PeaceStorie s from in a nd out of School

Irma-Kaarina Ghosn

Educators & Youth

Building

Editor,

Institute for Peace and Justice Education — IPJE • Lebanese American University

Irma-Kaarina GhosnEditor,

Institute for Peace and Justice Education–IPJELebanese American Universityhttp://www.lau.edu.lb/institutes

© 2010 IPJE and individual authors

ISBN-9953-461-13-9

Design by: Melissa Plourde Khoury

PeaceStorie s from in a nd out of School

Educators & Youth

Building

Institute for Peace and Justice Education — IPJE • Lebanese American University

Introduction, Irma-Kaarina Ghosn

Part I - Inspirations and reflections Educating for democracy, diversity, and dissent, Betty Reardon The school as a community: Schooling for citizenship, Sir Bernard Crick The European youth academy: An example for youth participation, Werner WintersteinerTeacher reflection on the challenges of teaching citizenship education in Lebanon, Bassel Akar Civic education: Theory and practice, Heba Nashabe Part II – Stories from the classroom In search of ethics: A step forward, Husni Zeine Global Classrooms-LAU Model United Nations teaches life skills, Elie SamiaLearning about the ‘Other’ in a university class, Irma-Kaarina Ghosn Infusing peace education into Grade 5 English, Lala Demirjian Peace education in grade 2, Alexandra Edde-Khawaja Civic awareness and conflict resolution initiatives in the International College, Mishka Mojabber Mourani

Part III – Stories from the community Ambassadors of Peace: Cascading the message of nonviolence, David VickersGrassroots comics: A new communication tool, Leif Packalen and Sharad SharmaYouth discover and act, Nader Houélla and Nora Mokdad Storycrafting: A simple method of multiple possibilities, Kirsti Palonen Abu Zeel teaches to care for our shared environment, Kirsti Palonen

1 – 9

1112 – 24 25 – 36

37 – 49

50 – 70

71 – 76

7980 – 83 84 – 94

95 – 110

111 – 116117 – 121 122 – 138

141142 – 154

155 – 164

165 – 170171 – 184

185 – 191

Table of Contents

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The need for peace educationThe Seville Statement on Violence, signed by twenty prominent scientists and disseminated by UNESCO in 1989, presents compelling scientific evidence to show that we are not biologically predisposed to violence. Violence is a learned construct, and it is, therefore, possible to eradicate it through concerted collective education effort. While educational institu-tions’ work in this regard is crucial, it is important to recognize the signifi-cance of each and every individual in promoting peace. Comprehensive peace education can, and should, take place at all levels of education, both formal and nonformal.

Peace education definedAfter the World War II, peace education has developed in three phases, or approaches1. The first, reform phase, aimed at preventing war through education for nonviolent alternatives to dealing with conflicts. The second, reconstructive approach, developed in the 1960s and focused more on structural, institutional changes and disarmament and abolition of war. The current, transformational approach, seeks to reject all forms of vio-lence, both between individuals and between nations. As Reardon points out, the desired changes are not only behavioral and institutional but also changes in the ways we think about violence and conflict and in the forma-tion of values2. Peace education is a multi-disciplinary field with a range of definitions and practices. UNESCO has characterized peace education as ‘international by nature, global in perspective and action-oriented in its aspirations’3. UNICEF defines peace education as follows:

Introduction

The constructing of peace begins in our minds as a vision of something new for the future. —The Seville Statement on Violence, 1989.

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soldiers by Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shii’a group. In 2007, with the reconstruction of hundreds of homes, schools, and factories destroyed dur-ing the bombing yet to be completed, a three-month-long battle was fought between the Lebanese army and an Islamist terrorist group holed up in the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp. The camp was destroyed and its inhabitants left homeless. In 2008, two hundred people were killed in clashed between rival local political groups, and sporadic street violence in different parts of the country continue as this volume goes to print.

Homogeneous schoolsThere are three types of schools in Lebanon. The public schools, also known as ‘official schools’, are supervised by the Ministry of Education and enroll less than half the student population7. Private schools are either non-profit international schools or proprietary schools operated for profit by individuals or groups. Some private primary schools, affiliated with vari-ous confessional communities, are government subsidized and accommo-date children from disadvantaged backgrounds. With the exception of the international schools and some of the subsidized schools, the student body in the majority of schools appears to represent a single confessional group, whether Christian, Sunni, Shi’a or Druze. This implies that a large number of school children have little contact with children outside their own faith community, especially since during the long civil war, many previously mixed communities became homogeneous. Similarly, students in the elite private schools have little, if any, contact with children from disadvantaged communities, with the exception of some community service projects that few schools require. In other words, the homogeneous schools pose a challenge in terms of national unity and tolerance toward ‘the other.’

The quest for national identity through the curriculum Independent Lebanon emerged ‘in the context of Franco-British competi-tion over the destinies of the peoples of the Near East’8. In 1943, a Na-tional Pact, an unwritten agreement among community leaders, allocated Christians political primacy, with Maronite Christians guaranteed the presidency. Sunni Muslims were allocated the prime minister position and Shi’a Muslims the speaker of the parliament post. All government positions are still distributed on confessional basis. The communal power sharing formula, however, failed to unify the country. On the contrary, it became a divisive force that, since then, has played a role in every violent conflict the country has witnessed.

Peace education in UNICEF refers to 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 level4. Ian Harris advocates ‘a holistic approach to peace education that could apply to community education, elementary and secondary schools, as well as college classrooms’5. In his view peaceful pedagogy—cooperative learning, democratic community, moral sensitivity, critical thinking—is integral in any peace education effort.

Similar stress on peaceful, participatory pedagogy is advocated by Betty Reardon, who provides perhaps the most comprehensive definition of the goal of peace education: development of an authentic planetary consciousness that will enable us to function as global citizens and to transform the present human conditions by changing social structures and patterns of thought that have created it6.

This volume illustrates a range of different peace education possibilities.

The contextThe Republic of Lebanon, comprising a mere 3900 square miles and a population of slightly less than four million, recognizes eighteen different confessional communities. In 2009, approximately one third of the popula-tion were Christian and two thirds Muslim, while in the first half of the 20th century Christians formed the majority.

Lebanon’s history is fraught with conflict, and in the 20th century the country has witnessed several periods of unrest and violent sectarian as well as intragroup clashes. In the two-decade long bloody civil war between 1971 and 1991, an estimated 150,000 people lost their lives, scores went missing, and the infrastructure was destroyed. The country also hosts over 200,000 Palestinian refugees, who live in several camps scattered around the country. In 2006, the country was ravaged by a month-long Israeli bombardment as retaliation for the killing and kidnapping of some Israeli

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to put the common good ahead of personal interests’13. The underlying assumption seemed to be that a change in curriculum content and styles of pedagogy will being about changed behaviors and attitudes, something not to be taken for granted.

Absence of common historyThe new curriculum was issued in 1997, but the new national history curriculum and textbook have not yet been approved as this volume goes to print in 2010. Because of the significant controversy surrounding the recent history, the community leaders of the different confessional groups have not agreed about the text. During the civil war, all the major factions engaged in atrocities, and there is fear that reminders of what actually hap-pened will bring about renewed feelings of hatred and subsequent revenge.

Schools now determine what history they teach, and several different ap-proved history textbooks from the 1960s and 1970s are used, many of them presenting contradictory concepts. Students are often frustrated knowing that what they are taught are not accurate accounts of the events. As one 9th grader put it, “We keep asking them when we’re going to learn the real history.” She continues: “The history just suddenly stops. You get this feel-ing they think that if history is going to create a problem, then just forget the history”14.

Despite the lofty rhetoric, it is unlikely that the latest curriculum will be any more successful in unifying the multi-confessional Lebanese society than the previous ones. The average Lebanese identify strongly with their respective confessional communities, and such strong intragroup identifica-tion is potential breeding ground for hostility toward other groups, particu-larly because the confessional power-sharing formula. There is fear among educators that because no consensus about a common version of the recent history has been reached and taught in schools, the youth are doomed to repeat the past, ‘with most of them learning contemporary history from their families, on the streets or from political leaders who may have their own agendas’14.

The potential of peace educationSince the early 1990s, after the two decades-long civil war, a number of different educational initiatives have been launched by various ministries, local and international non-governmental organizations, religious organiza-

A survey of the national curricula shows that throughout the 20th century, authorities have viewed education as a potentially unifying force9. The of-ficial curricula launched after 1943 consistently articulate a desire to bring together the various confessional factions for a cohesive nation through civic education, but apparently with little success.

In an effort to create a sense of Lebanese identity, the first independence era curriculum laid emphasis on the importance of citizenship education. In the official curriculum, religious education was kept to the minimum in an effort to secularize the public schools and unify students’ social and political orientation10. Since then, several legislative decrees have been issued with the goal of achieving national unity.

According to Frayha11, the social studies curricula and textbooks have lacked an important theme in educating students about their society, that is about pluralism. This deficiency has resulted in the students’ confusion about their culture. Students have been led to think of Lebanon as a homogeneous society, yet on all sides, they have been confronted with deep differences and conflicts. They have been taught that Lebanon is a sovereign and independent country with an Arab face, yet they could not be sure that this meant they were Lebanese, Arab, or Lebanese-Arab.

At the conclusion of the civil war in 1991, authorities once again turned to education as a tool to bring about social cohesion. The agreement called for schooling that will socialize children into national unity within the framework of Lebanon’s Arab identity. An agreement was reached to standardize history and civic education textbooks with the aim to promote national unity.

The subsequent Plan for Educational Reform emphasized national integra-tion through instruction of mandatory standardized history and civics in all schools. However, the confessional communities all vehemently opposed the plan. Consequently, a New Framework for Education in Lebanon was developed, which, according to Abuchedid et al.12 represented ‘a tectonic shifting’ from the political objectives of the initial plan to ‘structure, content and styles of pedagogy’. The curriculum document identifies two broad aims of the curriculum, which include development of individuals ‘able to deal with others in a spirit of responsible, cooperative citizens’ who can ‘build a unified, cohesive Lebanese society,’ and who are ‘willing

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In the school context, the crowded, test-driven curriculum leaves little room for new concepts to be addressed. While the infusion approach would enable peace education content to be addressed in practically any disci-pline, it is not a simple matter as few textbooks include peace education content. Thus, to accomplish infusion, teachers will need extensive training on how to adapt content to peace education aims. There are also cultural barriers to the participatory, leaner-centered pedagogy that characterizes peace education. Classrooms are a microcosm of the culture within which they are situated, and the Lebanese culture is hierarchical and rather formal, implying a clear power distance between the teacher and learners, with both roles clearly defined and resisting change.

In the context of both formal and non-formal education, funding for projects and their sustainability are two major challenges. In school settings, comprehensive peace education implies intensive teacher training, not only in content but in pedagogy. In many cases, only the elite schools can offer sufficiently long training and the very important follow-up.

Peace education in nonformal settings is also expensive. Without consider-able external funding NGOs involved in peace education work will not be able to provide free programs. I must agree with Surya Nath Prasad16, who argues that peace education ought to be considered a public good and as such should be offered as a free service to all.

The final challenge is how to measure the impact of peace education. This is not a challenge unique to Lebanon, however. First, peace education outcomes involve changes not in knowledge and skills but in attitudes, values, and patterns of behavior, which not only take time to change but are also elusive and difficult to measure. Therefore, there is a need for peace educators to develop creative ways to measure the changes brought about by peace education programs. The projects and programs described in this volume are anecdotal records of promising practices, and although not evidence of lasting change, the diversity of approaches across a variety of contexts they present offer an interesting perspective to the potential of peace education in conflict countries like Lebanon.

This volume complements the facilitator’s manual, Towards a Culture of Peace through Teacher Education17, exploring education for change, citizenship and youth empowerment and presenting examples of how Lebanese educa-

tions, and universities with the aim of healing the wounds of the war and promoting a culture of peace. Programs have addressed conflict resolu-tion, prejudice reduction, interpersonal communication, human rights, empowerment of women, reduction of violence against children, inter-faith dialogue, environmental concerns, and others.

Peace education takes so many different forms, because, as Betty Reardon has pointed out, peace education, just as all education is grounded in some social intent, which differ from one society to another. In 2002-2004, a group of thirty Lebanese educators and regional consultants from diverse backgrounds came together in a number of meetings to explore peace education in the Middle Eastern context in general and in Lebanon, in particular15. Although everyone present recognized the serious problem of political conflict and violence and the need to work to eradicate them, several other issues emerged that went counter to the core values of peace, human rights and democracy. Within a conceptual framework of these three core values, they identified what they considered the most important social purposes of peace education in the region: family unity and har-mony; just and caring classrooms; respect for human dignity; gender equity; tolerance and appreciation of diversity; citizenship. They explored also a variety of approaches to achieve the goals and delineated the following: interpersonal communication conflict resolution skills; prejudice reduction; inter-faith dialogue; critical thinking and problem-solving; and student governance. Many of the goals are addressed in the projects and programs described in this volume which reflect only a fraction of the effort undertaken by Lebanese peace educators.

ChallengesDespite these initiatives, peace education in Lebanon faces many challeng-es. First, there are prevailing misconceptions about the aims and nature of peace education, with many viewing it as a clandestine effort to get people ‘to make peace with the enemy’, whether that enemy be Israel, Syria, or a political party. Others perceive peace education as promoting a ‘turn-the-other-cheek’ attitude to conflicts. The lack of uniform single definition of peace education poses another challenge, and many different approaches are implemented in the country, some of which are rather far removed from the definitions cited above.

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6. Reardon, B. (1988). Comprehensive Peace Education: Educating for Global Responsibility. NY: Teachers College.

7. Ministry of Education and Higher Education Annual Statistics, 2007.

8. Traboulsi, F. (2007). A History of Modern Lebanon. London: Pluto Press, p. 104.

9. Ghosn, I.-K. (2010). The quest for national unity: rhetoric and reality of School Curricula in Lebanon. In In Kirylo, J. & Nauman, A. (Eds.). Curriculum Development: Perspectives from around the World. Chicago: Association for Childhood Education International.

10. Ministry of Education, 1946.

11. Frayha, N. (1985). Religious Conflict and the Role of Social Studies for Citizenship Education in the Lebanese Schools between 1920 and 1983. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, California, (pp. 349-350).

12. Abouchedid, K., Nasser, R. & Van Blommenstein, J. V. (2002, Fall). The limitations of inter-group learning in confessional school systems: The case of Lebanon [Electronic version]. Arab Studies Quarterly, 24(4), p. 61

13. Ministry of National Education Youth and Sports (1995). The New Framework for Education in Lebanon, pp. 3-4.

14. Fattah, H. (2007, January 10). Lebanon’s history textbooks sidestep its civil war.International Herald Tribune. Accessed from [ http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/10/news/Beirut.php ¶ 9-10] March 27, 2007.

15. Ghosn, I.-K. (2005). Towards a Culture of Peace through Teacher Edu-cation. Handbook for Workshop Facilitators. Institute for Peace and Justice Education, Lebanese American University.

16. Prasad, Surya Nath (2008). Access to peace education. Encyclopedia of Peace Education. Teachers College Columbia. Accessed from [ http://www.tc.edu/centers/epe/entries.htm ], April 11, 2010.

17. Ghosn, I.-K. (2005), op.cit.

tors are implementing aspects of peace education from primary school to university and the community. Some of the chapters are papers presented at annual conferences for Global Education of the Child at the Lebanese American University while some were specifically written for this volume. Although the different contributions have been slightly edited, the submis-sions have been kept largely in their original format, whether conference presentations or written papers. It is my hope that this will enable the different voices to be heard better than if all would have been edited to a prefixed, uniformed template.

I wish to extend my warm thanks to all the contributors, as well as to the anonymous reviewer whose input was extremely valuable. I also wish to thank the Mennonite Central Committee and its dedicated staff for their continuous support, which has made the publication of this volume pos-sible. I owe my sincere gratitude to Provost Abdallah Sfeir and Dean Fouad Hashwa for the ongoing support they have offered the Institute for Peacec and Justice Education. Finally, I wish success to all peace educators working to make our world a more peaceful place.

Irma-Kaarina GhosnByblos, July 2010

Endnotes

1. For the history and conceptualizations of peace education, see Encyclopedia of Peace Education. Teachers College Columbia [Online] http://www.tc.edu/centers/epe/entries.htm

2. Reardon, op.cit. p. xi.

3. UNESCO, 1981

4. UNICEF Staff Working Paper (PD-ED-99/003) by Susan Fountain, p.1

5. Harris, I. (2008). History of Peace Education. Encyclopedia of Peace Education. Teachers College Columbia. Accessed from [ http://www.tc.edu/centers/epe/entries.htm ], April 11, 2010.

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Let us begins with three inspirational conference talks. In her powerful and eloquent keynote speech in the 2002 conference, Educating for Change, Betty Reardon challenges us to think what it means to educate the next generation in democratic citizenship. She brings forth also the notion of dissent, which is, of course, critical in a democratic society. However, in fragile conflict societies, where dissent may lead to violence, it is important to promote a culture of tolerant exploration of disagreements. Sir Bernard Crick delivered the keynote address in the 2004 conference, ‘In loco parentis’: Safety and Ethos of Schools. He views the school as a community, within the safety of which children can learn the values and attitudes of citizenship. Some of the citizenship curriculum goals he deline-ates are very relevant in the Lebanese context, such as learning about hu-man rights and how they relate to citizens, and the origins and implications of the diverse religious identities.

Werner Wintersteiner’s pizza metaphor for European coexistence can be translated very easily into the Lebanese context; how much more satisfying it is to enjoy a dish of tabbouleh than eating plain lettuce. The Youth Acad-emy project he describes is an excellent example of youth empowerment that could well be replicable in the Lebanese context.

The conference talks are followed by two reflective studies. Bassel Akar explores the challenges of adopting a universal approach to civic education. Although the sample of teachers and students interviewed is small in this pilot study, his theory, research and analysis are compelling. Heba Nashabe takes a critical look at the current civic education curriculum and its poten-tial of fostering tolerance and a sense of community, which is not an easy task in a multi-confessional country like Lebanon. What can be taught in civics classes is, to considerable extent, influenced by politics.

Part I – Inspirations and Reflections

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democracy, and fifth that very great challenge is posed to educators by the current crisis in democracy. Democracy is the politics of tolerance, diversity, and dissent. It is not only representative public institutions and elections. Democracy is the sovereignty of the people. Democracy is government by “the due consent of the governed,” by consultations among the governed. Whether those consultations take place in villages in the Philippines or street corner assemblies, such as are emerging in Argentina today, where people confront their own public problems and political dilemmas and de-termine a policy course. Tolerance makes that kind of process possible. At its most basic, it is acknowledging the right of the other to be other and to participate in this common process. It is a mechanism for allowing cultural, social and political diversity to flourish. Such a system must develop from within a society. It cannot be exported from or imposed by another.

We speak of democracy as the shift from bullets to ballots, and the reason we can make such a shift is because democracy is in essence a mode to man-age complexity and conflict; not to manipulate them in the interest of one group. Authentic democracy manages conflict, complexity and diversity in the interest of the entire community, assuring within that management that conflict can be resolved without violence and that contention, all contro-versy is constructive, leading us toward a positive solution to our problems. I would argue that democracy is the only condition in which true citizenship can evolve, because in other systems, the population are subjects, not citizens.

I recently began a class by asking students whether they felt themselves to be citizens or subjects of the processes of globalization. The class looked quite startled. This was a class in which we were going to discuss the phenomenon of global civil society comprising citizens movements from all over the world. What was interesting was that most students agreed ultimately that they felt themselves subjects, being affected by but not affecting globalization. Those who felt the glimmer of citizenship were activists, students who were somehow involved in some movement deal-ing with the negative aspects of globalization. So, I would posit that the primary difference between subject and citizen is political agency, which I would say is the capacity to act to assure the accountability of a justly established government.

What I am going to say this morning has been said somewhat differently before by Gandhi, who, when asked what he thought of Western civiliza-tion replied, “I think it would be a very good idea,” and that, indeed, is what I think about democracy. It is an idea that we must work to achieve. It is, first, important for me to say that my perspectives are particular. We all need to be very much aware of our perspectives and how they were formed, and mine are of a 20th century American peace educator, strug-gling very hard to foresee the possibilities of an appropriate education for the youth and citizens of a global 21st century. So, in a sense I come to you, not only from another place, but also from another time. But I have always been an advocate of futurism and try to look at the present in the light of its consequences for the future. You must also keep in mind, as you hear what I have to say, that I have some very deep concerns, and when one has deep concerns they tend to color all that we think and say at a given time. I am deeply concerned with what is happening to democratic process in my country and with what the citizens of my country seek to ignore or con-demn in what is happening in the world, largely as a consequence of what is happening to democratic processes elsewhere. Basically, I believe that we should not be waging war to defend democracy, but rather, a non-violent struggle to truly achieve it.

I want to make five key points that are integral to my argument. First, I think that democracy is under threat because it is misunderstood. Second, I think we have failed to provide an education which enables young citizens to truly understand democracy. Third, I believe that the cornerstone of democracy is tolerance, and that diversity both necessitates and sustains democracy. Fourth, I hold that dissent assures the integrity of

Educating for democracy, diversity, and dissent

Professor Betty A. ReardonKey-note address in ‘Education for Citizenship,’ LAU, 2002

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to bring about a mutually beneficial outcome to all parties. We outline conflict process in a teaching manual distributed through the Global Cam-paign for Peace Education (Cabezudo & Reardon, 2002). Among the skills that conflict process requires are: anticipation, that is to be able to foresee from the signs of the present, potential future consequences of actions and policies; non-violent struggle to resist injustice - in other words we need to teach not just conflict resolution but how to conduct conflict non-violently, how conflict can be used for positive change. We need to teach skills of resolution and identifying common interests of disputing parties around which resolution can be built. We need to teach the skills of reconciliation, how to reintegrate disputants into a common community on the basis of mutuality and reconstruction of relationships. We must teach how to create a new situation in which these kinds of conflicts can be resolved through creative contention and do not have to reach the point of destructive and/or violent conflict.

Constructive, creative contention is a set of skills in a process which I have outlined in another recent book published by UNESCO, called Educa-tion for culture peace in a gender perspective (Reardon, 2001). It approaches building the capacity of anticipation through visioning as a skill. That is the capacity to conceptualize our values in operation; what would it be like when we have a universal recognition of human dignity? What institutions do we need to assure that? What behaviors and relationships? What social and political processes? Some will call this kind of visioning utopian, but utopia, I would remind you is not the impossible, but rather the articula-tion of the best possible society we can imagine. We can only get truly democratic societies by first imagining them. We need also to be able to articulate the positions we take on the basis of a values analysis. This skill ought to be taught as well.

We need to develop in our young and in ourselves the skill of self-awareness to assure civility, a habit necessary to constructive democratic discourse. Civility is the practice of according, even while in a dispute, respect and recognition of the dignity of the other. It involves respectful refutation of the ideas of others that we may not accept. It requires that when our values force us not to agree, or to agree to disagree, we disagree within the wisdom of a wonderful 20th century man, Pope John XXIII, who in the Papal Encycle of 1963, Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth), reminded us that while many may be in error, (He was actually referring to atheism espoused by

Developing capacities for democratic citizenship must be the primary pur-pose of education. The main present needs of democracy are that citizens be vigilant about the practice of transparency in policy making, the preven-tion of intolerance, the preservation of diversity, and the protection of dissent. Transparency is essential for citizens to have the information they need to make decisions and to form opinions upon which they may exercise political agency. Prevention of intolerance is the business of democracy as-suring that ‘the other’, minorities, non-elites of all kinds are not only let be, but may also voice otherness, even in the form of dissent from the political main stream. Dissent is at the heart of the democratic process, especially when disagreement with those in control of the state becomes necessary to preserve democracy. The preservation of diversity in a democratic society-a society made by people, a living system-is essential to the sustainability of the system. All living systems are sustained through their diversity, and the protection of dissent is necessary to allow for alerting us to the potential or actual betrayal of fundamental democratic principles. Political agency calls for commitment to those principles and capacities to achieve them.

In her opening statement, Irma Ghosn spoke of democratic values. The absolutely essential core value is that of universal human dignity-of acknowledging the innate human worth of every person-of assuring all persons’ opportunity and space to define themselves, not be defined by oth-ers, not even by their own societies. Another important value of democracy is human equality, the principle that human difference must never be the basis of discrimination or the denial of rights or the benefits that are to be shared in a democratic society. Social and economic justice requires that the citizens, the society and the government be committed to the well being of all. Policies should not be for the benefit of one group at the cost to another group. In my political tradition that holds that the point of government is to assure citizens’ rights and that the task of government is the promotion of the common welfare. The common welfare brings forth another important value, the value of sustainability, of keeping the democratic process alive and assuring that the needs of some of the present generation not be satisfied at the expense of meeting needs of the entire planet and future generations.

Political agency also requires proficiency in skills of democratic process, skills that some are coming to call not just conflict resolution but conflict process and creative contention (Reardon, 2001), conducting conflict

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is what many people think tolerance is; we don’t do anything, but we just abide the other. Positive tolerance is acting to assure that letting the other be other, as is meant in the words of the Beatles’ song, Let It Be.

Tolerance makes all the other values possible. Intolerance is the hallmark of authoritarianism. Whether it is some form of fundamentalism or political ideology, intolerance derives, in large part, from a narrowness of vision, of a very simple way of thinking of dividing things into dualisms: the good and the evil with no gradations in between, leaving no space for human error or human fallibility, to believe that others are “for us or against us,” because there is one right way to pursue human goals and it is usually our way.

A threshold point is also a crisis. Crises as we are told by the Chinese characters for the word are moments when we are presented with dangers and opportunities such as we now have in crises in democracy. The dangers are erosion of diversity and suppression of dissent. But we have opportuni-ties. We have opportunities to act, to educate to really understand what democracy is, and to appreciate that diversity is essential to the sustainabil-ity, to the very health of the living system of democracy. All living systems, whether derived through nature or humanly devised, need diversity for resilience and sustainability. Resilience is what enables the system to tran-scend a crisis.

But living systems can also be attacked by malignancies, illnesses which test resilience. I think that malignancy in the present system is quite evident in the multiple forms of violence that we face: Familial, domestic violence; social violence which is lethal but not warfare; political armed violence, whether the violence of terrorists or the violence of states in response to terrorism; political repression from the most discrete and subtle to the most overt. This violence is the manifestation of illness in the system. Any of these manifestations of malignancy holds the danger of undermining the entire system. So diversity is very important as a source of resilience and strength. Diversity offers us possibilities to overcome illness in a living system: if one component is not functioning for a time, another can pick up, in some sort of compensation. The more diverse the system, the more possibilities we have to confront problems and withstand crises. But when too many components begin to be repressed, when there are fewer pos-sibilities that compensation does not work, that is when the possibilities of democracy begin to deteriorate into authoritarianism.

communism.) no matter how great the error, they were still human beings, still the possessors and subjects of rights, which must be respected even, and , especially, as we deal with those with whom we profoundly disagree. And if we are going to disagree, we need the relevant information on which to base the disagreements; we need to know how to acquire information; we need the skills of information acquisition. If we demand transparency, we must also develop in ourselves the ability to acquire and use all relevant information and, as educators, we must develop that ability in our students.

Two other skills that I think are particularly important and which we try to practice in peace education classes at Teachers College, are what we call reflective listening and participatory hearing, something that I advocate should be part of all discourse. Reflective listening is when as you listen you think about the full meaning of the other. To listen reflectively is part of honor-ing the other. Participatory hearing is the testing of what you have heard, the testing of your own comprehension so as to participate with the other in a process of communication that can lead you toward a common truth. This type of process is described in the UNESCO book (Reardon, 2001). These two skills are absolutely essential in the most contended areas that we are dealing with today: • Identity; who defines us, self or society? • Security; what security? The security of the state, the security of the society, the security of the people, gender security? • What are the boundaries between human equality and respect for traditions based on inequalities? • Sustainability; in a world of poverty, how do we meet present needs and still assure of the future of the planet? • Sovereignty; how do we respect national independence, but prevent some gross violation of human rights by the state?These are some of the key questions we face now as global citizens and as peace educators.

The practice of these skills is the substance of tolerance, essential to democ-racy because without it we cannot have diversity. It is important to recog-nize that tolerance is not a static situation; tolerance is a threshold point in a process of the broadening and strengthening of democracy. It is the threshold at which intolerance moves from negative to positive social and political processes. There are both negative and positive forms of tolerance. Negative tolerance is simply abstaining from doing harm to the other. That

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Indeed, I think educators in all countries need to look into our textbooks for instances of xenophobia. I also think that we have to review the at-titudes, standards and language of teachers and school staff. We need to be alert in classrooms and on playgrounds to be sure that diversity is honored. We have to act in such a way as to establish respect for self and the other. We have to deal positively with the affiliation needs of the young. We know that very often, particularly in adolescence, affiliation groups engage in the phenomenon of moral exclusion; adopting negative attitudes towards out-sider to whom they believe they do not have to be just or fair. We cannot develop a society free of xenophobia with an inclusive sense of justice, if we tolerate moral exclusion among our adolescents. They need to be able to resist social exclusion as adolescents, so that as adult citizens they can resist xenophobia cultivated by leaders for their own political aims. They need to have an inclusive sense of justice, so that they can dissent from injus-tice -so they can practice safeguarding democracy by protecting the rights of minorities. Because, as we should know by now, majority will is not democratic, particularly when it is by simple majority; the majority is often also ‘simple minded,’ supporting policies without the benefit of informed critical thinking.

Dissent from intolerance and renunciation of negative identity that says, “I am who I am, because I am not the other,” is the first stage in the shift from a threshold point of negative tolerance to positive human identity based on appreciation of differences essential to the protection of democ-racy. We are now, as we heard in the opening remarks of this session, at the threshold point in the erosion of democracy. In the US such develop-ments as the Patriot Act, the censorship of media coverage of conflict areas, denouncing dissent, lack of transparency in policy making runs counter to the process both negative and positive tolerance. All of this is done in the name of national security. These trends raise one of the previously noted critical, contentious questions. Whose security? These antidemocratic devel-opments extend to the contempt for global community values manifest in the flouting of international standards. We try to teach our students respect for the rule of law as the guarantor of democracy. How do we help them interpret the ignoring of these standards in a struggle declared to be bringing democracy to former dictatorships? Who are we when we engage in the behaviors we denounce in the ‘enemy?’

Diversity can be both apparent and hard to perceive. We think of diversity largely as ethnicity, political affiliation, beliefs and our status in society, and so forth. Diversity that we have to deal with as citizens may ultimately confront these issues, but the diversity that we deal with as educators tends to be the diversities among the individuals in our classrooms, the diversity of learning styles, of ways of perceiving, of some attitude differences and aptitude differences. We need to cultivate an appreciation of diversity and we need to start with children in classrooms appreciating these kinds of less social and political differences in order to lay the ground work for the youth and the adolescent to be disposed positively toward dealing with other forms of diversity in the larger society.

Diversity, even within the same ethnic, class or age groups, when it is used properly in the learning experience, provides opportunities for broader senses of human identity. Issues of identity and belonging must be ad-dressed in ways that make us sensitive to when we may be coming to a threshold point, such as when legitimate patriotism is manipulated into xenophobia. I do think there are legitimate and positive forms of patriot-ism; part of our positive sense of identity is to belong to our countries, to be part of them. But we must be sensitive to when we have reached a threshold point toward the negative and exclusionary, whether it is just waving flags or attacking fellow citizens because they seem to have the ap-pearance of a people currently defined as ‘enemy.’

I was interested to read in a recent column by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times this quote: ‘Patriotism has become part of our blood, but I see that patriotism has also become a banner for the abandonment of humanity. I suddenly feel afraid. What country and people is it that I love? For a country and people like this one day will move towards terrorism and nazism.’ I was surprised that this was written by a Chinese university student some time past. Then Mr. Kristof goes on to say that what Chinese textbooks and politicians refer to as the war to resist America and help Korea is, what the West calls the ‘Korean War’ to resist communism’s extension into Asia. Such distortions of identity also distort perspectives that prevent us from perceiving the realities at issue in the crises we face. Educators concerned with developing and maintaining democracy need to help students develop more complex identities, not so easily manipulated as patriotism, religion and ethnicity often are.

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harassment. Perhaps one day Americans will honor Barbara Lee as they now honor Dr. King. Barbara Lee, the one representative in Congress, who voted against undertaking the war against Iraq, saying, “I fear that we may become what we are trying to resist.” I think that she was an example of the consciousness of potential consequences of policy and an ethical con-science in regard to political responsibility, and of the capacities to respect law and engage humane ethics as standards for making political decisions. These are capacities we should seek to nurture through civic education for authentic democracy.

We, educators face a great challenge. We need to cultivate not only consciousness but conscience, compassion and critical thought. Critical thought is not just nay-saying, neither is constructive dissent just nay-saying. It derives from reasoning that is both ethical and practical. We need to educate for such reasoning so that citizens will be prepared to exercise the capacities of conscience, compassion and critical thinking in very practical, responsible ways. To capacitate learners to be responsible political agents is to develop the knowledge and values that enable them to demand account-ability of leadership, to sustain democracy through reflection and action. If we wish, to educate toward a democratic culture of peace, we have to as-sure, not only that democratic values are studied, but that they are internal-ized as guides for action. That takes reviewing our own behavior, looking at the degree of our own internalization of democratic values and principles. It calls us, educators to be in process with the students whom we teach, to work on our own skills of agency.

Our challenge also calls for relevant and substantial content. We need to determine the appropriate knowledge on which the skills development processes could be based, around which values internalization would evolve. I think this knowledge base has to be selected toward two major learning goals: achieving a broader human identity, enabling us to build morally inclusive societies, and acquiring familiarity with a wide variety of human experiences, providing more possibilities for problem solutions within the context of tolerance, democracy, and nonviolence.

Foremost in curriculum content should be the international standards on human rights; not teaching them as, for example, they were taught right after the fall of the dictatorship in Argentina—by having the students memorize the thirty articles of the Universal Declaration of Human rights—

We need to be reminded of the Nuremberg Principles of the obligation to resist illegal orders and the violation of international law, articulated to convict the Nazi leaders of Germany in the Nuremberg Tribunals after World War II. Flawed as these trials may have been, they did contribute to an international acknowledgement of an obligation to a wider community than the nation, to a recognition of humanity itself as a level of human identity. The Nuremberg Principles were adopted as international law by the United Nations. During the Vietnam War I appealed to this principle of the obligation to resist illegal policies in witholding the percentage of my taxes that went to waging what I believed to be an illegal war. The Internal Revenue Service took the money from my bank account without my knowl-edge or consent. Although I knew I would be unsuccessful in my dissent on the basis of the Nuremberg Principles, I undertook to comply with a citizen’s obligation to international law as an assertion of personal political agency, and because I believe that the development and defense of democ-racy requires us to acknowledge and to enact our citizenship responsibilities at all levels from our local neighborhoods to the international system. A task of those who seek to educate for global citizenship is to illuminate the possibilities to exercise democratic rights and responsibilities on global issues and to educate so as to prepare learners to engage in such exercises. Exercises of dissent are found throughout the version of the history of American democracy I was taught in public school that still informs my perceptions of the rights and responsibilities of citizens.

