Teacher Education for Peace and Harmony
The world has recently seen a nuclear disaster during the Tsunami in Japan, political Tsunamis in Middle East and Africa; and continuing racial & ethnic conflicts in Sri Lanka, east Asia and middle-east; terrorist and fundamentalist attacks in India, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan etc. and closer home the Maoist Violence. All this is largely an expression of intolerance, manifestations of racial and ethnic hatred, the perpetuation of violence for ulterior motives and the discrimination, inequality and growing disparities between the rich and the poor. If civilizations aren't tuned to the reality of human existence, they conserve the worst of human behavior and free themselves from any responsibility of creating a positive, peaceful co-existence amongst the diversity of beings. Eventually, they become corrupt and self-destructing. The events cited as examples above are not wholes unto themselves but comprised of individual units of human beings, the simmering discontent of each of whom eventually adds up to a diseased society and successive catastrophes therein.
Education is one of the most important modes of dealing with this malaise at its root- that is at the level of individual thought and behavior. Value based teaching which expounds practices of Peace and Harmony are extremely relevant and significant for building a society that is characterized by mutual cooperation, fundamental freedom, peace, humane conduct and co-existence. The educated human being is the fundamental unit of a healthy society and education which is focused on his or her creative, intellectual and spiritual development has the power to extrapolate individual excellence into a thriving, harmonious character of a whole civilization. In the recent past, across the world, and especially in the Asian countries, attempts to evolve education systems based on peace, human values, morals, character-development and ethics are gaining popularity as nation-states, international organizations, global corporations and civil society organizations increasingly recognize the importance of such education. The urgency and necessity of such education was recognized by the member states of UNESCO in 1974 and reaffirmed in the Integrated framework of action on education for peace, human rights, and democracy in 1994. UNESCO is committed to promoting universal values of peace and non-violence, human rights and social justice with intercultural dialogue and mutual understanding. The approach of UNESCO to educating for peace is multidimensional and for that it links education with a range of activities to address the root causes of violence and to create an atmosphere of peaceful co-existence and sustainable development.
In the changing global scenario the main aim of ‘Teacher Education’ will be to help people to develop themselves as responsible citizens of their immediate society and the world, who shall not only live conscientiously but also strive toward building a humane mankind. The focus of ‘Teacher Education’ would be to find and evolve ways of inculcating values of peace and harmony based on concepts of right living, mutual respect and trust, cooperation, social justice, open-mindedness and fruitful co-existence. Keeping this in view it is necessary to reorient and restructure ‘Teacher Education’ programs to include the need for this kind of tutoring. Teacher Education for peace and harmony is intrinsically linked to the understanding of global world orders and commonalities and at the same time differences of socio-political-economic and legal systems.
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