Peace Education

Course responsible: Vidar Vambheim.

Peace Education is learning to hate war, love peace and do something about it.

Education in modern society consists of two partly separate fields: Formal and informal education. Both can be analyzed with respect to processes and outcomes, which can be analyzed and assessed in terms of knowledge, skills, attitudes and relations, here presented in a 2 x 2 table:

	Formal/planned (Education)	Informal/”natural” (Socialization)
Outcomes	Knowledge Skills Attitudes                      Relations	Knowledge Skills Attitudes                      Relations
Process	Knowledge Skills Attitudes                      Relations	Knowledge Skills Attitudes                      Relations

The MPCT course in Peace Education during spring 2003 will analyze and discuss these aspects of Education, and relations among them. Since education and socialization are primarily directed to the coming generation, and aims at affecting the individual, the main focus will be on how different forms of education may work at the micro level, how evocative use of power, dominance and violence - symbolic & mental as well as physical - may work on the (inter)-personal level, and what can be done to resist manipulation, avoid or contain violence, and solve or transform conflicts in ethically acceptable and sustainable ways at this level.

This course will focus more on pragmatics of communication (Watslawick), interaction and problem-solving than on critical knowledge of structures and systems, and their relations to war or peace at the macro level: We will also ask whether, how and to what extent learning from concrete “real life” situations and experiences in micro serves or may serve as prototypes for understanding and analysis, what impact such learning may have on mentality / cosmology, and how personal experiences may affect the way we relate to conflicts and violence at higher levels of social organization.

This problematique will be related to processes of modernization and social change, individual-lization and autonomy, and their relation to forms, organization and contents of education (Fägerlind & Saha). It will also be related to analyses of childhood and socialization,
and their impact on processes of identity and conflict (E.H.Eriksson).

The teaching will combine lectures presenting theory and literature and discussions of cases, with about equal emphasis on cases presented by the teacher and students. The course will also discuss learning material, including fiction and movies. There will also be some exercises in conflict handling at the micro/ intra-group level.

A list of literature will be presented within January 15 2003, and supplemented during the course.