“Common Sense” Thomas Paine’s widely read pamphlet that argued for the rebellion of the American colonies against British crown; the eight-eenth century colonists’ resistance to the crown’s Stamp Act, taxing tea that they denounced in the phrase “taxation without representation is tyranny” were acts of dissent as political agency. The abolition movement to abolish slavery opposing the laws that held kidnapped Africans in slavery for four generations was dissent. The civil disobedience of the civil rights movement was dissent. The anti-Vietnam movement that ended an illegal war was dis-sent. All of these dissenters were much reviled by the majority. Those who pursued these causes were subject to social sanctions and many paid high economic and political prices. Some gave their lives. The very honored civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday now is a national holiday, was the subject to contentious investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He had one of the thickest surveillance files of all whom the FBI surveilled. In our own day dissenters suffer similar rejection and

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with a practicing civic educator in at least one other part of the world, pref-erably several, for sharing perspectives and building international solidarity among those educating for peace and democracy. That is what the annual International Institute for Peace Education is all about; building solidarity and carrying it out through networking. From such connections we can draw the courage we need to commit ourselves to the long, difficult struggle for democracy, to face all these complexities and challenges.

We have been told that the war on terrorism, a war, it is said, for democ-racy, will be a long war. Achieving democracy through war is as impossible as is preparing for and waging war to achieve security. No war and no vio-lent revolution has achieved democracy or security. Revolutions and wars change institutions and personnel of governments, but they do not trans-form authoritarian states into democracies. Such transformation can only come out of an even longer struggle to learn how to develop and sustain a democratic order: to appreciate that democracy is the most complex form of government that requires more from its citizens than any other form. Our task is to educate the coming generations to take on the responsibility of continuing the struggle for modes of governance that respect the equal human value of all people and seek to fulfill their universal human rights. A truly democratic struggle means all parties risk the costs of the strug-gle and all must be committed to change. That’s what active nonviolence means; those embarked on a nonviolent struggle for a just and democratic society put themselves at risk. The difference between those risks and the risks of war and armed struggle is that those who wage the nonviolent struggle are those most at risk when they seek to transform rather than destroy an unjust order. I argue that this is the only form of struggle that can produce the authentic democracy toward which we seek to educate. Most succinctly stated democracy and violence are incompatible.

My friends, I think that we have to be ready gird up our loins for a long struggle, to educate our students and ourselves for democracy, and I think that the topics that have been offered to us in this program are a very good start.

but rather leading them to understand them as principles, to understand them as the articulation of those ethics and values peace educators argue to be the normative core of a democratic culture of peace; to know what they come out of human history. We should teach the history of the events and developments that led to the articulation of the principles encoded in the various human rights declarations, covenants and conventions, leading students to see history as the struggle for the essential conditions of human equality that is the core of democracy not just a chronicle of violence and conquest. Neither the history nor the cultural interpretations of human rights are written in stone. These standards do not deny diversity. They can be interpreted within many legal systems and many cultures, because they are principles. Above all students need to know that the variety of interpre-tation comes out of multiple ways of being human. There is not just one way to be right or human. Nothing is more human than diversity.

This calls for what I would refer to as the pedagogy of engagement, some-thing that is also outlined in Learning to Abolish War, a pedagogy of engag-ing learners in the process in which they not only learn but they do; they engage in acts of civic responsibility.

Engagement depends upon a reciprocal learning relationship with our students that is built on mutual respect and appreciation of diversity, mean-ing that we appreciate the differences that we bring to the process. It is a pedagogy of respect, reciprocity and diversity. Students need to learn to ap-preciate different styles of teaching, that all teachers need not do the same thing, nor should all students have to learn in the same way. Through this process of engagement, we can develop our own capacities to be critical thinkers, to apply to our teaching analysis, reason and ethics. We also have to be courageous in taking on these issues. Courage, in large part, comes from knowing how to do it. We need to be courageous as we practice the techniques of good teaching, and we need courage to unveil the hidden curricula; remember that xenophobia in some texts is often intended to produce unquestioning loyalty to authority, and authority must always be subjected to questioning and accountability.

We have got to confront ourselves with our own attitudes, our own biases and the discriminations that exist in contemporary education. We can do that by building solidarity, by helping each other. We need to network. Civic educators like peace educators should have a working relationship

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Professor Sir Bernard Crick Key-note address in ‘In loco parentis: Safety and Ethos of Schools,’ LAU, 2004

Let me begin at the beginning. Where do children learn their values? They learn them from several sources: the home, the school, religion and ‘the world’. ‘The world’ is everywhere else: other children, the street, and the media. The home, the school and religious institutions cannot shut the world out. They must prepare children slowly, gradually, tenderly but delib-erately, for living in the real world. None of these institutions can educate children alone. Let not too great a burden be placed on schools: they are a necessary institution for progress and civil renewal, but not sufficient.

How do children learn values? I do not believe they can be effectively taught values by the teacher or the preacher telling them what they are, and them writing them down, memorizing and reciting them. Not even UNESCO’s Charter of the Rights of the Child can do that–although I think ‘the right to be heard’ is of fundamental importance.

Children surely learn values by discussing moral and social dilemmas. Values can only be internalized so as to affect behavior towards others, if children become aware at the earliest age that others–other children and adults, not just parents and teachers–can sincerely hold other values, other opinions, have other interests. They must learn to form their own personal or communal values, but with understanding and tolerance of those of oth-ers, both of individuals and communities.

The school itself is, of course, a community. It needs walls to protect children and make them feel both valued and safe from what can be, in different ways in different societies, a very insecure and threatening outside world—especially in some neighborhoods. But the school walls also need

The school as a community: Schooling for citizenship

References

Cabezudo, A. & Reardon, B. A. (2002). Learning to Abolish War: Teaching Toward a Culture of Peace. Hague Appeal for Peace, New York. (Available on line at www.haguepeace.org)

Reardon, B.A. (2001) Education for a Culture of Peace in a GenderPerspective. UNESCO, Paris.

Professor Betty Reardon is the founder and Director Emeritus of the Peace Education Center at Teachers College, Columbia University, and author of several books and other publications on Peace Education, many of them published by UNESCO.

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The school window to the outside world must include a preparation for active citizenship.

The Theory of CitizenshipSo far so simple. But before relating what we in the United Kingdom11 thought to be the essential framework of a citizenship curriculum, let me try to summarize the whole theory of citizenship as it arose from the Greek city states so long ago. For there seems some uncertainty among many otherwise intelligent and well-read people about what “citizenship” means, or perhaps about what kind of activities are those of a citizen So perhaps a partly theoretical and partly practical note may be helpful. If the philoso-phy is grasped, the concept should then be clear and can be freely applied by teachers and others (that is applied with, quite literally, more freedom and imagination) to different circumstances and practices. Citizenship by prescription, order, rote-learning, grid or check-list is not, beyond neces-sary beginnings in schools, true citizenship at all. There is at least need to explain an obvious ambiguity in the concept.

The term ‘citizen’ does have two distinct meanings. A citizen can simple be someone who under the laws and practices of a state has both rights and duties, irrespective of the character of that state. In many states duties can far out-weigh rights, and those rights may not be political rights at all. Consider any dictatorship or military regime, even an extreme case such as North Korea. Most of its inhabitants are. In a clear legal sense, citizens, and will doubtless be called good citizens if they obey the laws, praise their leader and keep their noses clean.

But the second sense of being a citizen is what we find in states today that have some real claim to be called democratic: states where a majority of the inhabitants enjoy the political rights that emerged from a leadership class in the Greek and Roman and early modern city republics: freedom of speech, equality before the law, election of public officers and the right to combine together to change things, big and small; or to combine to prevent undesired changes.

It seems elementary that there is a difference between being a good citizen and being an active citizen. One can be a good citizen in an autocratic state. But one can also be only a good citizen in a democratic state, that is one can obey the law and behave oneself socially (causing minimal offence

windows for children gradually to become aware of the problems, difficul-ties and opportunities in the outside world. The school itself being a com-munity will set an example to children by its own ethos, an example and influence, both of what is possible and of what should be. Young children especially are very perceptive. They can see whether the head-teacher–of course there has to be a head-teacher–simply gives commands or whether she or he discusses matters with the other teachers. Children can early be habituated to an autocratic model of society or one in which decisions are made by discussion with all those whose interests are concerned.

Rule-by-discussion is what I call in the Greek and Roman, and in the Amer-ican and French tradition of the bourgeois revolutions against autocracy, a political society. My own country has had a more gradual evolution (if not always free from incident). Such a society may not be fully democratic. Nowhere is fully democratic; but some societies are fortunately more demo-cratic than others, and some not at all. A school certainly cannot be fully democratic. What is essential, however, is that children should be able to observe discussion among their teachers. And what is supremely desirable is that they themselves should have opportunities of discussion of issues that are real to them; and also, wherever possible, some real experience of participation in both school and local communities.

The school must give children some real knowledge of the diversity of com-munities and beliefs in their society, even if the schools themselves happen to be of one faith or ethnicity. Northern Ireland is still bitterly divided between Catholic and Protestant factions, even if now enjoying a precarious peace. But in all the schools a required part of the curriculum was called Education for Mutual Understanding (EMU)–an agreed syllabus to teach what the other religions believed and their different views of history. But mutual knowledge was not enough, and in practice could be, and often was, simply mechanical: learning facts by rote which had no observable influence on attitudes or behavior. Indeed it was said of EMU that it was ‘a bird that was born without wings.’ So instead of EMU, an agreed curriculum of Citizenship Education is about to be introduced. The essential difference is that Citizenship Education stresses skills as well as knowledge. The skills of a citizen are those of reasonable debate and discussion and abilities to find out information, to criticize information and to persuade peaceably.

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turn harmony into mere unison or to reduce a theme to a single beat. The truth is that that the polis… is an aggregate of many members; and education is therefore the means of making it a community and giving it unity (Aristotle).

Broadly there are two theories of the modern democratic state, mirrored in popular understanding or behavior: that the maintenance of free institu-tions depends on a high level of popular participation in public affairs, both as a practical necessity and as a moral and civic duty; or that competi-tive elections create governments that can modify and uphold a legal order under which individual can lead their lives with as little interference as possible from the state and minimal public obligations (to obey the laws, pay taxes, jury service and vote every few years). Historians and political philosophers now commonly call the first, ‘civic republicanism’ and the sec-ond ‘the liberal theory of the state.’ The liberal theorists of the state tend to see liberty as the direct relationship between the individual and state defined by legal rights and mediated by the market. The civic republican theorists see the guarantors of liberty less in such a direct relationships than in the existence of civil society (a term they have revived and popularized), all those semi-autonomous organizations and institutions intermediary and mediating between the individual and the state. Even before the modern consumer society of the West and global capitalism some saw this distinc-tion clearly.

The aim of the ancients was the sharing of social power among citizens of the same fatherland: this is what they called liberty. The aim of the moderns is the enjoyment of liberty in private pleasures; and they call liberty the guarantees accorded by institutions to these pleasures (Constant, 1820).

In ordinary discourse one sees the liberal theory as demanding ‘good citizenship’, invoking ‘the rule of law’, good behavior, individual rights and at its best moral virtues of care and concern for others, beginning with neighbors and hopefully reaching out to strangers; but it may stop short of demanding ‘active citizenship’–combining together effectively to change or resist change.

to others) but not work together with others on any matters that effect public policy, either at all or minimally. By ‘minimally’ I mean do no more than voting (and now a large number of people don’t even do that, even in the European Community) or just putting money in a collecting tin or signing a standing order with a bank for a voluntary body or pressure group, but never attending a meeting or even discussing public issues with friends. It is this minimalist approach to citizenship that made me, thirty years ago, voice skepticism about an old tradition of citizenship teaching in my country—and more common elsewhere in countries with written con-stitutions—as ‘Civics’. ‘Civics’ stressed the primacy of ‘the rule’ of law and the learning of rules, without always encouraging discussion about whether some laws work badly or are unjust and how they can be changed—in other words, the political element. Civic Education is about the civic virtues and decent behavior that adults wish to see in young people. But it is also more than this. Since Aristotle it has been accepted as an inherently politi- cal concept that raises questions about the sort of society we live in, how it came to take its present form, the strengths and weak- nesses of current political structures, and how improvements might be made… Active citizens are as political as they are moral; moral sensibility derives in part from political understanding; political apathy spawns moral apathy (Hargreaves, 1996).

Most of us accept that economic theory both describes and legitimizes a price mechanism, but we can forget that there is equally clear political theory that describes and legitimizes democratic societies. Just as economics is con-cerned with price, that in a world of finite resources everything we want is at the cost of something else (sometimes of others), so political theory is concerned with decision-making and persuasion: an assertion that, except in times of emergency, societies are best governed politically, not autocrati-cally, that is by public persuasion and publicized compromises among what are accepted as differing and to some extent always competing values and interests. Political thinking is not trying to reach the one and true best set of values for all. The cause of the fallacy into which Plato falls…is the wrong premises about unity on which he bases his argument. It is true that unity is to come extent needed, both in a household and in a polis; but total unity is not. There is a point at which a polis by advancing in unity will cease to be a polis… It is as if you were to

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themselves as active citizens, willing, able and equipped to have an influence in public life and with the critical capacities to weigh evidence before speaking and acting; to build on and to extend radically to young people the best in existing traditions of community involvement and to make them individually confident in finding new forms of involvement and action among themselves. ‘Political literacy’ was a term invented to mean that someone should have the knowledge, skills and values to be effective in public life.

Discussion was the very ancient origins and is still the continuing essence of both free citizenship and citizenship learning. And in both I can think of no real discussion of political issues or problems that do not raise both practical and moral issues. Can it work and should it work?

Let me give two examples of how the principles of a report appear in the statutory order. The order for Key Stage 3 (that is for 11-14 year olds) con-tains nine brief sentences under the first of three headings Knowledge and Understanding. Then follow two more headings.

Developing skills of inquiry and communication Pupils should be taught to: (a) think about topical political, spiritual, moral, social and cultural issues, problems and events by analysing information and its sources, including ICT-based sources; (b) justify orally and in writing a personal opinion about such issues, problems or events; and (c) contribute to group and exploratory class discussions, and take part in debates.

Developing skills of participation and responsible action Pupils should be taught to: (a) use their imagination to consider other people’s experiences and be able to think about, express and explain views that are not their own; (b) negotiate, decide and take part responsibly in both school and community based activities; and (c) reflect on the process of participating.

Notice that there is neither specification about what are the ‘issues, prob-lems or events’ to be discussed, nor about what form participation ‘in both school and community’ shall take. In the very nature of free citizenship it

A Citizenship CurriculumThe language of the recent citizenship report in the United Kingdom12, which led to our new compulsory Citizenship curriculum with their stress on ‘active citizenship’ was that of a revived civic republicanism:13 participa-tion and discussion of real issues. But often ‘active and good citizenship” is said so as to recognize the need for a moral basis for the means not just the ends of political activity, and what education (and by implication public policy) should seek to encourage and achieve. In fact the new Citizenship curriculum is compulsory only in secondary schools (11-16), but in primary schools there is a strong official guidance framework for Personal, Social and Health Education and Citizenship.

So there is now a concern for the enhancement of citizenship through and in schools, among young people generally, and among and within a hoped for increase in local voluntary and community bodies in the whole population. This was clear in the Secretary of State for Education’s remit to the 1997 advisory group who reported as Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools. That remit first set out a new participative agenda for public policy: ‘To provide advice on effective education for citi-zenship in schools—to include the nature and practices of participation in democracy; the duties, responsibilities and rights of individuals as citizens; and the values to individuals and society of community activity.’

The report itself stated a radical aim on the assumption that, despite our long parliamentary tradition in Britain, there has developed what is now of-ten called ‘a democratic deficit’ in society as a whole. In a changing society we have been living on the political traditions of the past. The aim was to create a general ‘political literacy’ for pupils, schools and society. The re-port argued that the benefits for pupils would be an entitlement that would empower them to participate in society effectively as active, informed, critical and responsible citizens; the benefit for schools would be an op-portunity to co-ordinate and enhance existing teaching and opportunities across subject areas and in relation to participation both in school and local community life; and the benefit for society, ‘an active and politically liter-ate citizenry convinced that they can influence government and community affairs at all levels.’ My group made an ambitious ‘mission statement’:

We aim at no less than a change in the political culture of this country both nationally and locally: for people to think of

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a paradigm of ‘good citizenship’ alone rather than of political literacy. Let me come down to earth with a true example. A school was recently visited by an inspector who was interested in how schools were interpreting the ‘participation in the community’ clause of the curriculum. A teacher proud-ly told him that his pupils in a particular class had planned a party for the residents of a near-by local government home for old people. They negoti-ated with the matron, purchased or begged provisions from local tradesmen and arranged among themselves a musical entertainment, even taking care to find out what kind of music the old people would like, rather than what the young themselves enjoyed. A jolly good time was had by all.

Now that was certainly a very nice thing to do, perhaps ‘good citizenship’ but not, in my opinion or that of the inspector, by itself ‘active citizenship’. The party for the old people could well have been a fitting culmination or celebration of a prior process of the pupils setting out to discover some-thing of the complicated relations and policies of the personal social servic-es, local authorities, the National Health Service, government departments, and the voluntary sector and charities. Why were some of the old people there at all and not able to be cared for at home? Had the pupils been taught something about these various services, they could have formed some responsible view on how well the arrangements work, what is public policy and how they could be improved. They might even have made, as citizens, a representation to one or more of the relevant authorities.

Even some parts of all that (admittedly one of the most complex of national problems, but one that nearly all of us encounter in some capacity when wanting help in caring for the old or when becoming old) would surely have enhanced their political literacy and counted as learning for active citizenship; but not just the moral motivation and perhaps the feel-good value to the individuals involved (‘personal development’?). A knowledge base as well is needed before the real situation could be understood, and skills of presentation and advocacy were needed if they then had wished to make representations on the basis both of what they found out and what they saw.

Long ago I expressed this in more formal and theoretical terms, if I may quote myself: Politics is, then, an activity – and this platitude must be brought to life: it is not a thing, like a natural object or a work of art,

was judged not right for either the government or its agencies to give pre-cise prescriptions on some politically and morally sensitive matters. Govern-ment should neither prescribe how best to discuss issues nor what issues to discuss. The devil may be in the detail but detail should be kept, whenever possible, at arms length from the state. In the very nature of learning for citizenship (after all, somewhat concerned with enhancing freedom) there must be local discretion. Hence the Minister of Education, David Blun-kett, called the new curriculum (unlike all the others) ‘a light touch order’, or what I glossed as ‘strong, bare bones’.

The second example is how the English report dealt with diversity. The United Kingdom has not had the trouble of Lebanon. But it is a diverse society. Historically it was a union of four nations and the largest part of Ireland broke away after violence and turbulence. Scotland, Wales and England had and still have distinct cultures and now about 15% of the population are of recent immigrant stock and visibly so. There is some prejudice against recent immigrants and some racial discrimination. So the Citizenship Order for Key State 4 (that is for 14-16 year olds) enjoined:

Pupils should be taught about: (a) the legal and human rights underpinning society and how they relate to citizens…; (b) the origins and implications of the diverse national, regional, religious and ethnic identities in the United Kingdom and the need for mutual respect and understanding.

The report behind the curriculum implied a methodology for teaching and learning: that knowledge of institutions is best gained through discussion of real issues and becoming aware of what institutions are relevant and needed if we are to influence or to resolve an issue or problem. It was a deliberate break from how Civics used to be taught, simply as knowledge of structures and legal powers of institutions (easily examinable but deadly boring and of little help in preparing children for the often harsher and always more complex realities of the world outside the school). The stress at every level of teaching and learning should on gaining the knowledge as needed, say on a “need to know basis”, by confronting real issues.

This has not always been grasped by teachers and lecturers, a few still think-ing, whether in error or for shelter from uncertainty, of safe old boring Civ-ics. But some have swung to another extreme, perhaps through thinking in

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children’s playground are admirable, as was giving a party for the old and infirm; but without some knowledge base that is not learning for active citizenship (it should be asked, how can such despoliation or neglect be allowed to occur). Active citizenship needs skills both of discovery and of advocacy. Volunteering in the community becomes citizenship when the volunteers are well-briefed on the whole context, given responsibility about how to organize their actions, and debriefed afterwards in the classroom or listened to in a formal meeting about whether they think it could have been done better. Volunteers are free citizens acting together; they should never be canon fodder, however worthy the organization they work for, however time-tested (or rigid) its procedures.

In a sentence, citizenship has meant, since the time of the Greeks and the Romans, people acting together effectively to achieve a reasonably important common purpose. In divided and troubled societies schools cannot rem-edy all social ills; but they can make a beginning in trying to create a culture of citizenship.

which could exists if individuals did not continue to work upon it. And it is a complex activity: it is not simply the grasping for an ideal, for then the ideals of others may be threatened; but it is not pure self-interest either, simply because the more realistically one construes self-interest the more one is involved in relationships with others, and because, after all, some men in most part, most men in some part, have certain standards of conduct which do not always fit circumstances too exactly. The more one is involved in relationships with others, the more conflicts of interest, or of character and circumstance, will arise. These conflicts, when personal, create the activity we call ‘ethics’ (or else that type of action, as arbitrary as it is irresponsible, called ‘selfish’); and such conflicts, when public, create political activity (or else some type of rule in the selfish interest of a single group (Crick, 1963 and 2000).

I have always striven to define politics not in the Platonic, idealist tradition, as a striving to achieve a certain or a preconceived ideal goal, but in the more realistic Aristotelian tradition: the creative conciliation of naturally differing interests, both material and ideal. But that conciliation implies both a mutual trust based on an experience of working together and of mutual knowledge.

I am not decrying knowledge, only saying that active citizenship needs a different kind of knowledge to old Civics. That old people’s home example should show the difference between learning for effective action and simply doing something that in itself is good, but was either foolish or evasive to call citizenship learning. Put it this way. To coincide with the launching of the citizenship order in school, the government gave a grant to an inde-pendent research institution for a seven year longitudinal study to measure changes in attitudes, knowledge and participation over the period. One of the indicators is membership by the age of eighteen of voluntary public bodies, but this is no more important or no less relevant than indica-tors of knowledge, skills and attitudes. The learning process must combine them all.

All citizenship must involve at some stage volunteering, but not all volun-teering involves citizenship. In Britain such things as cleaning up a field after a rave or pop concert or cleaning up a neglected local park or young

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The European Youth Academy: An example for youth participation

Werner WintersteinerPaper presented in ‘Education for Citizenship,’ 2002

What I will present is a simple but efficient model for international youth exchange and cooperation–the European Youth Academy (EYA). EYA is a two-year cooperation model of school classes from all over Europe, includ-ing delegates meeting, email correspondence and cooperation as well as personal meeting of all the 200–400 students and teachers involved in a Youth Academy cycle. We have now about ten years of experience with this kind of international youth cooperation, reported and condensed in the European Youth Academy Handbook.

The purpose of the European Youth Academy is learning to live together, or, in other words, to give a positive answer to the (rhetoric) question of the great Lebanese author Amin Maalouf:

Cet âge où les hommes de toutes origines vivaient côte à côte dans les Échelles du Levant et mélangeaient leurs langues, est-ce une réminiscence de‘autrefois? Est-ce une préfiguration de l‘avenir? Ceux qui demeurent attachés à ce rêve sont-ils des passéistes ou bien des visionnaires? Amin Maalouf 1996, p. 49.

This age where people of all origins lived together in the harbour towns of the Levant and mixed up their languages–is this only a reminiscence or is it a prefiguration of the future? People still attached to this dream, are they nostalgics, or are they visionaries?

This question, of course, is one that is not only of concern to Lebanon as a multicultural society but is also true for Europe. In this sense, one could say that, nowadays, the world is going to evermore ‘lebanonize’ itself. The more the globalisation progresses, the more living together of different cultures

Notes

11. Strictly speaking, I will be discussing only in the third section, England. For the United Kingdom has four different national administrations under the central government and parliament.

12. Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools, Final report of the Advisory Group on Citizenship 22 September 1998; and Citizenship: the National Curriculum for England (1999), both published by the Department for Education, London. I was chairman of the advisor group and adviser to the department when the actual curricu-lum was drafted, which was implemented in 2002 (thus the schools had almost three years to prepare). See also my Essays on Citizenship (London, Continuum: 2001).

13. The term was not used for fear of popular misunderstanding, indeed. But the term ‘civic republicanism’ is fully compatible with constitutional monarchies as in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, even if less so until very recently perhaps to ourselves.

References

Aristotle. The Politics.

Constant, B. (1820). The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns.

Crick, B. (1963 & 2000). In defense of Politics.Hargreaves, D. (1996). The Mosaic of Learning. London: Demos.

Sir Bernard Crick is Professor Emeritus of Politics of Birckbeck College, University of London. He was Adviser on Citizenship to the Department for Education in London from 1998 to 2001 and from 2001 Adviser on Citizenship to the Home Office.

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Seen from both sides, from its composition as well as from its cultural value, the pizza is a symbol for peaceful togetherness. I have to confess that this is not an idea grown in my own head. I became familiar with this ‘pizza philosophy’ through Luca, a 16-year-old boy from Italy, during the second European Youth Academy. With his class, he brought a manifesto with a Pizza painted upon it and explained: “Europe is like a big pizza: a varied mixture of different ingredi- ents, colourful and non-uniform. But all these ingredients are necessary for the pizza to taste good”. Luca, Bolzano/ Bozen (Italy) Participant at the Second Youth Academy, 1996.

I think this is a wonderful idea. But it is not enough to have a wonder-ful idea, because you also need the occasion to reflect on things like this. Without reflection, there will be no ideas. Secondly, you need the means to make yourself heard. If not, this will only be an idea in you mind. But your idea has to become an expression. And thirdly, you have to have an audience; you have to be heard and be understood. Then you expression can become a quotation.

The aim of my presentation is to tell you what we did in order to give young people the opportunity to develop political ideas, to express them, and to find an audience to be heard. In short, I will describe our experi-ence with the European Youth Academy.

‘The Right to Have a Say’Before starting I would like to make three introductory remarks:

First, I believe that, in general, we all underestimate the extent to which young people feel not understood, not heard and not taken seriously! In all my pedagogical and political work I have always had the impression that this comes first. Second, my association that organized this Youth Academy has a motto: ‘Solidarity and tolerance can be learned.’ I believe that this is also true for the whole project of youth participation: It can be learned, and therefore, it has to be learnt. Third, the right to have a say: Apart from the fact that the integration of young people can achieve a lot and should be supported for this reason alone, one ought also to mention the fact that young people have a right to have their say: The Declaration of the Rights of Children, established by the UN in November 1989, not only lays down the

and people becomes a central question of each society. Thus, youth partici-pation has also to deal with these crucial topics.

A Kind of ‘Pizza Philosophy’ I start with some ‘culinary-political’ considerations and develop some basic elements from what I would like to call a ‘Pizza philosophy’. Everybody knows this classic Italian food, so I guess, everybody can follow me. Let us first consider the pizza as it is, in its composition:The pizza and its composition:

• A pizza is a mixture, composed of some basic elements, like dough, tomato sauce and grated cheese; you can make many variations of pizza by varying the ingredients, such as onion, vegetables, olives, mushrooms, ham and spices. • Although all these things are mixed, they do not lose their identity; you can easily distinguish olives, cheese, onions and other ingredients by tasting. • All parts are important; you need them all for the pizza to taste good • A pizza is, seen like this, a hybrid, with a typical post-modern identity

It is a symbol for multicultural diversity, and an example for a fruitful ‘cooperation’ of diverse elements; a success story of intercultural exchange. If you wish, it is also an example of creative conflict resolution between the ground and the filling (layer), between the dough and the tomato sauce and all other ingredients. It is a win-win solution, and what is the most impor-tant–we, the customers, are the winners.

The pizza, an Italian export product. Let us now take a look at the pizza as a product, originally an Italian food, but now spread all over the world. Seen from another, a more cultural perspective, it is a typical expression of our multicultural society.

When I was growing up in Vienna, I did not even know that pizzas existed. There was no single pizzeria in Austria. Only people who went on holidays to Italy knew about pizza. Today you will find pizzas all over Europe, all over the world, including Austria–a small example of the change that as taken place in the last thirty years.

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ent countries from Europe have taken part: From Albania to Belgium, from Bosnia-Herzegovina to Germany (Ahrensburg), from Italy to Ukraine, from Croatia to the Netherlands not to mention Austria, Poland, Latvia, Sweden and many others.

Around fifty classes and 250 pupils per Youth Academy, representing 5000-6000 pupils in their schools, together with a hundred teachers, around fifty different workshop leaders, NGOs in Austria and in the countries involved, parents and official bodies were involved in the four different Youth Academies. A whole range of further encounters have taken place between individuals that resulted from the Youth Academy and of which we know nothing.

The European Youth Academy is not an actual school, but is, neverthe-less, a lot more than an extracurricular activity. It is an institution which schools and school classes can make use of in order to learn what it means to live together with ‘others’. It is, however, primarily an idea which can be applied and handled very flexibly, a model which can at any time be adapted and made to fit one’s particular needs. The basic idea of the Youth Academy is to give school classes and groups of pupils from all over Europe the opportunity to spend some time with each other and to learn from one another. Unlike other programs in which meetings between pupils are organised, the Youth Academy lasts for two years and has a concrete motto. For instance, the motto of the course in 1997/1998 was ‘Culture of peace’. The Youth Academy follows a relatively simple procedure, which can be divided into three phases:

1. Preparatory seminarSelected school classes, or groups of pupils, from at least ten countries each send two delegates and two teachers to a one-week preparatory seminar. At the seminar participants become familiar with the basic idea and the methods of the Youth Academy and plan the common work.

2. Collaboration during one school yearAt the end of the seminar, the participants make concrete plans for their one-year collaboration. They select the main points, which they will work on at home in the form of school projects. In order to guarantee cohesion between the classes, common themes are formulated for regional groups or project groups. This means that different classes work on common themes,

rights of children and the obligation of parents and politically responsible persons to protect their children, but it also expressly grants a say to chil-dren in all matters which concern their current situation and their future:

States parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child (§12).

The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds (§ 13).

A proposed definition and delimitation of the term youth participation‘Youth participation’ should give young people the possibility to actively contribute to the creation of work processes and democratic processes. • As ‘young people’ we understand all those who are not of age–in the UN declaration quoted above, ‘child’ is used in this sense. • Those who make decisions have to ‘provide the opportunity’–whether on a local level, at state level, at school or in an organisation. They have to take the initiative, they have to motivate and to create structures and rules together with the young people; they have to really want the co-operation of the young people–and they must be prepared to concede power. • ‘To actively contribute to the creation of work processes’ we naturally consider particularly relevant in relation to ‘school’. Today we know that to take in information passively is not particularly effective. The things one develops for oneself are the things that one learns particularly well. • Democracy has to be both learned and practised, and the offer of participation has, at the Youth Academy, proved to be a particularly fruitful form of ‘learning by doing’–the practical exercise of democracy as school of democracy.

The European Youth Academy as a Model of ParticipationSome Basic Facts about the European Youth Academy The European Youth Academy is a multilateral school project based in Villach (Austria) and organised by the Alpen-Adria-Alternativ Association. In the four biannual events that have been held since 1993, nineteen differ-

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this has been optimised and expanded. The following concrete examples are intended to show how the co-operation of pupils was organised and how it was experienced.

Planning of the project work at schools and in regional groupsProject-oriented teaching has quite a long tradition in Austria and almost every school has some experiences in this field. However, projects are still frequently considered (more or less welcome) interruptions of the everyday life at school, and they generally play an unimportant role as regards learn-ing goals and success in learning. What is valid for all is that the success of the project depends largely on the motivation and willing application of the pupils, and their identification with the contents of the project is the best basis for achieving this. It seems reasonable therefore to integrate them into the planning of the project as soon as possible.

Two teachers and one or two delegated pupils from each class are invited to the first preparatory seminar. Imagine what happens even before we meet: When one or two teachers travel for many hours together with their pupils, they are likely to establish a stronger contact than usual. And during the week, students and teachers are trained in the same way; they are at the same level, in some way!

Evaluation discussions confirmed that this collaboration has frequently led to a lasting relaxation of the relations between teachers and pupils, which in turn has had a positive effect on the atmosphere and on the success of learning. The leaders of the Youth Academy find it less easy to judge and influence the situation within classes, and it is an important task for the teachers to observe from the very beginning whether the delegates represent the interests of the entire class and whether they try sufficiently to take the positions of their classmates into consideration and to find compromises.

Collaboration regarding the thematic planning of the Youth Academy WeekThe experience of the climatic event of the Youth Academy—the conclud-ing Youth Academy Week—was very important for the pupils. Accordingly pupils showed great interest in collaborating in the thematic planning of this event. Naturally this primarily concerned the workshops on offer. This is an example taken from the 4th European Youth Academy, at which 27 workshops were offered for about 350 participants.

exchange material and experiences during their work, and organize at least one regional meeting during the coming school year. In order to get to know each other better, all schools send ‘personal fact files’ and ‘video letters’ to the other classes. They organize a Youth Academy Day at their school, which aims to make the project known to a wider public. A circular is emailed to the teachers and a Youth Academy newsletter is emailed or posted to both pupils and teachers. These provide regular reports on the progress of the work and get the activities going.

3. Youth Academy Week for all participantsOnce the project work has been completed, the classes–as a climax of the entire project–meet in Villach, Austria, the headquarters of the Youth Academy, where they spend a week together. The activities during this week can again be divided into three phases: • Presentation of the project: The project groups and the various classes present their projects to each other. This exchange of experiences is at the same time a method by which pupils come to know each other better. • Workshops: In the following days the pupils (and to some extent the teachers as well) from the various countries meet in small groups, and concentrate primarily on practical activities: Usually one opts for artistic, creative or project-oriented workshops. Some of these groups are led by the young people themselves. All these workshops are related to the main theme of the Youth Academy. They are the most impor- tant occasion for people from different cultures to get to know each other. • Common activities: Apart from sports activities, there are a few plenary events at which all participants work on the main theme together. These can include lectures, panel discussions or the Youth Parliament mentioned above. And naturally there is also a big final party.

Specific participatory attempts of the European Youth Academy The European Youth Academy has done pioneering work at a new level of youth participation: Young people practise democracy at a European, in-tercultural level, not only by simulation but in the framework of a concrete project, where decisions have to be made whose effects can also be felt. From the first Youth Academy onwards an important part of the project was the integration of pupils of the participating school classes in as many activities of the entire project as possible, and at each new Youth Academy

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so that the subject could be discussed further. It was agreed that pupils be integrated into the decisions at the beginning of the Youth Academy. This did not mean that the rules were always complied with. However, the instances of rule breaches were rare. The following procedure was chosen:

1. On the first day of the Youth Academy, a discussion group of two pupil delegates from each of the participant classes draws up a catalogue of rules for the Youth Academy Week. The school classes are informed of this activ-ity some time before the start of the Youth Academy, and they have enough time to discuss the subject with their classmates.

