Internationale Konferenz in Dresden, 21.-23.Mai 2010:
Vortrag von Maria Neuberger-Schmidt über Friedenserziehung:

"Education towards Peace"

WFWP: Dieser Vortrag findet in englischer Sprache im Rahmen der Konferenz

"Empowering women to form alliances to create a culture of peace" - Fulfilling UNO-Millenium Decade Goal Nr. 3: Promoting gender equality and empowerment of women

Hier das Manuskript zum Vortrag:

Maria Neuberger-Schmidt

„who longs for perfection must love imperfection“

Education for Peace

Education for Peace form me is education towards

• Selfassurance
• Responsibility
• Cooperation

It is the ability for peaceful life and cooperation within

• the family
• kindergarden and school
• the society and the world

In the bible education towards piece has the simple wordings:

“love your neighbour as you love yourself”

Love towards oneself is not evident, as therapeuts know.

Love towards oneself does not exclude but include the love towards the next, otherwise it is egoisme and egocentrisme.

One who truly loves himself or herself

• Can accept himself as he is, with his strength and weaknesses
• Can resist to frustration and finds something positive in every situation
• Has enough self-assurance to support criticism and does not need permanent recognition
• Does not put herself into the middle on the expense of somebody else
• Stays to his opinion even if it is not popular
• Does the right things, even if they are to her disadvantage
• Does not need action and distraction all the time, he gets along with himself
• Is not drug and consumer addicted
• Feels inner richness and is capable of self-restriction
• Feels joy about the wealth and success of others, as well as compassion for other’s problems and pains
• Puts her capabilities and talents towards the service of humanity
• Is thankful for life

What children really need is

• Attention, tenderness and esteem
• Compassion, solidarity, the feeling to belong to somebody and somewhere
• Trust and confidence into their capabilities, the feeling of being taken as serious, and also that we trust them to be considerate and thoughtful. Children need rights and duties suitable to their age and development
• Authority: they need loving strength, structures, rules, does and don’ts.

More detailed let’s express it through the so-called “3 baskets principle”

Each child needs a certain amount of

Basket Nr. 1: Liberty

Respecting child’s freedom

Recognizing children’s feelings and needs

Accepting children the way they are as a personality

Give space to joy, creativity and experiments

Let them decide things on their own according to their age and capability

Freedom needs a frame of security.

Contact your child where it just is – according to development and present emotions

Basket 2: Cooperation – Grant Children a Say

By considering children as partners

Strengthen their competences and self-assurance

Ask for their opinion and their suggestions to solve a problem

Give them a chance for co-decision

Share the responsibility with them

Strengthen their readiness for effort and efficiency

Honour the engagement as much as the result

Lead them towards realistic self-criticism by giving a positive view on themselves

Consider failure as chances to learn

Basket 3: Authority

Grant strength and selfcontrol through loving authority

Be a positive and authentic role-model

Self-discipline and mutual respect

Grant rules, structures, order, does and don’ts

Goals of Education:

• Respect for oneself and for others
• Takeover of responsibility
• Readiness and capability to respect moral authorities
• Follow orders and rules that make sense
• Respect laws
• Joy and creativity in cooperation
• Critical sense and courage to say no when necessary
• Capability to peacefully resolve conflicts
• Consider conscious and God as supreme authorities

Overall Development of personality

Families and social institutions must put more attention to the emotional and spiritual needs and development of children.

Learning must not be restricted to accumulation of intellectual knowledge but must also emphasise on practical everyday life skills and on creative and social competences.

Schools and Universities

Must not only be a place of intellectual training.

They also must emphasise on the emotional and moral development of children and youngsters. The small nuclear family, often only a 2-person-family in the middle of big townships does not any more offer enough possibilities for social learning. Therefore institutions like kindergardens, schools, music and sports associations and churches are of increasing importance.

Children need:

Rights and duties

A culture of solidarity, of attentiveness and care for each other through common projects

They must get a feeling about themselves to be valuable and of value for the community

They must experience esteem and learn how to express it to others.

Children need challenges and trust in their motivation and capabilities.

Cooperation instead of competition must be the dominating spirit. If competition, than only in a respectful, sportive and fair spirit.

Children need parents and educators who have love and understanding for them, with whom they can talk about their ideas and feelings, about their success and failures and to whom they have to report and sometimes justify.

Mistakes are to be considered as chances for learning and developing. Don’t ask “whose fault is it?” but “who is responsible for what?” the “20/80” rule has proved as useful: 20 % talk about the reasons why things went wrong, 80 % let’s focus on how to make it better.

Children must have occasion to express and reflect on their opinions by exchanging among peers, and with adults, in a spirit of understanding, tolerance and remorse.

They must defend but also respect point of views.

They must develop a healthy attitude for effectiveness and responsibility.

Children are idealistic

We must train their native capability to distinguish between good and bad. They need religious and ethical basics given to them by adults to whom they can rely and whom they can trust as role-models.

When children learn to respect and to really listen to each other, they have got a solid basis for peaceful conflict resolution. Then they won’t consider the foreigner as a danger or menace, but as somebody to enrich their mind and experience. If then they get into conflicts within the family, the society and other peoples, they will be willing and able to find peaceful solutions.

Maria Neuberger-Schmidt,

Elternwerkstatt, www.elternwerkstatt.at