MEPEACE Chat - February 28

In our current three chat workshop series we are exploring Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding Education. Each chat session focuses on a related sub-topic.


We invite you to join us for our sixth MEPEACE Chat Workshop and the third and final chat in this series. Our topic will be:

The Role of Educational Institutions in Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding Education.

After two fruitful discussions about the role of art in peacebuilding education, we're now going to touch on the 'core' of education: educational institutions - encompassing kindergartens, schools, universities and other education-related institutions.

Education is a topic we're all familiar with. We all went to school and perhaps attended higher education institutions as well. Some of us might even be teachers and thus able to pass on their (hopefully good) experiences to their own students. Although education in general is obviously something most of us have in common, re-telling our school days might reveal very different and diverse stories. That will have - to an extent - to do with individual circumstances (e.g. specific teachers), but - to a greater extent - with the various very different educational systems which have of course implications for what is taught and how things are taught.

In the context of the Middle East conflict, it's therefore appropriate to talk about those similarities and differences, and what they mean for the conflict at large. It's equally crucial to identify whether and in what ways educational institutions encourage or hinder conflict transformation. Other external factors, such as religion, might play a role, too. In the end, however, it's not only external factors - politics, culture, religion etc. - that have a stake in 'making' peacebuilders, nationalists or radical fundamentalists, it's the individual school, college, university, the individual teacher, and individual students, parents, families, too.

Below are some links that introduce the topic in a constructive way:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Palestinian_territories

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Israel

http://friendshipthrougheducation.org/

[more introductory links will follow]


The leading questions - based on the two introductory paragraphs above - are as follows:

What is the role for educational institutions in conflict resolution/transformation and active peacebuilding? Based on the experiences from workshop participants, which examples could count as good and constructive ones, and which ones as rather bad?

How do 'external factors' (political guidelines, cultural/religious tradition, ...) make themselves felt? What difference can we - as active peacemakers and maybe parents or teachers or professors at the same time - make to establish 'our' educational institution as one that promotes peace instead of prolonged conflict and narrow-minded nationalism?

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Please note that the event will start on Sunday, 28 February at 20.00 Jerusalem time.

If you have any questions regarding the event, please don't hesitate us to contact us on mepeace.dialogue@gmail.com.

We look forward to your participation on February 28th!

The MEPEACE.org Dialogue Team
Cigdem Yilmazer, Jessica de Souza, Johanna Silverthorne & Oliver Haack