2. The results are given to the teacher, the particular points are discussed and some modifications might be agreed on.

3. The rules are presented in a plenary session, and they are displayed on a poster at the event venue and are signed by all the pupils:Rules for the Youth Academy week from 2-7 April 2000 • In Austria, there is a law which prohibits young people under the age of 18 from staying out after midnight, which means that we have to be back at the hotel at midnight at the latest. If someone wants to stay out longer than this, they do so on their own responsibility. • There are no restrictions on young people being together in the hotels as long as other guests are not disturbed. • Alcohol is allowed only in small quantities. • No drugs. • Every morning we have to be at the Congress Centre at 9 o’clock sharp, we have to work in the workshops and we have to participate in all the activities. • Consider each other and consider others!

‘Political Youth Participation’ as the theme of workshopAt the 2nd European Youth Academy (1995/96) with the theme of ‘Good life’, a special workshop was offered which dealt with this theme and which was attended by 14 young people from six countries. The basic idea was for the group to formulate conditions which would make it possible for all people to live a good life in Europe. This met with an amazingly positive response, and it was remarkable how dynamically the activities developed.In the course of the workshop the participants wrote a ‘Youth Manifesto,’ which was then discussed with all the participant school classes in a so

The leading of workshopsDuring the Youth Academy Week at the 3rd Youth Academy (1997/98, ‘Culture of Peace’) young people were for the first time given the oppor-tunity to lead workshops themselves. This was done in order to integrate young people much more as equal partners. Summing up, one can say that the young people approached their tasks ambitiously and showed respon-sibility, and that the workshop-participants were both co-operative and disciplined.

All the workshops were supposed to have a thematic connection to the theme which formed the frame of the Youth Academy. The young people had to present their concepts at the second preparatory seminar (about six months before the Youth Academy Week). On this occasion a definite choice was made, leaving two months for the detailed planning.

The following are two examples of workshops led by young people: • The building of a wall of peace—a concept developed by pupils—which was not just another event, but one that had great symbolic meaning. It was led by pupils from Pécs in Hungary and Vienna. • Planning and production of a calendar with texts and pictures on the theme ‘Culture of Peace’, led by pupils from Austria and the Netherlands. We found the results of these workshops very satisfactory, but the partici-pants saw many more possibilities, so they themselves decided that they would continue the work after the Youth Academy.

Questions of discipline and collaboration: a rule-conferenceThe pupils participating in the Youth Academy were on average 17 years old, and it is clear that this age group wishes to make their own decisions with regard to the organization of their free time. On the other hand, the organizers of such a meeting are responsible to parents, schools and providers of accommodation to make sure that the participants stick to certain rules. An additional problem is posed by great cultural differences. Teachers have to make sure that their classes follow the disciplinary rules. This theme was discussed at the preparatory seminar in order to prevent conflicts during the Youth Academy Week. The fact that there was great en-thusiasm at the discussion and that the time allowed was not sufficient to find a solution proves the importance of this theme. Finally, it was decided to start a newsroom for teachers on the homepage of the Youth Academy,

•

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The mayor, after some hesitations, agreed, and since five years, there is a political representation of young people of the town, voted in by the young people.

A Summary in Five Theses 1. Different skills or the importance of learningI would like to underline the varied skills which were learnt or practiced during the activities, distinguishing the following four basic skills: • Research and study: It is impossible to carry out projects without studying documents and materials both from books and from the Internet. • Communication: There are specific needs for communication. As opposed to a simple class project, it was not only necessary to communicate in one’s own class but also with the peers and project partners in other countries. Especially during the Youth Academy Week, people had to shift also between different languages. Most of the time, the pupils did not use their mother-tongue. Of course, these communication skills include (new) media literacy, as well. • Cooperation: The same is true for cooperation. It is a challenge to cooperate with new people, for instance in workshops lasting three days, particularly when not able communicate in your mother-tongue. How to make common decisions without being authoritarian? • Presentation: It makes a difference whether you do a presentation in your class, speaking to your class mates, or whether you have an audience of 200-300 people, and you speak on stage and in a foreign language.

2. Different levels of participation or Practical activities and political perspectiveParticipation begins with simple decisions within a class about questions of content and organisation, or for instance the choice of the delegates who are sent to the preparatory seminars. Later pupils participate in decisions about the procedures of the project within an international team, deter-mine the contents of learning and the learning goals when choosing work-shops, and finally have the opportunity to actually lead an international workshop in the course of a major event. A group of young people at the 2nd European Youth Academy even went a step further and estab-lished a platform for the political participation of young people: Young Europe 2028.

called European Youth Parliament. This manifesto deals basically with three arguments: a) Youth Participation in a United Europe; b) Peace; c) Ecology.

The enthusiasm shown by most of the participants contradicted what has frequently been said about the disenchantment of young people with politics. It was especially important to the group that adults would really listen to them and take them seriously, and that during discussions about ‘important’ themes, they would not simply be present. The youth also showed that they really wanted to be heard; they translated the Manifesto into many European languages, they distributed it, and a delegation of the group presented it to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg some months after the end of the 2nd Youth Academy.

This Manifesto work had many consequences:1. The representative of the Council of Europe sent the Manifesto to all national youth agencies in Europe. We have received many letters and new contacts. In some countries, young people decided to translate the Mani-festo into their own language and to publish it.

2. The young people themselves decided that there must be a continuity of this work. The many positive reactions eventually led to follow-up seminars (Political Participation of Young People at a European level) and to the founding of a European platform bearing the name Young Europe 2028.

Said Luca Refatti, one of the founders of the new emerging organization:

The Youth Academy 96 was such an impressive experience that some of us decided that we would not just let it end. The core group kept in contact and organized a trip to Strasbourg, where our Manifesto was presented to the Council of Europe. We also realized that political youth participation happens predominantly at a local level, and that no international structures exist for it. This is how the idea of Young Europe 2028 was born, and after two years of hard work it had became reality. In May 1999 our founding meeting took place.

3. There were also some consequences on a national and communal level. In Villach, the hosting town of the Youth Academy, we began work with students from the Youth Academy to prepare a Youth town council.

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References

Buerger, H., Gruber, B. & Wintersteiner, W. (Eds.) (2002) For the Austrian Ministry of Education, Science and Culture. Education for Intercultural Understanding. The European Youth Academy Handbook. Innsbruck: StudienVerlag.

Wintersteiner, W. (1996). How the ‘Youth Manifesto’ came about. In: Living well in Europe. The 2nd European Youth Academy, (24-29). Villach.

Dr. Werner Wintersteiner is a professor at the Institute of German studies at the University of Klagenfurt

3. The role of adults, or helping without being dominantThe enthusiasm of young people is surely a decisive element for the success of models of youth participation. Just as important, however, is the role of adults, who provide support, whether in the provision of information or know-how, help with implementation, finding speakers, or in the provision of feedback and new stimuli and ideas when enthusiasm is waning. With-out the help of such adults the initiatives frequently prove ephemeral. At the same time these adults have to make sure that they remain largely in the background. If they position themselves, their own ideas and solutions too much into the centre of a project, young people will soon cease to consider it their project and will lose interest.

4. Favourable circumstances for learning:This was maybe a secret of the success of the Youth Academy. It is much more exciting to learn from your peers from other countries than only from your teachers; to learn in an international context rather than always in the classroom; to work for common goals with people from abroad instead of exclusively reproducing knowledge.

5. The adventure of peaceYoung people are looking for a ‘kick’, an adventure. Peaceful living togeth-er, taking responsibility is a challenge, an adventure. Peace is the greatest, the main adventure of humanity today. We especially need the enthusiasm of young people for mastering this challenge. In the words of Luca: From personal experience everybody can learn a lot without being subjected to distorting influences. This is why international exchange programs, Youth Academies, intercultural meetings etc. should be supported. Respect for foreigners can only be learnt in this way. The real therapy against prejudice is to truly get to know ‘the other one’, and in order to get to know him, I must meet him–and party with him!

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Underpinned by such fundamental principles, it follows that citizenship education for social cohesion and a unified national identity has been accorded a key role in Lebanon’s agendas of national development and educational reform.

The educational aims listed under the heading National Educational and Civic Development in the national curriculum for Lebanon acknowledge the intellectual and social developments within the child which include ques-tioning identity and the need for engaging in critical discussions (Official Journal, 1999, p. 26). The educational aims pertinent to citizenship educa-tion which are listed in this document are the following (1999, pp. 26-28):

• Knowing about one’s rights (personal, educational, political, social and economic), duties and responsibilities as a citizen; • Strengthening national unity, social cohesion, justice and the principles of equality; • Encouraging effective participation in the ‘national’ life; • Respecting the rights of others; • Engaging in the practice of development of laws through democratic practices; • Exercising values in daily life and social relationships by joining humanistic and moral values such as truth, security, politeness, listening skills, democratic behavior, respect and dialogue for conflict resolution.

These nationally mandated educational aims explicitly state numerous humanistic and democratic values and principles such as justice, equality, respect, truth, active participation and dialogue. Additional aims emphasiz-ing identity and belonging in the more specific civics curricula are listed and reviewed in Frayha (2004) and critically analyzed in Shuayb (2005). In Lebanon, citizenship education in schools is taught through Civics, or madaniyat, with an accompanying theme morals, or akhlaq; hence, the typi-cal textbooks designed for teaching are titled ‘Morals and Civics Education’ (Frayha, 1994).

Research on citizenship education in Lebanon is of particular interest to a wider community exploring paradoxes of educating for democratic and humanistic principles in a fragmented society. Previous research has mostly focused on curriculum design and development. For example, El-Amine’s

Teacher reflection on the challenges of teaching citizenship education in Lebanon: A qualitative pilot study1

Bassel Akar

Education for social cohesion and a unified identity in post-conflict Lebanon faces numerous challenges. While previous research has concen-trated on curriculum design and educational reform, this particular study focuses on teaching and learning within the classroom. To start exploring the challenges of teaching citizenship education in Lebanon, a sample of four teachers were interviewed providing reflections on fundamental values and principles and difficult moments throughout their teaching experi-ences. Qualitative data collected from these semi-structured interviews showed various fundamental values and principles across the cases with limited relationship to humanistic and democratic ones. Moreover, teachers experienced difficulties with the inconsistencies between home, school and society. In addition, the evidence suggests that curriculum design and texts require attention if they are to support more effective pedagogy such as democratic and reflective dialogue.

Citizenship education has recurrently been utilized around the world as a tool for achieving social cohesion and a unified national identity. Follow-ing the 1975-1989 Civil War in Lebanon, the 1989 Peace Accords in Ta’if emphasized the role of education for peace and social unity. Attention given to the unification of the history and civics textbooks which, according to Frayha (2004, p.170), ‘are most explicitly related to identity formation.’ Several years later, the Plan for Educational Revival in 1994 and the New Framework for Education in 1995 jointly re-established aims for strength-ening national pride, unifying the Lebanese and Arab identity and raising awareness of ‘the importance of mutual respect of other citizens and the social fabric of the nation’ (BouJaoude & Ghaith, In Press). Moreover, values and principles of democracy, tolerance, respect and freedom were re-emphasized as capable of embracing the diverse religious cultures and respecting humanistic values (BouJaoude & Ghaith, In Press; Frayha 2004).

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and one after the Lebanese Civil War (1975 – 1990). Despite the constructs of individualism, autonomy and inheritance of rights threaded into the international discourse of children’s rights and responsibilities, the actual practice of the Lebanese families she studied in a patriarchal-dominated society showed and modeled to their children that their ‘citizenship’ was proactively constructed and earned ‘by whom they knew and how they were related’ (2005, p. 1008). Despite the growing interest in citizenship education in Lebanon, however, there remains a paucity of literature and research on teacher experiences and reflections in the history and civics classroom.

A third approach for the further understanding the challenges of teaching citizenship education in Lebanon focuses on reflections of learning and teaching experiences within the classrooms. These can provide valuable insight on the difficulties of teaching and learning democratic and hu-manistic values in the post-conflict Lebanese society. My previous research, a unique study on student and teacher attitudes to civics education in Lebanon, found a general awareness and agreement among students and teachers on the developmental aims of citizenship education as they relate to civic responsibilities and active participation within a community (Akar, 2005). On the other hand, students felt that civics classes were inadequate due to the pedagogical practices such as rote learning while teachers felt the content was inappropriate. Similarly, Shuayb’s (2005) studies on attitudes of democratic values within the school showed a contrast of principals’ views between public and private schools where the former found democ-racy in schools a threat to the traditional and hierarchical school culture. Teachers and students, on the other hand, across the schools valued demo-cratic practice. However, data showed ‘limited democratic practices in the classroom’ in secular public schools.

These findings suggest further research into exploring the content and practice of citizenship education within the Lebanese classroom. From the teachers’ perspectives, what specific difficulties have they encountered in teaching citizenship education? According to teachers, what values and principles do they consider to be fundamental in citizenship education and to what extent are they taught in civics classes?

(2003) study, from the Lebanese Association for Educational Studies (LAES), focuses on the extent to which the educational aims and objectives of citizenship education and national development for political (socializa-tion including cohesion and unified identity) stated at the Ta’if Agreement were implemented in the educational reform plans following the civil war. Also focusing on curricular developments and challenges, Frayha (2004) illustrates the development of educational reform for social cohesion. As a former member of the Centre for Educational Research and Development (CERD)14 and current research specialist in citizenship education in Leba-non, Frayha focuses on the development of history and civic education and the political challenges involved in developing their curricula and learning resource materials.

Shuayb’s (2005) study on citizenship education in Lebanon comprised a critical analysis of the new curriculum as a whole and a content analysis of the texts used for citizenship education. In Shuayb’s analyses, the new cur-riculum appeared to pay more attention to educating duties and obligations to the state. Thus, she concluded that the design of the new civics curricu-lum was developed from an authoritarian approach neglecting humanitar-ian ideologies in citizenship education as it overemphasizes the role of the citizen rather than the development of the personality. Moreover, in her review of curricular aims of citizenship education, the “authoritarian” and “totalitarian” approaches contradict the fundamental aims of citizenship education based on human rights, democracy and active participation. Finally, Shuayb emphasized the urgent need for a humanitarian approach towards citizenship education in Lebanon for a more unified, not only national but human identity rather than a sectarian one.15

Another approach was taken by Joseph (2005) whose ethnographic stud-ies provided an additional perspective in understanding the challenges and paradoxes of citizenship education in Lebanon. Joseph studied the complexities of Lebanese families teaching their children their rights and responsibilities in a globalized world of predominantly ‘Western constructs’ (2005, p. 1007). In Joseph’s article, the term Western constructs is used to illustrate her argument that there exist social and cultural differences between universalized notions of children’s rights constructed in an era of Western-dominated globalization versus children’s rights and responsibili-ties taught and learned within certain Lebanese contexts. The findings came from two long-term studies of urban and rural contexts; one before

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Illustrations of universal principles based on humanistic and democratic values

From this, it emerges that the values for tolerance and reason and rea-sonability are shared among three; however, only Crick has emphasized freedom and truth as procedural values and only Kymlica has emphasized solidarity. Yet, both Kymlica and Parekh similarly value mutual respect and a sense of civility and both Kymlica and Crick value fairness and justice. This brief synthesis further illustrates the research backgrounds of these writers as Crick and Parekh have responded to today’s multiculturalism in England while Kymlica has focused on a more universal or cosmopolitan trend in citizenship. By and large, this first approach provides a framework for exploring the extent to which humanistic and democratic principles central to citizenship education such as respect, tolerance, freedom, justice and solidarity are present within the Lebanese civics classroom.

The second approach is based on a concern for active participation. Dewey (1916) conceptualized the nature of the student as a social individual where the school environment shapes beliefs and attitudes by responding to the child. In Dewey’s Pedagogic Creed (1929), the school must facilitate a smaller-scale democratic community, similar to society or state, in which the child is allowed to actively take part. The democratic environment provided throughout the educational experience, as he wrote earlier, fundamentally ‘produces…a certain system of behavior, a certain disposition of action’ for the participation in the democratic society outside the school (1916, p. 11). Dewey’s ideas of democratic education have greatly influenced a pedagogi-cal tradition of active learning.

This paper presents a small-scale study conducted in three schools in Leba-non. Interviews were conducted with teachers from these schools and their responses analyzed by reference to two conceptual frameworks. The first approach is the idea of humanistic and democratic principles and values be-ing prerequisites and civic virtues as fundamentals in citizenship education. The second approach entails the essential practice of citizenship educa-tion, better conceptualized as active participation and dialogue. These two approaches differ from Shuayb’s approach which focused on humanistic values primarily based on the development of the child’s personality includ-ing the child’s personal, emotional and psychological needs and democratic practices of student participation through student representative bodies and voices.

Citizenship Education—Conceptual FrameworksThe construction of the instruments for data collection and analysis are grounded in two fundamental approaches to citizenship education. The first approach derives from a set of concepts comprising universal principles based on humanistic and democratic values (see Figure 1). Crick (2000 re-visiting Crick & Porter, 1978) proposes freedom, tolerance, fairness, respect for truth and respect for reasoning as the five procedural values standing at the basis of citizenship education.16 Similarly, Parekh (2000) stresses pro-cedural values as tolerance, mutual respect and willingness for reasonable dialogue as ‘the basic preconditions for democratic dialogue’ (p. 53). These shared humanistic and democratic values are not prescribed throughout universal instruments of international human rights, but also, as Crick and Parekh state, as prerequisites for citizenship education. Moreover, another set of values viewed as basic universal principles in education for demo-cratic citizenship comes from Kymlicka’s (2001) four virtues of citizenship: public reasonableness, sense of justice, civility and tolerance and a shared sense of solidarity.

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citizenship. Based on these two conceptual frameworks on universal princi-ples and democratic dialogue, this study will investigate:

1.The extent to which democratic and humanistic values are found in the Lebanese civics education classroom (in terms of teacher awareness and support);

2.The challenges teachers face in promoting dialogue as a means of practicing these universal values.

MethodologyRationale of methodsI conducted semi-structured interviews with four secondary civics education teachers. Each interview averaged 45 minutes. During the conversations, flexibility allowed for further clarifications on issues that were related to the following outline of questions: • Constructs of citizenship education; why is it important? What does it mean? • Memorable moments of teaching citizenship education in the clas room: what were some particular challenging lessons or events in the classrooms? • Hypothetical situation of advising educational planners in developing country of three fundamental elements of citizenship education.

These three themes were developed from the conceptual frameworks de-scribed above. The design of the questions intended to collect attitudes and reflections of the challenges in teaching citizenship, particularly promoting dialogue and practice, in the Lebanese classroom and the extent to which humanistic and democratic principles were present.

The selection of the four teachers was an opportunity sample. However, the teachers represented three schools (two were from the same school) all of which were private secondary schools attended by students aged 12-18 from a range of religious and ethnic backgrounds. Statistics show that the major-ity of students (61%) in Lebanon are registered in private schools (Frayha, 2004)18. Two of the private schools were situated in the mountainous out-skirts of the capital city, Beirut, while the third was in the city center. The teachers were three females and one male, all with over ten years of civics teaching experience. In data analysis, false names have been given: Maha, Rola and Huda for the female teachers and Wisam for the male.

Osler and Starkey’s (1996, 2005) model of education for citizenship comprises complementary structural cultural dimensions which propose a continuum starting from basic reflection and understanding to active participation and political debates for an effective learning experience for citizenship17. Another similar element of active participation is the need for democratic dialogue continuously emphasized by Habermas in the debate of genetic engineering (2003) and the challenges of religion in politics (2005). Moreover, Freire (1970) has argued dialogue as the fundamental and ultimate means for political freedom of the masses from political oppression and domination where dialogue, an ‘existential necessity’ (p. 69), unifies reflection and action in the ‘conquest…for the liberation of mankind’ (p. 70). Dewey, Freire and Habermas are among the numerous thinkers who highlight active participation through democratic dialogue as an essential medium for the communication and practice of one’s rights and responsibilities in the community. Furthermore, this approach has been taken up in guidance issued by the Council of Europe (Council of Europe, 1985, 2002). Some pedagogical approaches of effective learning for developing skills within the classroom for the active engagement of dialogue are illustrated in Osler and Starkey (2005).

Certain pedagogies within the classroom should facilitate debates on nation-state, ethnicity, culture and religion as a ‘key educational task’ allow-ing students and peers to critically analyze different positions and reflect on their own identities (Jackson, 2003, p. 4). Blaylock (2003) explores pedagogy as a tool for effective teaching and learning in citizenship and religious education, focusing on various pedagogical aims such as pedagogy for liberation, action and diversity. Dialogue and reflection are crucial in the ‘pedagogy of action’ which ‘relates to democratic values…a legitimate and positive intention that citizenship education should widen and deepen participation in democracy’ (p. 219). Moreover, classrooms act as social settings for the students where they have little consent on social selection and thus a pluralistic environment is created making the classroom an ideal setting for verbal dialogue (Leganger-Krogstad, 2003). Pedagogies that promote democratic dialogue through debates and discussions are not only an approach to effective teaching and learning but also help develop funda-mental skills for the actual practice of humanistic and democratic values.

In summary, a pedagogy based on classroom dialogue effectively develops the skills for respect, tolerance, freedom, justice and solidarity for effective

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The key issues that were repeatedly expressed across the cases included the inappropriateness of the content being taught, its design for rote learning and, thus, the lack of activity for hands-on experience and practice. A civics teacher expressed concern on the inappropriateness as “there are some topics not for their age.” A social studies teacher felt that education for citizenship using a curriculum and textbooks that are “disconnected” from the “irrelevant” to the students’ lives leads to “passive learning.” Thus, the students learn “not to think, not to cooperate with others, not to be inde-pendent.” Such a structure that is monotonous and “very routine” results in “empty learning.” Maha, Rola and Huda found the curriculum designed for “memorization”. “There’s no independent learning” in the Lebanese program. Consequently, the teaching in the classroom is neither “efficient nor influential”. Even though “to build character…you have to know…your rights…[and] the laws”, the curriculum “gives information more than [it] builds character…unless the teacher is doing this”. While Wisam felt that civic knowledge on rights and responsibilities was fundamental and sufficient in creating the good and effective citizen, Huda, Rola and Maha sought more “hands on” activities for experiential learning of participation.

In-class pedagogy: teaching approaches and practicesThe data on challenging moments in their teaching experiences across the four case studies showed two different attitudes and, thus, approaches to teaching civics education. While Maha and Wisam’s teaching experiences appeared to have valued pedagogies that did not seem to promote critical thinking, Huda and Rola seemed to value active, constructive and reflec-tive learning. Maha expressed frustrations after one boy in class “would not accept that Iran is not an Arab country.” Even after a long discussion, “he wouldn’t accept this. There was no way I could convince him;” “you tell them, you tell them, then they go home and it goes away.” Maha also encouraged in-class debates, particularly on sensitive topics such as religious history and the tolerance of Arabs towards Jews or Israelis where the class would engage in civil dialogue “until one side agreed.” From these two examples, Maha appeared to focus on arriving at a conclusion through convincing. Wisam’s classes did not experience many sensitive or controver-sial debates, mainly because the teacher should have “total control of the class.” He continued, “I direct the class…You direct it the way you want it; you want to give information.” In Wisam’s class, the aim of political and religious debates is for students to “look for what’s in common.” Wisam sees the teacher’s responsibility during in-class dialogue as being “to guide

Verbal consent was granted for the digital audio recording of the inter-views. The recorded data were then transcribed and analyzed. Data analysis explored patterns found across the case studies of teachers’ classroom experiences. Certain themes were repeated across the transcriptions and thus grouped in categories related to the two main research questions. In investigating the pedagogical challenges of teaching citizenship, data were grouped in three categories: resources; in-class pedagogy; and school, home and society. Data for the second question, the degree to which teachers are aware and supportive of universal principles and values within the civics classroom, were grouped into fundamental values and principles inside the classroom.

Results The results show several patterns found across the case studies. All the teachers also expressed their attitudes towards concepts and principles that underpin effective citizenship education. However, this specific study will focus on analyzing data of classroom and teaching experience that would give more insight into exploring the challenges of teaching citizenship edu-cation in Lebanon. Thus, four patterns illustrating these teaching experi-ences have been selected and grouped in the following categories: 1.Resources: curriculum and texts; 2.In-class pedagogy: teaching approaches and practices; 3.School, home and society: relationships; 4.Fundamental values and principles inside the classroom.

Resources: curriculum and textsThis set of data found across the case studies addresses the state of the planned curriculum and published books for citizenship education in Lebanon, otherwise titled Civics and Moral Education. First, the teach-ers described how the curriculum and texts are based on the conceptual frameworks of rights and responsibilities which are also mostly integrated into history, geography and social studies. The teachers also described how civics education is fundamentally designed to teach the laws and govern-ment structures whereas moral education teaches about civil behavior in the community such as tolerance and respect through education on human rights. Human rights education in Lebanon, according to these teachers, emphasizes the freedom of belief and religion and other social and econom-ic rights such as education and medical care. In addition to outlining the civics and moral dimensions of the taught curriculum and its texts.

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“between the school and what they’re seeing outside the school”. Rola’s limits and inconsistencies between home and school were more of peda-gogy and curriculum design rather than content. “We don’t educate our kids the democratic way…our families are certainly not democratic”. Rola also strongly felt that the Lebanese programmes and schools which promote memorization, “nurture obedience” rather than “maturity” which “reflects the political culture”. With the absence of independent learning, according to Rola, “how do we expect the Lebanese people to be politically democrat-ic and mature politically when our schools do not nurture maturity in us?” Huda’s experiences with the students showed how “in reality it’s different…there is a big, big gap between [their] learning and what they see.” Huda recalled, I had a student once telling me, “Miss, I’m gonna cheat in class”. I said, “you’re not gonna cheat because I’m gonna take your paper and you’re gonna have a zero.” He said, “but life is not like that, Miss.”

Huda finds it difficult explaining to students about being righteous, honest and good citizens “while, the examples, they’re not”; “because we live in a very corrupted society from top to bottom.”

Wisam experiences inconsistencies through student attitudes in class. When teaching morals and behavior, Wisam found that students would not disagree with what is right or wrong; however, students would argue “but…look at what’s happening in society… [it] is different.” Students feel that although the books and the government value education for success, connections and who you know supersede what you know.

The final group represents data on the fundamental values and principles perceived and practiced by the teachers. Although the values and principles varied across the case studies, it is, nevertheless, interesting to note the similarities and variances and the degree to which they contain humanistic and democratic principles.

Fundamental values and principles inside the classroomThe following data have been grouped in four categories. Although they were not common across the case studies, the categories present values and principles that two or more teachers found to be fundamental in citizen-ship education. I also analyze the degrees to which values and principles vary across the cases.

them in the right direction…to guide without opinion” from which a right (teacher) answer is reached. From Maha’s avoidance of dissent or accept-ing differences of opinion and Wisam’s teacher-student dialogue practices (hierarchical dialogue), it appears that student-student democratic dialogue were almost non-existent within their classrooms.

On the other hand, because Huda found that the books were insufficient, poorly prepared and that “there’s nothing important” in them, much of the planning and lessons took place out of the classroom to promote active learning through “hands-on” activities. “You teach them civics things in the book; but they have to live it” and for Huda it meant actively “living” the culture in museums, literature, theatre and nature walks. Besides active learning, self-reflection was introduced through journals in Rola’s class after seeing how “there was very little tolerance or willingness to hear one another” during controversial debate in class. The students “got very, very emotional” after this debate on religion and created tensions even outside the classroom. When Rola started the journal activity, she saw how the class “really got into it.” Rola used the journals as a follow-up activity after the in-class debates and discussions to “develop their thoughts…develop an argument…[and] to feel it’s okay not to arrive to a conclusion”. The journals are also followed by a discussion on “whether we think we are good listeners” promoting meta-learning. Rola’s focus on the process of debate which was achieved through self-reflection was in contrast to Maha’s emphasis on debating “until one side agreed.”

Whether ‘learning’ citizenship is happening inside the classroom or out-side, whether the class is memorizing laws and rights or engaging in debates on controversial topics, all four teachers recalled students’ constant argu-ment of “…is it possible that the government which made this book trying to teach us that this wrong, is actually doing the wrong thing?” The evident inconsistencies between what is being taught and what is actually happen-ing in society according to students’ arguments is grouped in the third and the final section.

School, home and society: inconsistent relationshipsAll four teachers expressed, to some extent, the limits of teaching citizen-ship education particularly in regard to the contradictions between what is being taught and what is actually happening outside the classroom. Maha refers to these limits as “checkpoints” which illustrate the conflicts

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sions on sensitive topics despite the fears they felt from conflicts outside the classroom.

Solidarity and common groundRola and Wisam explicitly highlighted the importance of establishing com-mon ground and aiming for solidarity. Rola, ultimately, wants the students to “feel solidarity with people…[and] with other groups.” According to Rola, the feeling of solidarity is far more important than helping people or giving charity. Wisam, too, finds that commonality is central to citizen-ship; religious and political views are personal and thus, being Lebanese “is common among us all.” In turn, according to Wisam, solidarity, to a great extent, can be achieved through the practice of respecting freedom of belief where the search for common ground is essential among different views and beliefs.

The results presented in the four categories reveal essential data in under-standing and investigating the challenges of teaching citizenship education in the Lebanese classroom. In the following discussion, we shall see how they provide a deeper insight into understanding the previous research questions:

• The extend to which democratic and humanistic values are found in the Lebanese civics education classroom • The challenges teachers face in promoting dialogue as a means of practicing these universal values

DiscussionAcross the four case studies, teachers shared similar attitudes towards some universal values and principles such as respect and freedom. However, inconsistencies were present and, thus, posed concerns regarding the effec-tiveness of citizenship education in Lebanon. Furthermore, the challenges presented by these four teachers raised several discussions on the degree to which curriculum design and published texts, in-class pedagogies and the relationships between school and society promote effective teaching and learning of citizenship education in the classroom.

Humanistic and democratic values and principles in the classroomThere are two ideas which I wish to discuss from the evidence provided. The first suggests contrasts of humanistic and democratic values and

Humanistic values and principlesTwo of the teachers, Maha and Wisam, to some extent, consider respecting freedom of belief and thought (religious and political views) as essential. Maha, however, feels that a topic like respect “would need a long time” and such abstract topics cannot be taught as lessons in school, “you need to work at in school…[and] at home.” Similarly, Wisam considers respect inte-gral in citizenship education. However, he feels that respecting other views can be achieved through dialogue within the classroom where “you have opinions to give, but you also have to respect the other person.” Although tolerance was mentioned by Huda, it was not discussed as a fundamental principle in citizenship education; rather, Huda felt that “public schools are the best, here in Lebanon, for teaching tolerance…because they are mixed schools, most of the time.” Moreover, she felt that these public schools foster, by default, more diverse communities within them; as student demographics are more diverse, it is then easier to teach tolerance.

Democratic values and principlesConcerning democratic principles, Rola found them fundamental in terms of people being “part of creating the laws” in addition to students contributing to curriculum design and development. In addition to contribution, Rola feels that liberation or freedom is one of the ultimate educational aims for society. In addition to the democratic values, Maha feels that human rights need to play a stronger role in the Lebanese civics program to promote the practice of democracy; “if [the nation] is not democratic, then the citizen is not a human.” Wissam strongly felt that knowing the laws and civil rights of the citizen were fundamental in achieving effective citizenship.

Active participation through learning experiencesIn the classroom, Rola focused on “reflective action” which requires one to see and understand how one “interact[s] with the world” and “how you see your responsibilities in the world” for effective action. Huda focused on actively living the culture through museums, literature, art and nature rather than engaging in classroom debates. Living these moments, ac-cording to Huda, taught them to respect, love and pride for the country. Similarly, Wisam did not encourage controversial debates on religious and political views; however, he feels that dialogue, or hiwar, in the classroom is essential for practicing one’s listening and speaking skills for civil debates. Rola and Maha, on the other hand, encouraged in-class debates and discus-

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Challenges of classroom teachingThe curricular design and published textbooks for civics, according to the case studies, promote traditional learning methods such as a rote learn-ing and memorization and appear not to encourage dialogue within the classroom. Recently, in current events, political and religious leaders have emphasized the importance of dialogue, or hiwar, as a means of unification. This recent development in the political arena should be complemented in Lebanon’s educational reform. The primary aim of the reform in the late 1990s was to unify the history and civics books. However, hiwar, a crucial pedagogical approach, the alter ego of citizenship, was not emphasized and, possibly, not recognized. Not only has the traditional design of the curricu-lum and text books hindered the promotion of effective learning principles within the classroom. This includes focusing on the conclusion through “convince[ing]” and directing the class “the way you want” rather than the processes of dialogue such as reflection. Democratic and reflective dialogue is critical in providing an effective civics learning experience. But it is not only dialogue that the teachers feel is crucial in the classroom; cultural experiences too can help develop humanistic and democratic values with the aim of national pride or patriotism. This aim can create conflicts with the balance between national and global citizenship.

On classroom teaching and learning, Maha and Wisam appear to empha-size models of transmission learning with a traditional teacher-student relationship of knowledge transference, similar to the banking system, a traditional approach that is not only in contrast to dialogue and effective learning in citizenship but also potentially promoting submission and op-pression. Freire (1970) strongly opposed this banking system and argued that ‘dialogue cannot be reduced to the act of one person’s ‘depositing’ ideas in another” (p. 70). At the same time, Huda and Rola adopted effec-tive learning principles such as active learning in creating a cultural identity in the case of the former, and self-reflection and meta-learning as ‘cooling down’ exercises from heated controversial debates.19 This raises an issue of teacher training. Maha and Rola, and possibly Wisam clearly intended to facilitate debates on sensitive issues. However, their accounts suggest their inexperience with this kind of pedagogy. They were aware that a process of debate risked negative consequences and it would appear that they would benefit from appropriate support and guidance.

principles across the cases, which, in my view, is common as we human beings naturally hold various values. However, the discussion I wish to raise concerns the degree to which these values and principles reflect universal values and principles for human rights and democracy. Throughout teacher reflections of the four cases, it was found that a part of the Lebanese curriculum for civics and moral education is grounded in a humanistic principle of respecting freedom of belief and thought. Moreover, universal principles such as tolerance and freedom were also emphasized. However, they appeared to be rooted in personal values rather than curriculum design and the national agenda. In addition, other essential themes such as reflection, dialogue, solidarity and contribution to creating laws were also expressed as fundamental. These universal values and principles were expressed separately across the case studies which raises the second idea of discussion – to what degree is the teaching of existing universal values inconsistent throughout Lebanese civics classrooms and can this inconsist-ency hinder effective citizenship educational experience.

The second discussion raises possible inconsistencies across Lebanese civics classrooms as well as inconsistencies within the classroom from the contradictions found in teacher reflections. Our teacher feels that hiwar is an integral skill for effective citizenship; however, in-class debates rarely hap-pen in the classroom and civics education is centered around the content knowledge of civil rights and laws. Here, we can see a possible contradic-tion in the positive attitude towards the democratic principle of dialogue and the actual practice of ‘learning’ the laws and structures by rote learning, to a certain degree, avoiding controversial debates. Another teacher valued “citizenship for humanity” so as to avoid social exclusion of certain groups. However, this teacher also strongly felt that certain social and political communities should have the freedom to design and construct their own curriculum. Here, we can see an almost inevitable inconsistency between the struggles of balancing a sectarian agenda versus a universal one. Moving away from humanistic and democratic values, a third teacher strongly em-phasizes that ‘living’ the culture is the basic or fundamental approach for effective citizenship education. Moreover, solidarity and finding common ground were also emphasized as essential aims in citizenship education individually across the cases. Here, the inconsistencies illustrate a possible incongruity of fundamental values and principles across Lebanese civics classrooms which could also demonstrate an absence of understanding of procedural values crucial for social cohesion and unified identity.

