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Peacebuilding
Making Peace Where I Live (MAPWIL)
A program for adolescents
Comments from Kathy (a MAPWIL instructor) re defining a peaceful community…
To get at a definition of a peaceful community, we did
the visualization activity suggested in the MAPWIL curriculum. It's a
nice activity, and the kids love it, but you tend to get definitions of
peace that relate to tranquility, babbling brooks, or "in the zone"
kinds of feelings (doing the perfect jump on a snowboard).
To get beyond those definitions, I asked the kids to imagine two competitive
games (soccer, basketball, whatever) in which both teams are energized,
playing hard, and really want to win. One game they would consider peaceful
and the other not. How would they define the differences? I don't have
notes on what they said here at home, but it included things like:
- One game is fair, the other not.
- The players follow the rules in the peaceful game, may not in the
other.
- In the peaceful game, the players aren't angry.
- The peaceful game is fun; the other isn't.
- In the peaceful game, the players respect their opponents and show
good sportsmanship.
I used this as a springboard for developing a definition of a
Peaceful Community. The definition that this group came up with
was:
A Peaceful Community is one in which:
- People help each other.
- There is no violence.
- Disagreements and conflicts are solved without fighting.
- There are rules and consequences of breaking the rules.
- There are ways to change the rules.
- People talk respectfully to each other.
When we reviewed this definition the next week, several members of the
class were uncomfortable with the "no violence" part of it and
changed that to "minimal violence." So we talked about what
kinds and levels of violence might be acceptable and under what circumstances.
They wanted to include aggressive sports, like football, as acceptable
violence. They also felt that some use of force can be necessary to enforce
the law and maintain order. They felt that there should be as much as
is needed, but no more.
Defining where to draw that line was very difficult, and opinions varied,
ranging from a "blow them back to the stone age" approach to
terrorism to a much more pacifistic approach. I eventually used the range
of their opinions as representing the range of opinions that exist throughout
society and have reflected peoples' thinking about violence and order
throughout history.
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