Peace Education From A Global Perspective

Traditionally,war was usually regarded as the parameter or standard of defining peace as well as the opposite state or phenomena of peace,that is,peace means a state of the absence of war or between two wars.Later,peace definition parameter was expanded from war to conflict,violence and so on.People's peace opinion was changed with the development of such concepts as positive peace,negative peace and cultural peace as well;war wasn't the only parameter of defining peace any more.Peace was related to the value,dignity or daily life of people as well as the relationship between human being itself,human and society,human and nature.So nowadays,peace education is defined as the process of promoting the knowledge,skills,attitudes and values needed to bring about behavior changes that will enable children,youth and adults to prevent conflict and violence,both overt and structural;to resolve conflict peacefully;and to create the conditions conducive to peace,whether at an intrapersonal,interpersonal,intergroup, national or international level.As one important way of peace achieving,peace education is increasingly accepted and promoted around the whole world.The dissertation mainly includes five parts:In the first part,some issues concerned with peace education are illustrated,such as the definition development of peace,the concept of peace education,the relationship between peace and peace education,the goal of peace education and so on..The second part reviews the development history of peace education.It includes peace education development in 19^th,20^th and 21^st century with different forms and contents to meet varied social development situation so as to achieve its goals.The practices of peace education around the world are introduced in the third part. With several examples,this part clearly illustrates peace education practices in different levels and institutes form a global perspective.In the fourth part,the challenges of peace education in the 21^st century are discussed. According to the theory and practice of peace education examined in the previous parts, the paper puts forward four challenges that peace education faced with in the 21^st century, including culture environment,textbook developing,teacher training and the effective of peace education evaluation.The last part serves as a summary of the whole dissertation.Here some different opinions of researchers are presented to promote further discussion about this issue.