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education in Lebanon. The inconsistencies of values and principles across the classrooms raise immediate concern about the agreement and, thus existence of presupposition or prerequisites to citizenships education in Lebanon. Naturally, teachers, due to human nature, hold values according to their beliefs and culture. However, in citizenship education, there is a potential danger in not having, at least, a common aim or universal princi-ples for living together. So, there is danger that classrooms for citizenship across the nation (or world) lack of a consensus on the presuppositions of citizenship education. Furthermore, a civic-centered curriculum may pro-mote principles based on teachers’ personal values as opposed to universal humanistic and democratic ones.

In addition to the limited values and principles and their inconsistencies across civics classrooms, teaching methods appear inappropriate for learn-ing fundamental values and principles. This raises a second concern on the extent to which effective pedagogy, particularly dialogue in the case of citizenship education, is emphasized and valued by policy makers, school leaders and teachers and thus, present in classrooms. As one of the teachers expressed, these abstract values cannot be taught in one or two lessons, they take values and principles are simply presented in class. Furthermore, there also appears to be a lack of curricular support for the actual practice of these values and principles. Dialogue as a means for active participation appears to be absent or oppressed in the Lebanese educational culture. Rather, the principles of effective teaching and learning have primarily been focused on ‘core’ subjects such as mathematics, science and language arts? The results presented invite further inquiry into the extent to which pedagogical values for active civic participation and classroom practice and dialogue are present in classrooms of citizenship education in Lebanon.

In conclusion, the paradox of teaching citizenship in a culture of sectarian-ism, patriarchy, connections and corruption remains. The inconsistencies between home, school and society and the need for dialogue in a content-based civics curriculum continue to challenge effective citizenship educa-tion in Lebanon for social cohesion and a unified identity. From, this pilot study of four case studies, evidence has called for further inquiries into the challenges of teaching for effective citizenship. Additional data collected from class observations, text and curricula analyses, interviews with student groups and parents on the extent to which the curriculum, society and home develop and teach humanistic and democratic values and principles

Finally, inconsistencies between what was being taught and what was actu-ally happening continuously raised challenges of teaching and learning across the four cases. Some of the teachers felt that these were their limits in teaching civics as students would continuously question the inconsisten-cies of civil and reasonable behavior in Lebanese society. Two other teach-ers have used this paradoxical relationship to illustrate the importance and necessity of what they were studying by telling the students, “because it’s happening like that…we’ll teach you the right way so you can improve the situation”20. Pedagogy, too, was believed to have been affected as the politi-cal culture was said to nurture obedience, which in practice meant memori-zation. Although there may be tensions between the values of home, school and society, student attitudes find the paradox of learning humanistic and democratic values in a corrupted society contradicts their learning experi-ences. From this, further challenges are developed in learner confidence and approaches to classroom teaching.

ConclusionThis pilot study conducted on the four civics education teachers in Leba-non provides an initial step to empirically exploring the challenges of teach-ing citizenship education in Lebanon. It is important to stress again that the data collected from the four case studies must not be used for general-izing the case of Lebanon. Rather, the importance of the evidence provided and the previous discussions should be regarded as one of many explora-tory approaches in investigating citizenship education in the Lebanese classroom. I will now conclude with two remarks from the analysis of this pilot study which lead to critical implications for further inquiry.

The first is a concern about the extent to which the fundamental values in Lebanese civics classrooms are humanistic and democratic. The evidence gathered has suggested that citizenship education in Lebanon appears to be more centered around nationally determined civic rights rather than hu-man rights; more on what the laws are rather than how to critically analyze them; and, according to one of the teachers, more on obedience rather than participation. Consequently, the context provided for the values pro-moted in the classroom was a local and national rather than global or uni-versal. Duties and obedience were more strongly promoted than freedom, equality, fairness and empathy. What I find interesting is not merely the imbalance between the civic and universal agenda, but the disagreement as to what constitute basic, fundamental values or prerequisites for citizenship

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Blaylock, L. (2003) Religious education and citizenship: Some reflections. In Jackson, R. (ed.), International perspectives on citizenship, education and religious diversity (pp. 209-221). London: RoutledgeFalmer.

BouJaoude, S. and Gaith, G. (In Press) Educational reform at a time of change: The case of Lebanon. In Ernest, J. and Treagust, D. (eds.), Transi-tional societies. Curtin, Australia: Black Swan Press.

Council of Europe (1985) Recommendation No R (85) 7 of the Committee of Ministers to member states on teaching and learning about human rights in schools. Strasbourg: Council of Europe.

Council of Europe (2002) Recommendation Rec(12) of the Committee of Ministers to member states on education for democratic citizenship. Stras-bourg: Council of Europe.

Crick, B. and Porter, A. (eds.) (1978). Political education and political literacy. London: Longman.

Dewey, J. (1916) Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education (28th printing, reprinted 1955 ed.). New York: Macmillan.

Dewey, J. (1929) My pedagogic creed. Journal of the National Education Association, Vol. 18, No. 0, pp. 291-295.

El-Amine, A. (2003) Curricular reform in the context of conflict: Case study – Lebanon: Unpublished paper represented for UNESCO: Interna-tional Bureau of Education (IBE) training seminar for curriculum develop-ers in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Geneva.Frayha, N. (2004) ‘Developing curriculum as a means to bridging national divisions in Lebanon’. In Tawil, S. and Harley, A. (eds.), Education, con-flict and social cohesion (pp. 159-205). Geneva: UNESCO International Bureau of Education.

Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: The continuum Pub-lishing Company.

for effective citizenship may be a contribution to enhancing the educational experience of citizenship education.

Endnotes

1. Reprinted with permission from Reflecting Education 2(2), pp. 48-63, Institute of Education, University of London.

14. Has also been referred to as ECRD and, in some official documents, as NCERD (National CERD).

15. For more reading on critical reviews of the civics curriculum, see Acra (2003) Evaluating civics curricula. Report in Arabic submitted to the Lebanese Association for Educational Studies; and Zoreik (2000) Civics Education: How we deal with it. Beirut: Arab Scientific Publishers.

16. Crick also calls them ‘presuppositions’ in (Crick, 2002).

17. Osler and Starkey (2005, p. 86) cite McLaughlin (1992) and Richardson (1996) for the development of viewing citizenship education in terms of maximal and minimal degrees.

18. Frayha refers to the source from the Ministry of Education (2001) Statistical Bulletin.

19. For more on these approaches for effective learning, refer to Watkins, C. Carnell, E. Lodge, C., Wagner, P. and Whalley, C. (2002) Effective Learning. NSIN Research Matters, 17.

20. Underlined because shows emphasis during interview.

References

Akar B. (2005) A critical analysis of citizenship education in Lebanon: con-cepts, agendas and student and teacher attitudes. Institute of Education, University of London, London. Unpublished MA Thesis.

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Civic education: Theory and practice

Hiba NashabePaper presented in ‘Educating for Citizenship,’ 2002

It has been said that civilization is a race between catastrophe and edu-cation. If this is true, we must make sure that education wins the race, both here in Lebanon as well as elsewhere in the world. But for Lebanon education is a matter of existence. Lebanon’s present and future will be determined by success or failure of our educational endeavors. Though some might not agree, Lebanon’s success in the past has been primarily the outcome of our success in the field of education.

In this presentation, I am going to deal with three of the most crucial issues that concern most educators working in the field of civics:

1. What are the objectives that we hope to achieve through the teaching of civics? 2. Is the present curriculum of civic education service these objectives? 3. Are we forming through our civics textbooks the type of citizen who can achieve the best future for our country?

To answer these questions is not an easy task. So, consider my attempt at answering them with indulgence.

Allow me first to make clear that education is not achieved through text-books alone or even at school only. Indeed, whereas schools bear a special and historic responsibility for the development of civic awareness and re-sponsibilities, the family, the religious institutions, the community and the media exert important influences in forming a responsible citizen, as well. Education is the sum total of the influence of all these factors, and without the cooperation of the family, the religious institutions, the community and

Habermas, J. (2003) The future of human nature. Cambridge: Polity in association with Blackwell.

Habermas, J. (2005) Religion in the public sphere. San Diego: University of San Diego.

Jackson, R. (ed.) (2003) International perspectives on citizenship, education and religious diversity. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Joseph, S. (2005) ‘Teaching rights and responsibilities: Paradoxes of globali-zation and children’s citizenship in Lebanon’. Journal of Social History, Vol. 38, No.4, pp. 1007-1026.

Kymlica, W. (2001) Politics in the vernacular: Nationalism, multicultural-ism and citizenship. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Leganger-Krogstad, H. (2003) Dialogue among young citizens in pluralistic religious education classroom. In Jackson, R. (ed.), International perspec-tives on citizenship, education and religious diversity (pp. 169-190). Lon-don: RoutledgeFalmer.

Official Journal (1999) Appendix to No. 28, section 12/16. Beirut.Osler, A. and Starkey, H. (1996) Teacher education and human rights. London: David Fulton.

Osler, A., and Starkey, H. (2005) Changing citizenship: Democracy and inclusion in education. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

Parekh, B. (2000) The future of multi-ethnic Britain: Report of the commis-sion on the future of multi-ethnic Britain. London: Runnymede Trust.

Shuayb, M. (2005) ‘Is a new curriculum based on citizenship the solution for the social division of the Lebanese society?’ Unpublished assignment for faculty of education, (pp.1-16): Cambridge University.

Bassel Akar, Ph.D., teaches at the Notre Dame University in Louaize. At the time of this writing he was a Master’s student at the Institute of Education, University of London b.akar@ioe.ac.uk

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Through this approach, the student is expected to develop critical thinking and reach awareness of his civil rights and obligations. The curriculum, then, tries to move on from the local and the national to the international level. In fact, this is a necessary transition in a world that is becoming more and more a global village.

Concerns regarding the civic curriculumAll the above, of course, is important. But is this our first priority at this particular stage of our history? Well, the answer is a shy “no.” Indeed, this is not what a country that has suffered a long civil war needs. We seem to be navigating in the sea of utopias, ideals, and theories. Needless to say that our children must, at some stage, get acquainted with those theories, but we must help them understand that life is not only ideals and theories. The following are some examples derived from our curriculum that can help illustrate my argument.

Our civic curriculum lacks any definition of the beliefs and convictions of Lebanese citizens.

Lebanon is a country composed of a mosaic of communities, cultures, religions, and perspectives, but this plurality is in no way evident in the civics textbooks. Plurality does not imply fragmentation; Lebanon is a uni-fied society within the Arab nation. However, when it comes to plurality, our civic books merely talk about the ‘other’ who is different and that we must be tolerant of this ‘other’, respect him, and give him the freedom to exercise his convictions. But what are these convictions? Are all convic-tions worthy of our respect and tolerance, even those that conflict with our basic national convictions, religious beliefs, and basic human rights? How can we find common ground with this ‘other’ to build a future, if we differ on basic national convictions?

We must think aloud with our children, in order to be aware of and sensi-tive to historical, present and future manipulation. Otherwise, indeed, this ‘other’ remains unknown to our children.

We, as human beings, are naturally afraid of the unknown. We often hold prejudices about and can be aggressive towards the unknowns, and display negative and defensive attitude towards them. Therefore, a chapter dealing with the positive and negative aspects of plurality and a chapter dealing

the media, the school can do little. In fact, what the school does can easily be undone by these other factors. Bearing this in mind, tackle the objecti ves of civic education.

The aim of teaching civics must not be restricted to instruction in theo-ries. Rather, it should aim at teaching behavior founded on national, civil, social, and moral convictions. And since behavior is learned by repeated practice, civics should be seen as a central concern from kindergarten onward. This is all the more important in the Lebanese society, and I shall come back to this point.

We all want young students to care about their country, believe in their ability to make a difference, and assume the responsibilities of citizenship. However, we must ask ourselves whether we are helping them in this re-gard. Do we offer them the right curriculum that can help them overcome daily scenarios of conflict, abuse of power, twisted concepts of discipline, and so on?

Our current curriculumFor the first time in Lebanon, we have one unified book for all the Leba-nese; the book of civics. Previous attempts, starting from those in the sixties have failed to unify the book of civics. Hopefully, we will soon be able to have a unified book of history and geography, as well, because these subjects are very closely related to civics, for they all shape our national consciousness. This is what the Ta’if Agreement of 1989 stipulates, with the aim of remedying the schism that has divided the Lebanese society into warring fragments. And let remember that the Ta’if Agreement was not imposed on the Lebanese, but was arrived at by the representatives of the Lebanese people…all the Lebanese people. The civics curriculum must therefore honestly and truly reflect the principles agreed upon in Ta’if.

The content of the new civics curriculum covers the life of the learner, character building, and his/her relation with family, school, society, fellow-countrymen, and the world at large. This content is also inspired by our national heritage, the values of the present and the aspirations of the future. The new civics books are attractive in their layout, with pictures, documents and texts that prompt the learner to interact, criticize, analyze and reflect on the content. (See Appendix for samples of new civics cur-riculum objectives.)

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our children. Our primary concern today must focus on teaching our chil-dren the skills of putting into practice the theories and laws they learn. It is of great importance to teach them how to formulate theories and then how to implement them. The latter is far more important.

Our civic curriculum lacks a framework that recognizes genuine learning as a personal enterprise. Although through texts our students are exposed to a variety of intellectual, moral, and political concepts, nowhere do we find how the learner is going to translate and give meaning to these ideas in real life. In other words, how would this learner understand the complexities of the past and current events, and skillfully make an appropriate connection between the past, the present and future?

The most important element guiding the learners in the application of the civic attitude is the teacher. The teacher of civic education must be the most knowledgeable, the most educated, and cultured teacher in the school. In fact, teachers of civics must have the ability to understand that their students’ academic, civic and emotional growth depends to a large degree on what they teach them.

The civics teacher must master important skills in classroom pedagogy: how to conduct a discussion in which students truly talk and listen to one another; how to raise controversial topics; and how to establish a classroom atmosphere of trust. The teacher of civics must be able to make students carry with them this atmosphere to the playground, the street, home, and, later in life, to the society at large, the civil society and the political assemblies.

Our curriculum provides the teacher with some basic national information, giving each teacher the freedom to interpret sensitive subjects in accordance with the school’s vision, religion, and political tendency. Consequently, students of the same class from different schools may not stand on a com-mon national and civic ground. Indeed, each school will graduate citizens reflecting its own political, religious, and social image. Although we believe that difference of opinion is a blessing, and this difference enriches socie-ties, nonetheless, difference in basic national and civil convictions is a curse.

with the basic beliefs and convictions of the people living in Lebanon will be necessary. Similarly, our basic religious beliefs must be exposed with due respect accorded to all.

Our curriculum lacks the answer to the following question: What does it mean to be a Lebanese citizen?

By the time our children reach grade twelve, they will have acquired sufficient knowledge of their rights, duties, human rights, government structures, and international and local NGO’s. However, nowhere do we find texts about being active citizens and the power of citizens in changing the present and building the future. If, for one reason or another, decision makers think that citizens are not able to exercise power, the remedy is not, of course, in marginalizing our young generation. On the contrary, we should teach them how to be directly involved in their national affairs and cultivate in them the sense of responsibility. In fact, we must all be aware that civic commitment does not necessarily mean total political allegiance; however, it must indicate total commitment to civic values.

Our curriculum lacks any approach to the concept of civil Leadership.

Our curriculum tells us a lot about the characteristics of a leader in general. However, we do not find one sentence teaching us the importance of politi-cal or civic leadership. In my opinion, the craft of leadership is a science for the future. In fact, we must be aware that leaders are not born with leadership chromosomes in them. Although some people have a tendency to be leaders, yet, if this gift is not cultivated and reinforced by skills and knowledge, it will wither.

In a country like Lebanon, the need for civic leaders is enormous. We must make sure that through civic education we instill the ambition for and skills and attitudes of leadership in our children, regardless of gender, religion, social or economic status.

The historic clash between theory and practiceWe live in a world of theories and laws. In fact, we all master the art of speculation and rhetoric. However, when it comes to application most of us stumble and fall. We are all aware that theorization is a part of our culture, literature, and social attitude, yet this is not what we want to give

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The civic curriculum exists for our children’s sake. We must measure our own success by how well they actually apply the contents of the curriculum to the moral choices that confront them in their daily life. We must help them reflect on how to become aware of their own civic development. We must provide them with knowledge that challenges thinking, and stretches their imagination. The curriculum, the teacher and the textbook must not provide our children only with knowledge, it must also inspire them and instill ambitions in them for building a better Lebanon. All that could be achieved by relating historical and current social and political issues to their own experiences for them to study, analyze and draw the proper conclusions.

Finally, in order to claim success, our national civics curriculum should reflect the following questions:

• How should we behave and think in a fast changing world? • How can we accommodate change in our daily life? • How should we behave and think in a materialistic world which pays more attention to materialistic values than to moral and religious values? • Does our civic education curriculum teach: (a) tolerance; (b) tea work; (c) accepting difference; (d) appropriate vocabulary for discussing critical issues while widening perspectives; (e) empathy; (f) awareness of choices and opportunities; (g) techniques of responsible citizenship; (h) commitment to the Arab national belonging; and (i) commitment to the essentials rather than the appearances of culture?

If answers to such questions were an honest ‘yes’, then and only then would our hearts and minds be at ease looking forward to a healthy future.

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The second part of the book is a collection of papers describing what educational institutions and individual educators are doing to develop the peace-building capacities of children and youth within the formal educa-tion context. The section opens with Husni Zeine’s paper which describes a philosophy course entitled Belief and Reality, in which secondary school students are encouraged to reflect critically on prevailing beliefs in an ef-fort to help them develop new ways of thinking about their world and the reality. The Global Classrooms project described by Elie Samia is an excellent example of youth-empowering extra-curricular activities in which universi-ties can engage and link with schools. Originally a project involving 76 high schools, it has grown to host over 100 schools annually. Irma-Kaarina Ghosn’s description of her university course on cross-cultural communica-tion and conflict reveals the responsiveness of university students to learn-ing about ‘the other’ and to resolve conflicts by non-violent means. Lala Demirdjian describes her efforts to infuse the notions of citizenship and conflict resolution into her fifth grade English language classes. Alexandra Edde-Khawaja’s account of her experiences in grades two and three illustrate how important it is to begin peace education from the early grades. Mishka Mojabber Mourani’s thorough review of how the Interna-tional College in Beirut educates students in civic awareness and conflict resolution shows that citizenship skills can be fostered in many more ways than simply in the civics class. These positive examples from diverse con-texts are a powerful indicator about the potential of peace education to bring about change in Lebanon if widely implemented.

Part II – Stories from the Classroom

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to initiate the task of shaping a better tomorrow. The issue is basically of an ethical nature and involves answering fundamental questions such as the following: Is it possible to breed fewer arms makers and dealers? Is it possible to breed more Ghandis, Albert Schweitzers, mother Theresas, Jody Williamses, Medecins sans Frontieres? Is it possible to question the implicit finality of knowledge, and science?

If we are to give our children a truly global education then positive answers to these three questions must be possible. These are three essentials, no matter how seemingly idealistic this might sound. To respond negatively is to call into question the fundamental aims of education. That is to say, is education destined to perpetuate the very patterns of thinking that have lead to the present quagmire, or to assist tomorrow’s men and women in transcending the status quo? Is education meant to promote inertia or initiative, sheepishness or integrity? Is education a rebirth of custom or a rebirth to the spirit?

Two alarming attitudes seem to polarize the moral views of the majority of 17 to 19 year olds I have been working with for over twenty years now. The first attitude demonstrates a liberalism that has been pushed to an irrational extreme. That is to say, some of these adolescents jump on the bandwagon and accept views that to them seem cool and worldly, but are unsustainable if examined critically. The second attitude consists of a group-centric bigotry, complete with all the attendant prejudices and stereotypes. Both attitudes ignore universal standards and lack a cogent rationale. Both kill moral initiative with different instruments. Both are all or none reactions typical of sweeping adolescent judgments.

With this in mind, an elective philosophy course entitled ‘Belief and Reality’ was offered to senior high school students. The course had two objectives: first, to provide the critical philosophical tools to reflect on the possible difficulties, discrepancies, or paradoxes of the relationship between belief and reality; and second, to promote more tolerant but critical at-titudes towards beliefs in the Lebanese context. A total of 18 students took the course. Assignments covered a wide range of relevant critical issues such as superstitions, modern myths, astrology and astronomy. Others, however, dealt with more ethical matters such as cults and common sense, belief and freedom, the ‘Other’ according to me/us, peer pressure, the perception of madness, normalcy, and sanity. A class assignment on ‘Your experience

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and ca-tastrophe, noted H.G. Wells in1920. His statement remains as challenging today as when he wrote it eighty years ago. Which one will prevail? Nuclear catastrophe was the most fearsome during the second half of the 20th century. However, the balance of terror has made nuclear world war a no-win option. Although small scale nuclear flare-ups cannot be totally excluded, the twenty first century is viewed by many military strategists as the century of mini wars, that is civil wars predominantly of a xenophobic nature: ethnic, factional, religious, tribal, etc. This prophecy is cast against a gloomy backdrop of overpopulation, top-soil degradation, the ever-widening gap between rich and poor, illiteracy, and unemployment. Two factors com-bine to make this pessimistic prophecy not so far-fetched. First, the military factor, this is due to the vested interests of arms makers and dealers, the second factor is related to the demonization of the other — a demonization that is reinforced by the perception of the other as a potential competitor in the slave market of cheap labor.

The general picture therefore is that of a catastrophe in the making, can we as educators play any role in averting this catastrophe?

In a culture, like the Lebanese one, where the unpoliticized population expects all initiatives form State authority, and where the ruling elite does little to change that pattern, it is very important to emphasize the fact that the business of averting such calamitous wars is not exclusively political nor even primarily so. It is rather pre-political. First, in that in the absence of a civil society it depends on individual not collective will. Second, in that we, as educators cannot and must not stand back and wait for politicians

In search of ethics: A step forward

Husni Zeineh Paper presented in ‘Educating for Change,’ 2000

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of ordinary adolescents. Sometimes it is even unrelated, in the minds of students, to the creative attitude that generated it. When asked “what did Torricelli have to do to solve the problem that led to his invention of the concept of air pressure?” One science student responded with a shrug of his shoulders: “He just applied the formulas.”

Even more alarming are the bigotry and moral callousness induced by narrow specialization based on the allegedly impartial idea of ‘science for science’s sake’. It almost amounts to saying that science and the teaching of it bear no relation to man. A devastating consequence of this divorce occurred in 1995 in Japan where the followers of Japanese Shoko Asahara’s Ultimate Truth cult were recruited from among graduates of top Science & Technology institutes in Japan. It is arguable that scientists and educators take the human orientation of science for granted. It is very important, however, to remember that adolescents do not.

In conclusion, as in any race the loss of one party is an automatic gain for the other. If the nuclear catastrophe has so far been avoided the worst is not yet over. An ethically neutral education in a wider context of illiteracy, pauperization, and ecologically disastrous policies, would still favor a snow-balling catastrophe. An ethically committed education is essential to build and empower a civil society capable of averting civil wars. Educators can have their say in this process — if only they decide to.

Husni Zeineh teaches Philosophy at Broummana High School.

with prejudice and stereotypes’ proved to be particularly fruitful and inspir-ing. It triggered the launching of a free, independent, all-student publica-tion entitled Speak Out! by students for students:

SPEAK OUT! Is an outlet for anyone who has anything to do with BHS to criticize the stereotypes in our society and to speak up against inequality. We may not be able to stop prejudice, but we do not have to take it lying down. What are the things that really get you mad? The way adults treat you, racism, sexism, or the lecture boys get when the pierce their ears… You’re entitled to your opinion — if you SPEAK OUT! We’ll make sure you’re heard.

This issue featured four outstanding descriptions of personal experiences with prejudices and stereotypes: the first one described the experience of a young Lebanese man born to a Filipino mother and a well-to-do Lebanese father; the second tackled Lebanese double-standards concerning sectarian attitudes; the third focused on the stereotype of ‘femininity’ and ‘female intellectual’; the fourth highlighted the fact that ‘we live in a society where blacks are considered less human than whites.’

This experience demonstrated that many scientific section students who took a philosophy elective were able to bring critical reflection to bear upon ethical issues and take active responsible steps towards translating their stand into serious articles in the student publication. However, the limitations of the experience are not to be underestimated. The elective is exclusively open to students of the special program, meaning students with foreign passports (even if most of them are Lebanese). The nature and structure of the regular Lebanese program does not allow its students to take such electives. However, the fact that some student sin the Lebanese program have shown a marked interest in reading and contributing to Speak Out! is in itself an encouraging sign.

Can this experience be applied in other subjects? Can something similar be accomplished in teaching History, or the Sciences? This is a question about the final aim of knowledge in general and education in these specific fields. The fact that the teaching of science is totally divorced from its historical context makes it more extraterrestrial for young people, or even supraterres-trial, having little to do with the every-day preoccupations, hopes and fears

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and gain communications, negotiations and leadership skills as well as cognition about the global challenges facing the United Nations.Grade 10 and 11 students act as ambassadors for different countries and tackle the problems of sustainable development, global terrorism, menacing epidemics, global poverty, and the spread of weapons of mass destruction, rogue states, and environmental and ecological threats.

In its first year, GC-LAUMUN was the first program of its kind in the Arab world and one among forty-three similar programs around the globe. Be-tween the 14th of January and the 11th of March, 2006, the GC-LAUMUN student Secretariat trained 541 students and school advisers representing their seventy-seven schools from all across Lebanon. The seven training-session program enabled the students to successfully engage in activities on campus that helped in the formation and development of their character and leadership skills, much needed for their future careers and interac-tions in their communities at large. On the 8th and 9th of April, student delegates attended the 1st National High School Conference held at LAU Beirut campus. Students took on the role of ambassadors representing more than one hundred assigned countries. The ‘ambassadors’ formulated final resolutions in six simulated UN committees, representing the points of view of their assigned countries. Resolutions were reached for the differ-ent topics that were discussed as follows:

• 105 delegates reached a resolution on coordinating global efforts in the World Health Organization to achieve HIV/AIDS Medication; • 80 delegates reached a resolution delineating an action-plan on the eradication of Poverty with $100 in the United Nations Development Programme; • 75 delegates had the opportunity to discuss and reach a resolution on Human Rights for Refugees in the United Nations High Commission for Refugees; • 107 delegates discussed the major issues related to Women and Children Trafficking in the General Assembly’s Social, Humanitarian and cultural Committee; • 50 delegates tackled the problem of Freshwater in the technical Economic & Social Council; and • 124 delegates reached a resolution banning all nuclear activities in the Middle East under the title of Nuclear Disarmament, To Make the Middle

In 2005, the Lebanese American University (LAU) signed a five-year partnership with the United Nations Association of the United States of America (UNA-USA) to implement the Global Classrooms methodology and bring in the United Nations model to 300 private and public school students from all over Lebanon. Later on, and despite unstable political circumstances, LAU decided to raise the stakes for the sake of Lebanese youth and host more than 500 students from seventy-seven different high schools. In 2009, the program got a new sponsor, the Alwaleed Bin Talal Humanitarian Foundation, and was renamed Al Walid GD-LAU MUN, which stands for Alpha Leadership Web for Arab Leaders in International Diplomacy Global Classrooms—LAU Model United Nations. In 2009, the number of participating schools reached 110.

Alpha Leadership Web for Arab Leaders in International Diplomacy Global Class-rooms—LAU Model United Nations (Al Walid GD—LAUMUN) consists of training the students over seven consecutive Saturdays at the LAU premises in Beirut and Byblos in the following areas1: • conflict resolution skills and coalition building, communication, negotiations, open debate and resolution writing as well as simulation exercises; • skills of diplomacy and extensive knowledge about UN procedures and rules of diplomatic representation and protocol; • knowledge in country demographic, economic, political and social profiles.

The program aims at training Lebanese students from diverse socio-eco-nomic and sectarian backgrounds to acknowledge each other’s differences, think methodically and objectively about UN problems, tolerate diversity,

Global Classrooms—LAU Model United Nations teaches life skills

Elie Samia

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Bin Talal Humanitarian Foundation, which became the primary sponsor of the program. LAU students also played a major part in making this dream, again, come true.

Despite the unhelpful and sometimes threatening environment it is operat-ing in, GC-LAUMUN widened its horizons by outreaching to more remote areas in the South and the Bekaa, by restructuring its training program, and by raising the standards for the selection process of its Secretariat members. The program also paid special attention on adopting transparent means for communicating and coordinating with schools.

In its second edition, GC-LAUMUN sought to build a culture of peaceful conflict resolution by offering the alternative of peaceful and critical debate against what Lebanon has seen from violent power struggles. Moreover, stu-dents were given the tools to better understand their individual contexts in the Lebanese and global environment. This will help them believe in their own power to change by channeling their acquired skills to finding real solutions for the problems of their society. The 658 student participants from public and private schools played a major role in realizing LAU’s dream by defying their fear, week after week, in the hope of reinforcing and enrooting this new culture. On April 28 and 29, delegates represented their assigned countries in eleven simulated committees and managed to reach creative resolutions for the different topics at hand.

In addition to the six committees simulated during the 2006 Conference and their interesting topics (Maternal Health, Meeting the Protection Needs of Women and Children Refugees, Globalization & Development, the Illicit Trade of Light Weapons, the Digital Divide, and the Partnerships to Address the World Drug Problems) the next conference simulated five new committees, namely the Security Council and its reform; the United Nations Environmental Programme, where delegates discussed Global Warming; the Human Rights Council, where delegates discussed Religious Intolerance; the General Assembly’s Economic & Financial Committee, where delegates discussed Multinational Corporations & Development; and finally, the technical Commission on Crime Prevention & Criminal Justice. With such chal-lenging committees and topics, student delegates had to surpass themselves through hard work, discipline, creativity and commitment. In the closing ceremony, LAU commemorated the ‘Civic Responsibility’ of late Member

East a Safer Place in the biggest committee, the General Assembly’s Disarmament & International Security Committee.

In the closing ceremony held at UNESCO Palace, and in front of a packed audience of one thousand, high achievers were rewarded for their excel-lence in representing their respective countries objectively according to UN rules of procedure. Other students were also rewarded for their position paper writing skills. LAU also seized the opportunity to commemorate the diplomatic legacies of ambassadors Fuad Boutros, Nadim Dimachkiyye, Ghassan Tueini, and the late Charles Malik.

LAU also had the opportunity, thanks to the financial support of Merrill Lynch, to send a delegation of outstanding high school students to represent GC-LAUMUN, LAU and Lebanon in the prestigious UNAUSA International Model United Nations Conference held in the UN Head-quarters in New York in May of every year. The first delegation was coached by the program’s Secretary General, Mr. Anthony Torbay, and inclueded the following high school students: Ms. Roula Hajjar (Christian Teaching Institute), Ms. Yara Sgheib (Jesus & Mary School), Ms. Amani Abi Habib (The International School of Choueifat), Mr. Jade Hajj (Eastwood College, Mansourieh), Mr. Anthony Rizk (Saint Joseph School, Qornet Chehwan), and Ms. Rola Sherif (Al Qualaa High School). The Lebanese delegation competed with more than 2,400 high school students from all over the world and managed to clinch four recognition awards out of the six pos-sible, including two best delegation awards.

Based on the success the GC-LAUMUN program achieved in its first year, LAU decided — under unusually threatening local circumstances — to reorganize and expand the GC-LAUMUN program. The program’s aim was to champion the power of argumentation and make it prevail over the argument of power, to promote the culture of democracy that unleashes the creative energies of the student, and to make it triumph over the traditional teaching methods implemented in most of the schools of Lebanon and the Arab world; hence the motto Power of Argument, Not Argument of Power. Reaching this objective became a lot easier, thanks to the increased help of the global sponsor, Merrill Lynch International, as well as the generous con-tribution of the local sponsor, Bank of Beirut & the Arab Countries, who devoted time and effort to assist LAU in helping Lebanese youth. As stated earlier, in 2009, the program received a generous grant from the Alwaleed

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Session 2 Research & Interpretation/Rules of ProcedureEstablishes a starting point in research for the students to use while prepar-ing the final conference. It instructs them about the proper techniques of research and how to investigate the needed information. Training session 2 continues also, in a way, the aim of training session 1, i.e. to inform students about the United Nations. However, training session 2 further provides technical knowledge about acting in a United Nations committee through what is known as Rules of Procedure. Students are brought in to the real procedures of being an ambassador to the UN.

Session 3: Research & Interpretation/Position Paper Allows students to analyze the given information about a certain topic and enables them to include the information later in their statements as ambas-sadors. These statements — the position papers — are written by the students in order to inform others as well as the Dais of their stance regarding the topics that need to be discussed. In order for them to properly write the position papers, delegates have to grasp all the given facts about the topic, analyze them, and combine them with their country’s attitude regarding the subject. This type of information is introduced to them in the Back-ground guides.

Session 4: Public Speaking & Role Playing Enlightens delegates about the appropriate techniques of public speaking. Through live classroom activities the session provides good understanding of the means to overcome fear in public speaking. Delegates also engage in the skill of role playing and acting as ambassadors to the United Nations. They are taught how to play the role of diplomats of their assigned coun-tries. During classroom activities, different types of characters are involved, and delegates switch roles, so they can try to empathize with them as well.

Session 5: Negotiation Skills This is probably the most important session, since it provides delegates with the necessary know-how to perform in the Final Conference. It guides them to understand the true art and essence of negotiations. Through a classroom simulation of a real negotiation situation, students will grasp the basics of an accurate negotiation process that may eventually lead to a consensus or the use of the MAD option. This training session informs the students about the tactics of negotiation, the means for peaceful conflict resolution, as well as the different types of negotiators.

of Parliament, Mr. Georges Frem and the ‘Diplomatic Creativity’ of UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Mr. Geir Pedersen.

As in 2006, a Lebanese delegation of six students, accompanied by the program’s Secretary General, represented GC-LAUMUN in New York. This time, all six delegates won awards, including two best delegation awards in the biggest committee. Mr. Samer Rachid coached the delega-tion comprising Mr. Tannous Kasshanna (College de la Salle, Kfaryachit), Mr. Kabalan Gaspard (Notre Dame de Jamhour), Mr. Ashod Pakradonian (Yeghishe Manoukian College), Mr. Nader Bitar (Rawdah High School), Ms. Nisreen Jaafar (National Evangelical Institute for Girls & Boys), and Mr. Xavier Chalhoub from Beirut Evangelical School for Girls & Boys, Rabieh).

By 2009, the number of participating schools had grown from the initial 76 to 110, and the number of students from 541 to 1100. The trainers in 2006 were 26 and in 2009 total of 50 trainers were needed to accommodate the increasing number of participants.

