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From struggling for peace to peace making.
Quite
recently our planet was under the danger of the world
nuclear war. But today mankind having overcome this stage
has made its choice towards preserving life on our planet.
But now we are under the threat of the so called
international terrorism and local wars. The former like the
latter as well as any military conflict testifies
to our disability on the part of people, groups of people or
states to settle conflicts by peaceful methods, to
co-operate or to come to agreement. This disability is
characteristic of many people on the Earth but it is
manifested on different levels:
-
Conflicts arise in families
between spouses
-
Conflicts arise between
parents and children
-
Conflicts arise in working
communities
-
Conflicts arise between
teachers and students, etc
These
general conflicts have given birth to a whole science called
conflictology, which studies the ways of settling conflicts.
BUT: wouldn’t the other approach be better: instead of
teaching people to settle conflicts to teach them to
live without conflicts, by means of
developing in them an ability to overcome problems in a
peaceful way, an ability to carry on a dialogue. With such
an approach fight against terrorism will give way to its
prevention, eliminating the very causes of conflicts or
military ways of settling any problems.
And it is possible!
In our opinion it is an efficient way to transform the whole
of mankind into a peaceful community.
What is to be done?
-
to proclaim the following principles on
the basis of which any decisions up to law making are to be
taken as imperatives:
-
Positiveness
-
General responsibility
-
Consulting (consultiveness)
The first
principle will promote taking creative decisions,
the second will provide the realization of the
idea that on the thoughts and actions of each of us today
depend the present and future of anyone else and everyone
else on our planet. We all know the “butterfly effect”. It
can be commented on with the words of a remarkable
philosopher and thinker: “We
are all drops in the same ocean” and “We are all
leaves of the same tree”. This principle is to be the next
step of the globalists’ principle – act locally, think
globally.
The third principle means priority of collective
decisions and helps uniting people.
Mankind on the Earth is but one
large family, and each of us must realize that he or she is
its member! Unconditionally! And this is real. This is
something we must aim at.
How to achieve this?
What is the process
like?
Before we answer this questions
let us single out the two components of this process:
immediate and perspective.
So, we must immediately:
a) On behalf of the
participants of this forum ask all governments
to observe the above mentioned three principles when
realizing their functions. Moreover, maximum efforts should
be taken to introduce them into practice on all levels and
in all spheres of social-political life: mass media, trade
unions, youth organizations and the like.
b)
address all law making institutions with the
proposal to include those principles into constitutions, and
into laws on education in particular.
c)
call for
all educationalists
of the planet to analyze the current contents of education,
methods and principles of organizing the educational
process in all educational institutions from crèches up to
universities and bring them in correspondence with
these principles.
d)
address all parents who are their children’s first
teachers with the demand to become aware of their
responsibility and to raise their parents’ competence and
apply the three principles not only in their relations
with children but in reference to themselves. For it
is parents who first and foremost serve their children as
role models in building up their relations with the social
structure. And this process is endless for both children and
parents.
The
perspective component presumes providing transition
to educational process headed for peacemaking. Analogues of
such education do already exist, but they are all of local
character. It is obligatory that peace making should become
one of the guaranteed outcomes of education. And it is
possible.
The
expected result of such process is bringing up a new
generation capable of transforming the negative into the
positive, taking responsible decisions collectively.
Unfortunately, it
ought to be mentioned that in Russia there are but a few
schools where such experience has been achieved, and
thus these are local experiences not only on the scale
of the planet but on the scale of Russia as well. Whereas it
is Russia that needs such experience throughout first and
foremost being a multi-national state with a huge amount of
unsettled problems. We must realize that the wave of
war against terrorism results in the opposite: grown
ups and children are overwhelmed by fear, which is negative
but not positive. Fear increases
personal alertness but not universal responsibility.
Who is to do it?
-
We, those present here.
-
Teachers, scientists (ethics
of the experiments carried out should not be neglected)
-
Parents (there are many of us
on the planet and this is great potential, which has not
found its due use in the process of peace making)
At that, the
last comprise the overwhelming majority, and it is the
result of our work in this aspect that is to bring about the
most noticeable effect, the importance of which can’t be
overestimated. That is why we consider this work to be the
most actual, foreground and pressing. It is the level on
which we could transform that positive local experience into
universal, and it won’t fail to yield its positive result.
Moreover, we have already got algorithms of
activities in this direction:
-
Hopelessness is to
yield to creativity and inspiration;
-
Passiveness – to
activeness
-
Personal
responsibility/irresponsibility – to general
responsibility;
-
Speaking teachers – to
speaking pupils;
-
Monologue – to
dialogue;
-
Solely right answer –
to unity of various opinions;
-
Investigation of a problem
– to investigation of the possibility of
transformation of a problem into a
constructive possibility;
-
Personal point of view
– to readiness to acknowledge the limited nature
of one’s point of view;
-
Depression under the
conditions of instability – to optimism;
-
A mere satisfaction of
ones’ needs – to transformation and formation
of humane needs;;
-
Any certification of the
negative – to transformation of it in to the
positive.
Methods
of realizations
In
order to carry out perspective as well as
immediate tasks we suggest the method, which has been
probated worldwide, namely in such countries as the USA, the
UK, Belgium, Israel, Finland, Germany, Brazil, the
Netherlands, Italy and many others, the
method of projects. Today it has found wide use in the
sphere of social reforms. No doubt it would be as effective
for positive transformations in education too. Its
effectiveness grows considerably if it is integrated with
another method – the method of developing cooperation.
The essence of it consists in the following: the more
complicated is the task/problem, the higher level/degree of
cooperation is needed to settle it. A striking example of
the effectiveness of this method is set in the sphere of
education by numerous international projects.
This
method has been probated by us for 15 years. The
implementation of this method provides direction of the
educational vector towards real involvement of all the
participants of the educational process (children, parents
and teachers) in creating their own lives and social
environment. The mentioned above three principles,
positiveness,
general responsibility and
consultiveness
should be mainframe in the realization of these methods.
The results
gained in our work, and that has already got positive
assessment of experts, give us grounds to think that we are
on the right path and they inspire us in this creative
process.
I represent the
Bashkir State Pedagogical University in the Republic of
Bashkortostan, Russia.
It is one of the
leading universities not only in our Republic, but in the
whole of Russia, in fact, it rates among the 15 best
universities in Russia. We have 12 faculties and many more
specialities at disposal for 13 thousand students. But the
main profile of the University is teacher training.
What we should
like to empathize is the fact that our Republic is
multi-national (100 nationalities live here). Luckily, we so
far have been able to avoid critical clashes on the national
items. We realize that it is our general
responsibility not only to preserve peace but do our best to
improve our social and natural environment. So,
participation in the symposium of this scale and topic is a
unique chance for us to gain experience in peace making and
implement it in our work with students.
My name is
Rosa Akbasheva. I was born in 1952 in Russia.
I am a senior
lecturer of education at the Bashkir State Pedagogical
University. My main interest is application of the
method of project in my work with students not only on the
theoretical basis but also in practice. |
