Seeds of Peace
Martin Luther King, Jr. once wrote about education:
The function of education … is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.
One week ago, fourteen seeds began a journey of growth. We learned that a simple task of making a statement about education actually educated us in itself. In our discussions we shared information, we challenged that information, and then we intensively and critically examined how to apply all that we learned. What we gained from this process was a first hand understanding of the important role education can play in uprooting hatred and terror.
What is education, we asked ourselves? Education is an ongoing process of receiving, processing, and applying information in our lives. Through education we gradually discover ourselves and create a path that leads to success.
We acknowledged that formal education taught in school is intertwined with media, the internet, society (including social interactions), religion, and family heritage, all of which create our world of education. For the sake of facilitating the task of this committee, we will be drawing an artificial line between formal and the other sources of education, which are being addressed by our peers in some of the other committees. We will be specifically looking at that part of formal education that we believe promotes violence in our societies, such as history and social studies.
Formal education shapes the way people think, which in turn influences their actions and whether or not they resort to violence. Education might promote a sense of hatred towards the other side in two ways: a) by cultivating a feeling of superiority that may wrongly legitimize acts of violence and discrimination against others, and b) by promoting a sense of victimization and a feeling of being discriminated against which may lead to a need for revenge that justifies acts of violence.
Education may instill in students those feelings that lead to hatred in two ways, one obvious and the other subtle.
Obvious Ways:
Teachers and textbooks may openly preach hatred and the dehumanization of the other side. In addition, we as Seeds have had teachers who have criticized us for our participation in Seeds of Peace and for having friends from the other side. Some of us have even been labeled traitors by our teachers.
Subtle Ways:
- Biased Textbooks: Textbooks that are biased, by their negative representation of the other side/the enemy, provoke a sentiment of vengeance and violence. The perspectives that such books provide lack a balanced picture of events, which result in nurturing a positive image of our side and an unflattering view of the other side. A biased text blames the other side for initiating conflicts while describing the actions of our side as reactions. Furthermore, the manipulation of language by using different words to describe the same acts, such as our soldiers are freedom fighters who kill the enemy while their soldiers are terrorists who murder us. They also convey the idea that we are always right.
- Glorification of War: Wars and war heroes are glorified as if they are the central part in a nation's history, which could suggest that war is the key solution to disputes with other nations.
- Excluded History: Biased textbooks tend to exclude parts of history that show the other side in a positive light or that may demonstrate negative actions committed by our side. In addition such books don't draw attention to periods of time when conflicting countries shared peaceful relations.
- An Exclusive Focus on One's Own History: The lack of knowledge of the world at large leaves no room for critical analysis which ultimately leads us to believe everything we're told, which makes it easy to hate others.