The Training SessionsHigh school students engage in different training sessions for eight Sat-urdays (originally seven) during the program. They try to employ all the knowledge and skills acquired in the final conference. At the end, students are supposed to master many skills including analytical reading, interpret-ing, and writing. The training sessions aim at fostering knowledge, coopera-tion, consensus building, and a spirit of friendship among the students, as well as between the students and their facilitators. Eight different training sessions aim at accomplishing these objectives.

Session 1: Introduction to the UN and MUN Introduces the students to the basics of the United Nations. It enlightens them about the major organs of the United Nations, their main functions and powers, and the role of the United Nations Secretariat headed by the Secretary General. This training session mostly concentrates on endowing the students with fundamental information about the United Nations so that they can understand their roles as ambassadors in an improved approach.

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partially due to lack of clearly set facts and due to disagreement about the objectives, or the methods to use in debating issues.

Similarly when the students were debating the Social Responsibility of the Private Sector, trainers tried to orient their thinking towards the following questions: • Do you think globalization and the rise of large multinational corporations have affected the power and influence that countries have over what goes on within their borders? If so, how? • How might competition to sell products at the lowest price negatively affect workers? More creatively also: • What are some ways that contributing to development efforts might benefit businesses? • How would these efforts benefit developing countries? That is how debate becomes focalized and ready to bear the fruits of synthesis. By helping the trainees define their objectives, collecting relevant information, generating feasible options, making decisions and synthesiz-ing, we facilitate reaching solutions and compromise. Similarly on the topic of Violence against Women, trainers channeled discussions towards the following critical questions: • How can authorities protect the health and safety of women, while also respecting the customs and practices of a culture? • Why might lack of development lead to a higher incidence of violence against women? • Why is recognizing gender equality and preventing gender discrimination important to protect women against violence?Examples can vary from one committee to another, but the objective re-mains the same: helping students learn things by themselves while coaching them with the proper methodology. Winston Churchill once said “I am always willing to learn, but I do not like being taught” (Adair, p.89). Elie Kawkabani, one of the participants in GC/LAU Model UN describes his experience as “an eye opener… they helped us develop our communication skills, creativity and logic.”

Toleration of diversityJawad Mahfouz, another Global Classrooms delegate said: I want to learn to be more tolerant. I want to be more open to the world and get to know different things about UN and diplomacy.

Session 6: Caucusing/Working Papers & Draft Resolutions Offers a method called Caucusing, which is an important part of the Model UN simulation, because it provides an opportunity for delegates to collaborate, negotiate and formulate draft resolutions. Delegates begin to understand regional blocks and alliances. As a result of all the techniques and processes used during the Final Conference, delegates learn how to formulate and write a resolution for the topic at hand during the committee meetings.

Session 7: UN Day Gives delegates the chance of interacting with specialists from the United Nations who have previously experienced the work in the UN and are giv-ing their time to fulfill the main goal of the United Nations that is main-taining peace and security. Students will learn from real life examples and will try to simulate these examples in the final conference.

Session 8: Mock Simulation Grants delegates the opportunity to implement the knowledge and skills they acquired throughout the previous training sessions and a mock simulation that occurs before the final conference and the real committee meetings.

Student benefits from the Global Classroom experienceBuilding awareness through critical thinkingStudents learn how to build their awareness about various issues through developing critical thinking. When they were discussing the issue of Fresh-water Resources, the trainers channeled their focus on the following points: • How can conflict arise from multiple states sharing a single water source? And how can these conflicts be resolved? • How is access to clean freshwater resources a developmental issue? • How can lack of freshwater interrupt, or even reverse development in a country? Consequently, what effect will this have on the people of that country?With the flow of debate channeled into a specific direction, creative ener-gies become focalized and the possibility of reaching consensus increases. When we, as educators, introduce any topic by providing the background information and then channel discussion through a set of focused critical questions, the possibility of reaching clear recommendations for action in-creases and reaching compromise becomes more accessible. Conflict arises

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This has satisfied our students’ quest for belongingness to a place, iden-tification with an objective, and serving a cause. They gained a sense of power while pursuing a noble educational goal. Our students have been both socially and intellectually motivated to be role models for the high school participants, and this has given them the energy to pursue daunting challenges. They have deployed thousands of working hours, most of the time getting paid only for 70 hours, thus proving that moral motivation can constitute a bigger drive for achievement than material, one especially at the age of idealism.

Far beyond training in international diplomacy, Global Classrooms/ LAU Model UN teaches life skills — a set of personal and professional attitudes that are important for the future leaders of an increasingly interdependent world. These range from cultivating a true sense of humility, to assuming multifarious responsibilities, to manifesting outstanding communication skills, to acquiring an extraordinary work ethics, to grappling with complex issues and chores and faring well in the process, to tolerating diversity and shunning prejudices being considered the offspring of ignorance, to displaying unflinching determination to overcome obstacles, and above all, to enjoy it all. If these are not the characteristics of the future leaders of the world, then, what are?

References

Adair, J. (2007). Decision Making and Problem Solving Strategies. London and Philadelphia: Kogan Page.

Jacob, E. J. & Ostrom, R. (August 1996). Student Attitudes about the National Model United Nations Simulation. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of The American Political Science Association, San Francisco, California.

The Young Diplomat (January 2007). Newsletter published by the Global Classrooms/ LAU Model UN.

UNA-USA Global Classrooms (2007). Background Guides. New York: Author

This plea epitomizes the cravings of a whole generation of the Lebanese youth striving to understand the other and eliminate prejudices caused by religious or sectarian differences. The Global Classrooms experience tries to build bridges of understanding instead of the barriers of fanaticism that besiege the Lebanese society. And as Marylise Kassouf puts it: When I took the leadership and diplomacy training at LAU- Model UN, I defeated my own weakness and broke the cultural barrier that had so long prevented me from seeing the true beauty in every culture. The motto of the first year conference was Bridges, not barriers, and that of the second conference read as Power of argument, not argument of power. This year’s conference motto is Who are we if we cannot imagine peace? They reflect our pedagogical vision as a liberal institution of higher learning, namely in “developing world citizens with a deep sense of civic engagement” and “promoting the values of peace, democracy and justice”.

During the eight training sessions students learn all about the peaceful means of conflict resolution, ranging from mediation, to deployment of good offices, to enquiry, to reconciliation, to arbitration, to adjudication. But most importantly, they learn how to play ‘win-win’ games and the art of giving mutually rewarding concessions only after careful consideration of the concerns of other parties. In the words of Scarlet Gaby Rahi, who attended the Tenth Annual High School Conference organized by the Unit-ed Nations Association of the U.S. in 2009 in New York: “the experience taught us how to interact with people from different cultures and cooperate with them in order to reach a solution.”

EmpowermentIf empowerment is allowing students to exercise their own powers and responsibilities, then GC/LAU Model UN is definitely accomplishing this worthy task. In implementing the training program, the 70-student Secre-tariat composed of LAU students take care of a variety of organizational tasks: school coordination; registration and follow-up mechanisms; budget-ary planning; catering services; the multi-administrative chores of reserving rooms; working out the logistics; and overseeing all the numerous miscel-laneous details. A beehive of well synchronized operations, all performed with assiduity and love.

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Learning about the ‘other’ in a university course

Irma-Kaarina Ghosn

Lebanon’s population comprises a total of eighteen officially recognized re-ligious sects, and the war influenced the religious demographics drastically. While prior to 1975, over 80% of Lebanon’s communities were heterogene-ous, the majority of the communities are now homogeneous. The de-facto segregation of communities has also led to segregation of the public school system, and, to a large extent also the private school system. This implies that a considerable segment of the war generation youth has had very little, if any contact with ‘the other’. Also, even in the absence of direct violence, the country is not at peace. The war has left deep prejudices, suspicion and hatred in the students’ minds that, unless erased, or at least decreased, pose an obstacle for any effort to bring about a culture of peace in Lebanon.

Another ‘other’ in Lebanon is the foreign worker. The number of foreign workers in the country is in the hundreds of thousands, although no ac-curate figure is available. There are domestic workers from Sri Lanka, Phil-ippines and Ethiopia, and more recently also from Nepal. Men from Sri Lanka, Philippines, India, Egypt and Sudan are working at gas stations, as janitors in hospitals and offices, and at various other low-paying jobs, while Syrians work primarily at construction and agriculture. The foreign labor is often subject to serious racism and classism, and reports about inhumane, harsh treatment are not uncommon.

There is an urgent need for our students to develop basic awareness of the ‘other,’ skills and attitudes of empathy and tolerance, skills to communicate with those whose beliefs and values are different from their own, and basic skills to engage in non-violent conflict resolution. In 1999, I developed a course on cross-cultural communication and con-flict, which was first offered as a general elective, but qualifies now as part

Endnotes

1. It is important to note that all the training is carried out by LAU stu-dents specially trained as trainers (Editor’s note).

Elie Samia was Director of Guidance and instructor of Political Science at LAU when the Global Classrooms project was launched. As this volume goes to print, he heads the Center for Civic Engagement at LAU.

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The course will attempt to relate the above to the Lebanese cultural context in general, and to inter-faith dialogue in particular.

The course comprises lectures, readings, discussions, short films and a vari-ety of individual and group activities, including role play, simulations and games. The activities are always followed by debriefings in order to allow students the opportunity to process the experience and their learn-ings from it.

The course content falls into four major components: • Culture and communication • Dimensions along which cultures differ • Understanding conflict • Concepts and skills of conflict resolution • Developing intercultural competenceGrading is typically based on the following criteria: • Participation in simulations and debriefings • Written unit tests • Reflective journal • Field experience report • Comprehensive final examination

Student response and learningTeaching the course has been extremely rewarding because of the positive response of the students, their learning and emerging shift in attitudes that is evident in their journal entries and project reports. Student journal entries, in particular, reflect the personal insights that perhaps have been kept from public view of the class. Therefore, it was particularly rewarding for me to read the often very personal accounts of classroom experiences. In general, Lebanese students are not accustomed to sharing their inner feelings; the culture is very appearances-oriented (and I don’t mean it in any negative sense), and formulaic speech patterns, social amenities, etc. are a very important aspect of the culture.

In fact, when discussing the ‘action-being-becoming’ continuum in cultural values, students have come often to the conclusion that the Lebanese

of the Liberal Arts Core Curriculum. Since its introduction, the course has generally witnessed good enrolment, and student reactions have been very positive. The success of the course can be measured not as much by student performance on the theoretical aspects of the course, but rather by the insight and gradually changing attitudes demonstrated in classroom discussions and reflected in personal journal entries. I will first describe the course content, methodology, assignments and grading. Then I will share samples of student reactions to the various components of the course that vary slightly in response to the security situation in the country.

Course syllabusThe course is a combination of intercultural awareness and communica-tion theories, examination of conflict and non-violent conflict resolution strategies. It is designed for anyone interested in intercultural issues who has had little or no experience in the field, as well as those who have had intercultural experiences and seek to understand them better. We examine the basic concepts, theories and issues of intercultural communication and human relations. We then explore the differences in national cultures across different dimensions and what shapes the beliefs and values un-derpinning them. Special emphasis is on the role of identity, worldview and cultural values on interpersonal and intergroup conflict and conflict transformation. Students practice conflict resolution skills in role plays and simulations.

The course objectives are stated in the syllabus as follows: This course aims to raise your awareness of your own cultural values, and call attention to any counterproductive stereotypes and prejudices toward people of other cultures and values. It aims to increase your awareness of the problems that may arise in communicating with people of other cultures, and to help you develop empathy and tolerance for diversity, and ability to communicate with people who embrace diverse beliefs and values.

This course will help you accept controversy and conflict, and the fear associated with the two, as inevitable aspects of human life, and to help you develop critical and creative ways of thinking while engaging in problem-solving and conflict resolution.

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of times I blame them for reactions that to them are normal and right…I didn’t like what I discovered about myself (Rania).

About cultureAlthough it is not possible to say that permanent change in attitudes will have occurred without a longitudinal study, I do believe that student jour-nal entries reflect learning and seeds for change. I can only hope that some of them will be lasting.

At the beginning of the unit on culture, I often have the class read Donald Batchelder’s “The Green Banana’, which leads to the insight that we tend to perceive our own spot in the world as the center of the world and our ways of doing things the only right ways. This is what two students had to say about it: I found in the conclusion of “The Green Banana” many lessons It’s like the Lebanese people, we always think we are the best, sometimes I meet people that do not accept others that have moved from another culture — some other people believe that staying abroad is a ‘stupid’ thing to do, ‘our country is the best’ as they say (Ramzi).

I liked to story. It made me realize that what I think is not necessarily true (Sarah).

In the classic ‘Zebra’s Stripes’ activity described by Ann Hubbard (1996), students are shown two different pictures of zebra and they are asked to observe it very closely. One group sees a zebra that is predominantly black, with white stripes, while the other group sees a primarily white zebra with black stripes. After a moment of intense observation, the two pictures are put away, and the whole group is shown a picture of a ‘neutral’ zebra, with neither black nor white dominating. They are asked to observe the picture carefully and determine whether zebra is a black animal with white stripes, or a white animal with black stripes. Although most students quickly figure out the purpose of the exercise, it shows them in concrete terms how our perceptions are shaped by our life experience. Some of their comments included: I thought it was quite funny! Funny in the sense that each one in class seemed to be convinced of what they said…(Paul)

culture values ‘saying’ much more than either doing or what kind of person you are. What is important is what and, especially how, you say things; it is more important to be able to say things the right way than to actually do what you say. We have thus added a new dimension to the continuum. Another interesting dimension has been suggested by some students —independently of each other. They suggested that their culture was ‘having’ oriented; what mattered was what you had, not what you were.

About communicationWhile Lebanese students are generally active and participate willingly in group activities, they often have difficulty listening attentively to their peers; continuous monitoring by the discussion facilitator is needed in order to assure dialogues, rather than parallel monologues, are taking place. As one student in the first semester of the course put it in her journal (all names are pseudonyms to protect the privacy of the students): Interestingly enough, it seems that none of us was taught to listen. I wonder if any of us is actually trying to change that. I know I am, and it’s very hard…(Rana).Consequently, I make an effort in every course to make sure that people are really listening to each other, and we practice all the ‘active listening’ skills (e.g. paraphrasing, summarizing, comprehension check, clarifying ques-tions, etc.) to give students opportunities to develop their dialoguing skills, which are so important in successful interpersonal communication and conflict resolution. However, many students believe that the skills they were practicing were not part of their culture: In our culture, we prefer not to waste time to paraphrase, to repeat what the other person has already said (Joe).

I find it silly and strange to have to say what the other person said, like I don’t have anything different to say… like I don’t have my own opinion (Alia).

Yet, overall, students see the value in the active listening strategies, particu-larly after some role play and simulations will have shown how misunder-standings can result if we jump to the hasty conclusion “I know what you mean” before making sure we, in fact, did. Said one student in her journal: We all think we are active listeners…I thought I was a good [communicator]. I discovered I was average. I don’t always take in consideration other people’s language, behavior or beliefs. A lot

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When we were assigned different conflicts to deal with [I saw] how everyone thought their conflict was so difficult …and most of the class thought my topic was an easier topic to analyze than their own…why? (Marwan)

Sometimes we are given an exercise that we can’t resolve, because according to the rules and beliefs we have been brought up with, we just can’t find a solution to problems because we don’t know how to look at things in a different way than what we are taught we must shift our thinking. It is not always win/lose solution—we can get to a win/win solution (Joseph).

After practicing and role-playing reframing, a student wrote: This was hard. When faced with a conflict, it’s natural to focus on position and sort of forget the interest part…I still haven’t figured out a ‘perfect’ way to reframe and take the focus off ‘You’…but I’m working on it (Samir).

The student is recognizing the difficulty but is ready and willing to make an effort to improve their skill.

During ‘BARNGA’ (Thiagrajan et al, 1993), a cross-cultural card game, students must communicate without verbal language as they move from one game table to another. At each table—without them knowing it—the rules are different. The activity reveals much about how different individu-als react when they find themselves in a place where things do not work in the familiar way, or when they encounter newcomers who bring with them unfamiliar ways of doing things. Where some students are quietly curious and observe the situation, others get frustrated by not being able to express themselves without verbal language, and a few get very angry. The tensions subside when they figure out what is actually going on.

About interfaith awarenessIn the beginning of the last module of the course, we explore what students know about the faith of the ‘other,’ as well as what they know about their own faith. First, students brainstorm a list of what they know about the three monotheistic religions of the region. “What do you know about the faith of the other?” …not much really, except the holidays... The situation in class was interesting.

This is the funniest and most shocking hour till now…It made me realize that we don’t always see things in life correctly and that others are not necessarily wrong (Zeina).

We see what we want to see or what we understand, not what is really there (Tania).

A student, who had spent some time in a boarding school overseas during the war, described in class her frustrations when trying to deal with her cul-ture shock. Normally a friendly, outgoing and tolerant person, she found herself experiencing hostile emotions towards her roommates, who she perceived behaved in ‘unfriendly and cold way.’ These unfamiliar emotions, which she had not known she was capable of, disturbed and distressed her. In her journal, she continued the discussion: I never [was aware of] my behavior and my reaction [in the boarding school] until now when I learned that one often goes through avoidance at first, defensive reactions next and finally one learns to tolerate the others’ opinions. Had I known it before, I would have accepted my behavior and felt more comfortable with myself afterward. I am glad I am learning it now; it is crazy how I feel more sure of myself, my behavior and my perceptual way of reacting (Petra). Her reflections suggest that we could do much more in our classes to pre-pare our students for life in the global village.

About conflict and resolving itIn the module on conflict, students first define conflict by formulating their own definitions in writing in pairs and small groups, and then creat-ing a graphic representation of their definition, which they share with the other groups. They learn to analyze and map conflicts in terms of their ori-gins, sources, and the stance of the conflicting parties. They learn to see the how the nature of the relationship between the parties on one hand and the importance of the goal influence on the other can shape the outcome of the situation. We go through a variety of role play exercises and simula-tions to practice finding creative, win/win solutions to conflicts.

This is what two students said after an exercise, where groups had different conflicts to map and resolve:

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The course concludes in a synthesizing unit and a field experience that links the above concepts and relates them to the Lebanese context. The aim is to provide students with an opportunity to put into practice some of the understanding and skills they have acquired during the course. Initially, stu-dents had only one field experience option, The Stranger Experience, which has turned out to be the magnet that draws students to the course. How-ever, because of the security situation, I have developed another option, Cross-cultural Encounters.

The Stranger ExperienceStudents choose one of the locations from a list I provide them. These are places students most likely have never visited and where they would not be initially comfortable. They plan a day-long visit to that location with one or two partners. Maximum number allowed in a group is 3 in order to avoid the ‘safety in numbers’ syndrome, which would enable individuals to assume a group identity within which to hide. This will prevent them from experiencing themselves as a stranger. Students should complete the follow-ing steps: 1. Before embarking on your experience, reflect on your expectations: What will the place be like? What kind of people will you meet? How will they react to you? And so on. Jot down your expectations in your journal for later reference.

2. Map your way to the destination, noting any special landmarks, turns, etc. that will help any future visitor to find their way there. Write a narrative description of your route to accompany the map. (If you go with a partner or two, one can drive while the others take notes.)

3. Once you reach your destination, try to accomplish some of the following: have something to eat and drink in a coffee shop or snack stand; buy some fruit; talk to some local people, and explain the reason for your visit (to get to know the place); find out something about the population; how many people live in the area, what they do for living, where the schools and places of worship are, what their concerns/ interests are, etc. Write a narrative about your day.

It showed how far we are from our religion (if we have any). God was placed at the end of the list, to my surprise. I think we need more religious studies … (Petra)

Indeed, in the lists students have generated, God often does not appear un-til towards the very end of their lists, regardless of the religion in question. The lists tend to be topped by the concrete, surface aspects, such as ‘have communion,’ ‘don’t eat pork,’ ‘can have many wives,’ and so on.

In the next exercise, students are given first a list of statements they need to match with the religion/s they apply to, for example, ‘Consider Abraham as the father of their people.’ Some of the statements pertain to all three religions, some to two, and some only to one. Next, students are given a series of quotations and are asked to identify which ones come from the Bible and which ones from the Qur’an; all statements are, in fact, from the Qur’an, but some include mentions of concepts present in the Bible. This is what students wrote afterwards: … everyone seemed to associate only with the specifics of their religion as opposed to the generalities of “the other”. While this could be all well and good for individuals it becomes sad and disconcerting when you realize whole communities feel this way. What was interesting was that during the second exercise, when it was found out that all the quotes came from the Koran, many people laughed! Why? It just proves how close the religions actually are. If anything, that is sad because it shows that the evil [Lebanese civil]war was, to say the least, pointless (Hala).

I just discovered how little I know about my religion, faith and culture. How embarrassing to know that we know nothing what the Quran said, we had no idea that it was from the Quran but we thought they were from the Bible and Old Testament (Wissam).

I think that the following journal entry is one of my favorites. It is a response to the activities aiming at raising students’ awareness about their own cultural beliefs, values and norms: Through the descriptions and discussions, we aren’t necessarily being taught anything at all. We are being made to question what we already know. As a result, what we end up doing is brining our beliefs and experiences out in class (Rami).

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bassies to acquire informational material. Once they have carried out their investigation, they are ready for the interviews:

Once your research is completed, arrange for the interviews (or focus groups, if you prefer). Prepare questions based on what you found interesting/ baffling/ surprising during your research and or what you would like to know more about. (Do not use a survey questionnaire approach, as that is not conducive to interpersonal communication, which is one of the purposes of the assignment.)

Throughout the interview, keep in mind what you have learned in the course about cultural beliefs/values and how they are reflected in interpersonal communication. Remember the old Chinese saying: ‘We see what is behind our eyes’ and try to see beyond the values and norms you have been socialized into.

During the interview, try to find out also some of the following: • Personal details (age/family status/educational level/religious affiliation, etc.); • Reason/s the person is in Lebanon and how they perceive their experience; • What has been difficult for them while in Lebanon (e.g. differences in expectations regarding behavior, relationships, work ethic, time, etc.); • What is the typical family composition/authority structure and daily family life (small vs large; nuclear vs extended; who lives in the home; who is in charge of child rearing; who earns the income; relationships between children and parents/grandparents, etc.); • What are some of the significant life events of individuals (e.g. a specific birthday; coming of age; marriage; birth of the first child, etc.); • What are the most important festivals/special events and what do they celebrate/commemorate; • Learn some everyday expressions in the language of your interviewee (greetings; apologies; special nonverbal expressions, etc.) • Anything else you deem relevant in the context of the course.

After the interviews, students write a paper of approximately 3000-3500 words describing their findings. Their paper should include the facts they found about the culture in their research, a description of their inter-viewees and their reasons for being in Lebanon, and an overview of their

4. Take some pictures or video clips at your destination, but always ask for permission. Under no circumstances are you to try taking pictures secretly! 5. When you return from your visit, take time to reflect on your experience. Where your expectations met or did you have any surprises? What common elements (concerns/fears/interests) did you discover between your own life experience and those of the people you met? What did you learn about the values of the people who live in the area? Try to go beyond the surface features, or the obvious; in other words, try to understand the hidden part of the iceberg.

6. Write a reflective, personal learning paper. 7. Compile a field experience report that includes all the above components.

8. Prepare a short 5-minute presentation to the class about your experience. NOTE: While the information in steps 2, 3 and 4 can be collected jointly, each group member must write their own narrative. Steps 1, 5, 6 and 7 are strictly personal and cannot be developed collaboratively. Each group member must present a complete report that includes all the above mentioned items. The presentation to class can be done as a group.

Cross-cultural EncountersAs I mentioned earlier, Lebanon has a large number of foreign workers from different cultural backgrounds working in the service sector. In addi-tion, there are foreigners married to Lebanese citizens, expatriate employees of foreign companies, and members of the diplomatic core. Students are asked to select one cultural group that they perceive to represent a culture different of their own. They are then to identify a minimum of four to five individuals from that culture to participate in their study. Guidelines instruct them to introduce themselves, describe the project and ask for permission to interview them, as well as audio- or videotape the interview.

Before the interviews, students investigate characteristics of their chosen culture using the Internet and electronic databases. They may also visit em-

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hour of considering their options, they decided to make another try. They return to the inner streets, park their car and set out on foot.

Consequently, they meet a number of area residents, including a young man, A. K., who offers to show them around. This surprised the students, as they had expected ‘no one would be that friendly with use there…and consider us invaders in their village.’ They talked to many residents. They even visited a family of seven, who lived in a small room ‘not bigger than half a classroom,’ and an old, disabled woman in her small storefront room, who showed them pictures of her children and grandchildren. They took pictures and shot video footage showing themselves chatting amiably with the residents. This is what they said in their reflective reports: All what I can say is that going [to Borj el Barajneh] was a very good experience because it helped me practice the methods by which I should interact with any person who has a different culture (Mark).

When I left the village I found out that I do not have any problem anymore to go to different places. The environment changes but the people are the same…This is the best way to know whether the course is efficient in real life. I realize from this project that you can deal with all the people and from different cultures if you accept them as they are, and acceptance is the base of respect (Fouad).

Two other reports that made a memorable impression were produced by students who, for the first time in their life, encountered absolute poverty. Two girls chose the Dawha Bedouin camp in the Beqaa valley as their des-tination. Their video shows them sitting cross-legged on the earthen floor in a one-room burlap-and-plywood home of a family with eleven children. They were offered coffee and sweets and learned about the family’s daily life, aspirations and worries, as well as the realities of the nomadic way of life. They brought back with them bags of salted almonds and nuts they bought from the family.

One group visited a community in the city of Tripoli that is undoubtedly one of the poorest urban areas in the country, Bab el Tebbaneh. Students found homes without window panes, second-floor homes that could be accessed only by the way of a wooden ladder, and home with no running

experience. This is followed by a discussion of the interviewees’ description of their culture in response to the questions posed, followed by a discussion of how the information confirms, contradicts or extends the information found in their research. The final section of the paper is analysis of the information discovered in relation to the course content, concluded by per-sonal reflections on what learning the student gained from the experience.

In their analysis and reflection, students are expected to go beyond the surface elements and look for underlying beliefs and values that, while sometimes manifested in unfamiliar ways, deep down may have common elements with their own cultural beliefs/values. Students share their find-ings with the class in a brief 3-5 minute presentation.

Student responsesThe Stranger Experience has been a very popular project, and the majority of the students have ventured willingly to uncharted territories, from Bedouin communities in the Beqaa valley and remote villages in North Lebanon to the poorest neighborhoods in the urban areas.

Perhaps one of the most memorable reports is one written by three young men, Fouad, Wissam and Mark, who had chosen as their destination the suburb of Borj El Barajneh (not the Palestinian refuge camp bordering the suburb). Their expectations were to encounter ‘unsociable and close-minded people,’ and ‘Palestinian city where everybody has a gun and they are walking down the street without doing anything.’ Wissam describes the beginning of their visit: After a week, we went to Bourj El Barajeneh. On the road, we started to think about what cold happen to us if people know that we are Christians and if these people were very fanatic about their religion.

But they braced themselves and headed down the main street to the sub-urb. However, soon the road narrowing to the point where their big four-wheel jeep was barely able to pass the oncoming vehicles, and ‘everybody begins to look at us’ in a way that made them very uncomfortable. They turned around at the first available crossroads and returned to the main street, where they parked at a gas station to think things over. After half an

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means and ways to help these people,’ and ‘let the outside world know and see that poverty does exist in Lebanon.’

The Cross-cultural Encounters have provided students with insight into the lives of the foreign labor force, the domestic workers, in particular. One of the things that frequently surprises students is that many of the foreign workers in the country are educated, with many holding professional quali-fications. Many would have assumed that simply because someone is willing to work as a maid or a janitor they must be uneducated. Another discovery that comes as a surprise, particularly as regards the Philippines and Sri Lanka, is the similarity in cultural orientation between these two countries and Lebanon: the interdependent, primarily collectivist orientation, the importance of religion, and a fatalistic view of the future.

Quite often, this exercise also puts students in a situation where they have to communicate with individuals, who speak very little Arabic, English or French. So, students, many of whom are trilingual and can manage very well outside Lebanon in either French or English, must make an effort to understand the other and be understood.

Evaluation I have administered pre- and post assessments of students’ level of intercul-tural sensitivity. The results, supported by the discussions, student journal entries and reflective reports, do suggest that some changes can occur in one’s perceptions about and attitudes toward other cultures even within one semester. Students’ increased understanding of conflict is reflected both in their written examinations and their journal entries, and many demonstrate increased ability to communicate and find creative solutions to conflict during the course. Whether this will carry on to their life out-side and after the class remains to be investigated.

Needless to say, the course does not result in a change in every student; every semester, I encounter students who continue to believe that their particular world view is ‘the right one’ and adhere to their stereotyped view of the ‘other,’ or refuse to consider the possibility that a ‘win-win’ solution to conflict might be an option. Yet, these students are clearly a minority.

water or electricity. This is what Rasha wrote before their visit: I grew up in a very conservative family who has, from early childhood, told me not to enter in contact with strangers, especially if they were from different backgrounds and different religions. Before I went to Bab el Tebbaneh, I was thinking what these people could be like […] I could imagine tears in the eyes of their children. I thought that all women would be wearing Islamic black clothes, would be hiding their faces and would be forbidden to talk with strangers. Being a stranger, I imagined myself being robbed, so I took my precautions before I went, not taking more than 20,000 pounds [about USD 13]. Most of all, I was wondering about how I would be able to talk with them. […] In no way I thought that they were ordinary people just like us.

Their initial reaction upon arrival was a total shock — quite understand-able if one has not encountered poverty before. However, after spending an afternoon in their destination, visiting two homes, and talking to several people they met on the street, Rasha had this to say: What I discovered is that these people are just like us. They have their own emotions, feelings, and sadness. They have their miserable moments and happy moments. They have their families, their children; they send their children to school just like us; bring them back and wish their children can achieve a good level of education just like our mothers wish. The only difference between our life and theirs concerns the materialistic side […] Remembering what I saw, I cannot hold back my tears: small children have to work after school, selling juice or something else to help their parents […] They are very hospitable […] When I asked them if the government, and especially the Ministry of Social Affairs, are offering any kind of help, they laughed. What surprised me, is that, and you can see that through the video, everybody wanted to talk, to relieve the pain that is inside them: women, men, children; all of them want to talk and express their opinions, their sufferings and their pain.

All three write about not being able to sleep at night after their visit. They were acutely aware of the urgent need of assistance in the area. Two of the students pledge in their reflective paper that they will try to work to ‘find

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Infusing peace education into grade 5 English

Lala Demirdjian

Iteach grade five English in a private school in Beirut. After participating in the Teacher Education for Peace in Middle Eastern Countries (TEPMEC) at the Lebanese American University, I began infusing peace education concepts into my lesson plans. The lesson unit described here dealt with community and conflicts that take place among people.

The story we were reading in class during the unit was ‘The Baker’s Neigh-bor’, a story about a baker and his neighbor who get into a conflict. The village judge is called to mediate the situation and the conflict is resolved in a peaceful way. An important point in the story was that the baker learned

Resources used in the course Although I am always on the lookout for new resources, the following are usually included:

VideosBennett, Milton. On Intercultural Competence Better together than A-P-A-R-T, 1996

Intercultural Resources Corporation. A Different Place. The Intercultural Classroom, 1993

McLaren, David. A Chairy Tale (1957) and Neighbors (1952), both from International Film Bureau.

Simulation gamesNipporica Associates. ECOTONOS. A multicultural problem-solving simulation, 1993

Thiagrajan, Silvasailam and Barbara Steinwachs. BARNGA. A simulation game on cultural clashes, 1993. Both from: Intercultural Press Yarmouth, ME.

Activities & Reading Selections http://www.intractableconflict.org

Crookall, David, et al. (1995) Building a culturally tolerant futurethrough simulation / gaming approaches. Handouts from TESOL ’95 Pre-conference Institute, Long Beach, CA

Gaston, Jan, Ed. Cultural Awareness Teaching Techniques. Brattelboro, VT: Pro Lingua Associates, 1992

Irma-Kaarina Ghosn, Ph.D., is Associate Professor and Director of the Institute for Peace and Justice Education at the Lebanese American University.

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for the students to identify those factors, and relate them to their everyday lives. Since the story in question is a play, dramatizing the events will help students to understand the concepts.

ActivitiesClassroom Setting and EnvironmentThe students sat in groups of four to six in the classroom. Having the students work in groups enhanced the idea of community building and collaboration. The groups were changed every ten days in order for students to have the opportunity to work with students from various backgrounds.

The teacher’s desk was set in the right corner of the classroom to avoid the image of an authoritarian teacher and dictatorship in the classroom. Students were able to ask questions, engage in discussions about moral values related to lesson themes, and participate in group work tasks.

While teaching, I did not sit at or stand near my desk but was always mov-ing. Many times I dramatized the concepts we discussed in order to attract the students’ attention.

Classroom ActivitiesThe discussion and activities that took place in the classroom, were adapta-tions of various activities from the TEPMEC Handbook (Ghosn, 2005). The introduction of the following activities, and the discussion, was based on the activity 5.1 on p.57 of the Handbook. I asked volunteers to define the term citizenship, and to give various examples. The responses varied, but they were all related to the Character Education/Advisory course, which had been newly introduced into the school’s curriculum. In other words, the students were familiar with the terminology, and could relate aspects of citizenship (such as honesty, truthfulness, trust, cooperation) to their everyday lives. Some examples students identified included the following: • A good citizen should always help the people around him. • If we are good citizens, we have to be honest, and kind. • Being kind to people, and being able to work with them, without causing any problems, is a way to be a good citizen.

Students also gave examples of actions they took to practice citizenship. Some of the ideas students had about being a good citizen included

a lesson when he was asked to look back at all the events that occurred dur-ing the course of the events.

I planned to integrate the following skills of citizenship in my lesson plan: empathy, collaborative problem solving, conflict resolution and transforma-tion as well as communication. The main aim of the exercise was to lead students to relate the events of the story to the activity about community problems, and come up with various possible solutions a certain conflict. I prepared the following lesson plan:

Lesson Plan1. Ask student volunteers to define the term citizenship by relating it to their own environment (school, home, community) and the skills of citizenship (communication skills, empathy, problem-solving, conflict resolution, respect for others, cooperation, commitment to justice).

2. Based on the above, invite students to talk about or dramatize an experience or conflict situation where they applied one of the citizenship skills.

3. Invite the other students to evaluate whether the expressed way of dealing with the conflict was an appropriate one. Open a discussion, and invite the students to express their ideas freely.

4. Relate the discussion to the Independence Day. Let the students write or draw their feelings towards their country.

5. Following the above discussion, invite students to define the term democracy.

6. Ask students to express their opinion about their classroom and whether the classroom is democratic or not.

7. Bring the attitudes and values of citizenship into the discussion to help draw a clearer picture of the topic. Talk about respect for self and others; cooperation; and commitment to justice.

8. Make sure the discussion that is taking place is related to the story. Students can use the characters and the conflict of the story to draw a conclusion and come up with better ideas about resolving a conflict in the society. The story has elements of citizenship which deal with honesty, em-pathy, commitment to justice, and truthfulness. Therefore, it is much easier

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In the story, the villagers see the truth and they are justified in believing that Pablo was innocent. Here, the picture is much broader, because a community, rather than only two individuals, is involved.

