster awareness in the learners of the importance of peace in our world today and the ways that we all can be part of the peace making and peace keeping process. The activities are informative, fun, and designed to engage students in problem solving and critical thinking while practicing language skills. Within the past ten years many excellent resources have become available to help teachers incorporate educating for peace in their classrooms. Suggestions offered in this unit come from these resources and from the materials prepared by faculty and participants at the 1995 TESOL Institute on Peace Education. We hope that you find the volume interesting and useful for your classroom. Please visit us often! Carolyn Duffy PREFACE This volume of the Forum’s electronic journal Language and Civil Society offers tasks and activities related to Peace Education through content-based lessons. It is the goal of Peace Education to help students develop peacemaking skills to better cope with conflict in their daily lives and to promote peace in the world today. The ten chapters in this volume focus on topics such as conflict resolution, "non-violent" language, and cross-cultural understanding. Motivated by the excitement of using their English language skills to solve real-world problems, students will be engaged, observant, and active learners. The primary author for this volume is Dr. Carolyn Duffy. Dr. Carolyn B. Duffy holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Georgetown University and is an Associate Professor of ESL and Director of English Language Programs at Saint Michael’s College, Colchester, Vermont. She teaches ESL Intensive English students and in the graduate TESL/TEFL program. She also teaches in overseas centers in Greece and Colombia and has given workshops in content based language instruction in Greece, Indonesia, Venezuela, and Colombia. Her professional interests include materials development, curriculum design, second language acquisition, and language assessment. Her publications include the Heinemann TOEFL Preparation Course and Heinemann Practice Tests. She regularly presents at TESOL International and local TESOL affiliate conferences. In 1995 Professor Duffy was co-chair of the TESOL Summer Institute on Peace Education, which led to her interest in incorporating principles of peace education into ESL and EFL instructional materials and to her participation in the English Teaching Forum’s electronic journal Language and Civil Society. englishprograms.state.gov Menu 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS PEACE EDUCATION VOLUME Chapter1 Defining Peace Chapter 2 Analyzing Conflict Chapter 3 Conflict Resolution Chapter 4 Being Good Communicators: Listening Reflectively Chapter 5 Speaking the Language of Peace Chapter 6 Developing Cultural Understanding Chapter 7 Cornerstones of Peace: Valuing Diversity and Practicing Tolerance Chapter 8 Developing Empathy Chapter 9 Expressions of Peace Chapter 10 Promoting Peace Through Action Internet Resources References Bibliography englishprograms.state.gov 3 Menu CHAPTER 1 DEFINING PEACE efining Peace is the theme of the first chapter of the Peace Education volume and will provide learners with a common core of knowledge and experiences related to the concept of peace. By examining a series of photos depicting scenes of D people working together to achieve harmony and understanding, students can establish a core vocabulary and shared concepts which will be the basis for discussing peace. Using the photo series as the basis for discussions on the topic of peace, the teacher helps organize the information by using "webs" to introduce the concepts and "class word lists" to record key words and phrases. Dictionary and word-building activities engage students in working with the new concepts and lexicon. Learner notebooks will help students to record and organize the words and phrases for later use in their personal journals. The activities presented in Chapter 1 may be used in one lesson or presented over a series of lessons as a more extensive teaching unit in combination with the related Internet Resources, which are given at the end of this chapter. BACKGROUND INFORMATION Peace has been defined as the absence of conflict or violence and, conversely, as the presence of states of mind and of society such as harmony, security, accord, and understanding. In order to better understand how to achieve peace on the global level marked by the absence of violent conflicts or wars between nations, states, and communities, it is important for us to examine what personal attitudes, values, and knowledge provide the basis for working toward peace making and peace keeping. While almost all of us want peace and prefer to live and work in a peaceful situation, few of us have examined situations in order to identify the elements that foster peaceful living. What beliefs, traditions, attitudes, and values lead to living in peace and harmony? Is it possible to have global peace if we do not reflect personally on how peace is achieved in our daily lives? An exploration of the elements of peace includes examining the language we use in our discussions. Tolerance, understanding, empathy, cooperation and respect for differences in others are at the core of our peaceful coexistence on earth, but each of us may interpret these concepts somewhat differently based on our cultural values, our life experiences, and our beliefs about the world. It is important for us to share an understanding of these concepts as we talk about our attitudes and values and as we describe and analyze situations for elements of peace or conflict. CLASSROOM APPLICATIONS The following activities are meant to help students explore their own ideas about what