Peace Education - Comparing Two Peace Ed Books

An educator is one of the most influential figures in a student's life, and even more so is the educator of peace. The peace educator can provide a peaceable classroom and allow for student's to develop inner convictions about the need for peace. When a group of young students understand and act on the need for peace, they become a strong positive force within their local school, community, society and world. The teacher who desires to pursue peace with their students are supported by a rich supply of Peace Education resources that provide the needed knowledge, theory, research and practical advice for the classroom. This paper will look at two resources from among them who stress similar things about the education of peace. This paper will summarise the books Peace Education by Ian Harris and Mary Lee Morrison and Waging War on Our Schools by Linda Lantieri and Janet Patti and expand them with practical implementation strategies to aid the education of peace in the classroom.

Harris and Morrison in Peace Education approach the discipline of Peace Education as both a philosophy as well as a process, and imply that the intangible concept of peace can only be made possible through the process of educational awareness. Thus, throughout the book the authors stress the significance of the teacher. The authors' definition of Peace Education consistently expands throughout the book as they integrate disciplines that look at issues of conflict resolution, the environment, international relations, development, and human rights into their understanding of Peace Education. Most predominantly, however, Harris and Morrison stress that Peace Education is empowering, and should be infused into teachers' pre-existing curriculum. The empowerment of Peace Education, the authors argue, is too often stifled by the traditional hierarchical structure of the school and classroom