One of our activities was related to democracy. After defining the term democracy by giving examples from our own country, I related it to their classroom. I asked the students to think whether the way in which their classes were run was democratic or not. I gave them some examples to consider, such as choice of the subject to study, the freedom to express their ideas, choosing their teachers, and on what to be assessed. I invited them to write a short paragraph to express their opinion. Some of the ideas were: I think our classroom is democratic in some things, such having group works, and choosing our own friends. However, it is not democratic when we have to take permission in order to talk, we cannot walk freely in the classroom. Also, most of the time we have to do whatever the teacher asks (M. M.).

This class is not democratic because none of the students listen to each other, and the problems are not solved in a peaceful way. There is not a lot of respect towards our teacher, and the students (H. A.).

Our classroom is both, democratic and not democratic. Some teachers let us talk, and we are sitting in groups which is good because we can have group works. At the same time, some other teachers are not fair with us, because they do not let us talk, and we cannot have any activities in their classes (T. H.).

My class is democratic because we have the freedom to ask questions, and give opinions. We have the freedom to talk with the teacher, and the teachers love us and want us to succeed. I feel very relaxed in the classroom, especially with certain teachers.

When I am in class and our teachers enter, I feel so calm and relaxed, because I know that she’s here to let us learn new things. If we do not understand the material, the teacher would always repeat what we would want to know. The teachers teach us to be good citizens by letting us work in groups, so we learn how to cooperate. I love my school, friends, and teachers (A.F.).

• Helping my mom do the dishes. • Taking care of my baby brother. • Helping a friend do his homework. • When a friend tells me a secret, I do not talk about it with other people. • I do not label friends, and I try to help them. • I clean the trash. I do not let my friends write on the desks in class.

The second activity was role playing. Based on the story read in class, students were encouraged try to resolve the conflict in their own way. I asked three volunteers to “come up on the stage” and assigned each one a role: Manuel (the baker who was a main character), Pablo (the neighbor who provoked Manuel), and the Judge (who was called later to resolve the conflict).

The three students were able to dramatize the situation very nicely. First, they all identified the problem. Second, the Judge asked each character about the reason of the conflict, and formed his own opinion. The interest-ing part took place at the end of the dramatization, when the Judge was not the one to take the final decision. He asked Manuel and Pablo to solve the problem between themselves. The conclusion was that they negotiated and compromised. Therefore, the problem was solved in a peaceful way.

After the dramatization, I asked the rest of the students what they thought about the way the parties dealt with the problem. After a discussion, students agreed that it was a good idea for the Judge to let the two parties resolve the problem on their own. They also stated that, in this situation, taking the case to a judge would not have been necessary, since they were able to have a resolution between themselves. They also pointed out that deciding to discuss the problem was much wiser that fighting each other. I did also discuss the role of a mediator, explaining that, in many cases, a third person needs to interfere in order to help the two parties come into agreement. I gave an example about a conflict between students where a teacher often has to mediate. This made the idea more concrete for students.

Another element in the discussion was the factor of cooperation. In the final analysis, the characters were able to cooperate in order to find the means to come into an agreement. Also, the idea of justice was very clear.

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Peace education in a primary classroom

Alexandra Edde-Khawaja

When I started working with my second graders at the beginning of a new school year, I realized that children demonstrated some behaviors that were not conducive to a peaceable classroom environment that I wanted to establish. Many of the children were frequently tattling and complaining about each other. Rather than take any responsibility, they laid the blame on their peers.

I felt that I should give the students a chance to role play using situations to help them acquire the necessary assertive skills to communicate their feel-ings, wants and needs without being confrontational.

Role Playing RelationshipsThe students randomly chose a partner and worked together to develop a dialogue about a situation of their choice from Conflict Resolution: Teaching Children to Work Together1. This resource for grades K-3 presents strategies and activities to promote healthy friendships and appreciation for diversity. It includes sample scenarios about peer relationships. Students selected scenarios they could identify with and practiced them on the playground. They then presented their rehearsed scenarios on stage to their peers. While children presented their skits shyly, they were also proud, because they felt that they were now better able to deal with the various situations they had been confronting. Following are sample scenarios children chose from the book:

1. A class mate in your group never takes turns. She always wants to be first and usually gets her way. How will you handle it?

The last activity we worked on was related to the problems students face at school. I asked students to make a list of the problems that cause conflicts in the school. We chose the most common problems mentioned, and the students interviewed family members, peers and community members in order to gather data about various workable solutions that could used to resolve the conflicts identified. The students brought the interview notes, and we figured out what was the most common idea among the various solutions, and worked accordingly. The data gathered and the final works were displayed on the bulletin board. The project included the following four sections: • Description of the problem and why it is important. • Pictures and other supporting material. • A group proposed policy and a justification for it. • An action plan.

This activity was also an adaptation from the TEPMEC Handbook on ‘community problems’ (p. 86).

In conclusion, it was clear that students enjoyed the activities and gained insight into citizenship and conflict resolution. I plan to continue finding ways to infuse various concepts of peace education into my language classes.

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As for me, it has definitely made me more assured of the importance of the hidden curriculum and teaching children the importance of respecting everybody in order to form better relationships. The problems my students were facing became more obvious to me after having worked on this activ-ity with them, as it gave me the opportunity to read and hear everybody’s problems and their perceived solutions. Thus, I could plan better, with children’s concerns in mind, and all my lessons suddenly became much more meaningful and engaging, both to the learners and me.

Once I had established a peaceful classroom that was built on respect and communication, the whole teaching atmosphere became much more conducive to learning. There was a common ground that we all had agreed upon and worked accordingly during the school day. This did, on the long run, reduce disciplinary problems in my classroom, and it gave the students more confidence to deal with problem situations with which they were confronted by their classmates.

Throughout the year, I engaged my students also in other activities that offered insight into children’s lives and enabled me to plan strategies that helped children deal with their issues.

Reflecting on FeelingsAnother approach I used is to have children draw and describe their feel-ings. In the first activity, children were invited to think about a time or place ‘when they feel peaceful’ and draw a picture about it. Children shared their drawings with others and I engaged them in a discussion about what peace means to them.

Some children said they felt peaceful when they sat or played in their garden, when they were at home sleeping or playing with friends, and some felt peaceful in church. Children’s texts have not been corrected but are presented as they were written.

H. writes: I feel peaceful when in two plases home & church because church we pray peacefull & home we sleep in peace.

Many of the children’s statements also reveal that their lives are not always very peaceful:

2. Someone in your class begins to call you silly names. It may be fun to them, but you don’t like it. How do you feel? What will you do?

3. Your friend is telling stories lately that seem really hard to believe. You think your friend may be lying to impress people. How does this make you feel? How will you handle your friend’s behavior?

I then asked the children to create their own problems, based on their personal experiences at home and at school, and come up with possible solutions. Here are two examples: • If nobody in my class plays with me during recess, what should I do? I must try and talk to my friends in the classroom and communicate with them. If I became friendlier with them and talk to them about what I like or not like, then they will maybe call me to play with them. I should be a better communicator and risk taker and talk to my classmates.

• What should I do when somebody asks me for the snack that is in my lunchbox, and threatens to hit me if I tell anybody that he/she is taking my food? I need to talk to the teacher and explain to her what is happening with my classmates. After the teacher shares with me some solutions, I need to sit with my friend and try to solve the problem because I do not dare to bring the food that I like to school an more. Communicating with other people is very important and it helps me solve many problems.

Working on real life situations not only provided the students insight on how to handle real conflict, but also enabled me to understand better what is going on in their world.

During the year, I found the students referring back to their little sce-narios, and talking to their friends who were facing problems. A channel of communication was opened between the children, and the classroom atmosphere became calmer, more caring and much quieter. My students be-came better communicators and more empathetic. They were even able to observe, as well as pinpoint, problems such as bullying, specifically among younger students. This activity opened up new perspectives for the children and made them more aware of their surroundings.

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Peace BookIn October 2006, I was teaching grade 3 and my students were trying to process the experience of the summer war. They compiled their own book, ‘Peace—a five letter word which can change the world!!’ in which they describe their perceptions about peace. They discussed what each and everyone of them could do to bring peace to Lebanon. Their thoughts were expressed in a wall display entitled ‘This my country. I bring it peace’. Chil-dren wrote their commitments on index cards, which were posted on the wall. Cards were connected by strings to the region each individual child’s family came from. This is what some of the children said: I am A., and I am from Tripoly. I can bring peace to Lebanon through forgiveness, love and communication. My name is S. and I am from Baalbeck. I want to bring peace to Lebanon by respecting all the people.

I am R. I come from Musaytbeh in Beirut. All the children in Lebanon should be allowed to appear in a program on TV and say: NO MORE WARS!!!

The experiences described above have left me convinced about the impor-tance of bringing peace education concepts and pedagogy to the primary school classrooms from the onset of schooling.

Endnotes

1. Lenzo, C., Oakes, K., Carpas, J. & Hughes, M. ‘Conflict Resolution: Teaching Children to Work Together. Greensboro, NC: Carson Dellosa Publishing, 2003.

I feel peaceful when I am in class alone,” says S., while M. writes, “I feel peaceful when I am quit and no one disterbis me.” C. says, “I feel peaceful when my brother leaves me alone. I am at peace with myself when I stop hitting and they stop bothering me and they leave me alone when I study”.

In another task, children explored what makes them mad. These are some of the things that make A. mad:

When people shout at me and it is’nt my fault. When people tease me and call me names. When my Mom does not hear me and she keeps on with whoever she is speaking to.

Another child writes (age 7): What makes me mad? This is a question I hate to answer. But if I am to think about it I would say: The thing that makes me mad is when my mom shouts at me and grounds me for things I didn’t do. My brother A. is very naughty and always causes troubles to me. He blames me for bad things he does. Sometimes mom believes him and punishes me. This is when I get mad.

Involving ParentsThis particular year, so many children’s writings expressed issues with parents that I decided to bring in the parents to celebrate their children. Together with the other 2nd grade teachers, we organized a show for the parents in which all the children performed something. At the end, I gave each parent a worksheet and asked them to write about their experience and draw a picture to go with their writing. Although many parents at first balked at the idea — particularly the drawing — with gentle coaxing, all parents complied and returned the worksheets. Here are two examples (full names omitted to protect writers’ privacy): This morning seeing you on stage dancing, singing and laughing with your classmate, your father and I were the happiest parents on earth. Talking about the sweater aunty G. knitted for you before she died let us realize how sensitive and caring you are K. Last but not least, a big thank you to your teachers, friends and all the persons who made this day happen.

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International College Mission I.C. aspires to educate and graduate a core of compassionate self reliant young men and women, capable of initiative and critical thinking, who will serve as leaders in their societies. It is intended that graduates of I.C. will have developed qualities of self- discipline, integrity, loyalty, and courage, combined with an awareness of the interdependence of nations and cultures and a respect and tolerance for individual differences, be they physical, social, ethical, intellectual, or cultural. By including I.C.’s parent body and the surrounding communities in this educational challenge, I.C. also aspires to promote and nurture these values in the larger world beyond the College campus.

In 1999 IC undertook the drafting of a strategic plan that mapped out the College’s development over the next five years. A section of the plan, entitled Student Leadership, outlines the following strategic goal: To review programs and activities that promote responsible citizenship and student leadership with a global outlook.

When we undertook the task of developing a civic awareness program, we quickly found out that we would not achieve our goals by only paying lip service to the concept. Civic awareness and conflict resolution—an integral part of effective citizenship — were concepts that needed to be incorporated into the standard curriculum and needed to be modeled in the behavior and expectations of the normal classroom and school environment… a matter of walking the walk as it were. Another requirement was the provision of professional development activities that would help train our teachers in the design of appropriate activities and in the modeling of proper attitudes and behaviors. The inclusion of parents in civic awareness activities was another key component of the program. It is worth noting here that the new Lebanese curriculum civics component has been a useful and welcome addition to our programs.

A number of initiatives have been undertaken at various levels of the College. Among them are the following:

The Language through Action (LTA) LTA is a program which was first introduced to us at a workshop spon-

Civic awareness and conflict resolution initiatives at the International College

Mishka Mojabber MouraniPaper presented in ‘Educating for Citizenship,’ 2002

Developing civic awareness and the skills necessary to promote responsible citizenship and successful dialogue have been key aspects of the mission of International College. I will begin with a brief overview of the school: Founded in 1891, I.C. enrolls about 3400 students, ages 3-18, and has four hundred faculty and staff on its three campuses. The school offers several programs, including the Lebanese Baccalaureate, the International Bac-calaureate, the French Baccalaureate, and an American-style high school program. English, French and Arabic are languages of instruction at I.C.

Every class at IC is assigned a faculty advisor who is one of the teachers of that class. Advisors meet with the students for group sessions every week. They also set aside one-to-one meeting time. In addition to the class advi-sor, the College employs counselors, special needs professionals and cycle coordinators. Counselors deal with social, emotional, or learning issues that cannot be handled by the ‘informed’ layman. Special needs person-nel at the lower levels deal with learning and behavior issues, including the design of individual plans of action for students who need it. Each cycle at IC also has coordinators who oversee the implementation of the advi-sory program, serve as resources for activities and programs, and oversee initiatives such as the Character Education program at the lower levels, the Learning Through Action program at the Middle School, or the Anger Coping Program, which covers grades 1-10.

Before I describe some of these models of civic awareness activities in the IC repertoire, let me situate these programs within the overall vision which informs the College. I.C.’s mission statement serves as the framework for our civic awareness programs.

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6. The following week the children were required to report and evaluate what happened. The children looked forward to the Free Thoughts ses-sions. They voiced their disappointment whenever, for some reason, the advisor cancelled a session.

At the end of the year we asked the children to evaluate the project by telling us what they liked about the experience, what they did not like, and how they would improve it. The evaluations are positive and many are articulate and thoughtful with clear explanations of likes and dislikes and practical suggestions for improvement.

The Character Education Program Unlike The Free Thoughts Period, which is one teacher’s initiative, the Character Education Program starts at the Pre-School level and is a com-prehensive yet flexible approach to raising civic awareness based on values education. The purpose of the program is to guide children’s social interac-tion according to a set of values that emphasizes moral development, good citizenship and caring for the environment.

Based on Michael Josephson’s six pillars of character (Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Caring, and Citizenship), the Character Education Steering Committee developed a scope and sequence chart per pillar, which serves as an outline. To enhance the home-school connec-tion, the lessons include a parent letter for each pillar to encourage family involvement, build parent awareness of the values being taught, and gain their support in internalizing the pillars at home. Each parent letter con-tains items to be discussed and follow up activities to be done at home. After the pillar is taught, teachers fill out a unit evaluation to provide feedback to the committee on the lesson format, the support material, the parent letter, and any suggestions for extending the core value.

Character education classes are taught one period per week by each class teacher/advisor. All the other teachers are asked to be involved through their various disciplines. These teachers are given a scope and sequence chart of each pillar that communicates the objectives being taught. The committee seeks out their support and contributions to enhance the inter-disciplinary approach.

sored by the Lebanese American University. The LTA methodology uses structured role-play, simulation, and related techniques to challenge as-sumptions, to stimulate thinking and to offer a fresh approach to personal decision-making. It is based on the principles of dialogue and interaction, and the knowledge that we learn best through experience. We sent one of our teachers for training in the UK, and she has now set up the program at the Middle School and is training teachers to use LTA both as a different approach to teaching English, Arabic and French, and as a conflict resolution technique.

Free Thoughts Period This is another approach, implemented by a third grade teacher as part of the Character Education Program, that has been developed at the Pre-school and elementary levels of IC. The Free Thoughts Period is a weekly event that encourages free expression, trust building, and group problem solving. The steps are as follows:1. Children write letters describing a problem, incident or situation that they would like to discuss. The issues can be academic, social, discipline, or personal.

2. The letters are placed in a box. They are dated and signed.

3. The advisor opens the box during the Free Thoughts period and categorizes the letters by topic. Most of issues dealt with were social matters, such as not getting along with a friend, fighting in the playground, taking belongings without permission, feelings of not being liked by class mates, etc. In some cases, the children wanted to discuss family matters such as sibling rivalry, or parents fighting.

4. Each letter is read and the student is asked to clarify whenever necessary.

5. Sessions did not have a particular structured plan. The biggest challenge was to get the children to listen to each other. At the beginning of the year the entire class would engage in very heated discussions, even quar-rels (interrupting, yelling at each other, in one case a child even hit his neighbor)... During the course of the year, however, and by setting ground rules together, the advisor and the children managed to develop a reason-able, attentive and active audience. The children were able to give plausible suggestions and solutions to many of their daily school problems.

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Class values and rules Class value and rules are usually discussed at the beginning of the year. This activity aims at helping students of the same class to get to know each other, to articulate values, and to set general rules that will help them work together as a class. The emphasis is on helping students realize the impor-tance of reaching an agreement. By giving students the opportunity to make up their own rules, they gain ownership of their class — they ‘buy into’ the system and consequently abide by the rules they themselves had set.

Reconsidering my valuesThis is a follow-up activity done later on during the year. It is designed to help students think how and when conflict occurs and determine what they would do and how they would feel in a particular situation. The underlying key value that students learn in this activity is responsibility for one’s actions. The skill they acquire is thinking about consequences of a range of actions and deciding on the appropriateness of different sorts of behavior.

Family needs and responsibilities “Who does what in my family”, “Changing relationships within the family”, and “Growing up.” These are different activities given to different levels. Their objectives vary, but they all stress the importance of recogniz-ing the interdependence of family members, of understanding that families have their “ups” and “downs,” that conflict is normal, and that relation-ships within the family change and develop. Gender issues are tackled in this context as well.

Strategies for self controlThe emphasis is placed on allowing students understand the importance of self-control and anger management, and realize the dangers of impulsive behavior.

Teasing and bullyingThe objectives of this activity are the following: • Thinking about the reasons why people tease each other • Understanding that sometimes teasing can be affectionate and sometimes it can be unkind and hurtful • Thinking about the reasons why people bully each other

To enhance the program, the committee began the school year by develop-ing, with the students, a school-wide Code of Conduct based on respect and responsibility. This Code of Conduct serves as our disciplinary guide for conduct, zero tolerance behaviors, and dress code.

To encourage students to internalize positive conduct, the committee developed the Best Class Campaign based on selected behaviors from the school-wide Code of Conduct. A brochure was developed and shared with all the staff. The committee conducts monthly recognition of each class for the selected behaviors.

Guest speakers, field trips, or projects are incorporated whenever the pillar lends itself to such extending activities.

The Middle School Advisory Program This is a fourth initiative, which has been designed by the Ras-Beirut Middle School guidance counselor, and which is based on four major themes developed spirally across all levels: • Personal relationships• Social awareness• Personal Management• Health

The counselor’s report Based on these themes, there are specific, structured activities that advisors perform with their students during advisory sessions. These activities are designed to: • encourage students to think about issues and give their opinions• be aware and care for others• talk about feelings and be sensitive to the feelings of others• be responsible for their behavior• think about, assess and develop their potential.

The underlying premise is that students will behave more responsibly if they learn to set positive goals for themselves, understand the consequences of their actions, and deal effectively with conflicts and problems that occur in everyday social interactions. The program is designed to be used for both prevention and intervention. Some of the activities that are directly connected to conflict resolution are as follows:

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students to seek help and advice instead of referring to other means, such as aggressive behavior, for resolution.

The Anger Coping Program The Anger Coping Program has been developed at our Ain Aar campus and draws from the work of Lochman. It is based both on Emotional Intel-ligence (empathy) and Cognitive Psychology (problem-solving and conflict resolution). The counselor, who has initiated the project prepared the following report.

Counselor’s Report The Anger Coping Program was piloted last year in Grade 1 in a research study, which had the effect of decreasing students’ disruptive classroom behavior. The program was officially launched in the Upper Elementary and Middle School in May 2001 in a workshop for teachers and advisors and was followed up by two short sessions.

The program is focusing on developing: effective listening, (a communica-tion skill which was stressed in several workshops and group counseling, and advisory sessions this year), and empathy, understanding and feeling with the other person. Both effective listening and empathy are essential ingredients for problem-solving and conflict resolution.

Problem-solving and conflict resolution strategies were applied through advisory sessions with the students, as well as in group counseling in the guidance office with students from the Upper Elementary to the Middle Schools. The students for the latter were selected by their advisors for their poor problem-solving skills.

The Anger Coping program has been systematically implemented in all the school from October 2001 till May 2002, and its effectiveness in the Upper Elementary and Middle Schools will be measured.

In our conflict resolution model the counselor or advisor is a mediator. With time, as students internalize the skills, they can become peer media-tors. The role of the advisor is to calm down the students in conflict. She asks the students to take a deep breath and count to ten. She reassures them that she will listen to everything they say. She also reflects feelings by

• Realizing that bullying covers a wide range of behaviors, from name-calling to serious threat or attack• Clarifying the consequences of different types of bullying• Considering ways of dealing with bullying and helping to prevent bullying.

All these activities are performed in class. Advisors are asked to act as facili-tators or mediators. They cannot, and should not, impose their opinions. It is during these sessions that students are taught how to listen to each other (be good listeners), tolerate each other, and understand differences. They inevitably gain social skills through group interaction and contribute to make school a more pleasant place.

Guided group discussion This is more of a process than a product activity. The emphasis is always on the experience of articulating feelings and thoughts in the presence of others.

There are intervention processes also connected to conflict resolution. When conflict arises:• The parties are brought together into a calm place. This gives them the possibility to calm down and feel that we are all present to speak about the problem. • They both acknowledge the conflict, tell each his/her own story, and seek solutions. • A follow-up session is usually required.

How effective has the advisory program been?More and more students are voicing the need to discuss specific issues during the advisory session, related to specific problems that they are facing. Students are starting to appreciate the importance of these group discussions in solving conflicts. This year, for example, students from different sections of Grade 9 asked their advisors to launch a discussion on “labeling.”

When conflict arises, students are occasionally taking the initiative to speak about their problems and seek help to find solutions. The availability of the advisors and their willingness to help is a major factor in encouraging

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The advisor follows up on the effectiveness of the plan; she congratulates them when it succeeds.

With the Upper Elementary and Middle School students a lot was done in Group Counseling this past year. Teachers and advisors throughout the school developed a feel for applying problem-solving and conflict resolu-tion techniques starting at the Preschool. While several teachers are already taking action, others are being trained. This year a series of workshops and seminars for both teachers and parents have helped facilitate the transfer from school to other places, especially the home.

Conflict resolution initiative A report prepared by one of our Secondary School teacher advisors de-scribes the conflict resolution initiative with graduating students. In her report she says: The basic philosophy of Conflict Resolution is effectively portrayed by Camus in his Rebellion, Resistance and Death: I shall not try to change anything that I think or anything that you think… in order to reach a reconciliation that would be agreeable to all. On the contrary, what I feel like telling you today is that the world needs real dialogue, that falsehood is just as much the opposite of dialogue as is silence, and that the only possible dialogue is the kind between people who remain what they are and speak their minds.

Albert Camus, Rebellion, Resistance and DeathThe majority of interpersonal conflicts are resolved utilizing one of three resolution processes: • Negotiation (parties discuss the problem and attempt to resolve it by discussing it directly themselves), • Mediation (a third party enters the process to help the parties negotiate. Mediators try to help parties create win-win resolutions by listening to their needs and assisting them to communicate with each other) or• Arbitration (the third party not only controls the process, he or she also controls the outcome).

Basically, my role as a teacher/advisor was to focus on the affective, social, and behavioral needs of the students. It is centered on anger management,

saying, “I know how you feel, I can see you’re angry.” This helps the angry students calm down.

The advisor sets the rules, which are • listening without interrupting, • respecting each other’s feelings, • talking only when asked to do so.

The advisor asks students to take turns talking. In resolving conflicts the following steps are followed:

Defining the problem The advisor asks each student alone to describe the problem. When the student finishes, the advisor paraphrases what the student said. She will only asks the next student after making sure that she paraphrased correctly. After listening to the students, the advisor defines the problem, and makes sure that all parties know what the problem is.

Analyzing reactions The advisor helps students talk about their reactions to the problem; she helps the student think whether this was the only way they could have re-acted. They are also asked to talk about the consequences of their reactions, see the cause-effect relationship in their action, and perceive the conse-quence, which is the conflict. The advisor practices effective listening, and encourages students to do so.

Brainstorming alternative solutionsThe advisor asks the parties in conflict to give solutions to the problem, en-couraging them to explore other choices for acting. The advisor helps them think of possible consequences to these choices: What would happen if…Finally, the advisor guides them to decide on a solution which has the most accepted consequence by all students and which gives everyone satisfaction: a win- win situation. All parties shake hands in agreement, and congratu-late each other for making peace. They also promise to respect the plan

Deciding on a plan and evaluating its results The advisor helps the students set a plan for implementing their choice. The plan could involve other people to support the students in succeeding.

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I was approached by a number of students who wanted to talk about the conflicts they are facing with their parents and to ask for advice. Some asked me actually to talk to their parents. In some cases, parents themselves asked me to intervene in order to salvage a deteriorating situation at home. I used CR techniques and encouraged active listening. My role is one of moderator. I usually use the following steps:• Explain purpose• Describe problem or rephrase it for clarification• Explain positions (bring out distinct differences in points of view)• Set ground-rules• Make sure both parties have a chance to hear what others think about the issue• Probe for how they can affect what is valued or feared• Remind parties of certain facts or ideas that they might be ignoring• Call attention to contradictions in positions.

Student/teacher conflict Student/teacher conflict arises sometimes when each party has a different perspective and operates with different preconceptions. Misunderstanding might occur when a teacher’s general attitude strikes a sensitive chord in the student or when a student’s opinion is immediately dismissed or be-havior ridiculed. Although our philosophy at IC stipulates that no teacher should diminish a student, there are cases when this happens.

I have found that often the problem is one of perception or misinterpreta-tion. I find that talking to each party separately about the incident often leads to a clarification and resolution.

Student/administration conflict There are times when students have felt that an administrator has a nega-tive attitude towards them. This is the case with some graduate students who are rebellious and feel that they have reached a stage when they can make their own choices and abide by their own laws. I hold discussion ses-sions with them, show them understanding and sympathy while at the same time presenting the point of view of the other party. The most important thing is to keep their trust in me so that I can follow up on them and to make them feel that they can actually share with me their ideas.

bullying and teasing prevention, as well as respect and tolerance. This is where, again, I find it essential to educate for character. Conflicts arise at four different levels:• Student/student relations• Student/parent relations• Student/teacher relations• Student/administration relations.

Student/student conflict I have often given time to solve conflicts between students either in advisory sessions or privately, when students wanted their problems to be kept confidential. In both cases, my aim was to make both parties see each other’s points of view and frames of reference without an attempt at simply lecturing them. At times, and when the situation required, there were follow up session. However, I have always made it a point to talk to the con-cerned students individually and privately before discussing the issue in the presence of both parties. At times, and with the permission of the parties concerned, other students joined to present their own points of view.In summary, I aim for the following:• Understand the different sides of the problem that is causing the conflict• Consider the consequences of their behavior• Hear what the other party has to say• Acknowledge where they went wrong when appropriate. I am pleased to observe that, in most cases, students managed to under-stand that others have reasons for their feelings and judgments and that their reasons are to be taken into consideration and clarified if need be (clearing misunderstanding). In most cases they also realize that one’s point of view is not always correct, infallible or unique, and understand why others feel the way they do.

Student/parent conflict Some students suffer from their relationship with both their parents, a par-ent, or with a significant other, thus affecting their academic achievement as well as their social/interpersonal relations with others. These students are often aggressive or cynical. Some of them suddenly become introverts or rebels.

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of social and environmental problems and show them firsthand how they can be part of the solution. The Community Service Program is designed to: 1. Expose students to the broad spectrum of challenges the communityfaces every day;

2. Involve students meaningfully in activities designed to address these chal-lenges, and

3. Inspire students to make community service a permanent part of their lives and to share their enthusiasm with others.

Students fulfill the community service requirement by participating in two (2) community service projects per year during the last three years at IC, each lasting for one month.

All projects consist of the following components:• Hands-on service activities on weekday afternoons and/or weekends coordinated with local, national and international organizations • Weekly discussions featuring professionals in the corresponding service fields • Student-designed projects and presentations to highlight what they have learned or promote a service activity • Newsletter to inform the IC community about service program activities.

During the last three years of school, students perform community service in four of six major areas:• Division of Physically Disabled• Division of Mentally Disabled• Division of Environmental Awareness• Division of Orphanages• Division of Health• Division of Lebanese Heritage.

Students are evaluated for each project according to the following criteria:1. Attendance of all project-related events, including service days, field trips and discussions;

At the same time, I always emphasize the good intentions of the other party, explaining to them that at the root of most conflicts lies a misun-derstanding. Usually both parties eventually meet and have an honest and clear discussion about their points of view in my presence.

RecommendationsFirst, teachers can serve as moderators in solving conflicts. Moderators should possess certain characteristics and skills in addition to a background knowledge of psychology. He/she should be • Impartial and objective• Committed to effective communication• Sensitive to the needs of others• Ethical• Caring• A good listenerSecond, conflict resolution can be incorporated into some subjects of the curriculum and into classroom management strategies.

Third, workshops on the basics of conflict resolution are important, with emphasis on role play and exploring different techniques in communication.

Fourth, some students can also be trained to be mediators.

Finally, parents need to be involved not only when there are problems to solve: training parents can be a powerful prevention measure.

Publications The College encourages students to express themselves in writing on issues that pertain to their concerns and interests. We have a number of student publications that deal with the themes of peace, justice and civic responsibility.

Community Service ProgramFinally, let me brief you on the Secondary School As Lebanon enters the twenty-first century, its future well-being depends not only upon the intel-lectual talents of its young people, but also upon their compassion for oth-ers. With this in mind, International College has made community service during the final three years of secondary school a graduation requirement. The Community Service Program aims to increase IC students’ awareness

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displays, classroom units, parent involvement activities, panels and seminars, are all attempts to render civic awareness and responsibility, values education, and conflict resolution integral and vital parts of our students’ lives.

Finally, I would like to express my thanks to Diana Abu Lebdeh, Thalia Arawy, Evienoula Assad, Nabila Hamade, Hiba Othman, Jihad Salem, Reem Sardouk, Beverly Shabshab, and all the other teachers and administrators who have been developing initiatives whose purpose is to create a climate of civic awareness and the skills necessary to promote productive citizenship.

References

Dill, V. S. (1998). A Peaceable School. Bloomington, IND: Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation.

Fraschl M., Sprung B., & Mullin-Rindler N. (1998). Quit It: A Teachers’ Guide on Teasing and Bullying in Grades K-3. New York NY: Educational Concepts, Inc.

Heartwood (1995). The Ethics Curriculum for Children (Levels C,D,E). Pittsburg, PA: The Heartwood Institute.

Josephson, M. (2000). Character Counts. Marina del Rey, CA: Josephson Institute of Ethics.

Kreidler, W. J. (1984). Creative Conflict Resolution: More Than 200 Activi-ties for Keeping Peace in the Classroom. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman.

Kreidler, W. J. (1990). Elementary Perspectives 1: Teaching Concepts of Peace and Conflict. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman.

Kreidler, W. J. (1994). Teaching Conflict Resolution Through Children’s Literature. New York, NY: Scholastic Professional Books.

2. Cooperation, tolerance, respect for individual differences, and initiative;

3. Individual final project: scope and content is determined with advisors.

Performance is graded according to the following standards: Honors, Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory. Students must receive a minimum grade of Satisfactory on four projects in six different areas over three years in order to fulfill the community service requirement for graduation. Students who receive an Unsatisfactory grade on any project must compensate by success-fully completing an extra community service project.

Student participation in the Community Service Program is monitored and evaluated by a group composed of: • Community Service Advisors • On-site supervisors from host organizations • Class Advisors

What I have shared with you are snapshots of the various programs which were initiated at IC over the last three years. The list of projects is not comprehensive but aims at showing the variety and depth of programs being offered. These programs and initiatives are effective because they cut across levels and cycles and do not adopt a single presentation mode. Whereas civic and behavioral issues used to be restricted to the classroom, often only within the confines of a set program such as the civics syllabus, this new format we have adopted is both more dynamic and more organic. Civic awareness is dealt with at the school-wide level through programs such as community service, at the cycle level, such as the character educa-tion program, but also at the individual teacher level, where spontaneous interactions between students and their teachers have yielded some of the most remarkable results. I refer here to a set of student publications arising from a course entitled Thought and Issues that was developed by one teacher. Each unit she teaches is based on dialogue and debate and culminates in reflective writing about a set theme, such as capital punish-ment, humanitarian law, and issues in peace education. The students work on each theme is published in a book.

Student projects and presentations, field trips, participation in student debating, for example such as the Harvard Model Congress, bulletin board

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Lochman, J.E., Dunn, S.E., & Wagner, E.E. (1997). Anger. In G. Bear, K. Minke, & A. Thomas (eds.), Children’s needs II. Washington D.C.: National Association of School Psychology.

Lochman, J.E., Fitzgerald, D.P., & Whidby, J.M. (1999). Anger manage-ment with aggressive children. In C. Schaefer (Ed.), Short-term psychothera-py groups for children. (pp. 301-349). Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.

Porro, B. (1996). Talk It Out: Conflict Resolution In the Elementary Classroom. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Shore, H. (1995). Let’s Work It Out: A Conflict Resolution Workbook for Grades K-3 King of Prussia, PA: The Center for Applied Psychology, Inc. Sunburst Video Series (1992-95). Pleasantville, NY: Sunburst Communica-tions, Inc.

Tillman, D. & Hsu, D. (2000). Living Values: An Educational Programme—Values Activities for Ages 3-7. United Kingdom: Westward Documedia Limited.

Vernon, A. (1989). Thinking, Feeling, Behaving: An Emotional Education Curriculum for Adolescents. Champaign, IL: Research Press.

Wise Words and Wise Quotes (1998). A Comprehensive Character Build-ing Program. Santa Cruz, CA: Wise Skills Resources.

Zimmermann, T. (1995). The Problem Solving Workbook. King of Prussia, PA: The Center for Applied Psychology, Inc.

Mishka Moujabber Mourani is Vice President at International College, Beirut

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Peace education efforts are carried out also through non-formal educa-tion in the Lebanese community. Some of these are described in the third part of the volume. David Vickers begins by describing the Ambassadors of Peace program that was initiated in Sidon but is now spread all across the country, involving hundreds of children. Leif Packalen and Sharad Sharma present Grassroots Comics, an approach they have developed to empower youth and which has been implemented in a Palestinian refugee camp in the Beqaa. An award-winning youth empowering program, Youth Discover and Act, was developed and carried out in a disadvantaged suburb of Beirut by Nader Houélla and Nora Mokdad, two LAU students, with support of UN and Rotaract. The Storycrafting method developed originally in Fin-land and implemented in Lebanon by Kirsti Palonen provides a means for traumatized children to process painful experiences within a safe and supportive context. The stories she shares make a compelling case about the need for trauma-healing work with children in post-conflict areas. Abu Thiel is a Lebanese version of internationally known Skogsmulle (forest troll) of Swedish origin developed to engage urban children in close examination of nature in order to develop their affinity with plants and animals. Abu Thiel was introduced into Nah-el-Bared refugee camp to teach children how to avoid getting hurt by landmines and other rubbish left over from a recent war. These non-formal education projects highlight the need to reach chil-dren and youth who may be outside the formal education context or not have such opportunities within their schools. The need to reach children in the refugee camps is particularly acute.

