POSITIVE PEACE
"The teacher that learns, and the learner that teach". This was one of the messages of educationalist Paulo Freire. The further we get into the workshops in the South Bronx, the more meaning these words give to us. Every day with the kids is a learning process just as much for us as it is for them. We go into the classroom with certain ideas and leave with our mindsets re-sculptured. An example is one of the main philosophies we work from: positive peace education. This is the kind of peace education works with understanding the root of the conflict. It is positive, future oriented, and works with empowering youth to build a peaceful future. In contrast, negative peace has more of a character of damage-control: the peace-building comes in after the damage is done.
Now, we would be naïve if we thought that we could build our work only around positive peace. We work within a reality where negative peace education is the norm more than the positive peace education. As our experiences in the classroom tell us, much of the peace education does not occur until after the damage is done. In many cases it wouldn’t even qualify to be called peace education. What some school systems seem to lack is an understanding of the fact that violence and fights are easier to avoid if the youth learn how to make peace. The system we have seen so far is working with punishment and intimidation rather than prevention and understanding. It is this approach that we are trying to change. Punishing kids who make a wrong step will most likely not keep them on the right trail in the future. This is supported by numbers of studies (see for instance the advancementproject.org) but still needs to be reflected in the school and legal systems.
"Peace education asks the question: what do we need to create a culture of peace and justice in the future"? This future tense is important when differentiating peace education from other forms of human rights approaches. What we aim to achieve with positive peace education is not the “transmission” of knowledge, not the “transformation” of that knowledge. With our youth media project we do not aim to simply work with media and create various films however, we want to provide educational resources, provide plans for the future, offer a network of like- minded people, and overall offer information where human rights and positive peace can continue. As Peter Lucas states, "progressive youth media practices today are not only concerned with the creation of media, but also how to package their work for change". (Lucas, 2010).
In our youth media classes we aim to go into a dialog with the kids, show them respect and show that we have confident in their ability to change things for the better. The positive change must come from within the youths themselves. Our challenge with this is working in school systems where punishment is institutionalized. How can we get free hands to push the education of youth in another direction? This is two-sided. First of all we need not to be tied down by a system that is not ready to work within our philosophy of positive peace education. Secondly, we can start trying to push for changes in the system. As it is know we seem to be trapped somewhere in the middle.
