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Pedagogy of Peace and Philosophy of War: the Search for Truth
Serhiy Klepko — Doctor of Philosophy, Associate Professor M. V. Ostrogradsky Poltava Regional In-Service Educator Training Institute
(Poltava, Ukraine)
E-mail: [email protected]
Peace pedagogy (German: Friedenspedagogik) and the Peace education are identified as relevant educational paradigm and set of educational projects aimed at solving problems of teaching non-violence and the capacity for peace in the context of the democratic movementfor peace. There is a set of reasons to state that the education system of the world depends not only on technological trends and mastering the sum ofstrategies ofwar and peace but, first ofall, on what extends the whole education is true for its subjects and able to provide research on the ultimate question of social and personal life, including eternal mankind's dream for peace. This paper describes methodological role for pedagogy of peace of geophilosophy as a concept to solve socio-economic conflicts in the dimensions of truth and earthly life in which modern geo-philosophical research carried out to find a man's place in the world and territory for him.
Key Words: Peace pedagogy, Peace education, the truth, being, geophilosophy
Peace pedagogy and Peace education within international programs and critical educational literature are identified as important aspects of education [Suvorova, 2008]. Peace pedagogy is seen as educational paradigm and pedagogical project those considered extremely important and worthy of thorough study in the context of the democratic movement for peace [The Education, 2016].
However, peace education is not modern or even postmodern phenomenon. German theologian and religious teacher Karl Ernst Nipkow in his fundamental work "Der schwere Weg zum Frieden: Geschichte und Theorie der Friedenspädagogik von Erasmus bis zur Gegenwart" [Nipkow, 2007] doing his pioneering research in the history and theory of Peace pedagogy, analyzes the flagship texts of the outstanding "teachers of peace" on the problem "Is it possible to teach people the non-violence and capacity for peace?", sums up 500 years of discourse "theology — violence — war" and develops his own "theory of peace pedagogy" which is based on the terms of enhanced global responsibility, empathy and trust.
On this time, some researchers identify crudity of philosophical foundations of peace pedagogy. Some studies of possible ethical and philosophical foundations of peace education provide only fragmental reasons for it and do not holistic and integral understanding of the culture of peace [Page, 2008; McGregor, 2014]. Even more concerning is the state of theory and practice of Ukrainian peace pedagogy, where the leading role belongs to the methods of word and literary influence.
Problems of education through the lens of peace, forming peacemaking attitude of pupils and students in Ukraine are solved in theoretical studies, too (Viktor Andruschenko
© Klepko, Serhiy, 2017
[Andrushchenko, 2014], Olena Bezkorovaina [Bezkorovaina, 1999], Anatoliy Demianchuk [Demianchuk & Demianchuk, 2000], Stepan Demianchuk [Pedagogy of Peace, 1995]); in educational practice, for one, Ukrainian Movement "Educators for peace and mutual understanding" actively encourages teachers to peacemaking activities, promotes the culture of peace; secondary schools award a title of "school of culture of peace" and the peace pedagogy is its theoretical basis. However, the "The National Report on the Status and Prospects of Education Development in Ukraine" (2016), which intends to be "comprehensive analysis of the status and prospects of development of national education during the 25-year period of independence of Ukraine" [National Report, 2016], does not mention the presence in Ukrainian educational space of peace education, peacemaking activities in education.
This significant lack of attention in the "National Report..." to the peace education clearly demonstrates the need for the conceptualization of theory and practice in the current war in Ukraine. Nevertheless, student's or teacher's progress in the peace pedagogy does not guarantee their safety from the war challenges to human being. Peace pedagogy, in fact, establishes an utopian goal: to form the peacefulness of education subjects unconnected and considering the a lot of factors those impact on making decisions resort to war on their territory, most of which are made neither by them, no by their compatriots or their government. Wars and conflicts do not occur due to the lack of education and training; more than likely, they are started and planned by well-educated rulers those manipulate by ignorance and roughness of their subjects.
Therefore, for the holistic or integrated understanding of the culture of peace for the needs of education, the importance of philosophical knowledge of the nature and causes of modern wars, armed combat and non-military forms of confrontation, defense issues, particularly within the philosophy of education not only of Ukrainian one, but of the world, where subjects of the philosophy of war considered insufficiently, increases significantly. As some exceptions is speech by Michael Barber "Brief Remarks on Education and the Causes of Waf' [Barber, 2009]. Barber tried to find out the causes of war and thought about kind of educational capacity to eliminate them, in particular, he defined the question: "How does your life help to remove the causes of war?" as a challenge for everyday activities and education through the life.
Therefore, on developing pedagogy of peace we should consider an ontology of war and peace in it. The necessary amount of philosophical work in this field are exemplified in the book Oleg Bazaluk [Bazaluk, 2017]. Using concepts of geophilosophy, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, social and military history, the author tries to find out the axioms of philosophy of war and peace and prove that the war and peace are the ways to achieve regulatory compromise between the active principle of the human psyche and the external environment. From the theory of war and peace proposed by Oleg Bazaluk one can follow that the transition from war to peace largely depends on the effectiveness of educational technologies [Bazaluk, 2017; Bazaluk, 2017a].
The next constructive approach, bringing into education some conclusions of the philosophy of war, presented by Sergey Pereslegin in his book "The Sum of Strategy", understanding the term "war" in the most general sense as "any conflict in which survival of the enemy in any sense: physical, social, economic, professional does not seen as an essential boundary condition." This author believes with good reason that "modern education with all its best prepares the student to be a soldier, trained on several basic techniques. There is no unified system of military training in modern democratic states, and views of most people on antagonistic conflict problems are at the level of the cave." According to Sergey Pereslegin, the
basic idea of military science, the art of war should be the wealth of every educated person as "impossible to be master in advanced mathematics of peaceful life, being poor in the arithmetic of war" [Pereslegin, 2013].
Only such strategic approach to education based on the philosophy of war fail to meet the requirements of the development of pedagogy of peace. In the future the shape of the peace education system will be depended not only on technological trends and strategies for mastering the sum of war and peace, but on how education will dare to be true for its subjects and its ability to explore in own content the boundary problems of social and personal life, particularly, the eternal human dream of peace, which is reflected in the continuous history of writing Treatise on perpetual peace [Treatise, 1963].
In this context, we note that under conditions of expanding of military confrontation and tensions, researches in "geophilosophy" in the world are intensified, too. Summarizing the intentions of various definitions of "geophilosophy" one can consider it as the search for man's place in the world and the territory for him. Geophilosophy is a particular social or individual concept of conflict resolution as for truth and earthly being described by Ukrainian writer of the 19th century Panas Myrnyi in his work "Khiba revut' voly, yak yasla povni?" (In Ukrainian, 1880) "Do the Oxen Low When the Manger is Full": "Because no truth on the Earth... no good... and no land... gone!... The land was gone than all gone ... No land — no life" [Myrnyi, 1990]. Alienation of people from the truth and land, corruption of the land relations in society, including primitive functioning Land Cadastre in the modern Ukraine are the factors those rise geophilosophical discontentment, concentrated in aggressive behavior of many people. Therefore, for the philosophy of the pedagogy of peace is important to explore the complex of problems revealed by Heidegger in the relations between categories of "Alethea" and "Earth" in a comparative analysis of the concepts of "truth" and "untruth" [Miroshnikov, 2013].
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