Part III—In the Community

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• Integrate peace education and conflict resolution materials and activities into the official government curriculum at the Basic and Secondary Cycles; and • Create a community of educators with the purpose developing peace education projects and providing teacher training accessible to all interested educators.

Social violence is pervasive in schools as it is in wider society. Accepting this brought Richared Proulx in 1999 to implement a peaceful conflict resolution program called Peace Ambassadors in schools in Quebec, Canada. The project began in two schools with the aim of enabling students to intervene when violence occurs among students, in order to restore a peaceful environment. The project proved successful among both student and teachers.

This idea was limited to simple conflict resolution. It was then adopted and adapted by a pioneering team in Lebanon. They began their own program in September 2002 in what was to become the Training Center for Com-munity Development (TCCD), a department of a Lebanese NGO – Blue Mission, based in Sidon. A decision was made at an early stage to include teaching staff and parents more directly in the training. Their involvement has resulted in improved integration of approach and resulting impact. The evolution continues. Each year the issue of violence to children is pushed further up the international agenda.

On 29 August 2006 the report of the independent expert for the United Nations study on violence against children was published (A/6/299). The following are abstracted sections of the introduction to that report. 1. No violence against children is justifiable; all violence against children is preventable. Yet the in-depth study on violence against children (the Study) confirms that such violence exists in every country of the world, cutting across culture, class, education, income and ethnic origin. In every region, in contradiction to human rights obligations and children’s developmental needs, violence against children is socially approved, and is frequently legal and State-authorized.

2. The Study should mark a turning point — an end to adult justification of violence against children, whether accepted as “tradition” or disguised as “discipline”. There can be

Child development is subject to a number of influential systems, the principal being family and school. Ideally the family system fulfills the basic needs of security and love, allowing the child to explore boundaries and integrate these related values. Where families do not provide this security and love, boundaries and value systems may not develop appropriately. In schools children face the challenges of interacting with others (non-family) in a growing and learning process. During this growth and develop-ment, the child’s evolving value system is confronted with those of many others in a similarly volatile state. Therefore the potential for conflict is significant in schools. Without the acquired social skills for resolution of that conflict, violence often ensues. Causes of violence among children are often misunderstood and its alternatives difficult to identify and imple-ment within the traditional school system. Nevertheless, the impact of violence on children’s lives and development is pervasive and often extends into adult life. The Ambassadors of Peace Project accepts that conflict is inevitable and seeks to prepare young people, and others who work with them, to adopt non-violent responses to conflict. The aim of the project is to reduce the incidence of violence by and to children in schools, including that of corporal punishment.

Background1998 saw the Fifth Annual Conference on the Global Education of the Child at the Lebanese American University. From a working group of educators within that conference came a set of recommendations. These included (among others):

Ambassadors of Peace – Cascading the message of non-violence

David A. Vickers

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Core valuesThroughout all activities, we strive to express our organizational philosophy expressed in core values: • All people have the responsibility to respect the human rights of others • Any form of discrimination on the grounds of race, color, religion, gender or age is unacceptable • Violence behaviour in any form will not be tolerated • Challenges and conflict are best resolved by working together democratically • The voices of all members of the community are valuable. Their empowerment can make a difference • Health is incomplete without spiritual peace • A health society respects the wellbeing of the environment.

The target groups • Children from 8 to 18 years • Parents and prospective parents • Teachers

Groups of children are accessed via schools, youth centres, training centres and NGOs. Teachers at the same schools are accessed in parallel with the students, or trained in preparation for working with groups of their own students. Parents are accessed via schools, NGOs, community groups or local advertising.

We set no geographical, gender, ethnic or religious boundaries to groups. In the current year (2007) we have groups of children, teachers and parents in Sidon, Tyre, Beirut and Beqaa. We have groups of Lebanese (Sunni, Shiite and Christian), Palestinian, and families of asylum seekers (African, Iraqi etc.). In previous years we have made inroads into schools in Yemen and held workshops in other Arab countries.

The Ambassadors of Peace curriculumKey concepts in the curriculum are tackled through a theoretical and practi-cal approach, each one having integral importance. There are core elements of the curriculum which apply to all participants, regardless of age and role. Other elements are relevant to children, teachers and parents respectively. The style and activities used in the training of adults is markedly different from that of children. The switch is from pedagogy to anthology (Knowles,

no compromise in challenging violence against children. Children’s uniqueness — their potential and vulnerability, their dependence on adults — makes it imperative that they have more, not less, protection from violence. 3. Every society, no matter its cultural, economic or social back- ground, can and must stop violence against children. This does not mean sanctioning perpetrators only, but requires transform- tion of the “mindset” of societies and the underlying economic and social conditions associated with violence.

Ambassadors of Peace projectThe Ambassadors of Peace training curriculum is one element of a psycho-educational project, which is the current product of an evolution of methodologies and techniques generated by the staff and volunteers working with the Training Center for Community Development and in consultation with community focus groups. Public opinion and other feedback are essential in the evolution and modification of the curriculum which constantly changes in response to the newly expressed and identified needs. The program provides a number of human rights and conflict resolu-tion training elements which focus on individuals and their interaction with their surrounding environment. There are six key themes which run through the training: • Non-violence • Human rights • Democratic practice • Respect for environment and health • Anti-racism and anti-discrimination • Participation

ObjectivesThe Ambassadors of Peace project represents a long-term approach with interventions and goals at several levels. In the short term, participants become more self-aware, recognize sources of conflict and alternative, non-violent response to conflict. They learn to value and respect the rights of others and the environment. The medium-term objective is to decrease the incidence of violence and corporal punishment against children within the participating schools and centers. The long-term objective is to create a more peaceful and democratic society by decreasing violence to children and corporal punishment through the interventions of ‘Peace Ambassadors’.

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• Pressures of youth • Positive and negative role models.

Curriculum elements relating specifically to teachers

Clinical knowledge • Qualities and attributes of teachers • Teacher training • Use and abuse of power • Respect for the rights of children • Correction and punishment • Encouragement and praise.

Curriculum elements relating specifically to parents • Philosophy of the program “Development of parenting skills” • Parental educational background • Unacceptable parental behavior • Level of tolerance • The four styles of authority • The five “C” of discipline rules • Constructive consequences • Expression and anger management • Verbal and psychological violence • Alternatives in parent-child communication

Summer activitiesIn addition to training which takes place primarily in school term time, the volunteers organize a variety of summer activities which integrate many of the themes of non-violence and mutual respect. Children have a fun time — and at the same time work cooperatively, learn to follow rules, value each other etc.

Psychological interventionFrom time to time children are identified during activities that are in need of some form of psychological intervention. Parents, teachers and peace ambassadors need to be aware of their limitations, with the ability to intervene and/or refer appropriately. Teachers and parents are taught a simple, problem based, counseling methodology. Concepts and skills are tackled through a theoretical and practical approach (eg. Person-centered counseling; cognitive behavioral techniques):

1998). Adults have more developed cognitive, especially abstract skills. They are keen to learn and enquire. When activities are presented to teachers, they must help the teacher discover for himself. Other child-centered activities are presented as examples of those they can use with their own students.

The curriculum is presented to groups of children over a twelve week period, one session per week. It is built into the mainstream curriculum of that group with the approval of the Ministry of Education, owners of pri-vate schools, managers of NGOs and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

Common elements of the curriculum

Values and Principles1.To understand the meaning of personal values and those of others 2.To be able to associate principles to values

Concepts of needs versus desire • To understand the difference between “need” and “desire” • To recognize how to meet your needs in your personal life • To establish links between our needs, values, and principles

Categories of stress • Positive, negative, and traumatic stress • To acquire a better understanding of the stress impact and perception

Verbal and non-verbal communication • To be acquainted with the concepts related to verbal and non-verbal communication • To develop focus group communication skills, verbal, non-verbal and understanding group dynamics

Conflict and non-violent conflict resolution

Human/Child Rights

Curriculum elements relating specifically to children • Peer groups • Physical, social and emotional development • Relating to adults

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Carl Ransom Rogers (1902 - 1987) is best known as the founder of “client-centred” or “non-directive” therapy. Carl Rogers was able to join Dewey’s concept of holism with therapeutic insights and the belief, borne out of his practical experience, that the client usually knows better to how to proceed than the therapist.

His framework is based on the belief that human beings become increas-ingly trustworthy once they feel at a deep level that their subjective experi-ence is both respected and progressively understood. He put forward ‘core conditions’ for facilitative counselling and educational practice — congru-ence (realness), acceptance and empathy.

Realness in the facilitator of learning When the facilitator is a real person, being what she is, entering into a relationship with the learner without presenting a front or a façade, she is much more likely to be effective. It means coming into a direct personal en-counter with the learner, meeting her on a person-to-person basis. It means that she is being herself, not denying herself.

Prizing, acceptance, trust There is another attitude that stands out in those who are successful in fa-cilitating learning. It is an acceptance of this other individual as a separate person, having worth in her own right. It is a basic trust — a belief that this other person is fundamentally trustworthy.

Empathic understanding A further element that establishes a climate for self-initiated experiential learning is emphatic understanding. The teacher has the ability to under-stand the student’s reactions from the inside, has a sensitive awareness of the way the process of education and learning seems to the student. From this was generated some basic principles: • We cannot teach another person directly; we can only facilitate his learning. • The structure and organization of the self appears to become more rigid under threat; to relax its boundaries when completely free from threat • The educational situation which most effectively promotes significant learning is one in which 1) threat to the self of the learner is reduced

• ‘Behavior problem’– whose definition?– whose problem? • Characteristics & assessment of behavioral problems. • Counseling process phases: observation, implementation, and assessment. • Use of clinical assessment tools: child’s behavior assessment grid, child’s characteristics and needs assessment grid, challenges grid. • Strategies to prevent behavioral problems: human and structural organization in a child’s environment.

Theoretical considerationsThe premise of the approach is that there is a conflict between values and principles, between wants and needs and between perceived needs and met needs. Helping people become aware of these issues related to themselves and others, promotes modification of attitudes and behavioral responses to that conflict.

The theoretical basis of the curriculum is an eclectic model which has evolved over the five year lifetime of the project. It has elements of human-ism (Maslow, 1954); Transactional Analysis (Karpman, 1968) and, since it explores the link between thought and behavior, uses elements of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) and Rogers’ (1993) Person-Centered approaches to both education and therapy.

Needs of self and others are identified and prioritized, students explore their own self awareness and examine links between unmet needs, clashes of belief systems and responses to the resultant conflict. Conflict is not denied, but can be minimized or a non-violent resolution reached.

Beyond the details of air, water, food, and sex, Maslow laid out five broader layers: the physiological needs, the needs for safety and security, the needs for love and belonging, the needs for esteem, and the need to actualize the self, in that order.

Maslow claimed that we are motivated to meet out lower level needs before higher level needs in turn become motivators. When studying needs of self and others with a group, unmet and conflicting needs are explored as sources of both potential conflict and its non-violent resolution.

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Learning by doing accepts that learning is not a linear activity, but achieved using a cycle of active reflection. Kolb’s (1984) experiential learning cycle is one example of the many published learning cycles. It has four phases: con-crete experience/doing, reflective observation/reflecting on the experience, abstract conceptualization/concluding, and active experimentation/ tying out what one has learned. Individuals differ with respect to which phase they prefer to begin their learning experience at.

Capacity buildingThe most valuable resource in Blue Mission, as with any other NGO is its community of volunteers. What is a volunteer? A common definition of a ‘volunteer’ is someone who serves in a community or for the benefit of natural environment primarily because they choose to do so.

Volunteers at Blue Mission fall into three categories: • Those who are university students who use Blue Mission as a supe vised placement as part of their studies • Those who find the project interesting and rewarding and want to give their time to it • Those who have received some Ambassadors of Peace training and want to be involved in passing the message to others

Returning to Maslow, some educationalists who have ‘tinkered’ with his hierarchy of needs have added up to three more layers of the hierarchy. This includes a new higher level apex to the triangle – ‘Transcendence’. This is defined as the need to help others to self-actualization. Since our approach to conflict resolution and peace involves personal self-actualiza-tion after having identified and met lower level needs in self and others, transcendence is seen as a motivator to help others do the same. Those who have seen the benefit of the program (experientially) develop a need to help others receive a similar benefit. They share the medium and short term vision of reducing violence and creating a more peaceful environment. These individuals become our ‘ambassadors of peace’. They get involved in school and other activities, workshops and celebrations. They attract new people and groups to join in and receive training. When the capacity builds to a critical mass, it is self-perpetuating. This, in turn becomes attrac-tive to donors, as there is built-in sustainable impact. That impact can be evidenced from reports from new ambassadors.

a minimum, and 2) differentiated perception of the field of experience is facilitated.

Teaching children and teaching adultsWhen training teachers and parents, traditional ‘pedagogy’ (designed to teach children) must give way to more adult orientated styles. When train-ing adolescents and young adults, the transition in styles may not be a clear one, many bridging the gap between the two. Malcolm Knowles popular-ized the concept of ‘andragogy,’ which first appeared in the writing of a German teacher named Alexander Kapp, in 1833. Commenting on Plato’s education theory, Kapp contrasted andragogy (andr- meaning ‘man’) with pedagogy (paid- meaning ‘child’ and agogos meaning ‘leading’).

In 1970, ‘The Modern Practice of Adult Education’, Knowles defined an-dragogy as “an emerging technology for adult learning.” His four andragogi-cal assumptions are that adults: 1) move from dependency to self-directedness; 2) draw upon their reservoir of experience for learning; 3) are ready to learn when they assume new roles; and 4) want to solve problems and apply new knowledge immediately.Accordingly, Knowles suggested that adult educators should: • set a cooperative learning climate • create mechanisms for mutual planning • arrange for a diagnosis of learner needs and interests • enable the formulation of learning objectives based on the diagnosed needs and interests • design sequential activities for achieving the objectives • execute the design by selecting methods, materials, and resources; and • evaluate the quality of the learning experience while re-diagnosing needs for further learning

Learning by doingIn Lebanon, as in many Arab countries, the predominant mode of learning has been by rote. This is a passive approach in which students listen, take notes or are given handouts, and then they memorise information which they reproduce at examinations. Whether they actually learn anything which can be transferred outside the examination is open to challenge.

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punishment. However this is used unofficially and sometimes comes to the attention of head teachers. As Peace Ambassadors are established, they will become a focal point for children to report all violent incidents and data will be passed to head teachers and thence to the Project Coordinator. It is not the intention to give detailed information in the collection of data, only raw numbers. This data will be compared over another two week pe-riod at the end of, or at some time after the project activities. Comparison will give some indication of project impact. Other evaluative feedback is gained from stories and other sources of reflections from participants. This includes narrative, poem, painting, photographs, songs, film.

Current funding and future plansFor the last five year, the main source of funding for Ambassadors of Peace project has been Save the Children Sweden (Lebanon). That funding has demanded, quite rightly, that the project evolve, be continually innova-tive and ensure sustainability. Save the Children are active partners in the program offering advice, support and other resources as required.

Other donors are being support to expand activities. In 2007 we are also receiving a contribution from the British Embassy in Beirut. A proposal for a project to complement the current project is being circulated to possible donors. This is for a children’s library based at our center. This will be the focus for children and young people to access information, work in groups, learn to debate, form and express opinions in a safe sup-ported environment.

SummaryThe Ambassadors of Peace program is one component of fulfilling the vision of Blue Mission to create more peace-orientated society in a coun-try that has rarely seen absence of armed conflict for many generations. By facilitating groups of children, teachers and parents, using a planned curriculum of class-based and summer activities, an increasing number of young people are being equipped with the attitudes and skills of non-violent conflict resolution and mutual respect. The impact is measurable in terms of reduced incidence of violence in schools and the desire and action of many involved to spread the message of peace to others.

Training trainersAs volunteer trainers apply their training and become experienced and innovative in their activities, they then become involved in the training of other trainers (T.O.T.). Some of the trainers develop in specialized activi-ties such as art, music, film, theatre, creative writing. They then pass on these specialized skills to other trainers for use with individuals or groups in classroom, training center or summer activities. Training of trainers pro-grams are tailor-made to groups, depending on their previous experience as teachers or with the subject matter.

Staff development and reviewIn the intervening space between activities, curricula, manuals and activities are reviewed and modified in the light of experience. This is done in staff groups as part of their on-going development. As new/modified methods are identified, training and practice is given. Most of this is done at the TCCD. Some volunteers may be offered training by other bodies/universities.

The TCCD team and wider group of volunteers are from a diversity of backgrounds and disciplines. Potential conflict exists for team members. When conflict is identified, a plan is made for its resolution. Working through such plans further enhances and reinforces the practical applica-tion of conflict resolution theory. It also makes Blue Mission a pleasant environment in which to work.

All staff and volunteers have an allocated supervisor. Here supervision re-fers to someone who helps the person reflect; identify needs, set goals and strategies for personal and professional development. This is formalized and a record of sessions kept by the supervisee.

Impact measurementEffect on the incidence of violence (comparative data)In each school and center where we introduce the program we ask teach-ers/directors of schools to use a simple system to measure the incidence of violence. Over a two week period, one responsible person in the school is asked to enter daily a number for each of six categories of violence: child to child; child to teacher; child to visitor; teacher to child; visitor to child; child to property. Violence of teacher to child also includes use of corporal punishment. All schools have a policy against the use of corporal

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Grassroots comics – a new communication tool

Leif Packalen and Sharad Sharma

The use of comics as a campaigning tool for grassroots organisations is a relatively new phenomenon and has been tested so far only in India, some other South Asian countries, in a few countries in Africa, the Middle East and Europe. The purpose of this article is to share the experiences we have gathered over the last few years so that other non-governmental organisa-tion (NGO) activists and movements can also try out this quite exciting and participatory development communication method.

Grassroots comics, i.e. comics that are made by socially active people them-selves, rather than by campaign and art professionals, are genuine voices which encourage local debate in the society. Furthermore, they are cost-effective, and the technology is not complicated — pens, papers and access to a copying machine are usually enough.

What makes these comics different from professional material, is the fact that they are made mainly for local distribution. The comics are pasted up in meeting places, bus stops, shops, offices, schools, on notice-boards and electricity poles, etc. The readers usually know the organisation which has put up the comics.

Proximity is important, the source of the communication as well as the readers are not very far apart. The comics will show that some persons in the community feel so strongly about an issue that they make local cam-paign material themselves, rather than rely on materials produced by some distant campaign professionals from the capital or even from abroad.People are very much interested in what their local organisations and activ-ists have to say. When they use wallposter comics, their message will get attention and create local debate.

References

Berne, E. (1964). Games people play. New York: Ballantine Books.

Ghosn, I. & Samia, E. (1998) (Eds.) Recommendations. In Weaving the Fabric of Peace: Tolerance, Justice and the Child (pp. 124-125). Byblos: Lebanese American University.

Karpman, S. (1968). Fairy tales and script. Transactional Analysis, http://www.karpmandramatriangle.com

Knowles, M.S., Holton, E. F. & Swanson, R. A. (1998). The Definitive clas-sic adult education and human resource. Burlington, MA: Butterworth Heinemann.

Kolb, D. (1984). Experience. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Maslow, A. H. (1954; 1987). Motivation and personality. New York: Addison-Wesley.

Rogers, C. (1993). Freedom to learn (3rd ed.). New York: Merrill.

Rogers, C. (1951). Client centered counselling. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.

United Nations (2006). Study on Violence against Children. A/6/299. Geneva: United Nations.

David Vickers at the time of this writing was coordinating the program at the Blue Mission.

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fore, the grassroots comics are interesting also for outsiders and help them to learn how people in these particular communities look at life.

We should not underestimate the knowledge of common people about their own community, most probably they know much better what is right or wrong there than any well-meaning outsider. By anchoring the grassroots comics to the community activists and to their NGOs, the messages in their stories are more exact, to the point and relevant to the debate within the community. Their impact in the local debate is quite strong.

The grassroots comics, especially wallposter comics, emerge as a medium which is available to groups and individuals, who normally have little or no access to media.

Since comics stick out, they are attractive for NGOs, which always have to look for new and innovative ways of communicating with their target audience. Furthermore, to distribute comics in communities is not very expensive as the NGOs can use photocopying or low-tech black and white printing methods.

Who can use the medium?Grassroots comics are best suited for local campaigning and peer com-munication in local languages. The comics have been successfully used in campaigns involving human rights, health education, corruption, environ-mental concerns, etc.

Any group with an identity, a message and a target audience can produce and use grassroots comics as a communication tool. The technology involved is not very complicated and the comics deal with local issues, and use local languages, local visual culture and local meanings and metaphors. In our experience, very diverse groups on different levels of literacy and technical sophistication can, with some encouragement, all learn to pro-duce comics which are of great interest to their groups or communities.

CampaigningThere are different levels of campaigning with grassroots comics, from peer group distribution within a local community to using local comics in mass distribution. Obviously, the available resources will always be the determin-ing factor.

A development communication methodComics are stories, which are told visually. They become grassroots comics when they are made by NGO or community activists about some issue which is relevant to that particular community. The method is a set of instructions on how to proceed in producing the comics, how to make them readable and how to distribute them. It is the drama of the story that engages the reader and makes the point.

Grassroots comics dramatise specific issues and bring them into the debate in the community. The comics are most of the time directly related to some activity of an NGO or a community group, but there are also works from individuals who just want to tell their own stories. Especially children often depict their lives in a moving way.

Grassroots comics are made mainly in workshopsIn workshops the trainers never give advice to the participants about the content of the stories, this has to be worked out by the NGO activists themselves. The trainers concentrate on showing the participants how to visualise the story, make the story in a logical sequence, and make it easy to read and to understand correctly. The trainers must also boost the partici-pants’ confidence in their drawing.

Many of the participants in our comics workshops have never made comics before, but most of them are eager to give it a try. The results have been very encouraging. In our experience, NGO activists are able to pick up this new communication method quite easily. Over time, when creating more stories and comics, the messages of the stories will also develop and become more to the point.

Why use grassroots comics?If we look at life from the perspective of a community activist we can easily understand that the mainstream media rarely reflect the views the activists want to put across. The media in general tend to look at the larger picture and pay most of their attention to political and business stories. The stories of the common man are featured less.

Because grassroots comics are created by common people and activists, they give a first hand view — first voices — to the issues in the community. There-

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posters normally have only one message or a slogan, but in the wallposter comic you can put in a lot more information and feeling as in the story there can be drama and a sequence of things that happen.

Photocopied wallpostersNormal photocopying, using A4 sized paper, is widely available in the world, even in rather remote areas. Therefore the simplest wallposter format is to combine two A4-photocopies and join them. This makes a wallposter of A3 size, which is big enough to be noticed from a distance. The wallposter can be comfortably read standing, from a distance of about 1 meter. If a bigger (A3) photocopying machine is available, then the copies can be made directly to this size.

Printed wallpostersWhen you need a big amount of wallposters, photocopying becomes an expensive option. There are, normally, in towns some small printing shops which cater to the business printing needs in the area. Most of these small printers can make inexpensive print runs of a few hundred copies either on screen printing or offset printing equipment using simple newsprint paper. There might be some requirements for what type of original the printer can use, but these should not be too difficult to master quickly.

BookletsComic booklets are useful because the stories can be much longer than in a wallposter comic. You can increase the number of turns the story takes, introduce more characters, and make the story more dramatic and lively when you have more space. A booklet can be distributed to participants in meetings or seminars, to people that are motivated to take a stand on an issue, and to visitors to an NGO office, etc.

8-page story from one double-sided photocopyThis format is the basic booklet. When the pages are set in a specific order and photocopied on the same sheet of paper, it can be folded into an 8-page booklet. You can also make a 16-page story by folding a double-sided photocopy. This is the format to use when you need to make a longer story without having to draw a lot of detailed action.

Accordion minicomics Accordion comics are folded into an accordion and read either as a long

Grassroots comics which have been made for a local audience can also be used for mass distribution. This was the case in the Barmer Girl Child Campaign, in Rajasthan, India, in which the comics were made by villagers and activists in Barmer, but the comics were later distributed in a large part of Rajasthan, because the messages were relevant for the whole area. A first voice communication by a community member has much more credibility and impact than a slick presentation by a communication professional.

Exhibitions and publications of grassroots comicsGrassroots comics from different groups and countries can also be shown in exhibitions or published in order to give an insight into how members of a particular group look at their lives and which issues are important to them. From their comics we can get a first-hand view of how they tackle their problems.

The exhibitions and publications are filled with a lot of local cultural information, but sometimes it is difficult to translate that to a mainstream audience. Even when the comics are not drawn on a professional level, the passion and confidence in the message come through.

Grassroots comics formatsWhat is common to all grassroots comics formats is that they always use simple, widely available duplicating methods, such as: • Photocopying for issues up to 30-40 copies • Screen printing for issues from 100 copies upwards • Offset printing for issues from 200-300 copies upwardsSome of the comics will often later be converted for publication in news-papers, magazines and brochures, so it is also a good idea to consider this when choosing the format.

Wallposter comicsBy far the most common and most cost-effective format of grassroots com-ics is the wallposter. The advantages are obvious; you can cover a whole village population by pasting two or three wallposter comics in strategic places. All this for the cost of a few photocopies!

The wallposter comic is a story which is told visually in four parts, so it is a compact format. Most messages, however, can be converted into a short and precise story. Many of the traditional development communication

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The workshop was arranged in July 2005 in Barr Elias, Lebanon. Fifteen youngsters were taught how to make and use grassroots comics. They took up in their stories problems of early marriage, how boys chase girls, the importance of education, better garbage collection, anti-smoking, and of course the unsolved political dilemma of the Palestinian refugees. (See Figures.1 and 2)

The experiences from the workshop proved again the fact that for a group or organisation with a clear identity and something to say, grassroots comics offer an effective alternative for getting the message across. For the partici-pating young Palestinian boys and girls the experience gave a sense of being able to influence their own lives and environment in the refugee camps.

After the workshop, the comics were pasted up by the youngsters in some of the camps, and now several groups in the BAS network make comics on a regular basis.

A follow-up workshop, mainly to train grassroots comics tutors, was planned for July 2006, but had to be postponed due to the Israel-Lebanon war.

In June–July 2007, there was a mass exodus from the Nahr el Bared camp and about 30,000-40,000 Palestinian refugees had to be relocated due to the fighting that took place between the Fatah Al Islam and the Lebanese Army. A spontaneous comics group (together with Finnish Psychologist Kirsti Palonen) made a set of wallposter comics warning of mines and unexploded ammunition. They pasted more than 100 comics on the walls in the Beddawi camp, where most of the Nahr el Bared evacuees had been placed. So, even under these very difficult circumstances, the youngsters could make a concentrated effort, prepare the comics and distribute them. They were doing something of value for their own community.

strip or a minibooklet. The format is especially useful for discreet distribu-tion because from the outside of the minicomics you cannot see what it is about as the covers are blank.

The simplest accordion comic is made from a photocopy of a story which is drawn in eight panels on a sheet of paper as shown above. The paper is cut in half and the two pieces are joined with a piece of tape. Although it includes a bit of handwork, the size of the panels is OK and this format is easy to photocopy as you need to copy only on one side.

A mini-accordion can be made if you have access to a photocopying machine that can reduce the original to 50% of its size. Take the original 8-panel story (A3), reduce it to 50% and make four copies. Cut the two strips and assemble them on an A3 sheet of paper as shown in Appendix 4. Then fold the A3 into an accordion and cut it into four parts – you have got four accordion minicomics for the price of one A3 –photocopy!

Converting comics into stripsYou can convert comics into strips to be published in magazines, newslet-ters and brochures, but you have to remember that the reduction from the original size can be very drastic and you will have to make sure that the original artwork has sufficiently thick lines and that the text is big enough.

Case example: Palestinian refugees in LebanonThe Finnish Psychologists for Social Responsibility (FPSR) has had coop-eration with a Palestinian Refugee organisation in Lebanon for more than twenty years. The cooperation has included various programs to promote mental wellbeing, offering psychologists’ counselling services, training in special counselling skills, etc.

The organisation, Beit Atfal Assomoud (BAS), covers ten Palestinian refu-gee camps in Lebanon and has an activity center in each camp. These cent-ers offer day-care services, educational courses, handicraft groups, activities for youth, etc.

It was felt within BAS that comics could be an effective additional com-munication tool in many of the activities. Therefore, FPSR and BAS asked World Comics Finland to run a grassroots comics training workshop especially for BAS’ youth.

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Don’t touch strange objects! Nour Khalail, Beddawi Camp, 2007. Children are learning at school about the dangers of unexploded ordnance. A boy tries to warn his friend, who wants to examine an unknown object…but too late. The boy and his mother cry at the friend’s grave.

Grassroots Comics - a tool for empowermentGrassroots comics can be seen also as a tool for empowerment as they give ordinary people a chance to voice their opinion and present it to others. We have in all our workshops seen the pride, excitement and joy in our par-ticipants, when they have completed their comics and put them up on the walls for everybody to see and comment. This has been particularly evident in the cases when the participants have been youngsters or children.

Comics can promote communal/ethnic understandingWhen people tell their own stories on a local level, they can reach out to other groups in the society that have misconceptions or adverse opinions of them. Genuine, heartfelt stories are convincing and they have credibil-ity. These comics can be distributed by organisations working with ethnic, political or communal problems. Comics in advocacy workPeople in decision-making positions often have very little direct contact with grassroots organisations or local activists. By using the attention-grab-bing medium of comics, these activists can send their stories on specific

Marriage is not a joke by Jumana Khalid Assam, Rashidieh Refugee Camp, Lebanon, 2005.

The girl gets married. Soon she realises that married life is not easy or fun. She is pregnant, but divorces her husband anyway. While asleep, she accidentally suf-focates her baby. She then realises that she is free and vows never to marry again. (Note: reads from right to left.)

Learn from your mistakes by Omar Abu Staiti, Beddawi Refugee Camp, Lebanon, 2005.

When the school bell rings, a boy decides to stay at home to play. It feels wonderful to go to the playgrounds. But in the end the boy realises when he fails his grade that his father will be very upset. (Note: reads from right to left.)

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Youth discover and act

Nader Houella and Nora Mokdad

The Youth Discover and Act project is a series of training camps jointly conducted by the 1st UN Summer School on Conflict Prevention and Transformation in partnership with the Rotaract Club of Beirut. The project, which was to be launched in summer 2006 and concluded in early 2007, had to be postponed several times due to the consequences of the July 2006 war.

The training campsOn, the 16th of February, 2007, the first training camp for Youth Discover and Act was launched in the village of Rmediyyeh in South Lebanon. It was followed by another training workshop with more focused topics and emphasis on project planning and development. The events targeted public school students from the village. The training content revolved around group dynamics, team-building, communication skills and other theoretical and practical material related to project planning on the local level.

The staff of the UN Summer School on Conflict Prevention and Transformation spent the first week in on-ground preparations, recruiting participants and finalizing the project logistics. During this week, an official presentation on the project, its mission and objectives was given to the Municipality of Rmediyyeh.

The Municipality of Rmediyyeh was an essential partner in the event, contributing in the recruitment of participants, providing logistic and local administrative support, such as the venue, promotion of the project, security, and so on. The Rotaract Club of Beirut offered its volunteers to provide ice-breaking and team building activities, in addition to evening entertainment programs.

issues directly to the decision-makers. Busy politicians and officials may wel-come the opportunity to read a comic rather than to look through another pile of papers. If the comics are sent to the local press at the same time, it could also increase publicity for the issue.

Grassroots comics are inexpensive and versatile communication tools, which can be used in a wide variety of contexts. They are within reach for people and groups with limited resources and the technology involved is simple.

You can find out more about the grassroots comics concept and how these comics have been used in local campaigning on the websites of the World Comics network: www.worldcomics.fi (site updated by World Comics Finland, includes a large section of downloadable resources, such as manuals, videos, presentations, etc. in different languages) and www.worldcomics.com (site updated by World Comics India, includes a very comprehensive range of grassroots comics samples from all over India and the neighbouring countries).

Leif Packalen is the founder and current Chairman of World Comics Finland. Sharad Sharma is the founder and the current Secretary General of World Comics India.

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gram and approach of the first workshop, the sessions included additional teamwork exercises, activities promoting values of tolerance, non-violent communication and leadership skills, which would enable participants to propose and manage development projects in their local community.

Haret Hreik Workshop in April, 2007The third workshop was conducted in Haret Hreik, Beirut, because the team realized that the Beirut suburbs after the July war had more press-ing needs, and the young generation of the community would require the empowerment training offered in our workshops. Therefore, we conducted a full day training workshop with high school students of Ashbal Al Sahel school in Haret Hreik. It is worth noting that our primary partner, the Rotaract Club of Beirut, had assisted in renovating this school in October 2006.

The training took place at the school premises, and focused on the follow-ing topics: • Team building • Assessing the needs of the local community • Project planning and funding

In the last part of the workshop, the participants were divided into six groups, and each group was asked to come up with a project that targets the local community. Each group was also asked to propose ways to fund their project, prepare a time line for its implementation, list clear objectives and

Even though only two workshops were planned for the project, funds avail-able made it possible for a third workshop to be organized. Moreover, the war had produced new needs on the ground, beyond the areas of southern Lebanon. Therefore, the third and last workshop was given to a private school in the war-torn southern Beirut suburbs in April to meet the rising needs of that area. Although this workshop was only one day long, the participants showed progress during the workshop and clearly benefited from it.

Remediyyeh workshop in February, 2007In February, thirty-three students between the ages of 14 and 19 partici-pated in the first three-day workshop. Given the novelty of the event in the village, the demand for participation greatly exceeded our expectations. More than fifteen participants had to be rejected due to the lack of places in the workshop. The participants were all students from the following pub-lic schools: Qana Official High School; Remediyyeh Official High School; Sidiqeeen Official High School; and Shaaytiyyeh Official High School.

The first preparatory workshop aimed to train the participants in core skills, topics and techniques, such as group dynamics, team building, and communication skills, as well as in local community awareness, how to assess the needs and the situation of one’s local community. Approaches in-cluded both theoretical and practical exercises which involved brainstorm-ing, group work and outdoor games. One example is the ‘treasure hunt’ that involved leadership positions and teamwork skills. Participants were divided into groups of five, and each group was designated to follow a map where field marks, signals and questions leading to ‘the treasure,’ which only one group will find. In addition, several trust building and problem solving games were introduced.

In the evening, participants viewed movies related to the workshop topics and the local community. One evening, entertainment was organized by our primary partner, The Rotaract Club of Beirut, which also provided volunteers for the logistical and administrative support of the project.

Second Remediyyeh workshop, February 2007As a follow up on the first preparatory workshop, a second three-day work-shop was held in Remediyyeh for a more focused target group and with emphasis on project planning and management. In addition to the pro-

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Local community feedbackThe head and members of municipality, as well as official representatives of Remediyyeh village, expressed their deep gratitude to the organizers for choosing their village for the training camps. There was a great desire for additional projects since they sensed the need of their area for such type of projects, and the need of their youngsters for such training sessions. It is worth to note that it was the first time that the village witnesses such a project, as no training or development projects were ever carried out in the village before. The participants’ families also welcomed the initiative, appreciating the skills that were provided to their children, which were needed for the development of their community and even for the children’s own personal skills which may not be offered in their local schools.

