As we start 2024, every day we see news of emerging, or re-emerging, conflict, and political uncertainties, as well as a rise in violent acts and hate speech that seem to drown out the pleas of unity and harmony. The impact of this violence transcends boundaries of geography, gender, race, religion, and politics. Now is the time for an active commitment to peace, an indispensable component of what we need to maintain a tenable present, and to build a sustainable future. Without peace, there can be no sustainable development.
Today, January 24, 2024, is the sixth International Day of Education with the theme of “Learning for Lasting Peace”, and UNESCO is working with its many partners to deepen its resolve to transforming lives through quality education and empowering learners with the knowledge, values, attitudes, skills, and behaviors to become responsible agents of peace in their communities.
As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “If we are to reach real peace in this world, we shall have to begin with the children.” Yet today, there are some 250 million children are out of school globally.
We know that an additional 44 million new teachers are needed to meet the Sustainable Development Goal of achieving primary and secondary education by 2030 for all, with an estimated annual finance gap of almost $100 billion per year for countries to reach their education targets. At the same time, the total global military expenditure increased by 3.7% in real terms in 2022, to reach a new high of US $2,240 billion.
In the virtual realm, social media is rife with raw footage of wars, human-induced disasters, and the predicament of those experiencing these devastating calamities. It is impossible to equate the experience of living through a war to that of watching it unfold on our screen. Nevertheless, a University of California, Irvine study suggests that news coverage can have a strong impact on the mental health of those who are not directly linked by the crisis. Social media can also become a breeding ground for misinformation and disinformation, often resulting in greater collective angst and lowered objectivity as well as in polarized views.
The emotional, physical and spiritual implication of wars and conflict on human beings is one that cannot be statistically calculated; nor can we calculate the compounded inter-generational reproduction and continuation of hatred and mistrust that wars induce on the communities they effect.
If Albert Bandura’s Bobo Doll experiment on aggression taught us one thing, it was that children have the propensity to learn behaviors through observation and imitation of adults. The understanding that humans learn socially and not just intellectually, brings home the point that being educated is not just about being literate. Learning also stems from our social interactions, surroundings, circumstances and positive or negative reinforcements. And without doubt, this is why how we teach, learn and work must change too.
Against the backdrop of the current world situation, education must transform to build the foundations for lasting peace and nurture connections between people. It should focus on the holistic development of learners and nurture their ability to think in broader terms to analyze challenges, think rationally, act purposefully and deal effectively with the environment. For this we need to work towards nurturing empathetic and inclusive learners.
UNESCO’s Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development, unanimously adopted by its 194 member states, is a non-binding guidance document that focuses on how teaching and learning should evolve in the 21st century to bring about lasting peace, reaffirm human rights and promote sustainable development.
UNESCO’s ‘motto’ drawn from its constitution, remains unfortunately as relevant today as when it was drafted in 1945: “Since wars begin in the minds of men and women, it is in the minds of men and women that the defences of peace must be constructed”.
Transformative Education is critical to breaking down the suspicion and mistrust among peoples which continues to plague our world even as we face new and unprecedented collective threats, not least of which is the climate crisis. Arming our future generation with transformative education is without doubt the strongest armor we can give them to face the complex challenges that await.
Timothy Curtis is UNESCO Regional Office Director and Representative (to Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka)
