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Education plays a transformative role in fostering peace and is a bulwark against apathy

Education plays a transformative role in fostering peace and is a bulwark against apathy
Mark Potterton
By Mark Potterton
7 Oct 2024
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A new Unesco report provides an overview of the importance of peace education and highlights the challenges and opportunities for using it to bring about lasting global peace.

There are so many threats to global peace around the world, and this report from Unesco argues that now more than ever people should be applying all the tools of peace-building, diplomacy and conflict transformation available to us.

I read this anonymous quote on a teacher blog the other day: “I’m a Gen X teacher so I’ve been at this for a while. I used to hate it when I would hear veteran teachers, or just people in general, talk about how kids have changed. It always sounded like ‘blah blah’ to me. For years I always said that kids are the same as they’ve always been. But I don’t feel that way any more. I’d reckon that in the last five or six years I’ve noticed that kids seem indifferent. 

“I chose that word because it’s the only word I can think of to describe what I see and what I feel. It is just like a lack of interest. I feel invisible in front of my students, and they seem tuned out. I feel like I must practically do magic tricks to get their attention. And this has been going on for a couple of years now, starting even before the pandemic. And what is sad is I teach primary students, in grades 4 and 5. It’s this attitude that is easily summed up in the word ‘whatever’. I try to be engaging and interactive, I have kept up with technology and I think I’m pretty creative. It is so depressing.”

This quote made me sad because I have had similar experiences with some children. I thought to myself that, in an increasingly complex society and a rapidly changing technology-based economy that poses new and demanding challenges to schools and communities alike, children can’t be indifferent. School systems worldwide are responding and developing frameworks that emphasise the development of the skills, knowledge and attitudes necessary for success in the 21st century.

Fostering lasting peace


The report provides an overview of the transformative role of education in fostering lasting peace. It sets out to examine the evidence, trends, challenges and potential to harness education effectively as a tool for change, and explains how and why peace education is a necessity to peace in all situations.

The report recognises that global military spending reached an all-time high in 2022, reaching more than $2.24-trillion. More importantly, it notes that the true costs of war and militarism go beyond lives lost and money budgeted, and include ecological devastation, gender-based violence and collective trauma from armed conflict from which it takes generations to recover.

In the 21st century there is general agreement that the social and political purposes of peace education are directed towards the elimination of violence in all its various forms and manifestations (negative peace), and the nurturing and establishment of the conditions necessary for peace to flourish at intrapersonal, interpersonal, intergroup, national and/or international levels.

Transformative and futures-oriented


Peace education is also transformative and futures-oriented: it seeks to nurture attitudes and capacities for pursuing peace personally, interpersonally, socially and politically.

Peace education is transformative, and the goals involve personal, relational, political, structural, cultural and ecological dimensions. These goals are cross-cutting and interrelated, each shaping and informing the other. The goals are implemented through a diversity of transformative learning approaches and practices.

Personal: Develop capacities for managing internal conflicts, biases and ethical/moral decision-making; engage in critical self-awareness and introspection; nurture social-emotional intelligence and creativity; and foster political agency.

Relational: Develop empathy for and understanding of others, as well as appreciation of cultural, ethnic and national differences; foster global citizenship; and develop skills and capacities for resolving and transforming conflicts without violence.

Political: Develop understanding of basic principles of rights and responsibilities; foster civic engagement and political agency, and develop advocacy skills; and experience and practise collective and democratic decision-making processes.

Structural: Develop awareness of the systems in which relationships are embedded and the institutions through which norms and values are established and maintained; and understand equity and justice, and how to pursue them.

Cultural: Develop awareness of the cultural roots of knowledge creation and meaning construction; cultural assumptions related to communication, expression of emotion, ways of settling differences and approaches to dialogue; and nurture appreciation of cultural differences.

Ecological: Nurture respect for all life and ecological thinking and awareness; foster systems and future thinking in support of sustainability; and develop awareness of interdependence and interconnection among peoples and the broader web of life.

The report acknowledges that formal education is one of the most influential means of cultural production and reproduction in society and, as such, including peace education in formal schools must be a key strategy of peacebuilding.

“The content of the learning should be meaningful and relevant to the context in which it takes place, rooted in an understanding that such needs, while local, are also global in scope.”

The report argues that peace education is not a viable strategy unless we invest in it. The authors believe that, unless peace education is prioritised, it will merely remain an add-on, as it has for so many years.

More importantly, the report acknowledges that living in a world of converging global crises breeds hopelessness and apathy. 

“The enormity and complexity of the challenges, and the often slowness of formal response mechanisms fosters fear. Under these conditions, fears for the future are considered realistic and hopes for peace are considered unrealistic.”

Peace education deals with these challenges by focusing on histories of successful social change, fostering skills of the imagination and developing capacities for futures thinking.

The following recommendations, which are aligned with those outlined in the recently adopted “Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development”, are proposed to help to improve and strengthen the effectiveness and prevalence of peace education: 

  • Adopt laws, norms, policies and strategies supportive of peace education.

  • Support teacher participation, development, preparation and training in peace education.

  • Prioritise funding and support of peace education and peace education research.

  • Invest in early childhood and lifelong learning for peace.

  • Support youth engagement, participation and empowerment.


The final recommendation, if implemented, would go a long way towards allaying the fears of the teacher in her blog. Young people are seen as the recipients of education, but their concerns are rarely part of the education agenda.

The report argues that, for education to be transformative, it must be learner-centred and prioritise the concerns and motivations of the youth.

“Young people should have a say in matters that affect them, particularly in the context of their formal educational experiences and the content of their learning.” DM

Dr Mark Potterton is a former principal of Sacred Heart College and director of the Three2Six Refugee Children’s Education Project.

Peace education in the 21st century: an essential strategy for building lasting peace – Unesco Digital Library

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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