Participant feedbackIn the final evaluation questionnaire filled by the participants — in the absence of trainers and key staff members—we received the following feedback:

Participants also showed concern for sustainability of the project, request-ing that follow up sessions be held.

identify the target group. This particular exercise attracted great interest and enthusiasm from the students, who proposed projects such as renovat-ing a school class and establishing a school library.

Feedback

GeneralThe training camps were conducted successfully meeting all their objectives, however for a larger than expected target group.

In the first workshop, the program team sensed that the training material was a bit difficult for the trainees, and, therefore, the content of the train-ing program was quickly adjusted to meet the qualifications and education-al background of the participants.

From the evaluations the team also deduced that in order to achieve the goal of the workshops in full, the recruitment process should be adjusted in terms of age and grade level; participants should be minimum 16 years old, thus making sure they are not below 11th grade level in school. This would insure that the participants will understand and have a good grasp and of the workshop material. Moreover, certain amendments and changes in the program were done and new games and methods were added in the second and third workshops as well according to the type of the target group.

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Storycrafting: A simple method of multiple possibilities1

Kirsti Palonen

Tell a story that you want. I will write it down just as you will tell it. When the story is ready I will read it aloud. And then if you want you can correct or make any changes.

These instructions given by an adult who is preparing to listen to a child tell a story reveal what is essential in storycrafting. Storycrafting is easy as long as the adult conforms to what is promised in the instructions.

For some children, storying is easy. For others, getting started may be dif-ficult. Some children need to pause to think every now and then. Novices in storycrafting — or in recording — often make the big mistake of not allowing time and space for the child’s own story to take shape. Instead, they begin to propose topics or attempt to guide the child’s inner processes in some other ways. According to Monika Riihelä, the Finnish psychologist who has developed the method, the storycrafting situation must be free of hidden adult purposes.

Storycrafting provides the child an experience in equality. Rather than the adult deciding for the child, the child makes use of storying to meet their own needs and crafts their own story without adult intervention.

On the other hand, the method enables the adult to closely document not only the child’s story but also the workings of their inner world. As these documents are collected over time, they allow the adult to monitor the child’s developmental process, as well as the child’s healing process in the event of problems or traumas. A deeper understanding is thus achieved, and a bond of mutual trust forms between the child and adult.

Trainers’ evaluation • The staff and organizers worked together very cooperatively as a team. • The trainers unreservedly attested that more than 80% of the participants grasped the material fully, benefited from the training and that they are ready to pass on their skills to fellow youngsters. The team has also successfully trained multipliers who are very motivated to pass on the skills they acquired to their community. • Some of the material was difficult for the participants, particularly in the first workshop. Even though the participants were high school students, their education had been hindered by the many problems and lack of resources typical to public schools in the south. For the future training camps, minor changes were suggested in the training program, insuring that the participants are from grades 11 and 12 and not below.

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but all are accepted as they are. The emerging story is the child’s own crea-tion for which they hold copyright. Only the child has the right to edit or alter their own story as they wish. In storycrafting, the child has the right to make their own choices and learn to make choices.

Storycrafting is one method of teaching freedom of expression in countries that have recently abolished government censorship. Despite a more liberal environment, the self-censorship developed during the previous situation may persist for psychological reasons. Children also apply self-censorship modeled after the adult examples they observe. They have learned in politi-cally sensitive situations to refrain from addressing issues that, if expressed out loud, would have serious consequences in their society. Moreover, chil-dren hide things that they perceive would anger important people. Or, they may not talk about their own difficulties, believing that their parents have enough difficulties of their own trying to survive the everyday problems or a bigger catastrophe.

In the aftermath of politically restricted times, storycrafting can foster children’s trust in their ability to talk about things they want to talk about without fear of disapproval or punishment. Children may test adults with stories they believe might be perceived as undesirable; for example, in many groups, little boys have been eager to tell ‘fart stories.’ If the adult records these stories just as any others, and reads them to the children for possible editing , he or she has passed the test and ‘fart stories’ or other similar ones will stop. Trust increases: the adult is truly serious about allowing the child to choose what and how to tell.

Continuous storycrafting develops children’s imagination and expressive ability. Imagination is an essential tool in solving problems to be encoun-tered in the future. It increases the possibilities for realizing one’s human rights, because the more an individual is able to use their imagination to identify various possible solutions the less likely they are to remain passive victims of the circumstances.

Storycrafting as a method in development cooperationStorycrafting as a method is very inexpensive and thus applicable even in poor conditions without big budgets. It is useful method in development co-operation projects aiming at promoting children’s psychological well-being.

Storycrafting can be done individually or in a group. In educational set-tings, storycrafting can be included among other pedagogical methods. The Family Guidance Center of National Institution of Social Care and Vocational Training—Beit Atfal Assumoud (NISCVT—BAS) operating in Lebanon has been using the storycrafting method for a number of years with positive results. For example, when a group of boys with learning difficulties had participated in a storycrafting group for a year, significant improvement was noted in their school grades.

One possible reason for their achievement is that storycrafting demonstrat-ed very concretely the significance of reading and writing skills and thus increased their motivation to master these skills. Improved reading and writing ability, in turn, facilitated their learning of subject matter. During storycrafting children also learn to collaborate with an adult, which may further facilitate schoolwork. In addition, it is likely that the group work and storycrafting had a therapeutic influence, thus supporting schoolwork.

Creates a foundation for the realization of human rightsStorycrafting is not only a pedagogical tool but also human rights educa-tion. A child must be granted a basic right to freedom of speech, self expres-sion and imagination, as well as the right to be heard within an egalitarian, reciprocal relationship.

Storycrafting can teach the child to use their freedom of speech and the adult to allow the child this right. During storycrafting, the adult learns a way to engage in a reciprocal relationship that appreciates the child. The adult learns the skills of patience, waiting and listening. These are critical skills especially at times when the child is experiencing difficulties. Too many eager questions may block access to the very issues that would be es-sential in order to understand the child’s situation. Everyone ought to have the right to psychological well-being. In terms of children, this presupposes a listening and understanding adult, who can receive the child’s experi-ences, thoughts and feelings.

When the adult follows the storycrafting instructions, they provide the child an opportunity for a reciprocal relationship with an adult, who is so interested in the child that they have the patience — without criticism or corrections — to listen to what the child has to say. The adult values the child’s story, regardless of its content or style. These stories are not graded,

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Provided the adult carries out the task in the way promised in the instruc-tions, the realization of storycrafting is very similar to children everywhere. In contexts of temporary or long term exceptional conditions, the record-ing adult must use their situational intelligence and imagination in order to create the best possible environment for success.

The basic skills the adult needs to carry out storycrafting are reading and writing skills. In addition, the adult must know how to give time to a child or a group of children. The adult must be able to listen to children sin-cerely and in depth. What is crucial is the adult’s attitude and motivation, not professional training per se.

For example, I trained two Kurdish mothers for storycrafting in Kirkuk, four months after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Storycrafting fostered the women’s self esteem and changed their relationship with children. Story-crafting teaches and develops the adult as well. The self esteem of these Kurdish women grew when they noticed that their children’s psychological well-being was enhanced by their contribution through storycrafting. Undoubtedly, their self esteem was also enhanced by their being able to teach foreigners important things about their children’s world—both external and internal.

Storybridge teaches about cultural differences and similarities In Lebanon, staff at the Family Guidance Center (FGC) of NISCVT in Beirut were the first to experiment with storycrafting. FGC’s storycrafting team comprised a psychologist, a special education teacher and a speech therapist. The team had a counterpart in Kotka, Finland, that included a psychologist of a family center, a kindergarten teacher and a school teacher. FGC’s Palestinian children — and later special needs classes of NISCVT —began story exchange with the child clients of the Finnish family center, kindergarten children and school children. In Beirut, FGC staff and special education teachers storycrafted children, and in Kotka, the family center staff and teachers of the kindergarten and school classes. All work was done as part of the regular daily work of each setting.

The Storybridge Kotka — Beirut lasted for three years, from 2001 to 2003. As they freely told their own stories, children taught their counterparts in the other country things meaningful to children of their age in their own culture and life. Two seemingly different worlds met through the children’s

The only necessary tools are paper and pen or pencil. Coloring pens enhance children’s opportunities to visual telling in addition to their verbal narrative. Once the story is ready, the child is asked whether they would like to illustrate their story. In the absence of coloring pens, ‘nature’s colors’ can be used: flower petals of different color, plant leaves, etc. In a recent summer camp of Palestinian refugee children, my storycrafting group found it fun and interesting to search from nature different colors for their drawings. Finding new colors brought them the joy of discovery.

Storycrafting can be realized in many different settings. While it needs its own space, what is more important than the physical space is the psycho-logical and reciprocal context created by the adult. Some children happily tell their stories in a group, while some prefer more privacy. When story-crafting is continued with the same group, and the children’s trust in the adult increases, the need for privacy may even grow, as children begin to address in their stories difficult issues they are struggling with. The physical space needed for the activity is connected to the internal processes being activated in the child.

Opportunities for privacy can vary widely between children across cultures and life circumstances. Although the best privacy is guaranteed behind the closed door of the therapist’s clinic, it has also been realized in the schools of the Beddawi refugee camp teeming with displaced families from the Nahr el-Bared camp in the aftermath of the summer 2007 armed conflict.

Although a classroom may be crowded by tens of people of different ages, the recording adult is able to find a quiet corner. Storying can be done in whispers, and the written text can be covered, if no other privacy is pos-sible. By guaranteeing the level of privacy the child needs at the given time fosters the child-adult trust that is fundamental to the therapeutic value of the storycrafting method.

In locales full of people, one can expect many interruptions. Representa-tives of an NGO are bringing toys to the children. The residents of the next class get curious about what is going on and come over to find out more. But when the unfinished story is recorded and read to the child, he is able to continue the story. Thus the value of writing skill is also reinforced: a written story does not disappear, and it can be repeated over and over, exactly in the form the child narrated it.

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reaction was that one cannot go to a demonstration because there will be shooting. At the time, the violence in Iraq was a staple in the Finnish news. The violence shown made such a strong impression on the children that they imagined violence to be even part of the Finnish peaceful demonstra-tion, because it was related to Iraq.

To media, bad news is good news. From the Middle East, the media gets plenty of ‘good news’: shooting, car bombs, thunder of tanks, and shocked and crying people. Media is not interested in the fact that despite all the violence, people are trying to live as normal life as possible.

When the children in Kotka began receiving the Palestinian children’s stories from Beirut, the little correspondents began to re-shape their views. Similarly, the Kurdish stories from northern Iraq began to change the one-sided view created by the media. In the stories, children were experiencing frightening things, but they also woke up in the morning, had breakfast and went to school. In the stories, they went shopping for food with their parents. Sometimes, a toy was bought. There were birthdays and other celebrations. New family members were born. Children played with each other. In all Storybridge countries, animals faced difficult situations and cooperated to overcome them. In all three countries, children knew similar stories. For example, many versions of the familiar Little Red Riding Hood story were produced by children Finland, Lebanon and Iraq.

Finnish children’s perceptions about Palestinians in Lebanon and Kurds in Iraq—or perhaps more generally, Palestinians, Libanese, Kurds, Iraqis—became richer and closer to reality. As the similarities between people of one’s own country and those of the other increase, stereotypical stranger and enemy images can diminish. Thus the Storybridge lays foundations for peace education.

In terms of peace education, it is important to understand how the child’s inner world changes when he is thrust in the midst of war, shootings and bombings, and later must face the aftermath of the war. The more collec-tive traumas are experienced, the greater the danger that resolutions are attempted in ways that will only bring new traumas, mutual suspicion and hostility. The likelihood of violent solutions increases if there is no oppor-tunity to process what has happened and examine the resulting emotions.

stories: secular Christian worldview and the world of Islam; poor refugee life and the affluent Finnish way of life. Children taught each other things that were of interest from the perspective of their own age group. Thus, the motivation to learn might be stronger than when adults attempt to teach aspects of another culture they perceive significant.

Through these encounters, children learned also that, despite differences, children’s basic needs are similar from country to country; e.g. the need for security and safety, the nee for privacy and belonging, and the need for love and friendship. As the project progressed, children shared through their stories also some of the most difficult issues in their lives. They told about the death of family members and about divorce of their parents, two problems experienced by children in both countries. Children developed empathy towards other children, despite that their relatives were buried in different ceremonies or that the consequences for divorce might have been different.

Storybridge2 project aims at reducing prejudice and increasing understand-ing among different groups. It provides a view to a foreign country and culture in a way that appeals to both factual curiosity and experiential and emotional perspective taking. Storybridge arouses a desire to get to know different people and cultures at a dialogic level that transcends prejudices. The aim is to raise interest in and respect, tolerance, understanding and empathy for another culture and its people. ‘Otherness’ can then be perceived as common cultural richness. But, at the same time, exchanging stories across countries can bring about insight into similarities between people and their similar basic needs everywhere.

Storycrafting possibilities in peace educationPrejudiced individuals hold pre-determined notions about ‘the other’ as suspicious, bad, or harm causing. For an unprejudiced individual, ‘the oth-er’ is interesting and not to be feared. As prejudices decrease, the likelihood of hostility towards those who are different also decreases. An unprejudiced person perceives having fewer enemies than a prejudiced one.

The Western media coverage from Arab countries is often wars, fighting or damage caused by fighting, and this shapes children’s perceptions. A Finn-ish colleague asked her children whether they wanted to join her in a peace demonstration organized after US invasion of Iraq. The children’s first

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Play is one of the essential means that helps children survive during and after the war. Despite their war experience, Ali and his siblings also began to play as soon as they had the chance: Father was shouting to us all, said take your things and jump in the car. So we all went to the car on top of each other. Went to Sidon. My sister was crying. She wanted her baby doll, and I wanted my bike. Then in Sidon we played with my aunt’s children.

Ali’s story reflects the gender differences about war experience. The girls are terrified; however, the boy is not afraid. Then we went to Beirut and I saw all the destroyed bridges and one car and one van completely burnt. I was not afraid, but m sisters were screaming. Then we arrived to Shatila…

In Shatila, the little refugees encountered the bleak reality of a refugee camp, which was totally different from their life in the rural South Lebanon: When I woke up I found everything differen, not like the south. They do not have milk. I wanted but nobody gave me. Then I was telling my mother. She brought powder and cooked milk.

NISCVT invited Ali and his siblings to join the center’s activities. In Alis’ story, the significance of friends is clear. In the stories children told they missed their familiar friends, but they also rejoiced about the new ones. Then I went to BAS. I started playing and drawing. I am happy now. I meet now friends. Together we do drawing and play.

Returning home is a joyous thing, but it arouses also uncertain emotions. The child encounters destruction of familiar places. The significance of the home as the place of safety and security was evident in many children’s sto-ries. A Palestinian child returning from the North to the Burj el-Barajneh refugee camp must have echoed the emotions of all children: There is no place like home. Ali, now familiar with the storycrafting, told about his home coming emotions to Jamal Abou Saleh, who visited him at home in January 2007: Now I want to tell you about an area called Shameh. I saw it all destroyed and I saw a cat running on the road and I saw people

Collective trauma often creates a sense of collective victimization and the subsequent need for revenge. Storycrafting gives children the opportunity to share their traumatic war experiences, thoughts and feelings with a listening adult. The adult has the opportunity to monitor the child’s healing process, or to note whether the effects of the trauma are more permanent and requiring professional help in order for the child to be able to overcome the difficult psychological experiences that are beyond his processing ability.

Ali, 9 years, as war correspondent: an example of storycrafting in monitoring effects of war NISCVT began a new storycrafting project during the 2007 summer war. Palestinian and Lebanese children displaced from their homes and seeking shelter in the camp, as well as permanent residents of the camp were telling and illustrating their stories during and after the war. With the exception of one, every child told about their war experiences or their images war cre-ated by the situation. Even the child who first told a typical children’s story, told a war-related story the second time around.

One of the narrators was 9-year-old Lebanese-Palestinian Ali, who escaped Israeli fighter planes from his home in South Lebanon, and later to the Shatila camp. Clearly and simply, Ali was able to tell about the effects of the war on both his external and internal realities. He is one of the children who opened adults a door to a child’s internal experience with war. Ali has been an important war correspondent to Finnish NGOs. His unique reports tell about the realities of war in a way no adult is able to. As the war was still raging, Ali wrote the series of his stories in the NISCVT center in Shatila: I was on the balcony. A war plane hit us. Fell down from a chair. Then another rocket targeted the water spring. I was afraid because the house was shaking.

Although the danger is so obvious, it is difficult to act immediately. In exceptional crisis situations an individual is usually overcome by a psycho-logical shock and finds it difficult to believe as true what they are experienc-ing or hearing. Even though Ali was in the center of the events, in his mind he was still in his regular child life with its known objects. This was also the case with his little sister.

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Central themes in the stories told by children during the war were a mas-sive fear of being killed and the fear of losing family members. The stories show also that television plays a role in traumatizing children. In small, cramped homes with many children, television was on all the time so that adults could keep up with the latest events. But many children told that their fear reached panic levels after they had seen on television bodies of children who had died in the bombings. Many said they though they would be the next victim of bombing.

Reading between the lines of horror-filled narration reveals children’s tena-cious attempt to live, amidst the bombing even, a life normal to their age, with play and friends. Through their stories children tell adults that they wish these would arrange for opportunities to play, even in the exceptional situation. In addition, the stories reflect the significance of the sense of community, sharing and mutual solidarity in a situation when one must endure the frightening conditions day after day, with no one able to know when things would get better.

Stories of Nahr el-Bared children: Storycrafting as a means to share trau-matic experiencesNISCVT began their latest storycrafting project soon after the bombing in Nahr al-Bared had forced the inhabitants to leave their homes in May 2007. The project was initiated in NISCVT center in the Beddawi camp and later on also in the other camps receiving refugees from Nahr al-Bared. The ma-jority of the stories recorded so far have been collected by BAS dental clinic dentist, Nadia Eldihide.

First, all Nahr al-Bared children who wanted to participate in the process could do so, without any specific criteria. All of them had experienced traumatic events and used storycrafting to process the frightening events. When a child has been forced into a situation without any choices, it is therapeutic for him to have an opportunity that he can use as he wishes.

When a child hears herself talk about horrible things, and the adult receives her experiences calmly, they don’t sound as horrendous anymore. When one is able to repeat in sequence events that felt chaotic, one can perceive having some control over the traumatic memories. In addition to describing their horror, children were often able to talk already in the first storycrafting situation about their losses and what they missed.

looking at their houses and also the house of Ibrahim’s mother was destroyed… I was sad for the village and for Al Mansori.

I was scared when I saw our door opened but my sister’s fiancé… had cleaned the house and the refrigerator… I slept and the windows of our house were open. But I was not afraid because mom and dad and sisters and brother were all at home.

Ali’s stories reveal that the threats and traumas brought about by the war did not end in South Lebanon despite the cease of hostilities. Ali’s father was injured by a cluster bomb in February 2007. Father’s injury was such a serious issue that, when Jamal was storycrafting Ali a month later in March, Ali told how he cried when he heard the news: …injured in his hand and his head and behind his ear…

When we heard this news about my father I began to cry and my mother went to the hospital in [Tyre]…

And my father staid in hospital three days and he left the hospital healthy…

My mother cooked delicious food for my father and he likes black soda and the father ate it fresh and he also drank Pepsi. And I ate with him and I felt happy when I ate with my father. When my father was in hospital I was sad and did not eat.

In May 2007, Ali told Jamal the first story that is like any told by a boy of his age. His story tells adults that despite all the shocks experienced by the family, Ali began to heal psychologically in slightly less than a year: And we played football, with Muhammad, Nour and Zahlaa. We played by Muhammad’s house. Every team was two persons, Muhammad and I, Nour and Zahlaa. Also we won me and Muhammad…

I am happy at school because they have a big football ground and it is sand… and I still dream of becoming an important football player.

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When we were going to Oumra we saw monkeys on our way. We stopped to watch them. We had bread and started feeding them. Their leader came and took all the bread and ate all by him. We started to say: “God bless this monkey he ate all the bread.” Then we kept going till we reached the hotel. It was very hot. After spending three days on the road we went and saw the black stone. Then my father bought a car for us to play with all of us and bought a doll for my little sister. After ten days we came back with the bus to Nahr al-Bared. When we reached home I was very tired and went to bed directly. Then my mother woke me up. I found my grandees at our home. I started telling them that I saw the black stone and how I enjoyed Oumra.

And my friend Mahmoud came to see me. I told him how much I enjoyed the Oumra, and wished he was with me. The second day I went to my friend Mohmad, he is my nephew too. We went to the river. We did not swim, but played.

Afterwards war started near our place, and we woke up on heavy bombing. We woke up frightened and scared. Then the bombing got less. We went to the shelter all of us except mum and dad. Then we went back home and stayed three days with parents. Then we went out of the camp, but on our way snipers shot at us. My father got injured. When I saw my father I started crying. Also a woman got shot and her intestines were outside, and the baby in her tummy went out. And the bus turned on its side.

Then the Red Cross took all of us to a house, but my father to the hospital. My father’s friend had moaning memorial for my father. I was crying and my mother was crying.

I told my grandfather how I saw my father injured. I stayed one month in Beddawi, playing with my friend Mohamed Alhassan. When we were walking I saw a car in a shop like the one my father brought to me from Oumra. I wished, brought it with me.

After the ‘first-aid’ storycrafting, the process was continued with children whose experiences were particularly painful or who had suffered extreme losses. They have typically been children who have lost either parent, in the worst case in front of their own eyes.

Storycrafting has become also a means of referral to further care. During storycrafting, the adults have discovered needs for speech therapy, dental care, social work and psychotherapy. Through storycrafting, children have joined many of the NISCVT’s diverse activities. Nadia Eldihide said she had learned a great deal during storycrafting. She was particularly surprised the storycrafting facilitating her dental work as she now finds it easier to work with the children even in the dental clinic.

When the process has been ongoing with the same children, children have taken advantage of the situation and shared many of the difficulties they are facing in the schools crowded with refugees. They have talked about the problems of their whole extended family. The storycrafting adult visiting the schools populated by refugees builds also relationships with other fam-ily members, not only the child. A family who has lost one parent might seek the storycrafting group’s support in difficult of otherwise significant situations, for example when bringing the father’s body from the hospital or when visiting father’s grave.

In case the trauma is very severe, the child does not necessarily want to continue the process after the initial story. His own telling about the event can bring to the surface such strong emotions that the child is unable to bear them, and thus tries to avoid them by not telling another story. But even in these cases, children have gladly participated in other activities of the storycrafting group.

Another child might avoid distressful memories by deciding that, rather than telling about the difficult event, she will tell about something cheerful instead. But if the trauma is acute, it pushes to the surface and eventually the child will talk about it. This was the case, for example, with the 8-year-old Mohmad, who told his first story to Nadia in Beddawi. Then the family moved to relatives in Sabra, where Jamal Abou Saleh storycrafted him. Mohmad said he did not wish to tell about Nahr al-Bared, but would tell about Oumra (minor pilgrimage) his family did to Mecca the year before by father’s bus:

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Abou Zeel teaches to care for our shared living environment1

Kirsti Palonen

Fifty years ago in Sweden, a man named Gösta Frohm created an imagi-nary character, which he named ‘Skogsmulle’ (‘skog’ = forest; ‘mulle’ = a Frohm-coined word), who is known in English as Forest Mulle. According to the story penned by Frohm, this imaginary character was born naked in the forest. Forest animals and two children dressed the creature, so that it would survive outdoors in the changing weather of the north. Forest Mulle first appeared in Lebanon in the year 2004, in the Beddawi refugee camp.

It was difficult to find for Forest Mulle—this ambassador of the forests and advocate of nature — an Arabic name with whom the children in the refugee camp would have immediately identified. In summer 2007 in Beddawi, it was named Abou Zeel2, and the children began to use the name right away. Although Gösta Frohm Foundationista in Sweden has not yet confirmed whether the name has been accepted in their registry, I shall use the name Abou Zeel in this article. The original character is non-gendered, neither human nor animal. The Arabic name adopted in Beddawi indicates not only that the character is gendered but also that it may have offspring.

The character created by Gösta Frohmin symbolizes forests. Later on, three friends were born to Forest Mulle that symbolize waterways, mountains, and the space. Each character has its own story, and all four have their own song. These fantasy characters lead children to become familiar with their environment imaginatively through play.

After Forest Mulle was born, the Swedish Association for Promotion of Outdoor Life began to gather children in small groups to explore their immediate natural environment, and the Association trained leaders for these groups. In the 1950s, unlike today, the Nordic countries had few

Then my uncle came and took us to Beirut, and now we are staying at Aldaaok in Sabra. Today I went to Alsoumood in Shatila because I came back from Beddawi. They had a party and I enjoyed a lot.

One can imagine that as the story unfolded, Mohmad’s trust toward the adult grew stronger, and thus he was able to share with her something he afraid to bring up at first. The adult had passed the trust test, although the child most likely did not even know having set it for her. It did not seem to bother Mohmad that he ended up talking about something he had decided not to talk about. When the family returned from Sabra to Beddawi, Mohmad was ready to tell his third story, this time again to Nadia.

I would like to close with the words of 12-year-old Farah Shehadeh, who participated in storycrafting in the Rashidieh refugee camp in South Lebanon in summer 2006. The concluding call of her story is universal and always timely: I wish to say to the whole world: Look after little children. What crime have they committed that they should be killed or made disabled.

Endnotes

1. Translated from Finnish by the editor.

2. ‘Storybridge’ is very similar to the ‘Partnership Story Project’ described by Kenneth Cushner (Creating Cross-cultural understanding through internationally cooperative story writing. Social Education 56(1), 1992, pp. 43-46) and initiated by Parents and Teachers for Social Responsibility in Vermont, USA, in 1989. (Editor’s note.)

Kirsti Palonen is a counseling psychologist and founding members of the Finnish chapter of Psychologists for Social Responsibility.

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Abou Zeel as an educator in peaceful times Abou Zeel and his friends have simple messages from nature: Enjoy the outdoors! Learn from nature, play, sing and use your imagination! Love nature and take care of it!

Every Forest Mulle nature school group has its own ‘study area’ outdoors; in Sweden and Finland, this is nearly always in the forest. Each group’s own nature area is marked by walking its borders several times. The group revis-its this ’classroom’ over and over again, for example, once a week, or even daily as in the nature-focused daycare centers in the Nordic countries. The group leader allows the nature in all its manifestations, within the invisible borders, to taking on the teaching role, while the teacher and Forest Mulle assisting the great teacher.

When the location is always the same, children are able to observe the changes occurring in nature as the season change and time passes. In Forest Mulle pedagogical principles it is essential that children learn on their own through discovery, exploration, questioning and contemplation.

In the leadership training, participants experience the same activities that they will later use with children. For adults, the courses are usually enjoy-able and relaxing. The trainees get a sense of how it is possible to awaken an inspiring and interesting relationship with nature through activities and games that draw on all the senses.

Because naturegroup participants are young and the program is part of their other daycare activities, the nature class must be close to their daycare center. For the Beddawi training, an open space in the close proximity of the NISCVT was identified as suitable. Much of the area was dry ground, with some grassy plants here and there — at first glance a rather dismal location for a natureschool. However, the exercises revealed that even this bleak terrain contained a diversity of life. We discovered plants previously not noticed, we were able to observe the life of many insects, and sheep also wondered in to observe us. Sticks and pieces of dry branches provided measuring tools and revealed the importance of a unit of measure.

Abou Zeel (one of the trainers in costume) appeared the second training day, sporting the trademark green suit and a hat made of birch bark and

daycare centers and mothers cared for their children at home. At the begin-ning, also the group leaders came from Swedish homes and were primarily housewives. Today, these natureschool groups are an integral part of day-care center activities. Both Sweden and Finland today have nature-focused daycare centers, where a significant part of the daily instruction takes place outdoors regardless of the weather.

Abou Zeel arrives to Lebanon via FinlandFrom Sweden, the program has spread to many other countries. To the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon Abou Zeel arrived via Finland. Over twenty years, activists from the Finnish Psychologists for Social Responsibil-ity (FPSR) have visited several times the numerous refugee camps, where the association’s partner organization, The National Institution of Social Care and Vocational Training (NISCVT) operates.

During the visits, the psychologists noticed how little evidence there was in the camps of anything that to Finns would evoke ‘nature’; green trees, shrubs or plants, let alone forests. The inevitable question that came to mind was what is the relationship to nature of children growing up in these circumstances, and how could children learn to take global responsibility for the welfare of nature.

FPSR contacted Suomen Metsämörriohjaajat organization (Forest Mulle Leaders in Finland), and the two Finnish associations, together with NISCVT, began a joint project “Welcome to Nature”, the aim of which has been to integrate the nature school program into the NISCVT daycare centers’ activities. Two NISCVT kindergarten teachers came to Finland to prepare for the activity with representatives of the Finnish associations, and so far, two leaders’ training courses have been conducted in NISCVT’s center in Beddawi.

In summer 2006, the plan was to organize training of trainers, but the plan had to be moved to 2007 due to the war. At the time of this writing, the plans are still on hold, now due to the Nahr el-Bared camp fighting that has had its impact on all the camps in Lebanon, but most notably on the destroyed Nahr el-Bared and the refugee-crowded Beddawi. However, Abou Zeel has not been idle during the summer’s exceptional circumstances.

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over and over again. Each time the spoon hit the floor, the boy covered his ears and shouted “Boom! I’m scared of the bomb! I’m scared of the bomb!”

Together with Howaida, I began to think how best to discuss the dangers of mines and bombs with young children. Howaida, who has been involved in the ‘Welcome to nature’ project from the very beginning and applied it in her own work at the NISCVT daycare center in Beddawi, proposed that we bring in Abou Zeel to help.

Because approaches used in natureschool produce results over time, but war pollution can kill in a flash, Abou Zeel had to think of something new. Abou Zeel himself was also in danger; the danger was not that the tail would wear out while cleaning up, but that Abou Zeel would blow up trying to clean up war rubbish. So, Abou Zeel and Howaida decided to use puppet theater instead. Howaida wrote a script for a puppet play with four roles: Abou Zeel, Sumoud (Beit Atfal Assumoud is NISCVT Arabic name), a policeman, and a police car. A variety of ‘mines’ and ‘bombs’ were used as props. The storyline was simple: While walking in the woods, Abou Zeel notices some unusual flowers. Wanting at first to examine them by touching, Abou Zeel remembers that if something new or unusual appears in nature, it may be dangerous. So, Abou Zeel calls Sumoud to come and see them. Sumoud calls the police, who, to the great amusement of chil-dren, arrives in a police car whose only lines are “Wee-waa, wee-waa!” The policeman takes care of the removal of the mines and thanks Abou Zeel and Sumoud for notifying the police about them.

Although removing ordinance is not actually that simple, the play gives children key advice: strange objects must not be touched but they must be brought to the attention of adults. At the conclusion of the play, all the characters appeared on stage to sing a song written by Howaida: Bombs hurting us, Rockets killing u.s Mother, protect us From what is happening to us. My child, do not pick Strange things, might be an ammunition. Do not think it is a toy, It is a fearful thing. If you touch, you bleed,

decorated with a feather died cranberry red. Abou Zeel engaged participants in conversation, games and songs in the way the character would later engage participants’ young students. An essential aspect of Abou Zeel is a long tail that reaches the ground, and the character explains how it uses the tail to clean the nature from rubbish people have left behind, encouraging children to help in order to protect the tail from wearing out from excessive use.

There is little lecturing in the natureschool. The leader guides children through games and activities that help children engage all their senses to make observations about nature. Children’s interest in phenomena of nature increases and they begin to raise questions. Together children and the leader ponder the given observation, and the adult guides children to make hypotheses and to examine which ones are the most likely explana-tions. Alongside games, songs and play-like exercises, children are also taught nature awareness in small doses and as conclusions to children’s own questions and observations. Central theme is the cycle of nature and understanding of one’s personal responsibility in conservation. Equally important, however, is that children are able to relax in nature, use their imagination and have fun in a peaceful way.

The aim of natureschool is not merely develop knowledge about nature but to awaken in children a loving relationship with nature. One of the basic premises of Abou Zeel pedagogy is that humans want to protect what they love.

Abu Zeel as an educator in exceptional circumstances In Lebanon, wars have been nature’s worst enemies. At the time of this writing, South Lebanon’s nature is polluted by unexploded clusterbombs and the sea coast has not yet recovered from the huge oil spill. Dangerous waste has also spread into Nahr el-Bared refugee camp, and in Beddawi, posters by various organizations describe and warn about unexploded ordi-nance. But little children cannot read.

A little 3-year-old boy made me think about the dangers of landmines and unexploded bombs. I was visiting kindergarten teacher Howaida Al-Ali in her home in the Beddawi camp, where the little boy was also visiting with his mother. Suddenly, the boy began to throw a plastic spoon to the floor,

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The battles of Nahr el-Bared have already left their mark on children’s play culture. The new game of Beddawi boys is “Fatah al-Islam,” in which there are two teams: the Lebanese army and Fatah al-Islam. I have also often observed children’s play related to funerals. Abou Zeel play would counter these war and death games by emphasizing the meaning of life in all its forms and the importance for all of us to protect life.

Endnotes

1. Translated from Finnish by the editor.

2. Editor’s note: Zeel in the Arabic name appears to be a colloquial pronunciation of the Arabic word theil, meaning ‘tail’, as Forest Mulle sports a long sweeping tail attached to its pants, thanks to the ingenuity of some moles, mice and earwigs. The word Abou means the father of someone (as in Abou Ali = father of Ali); however, the term is also often used to indicate a special attribute, as in Abou Shanab, ‘the father of moustache,’ referring to someone with notable moustache; thus Abou Zeel could also refer to ‘one with a formidable tail’.

My child be alert. Do not come near it, Inform the police directly, They can protect us.

After the song, Abou Zeel (played by Howaida) told children how he was born in the forest and how all the creatures help him. Abou Zeel also asked children to be his friends and promise that they would tell adults about any strange objects they might encounter.

In Beddawi, many children have difficulties concentrating as a result of traumatic experiences. Noise pollution caused by extremely crowded condi-tions further reduces abilities to concentrate. The echoes of shelling and shooting at Nahr el-Bared reverberated over children’s play. In every group there were children, who not only were able to concentrate themselves but also hindered the concentration of others, and group leaders frequently had to spend time trying to calm the groups. However, the forty young children who attended the first puppet performance, as well as the eighty slightly older children of the second performance, all followed the play attentively. Also, when Abou Zeel told his own story, everyone listened quietly. It was the most quiet moment I have ever experienced in the NISCVT’s Beddawi center.

The staff member, who had played the policeman, escorted her group from the second performance and had the opportunity to hear children’s feedback. After discussing which character they would want to play, they decided that it was, indeed, best not to touch strange objects, even if they looked liked toys.

I sincerely hope that children will begin to play the games of Abou Zeel. They would help not only internalize the need to exercise caution in dan-gerous places but also Abou Zeel’s view about the importance of protecting nature—including humans.