Education for an Interdependent World
an article by Michael True

I just returned from a presentation and teacher workshop on the UN Decade for the Culture of Peace and Nonviolence, 2001-2010 in Wisconsin, for 100 participants at a celebration of the Plowshare Center in Waukesha, including teachers involved in religious education and public education. Everyone at the events took flyers on the UN Decade, with appropriate email for further information from UNESCO and the culture-of-peace.info website, and responded very enthusiastically to the Decade proposals and suggestions to take into classrooms and church groups.

This is one of many positive responses to the Decade from various groups, high school through graduate school and community centers, since 9/11. And I encourage everyone to offer the vision of the UN Decade, together with the support of International Criminal Court, as well as research and strategies for nonviolent social change from the Albert Einstein Institution and Gene Sharp. All three are messages of hope, with concrete proposals.

Editor's note: Michael True lectures widely on the culture of peace. He is active in the International Peace Research Association Foundation and the International Association of Educators for World Peace and lives in Worcester, Massachusetts.

DISCUSSION

Question(s) related to this article:

What kind of leadership is needed for the International Decade?


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GLOBAL MOVEMENT FOR A CULTURE OF PEACE

LATEST READER COMMENT:

I agree with the need to establish a meaningful history by leaders & workers who build peace.  Certainly, the culture of war-tools has dominated the history books.  But I believe much of this work must be rooted in the daily economics of common people around the globe.  It seems that a large percentage of fear & violence is based in the real & perceived needs for basic safety & wellbeing... and this is what we all attempt to build for ourselves & our families when we go to work each day.

If we can't connect our global justice/peace work to the everyday environment of working people, we leave our struggle in the hands of the corporate media who will continue to glue together the needs of typical workers with their market driven desires & understanding of daily events, politics & the resulting relationships between them.  The commercialized acculturation of freemarket greed is so entrenched in the daily consciousness of everyone here in the global North/West as to require a fundamental shift in those "real world" intersections of time & money that drive each other.

I think we can learn from one clear example of success, however, in dealing with this gloomy dilemma: the ecology/environmental movement.. . ...more.

This report was posted on October 18, 2003. The moderator is David.

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