Books: Teaching peace

Murray Polner, History News Network -  Can teaching peace and nonviolence to students make a difference in their lives? Colman McCarthy, who spent three decades as a Washington Post columnist, has certainly tried in his own very unique way by persuading school boards and principals to hire him as an unpaid volunteer teacher of “peace studies.” His motivation: “Unless we teach them peace, someone will teach them violence.” His new book, “Teaching Peace: Students Exchange Letters with Their Teacher,” is riveting and a real gem, filled with insights gleaned from the thousands of letters he’s received from former students. In it, he explains how and why he went about it, enduring skepticism and praise, criticism and admiration.

Given that “teaching peace” encourages critical thinking it tends to alarm timid school boards and provoke opposition from local pressure groups. Obviously it’s not easy to challenge beliefs, patriotism and legendary heroes, any one of which is guaranteed to shake up a good many people and institutions. It’s much easier and simpler to teach about wars, military and political leaders and unquestioned support for the flag than debating alternatives...
“Teaching Peace” (also a website) allows us to understand how he has proceeded and how much of what he imparts—not by dominating pronouncements but rather by the Socratic Method and his version of “Show and Tell.” There is no homework, no tests, no papers to write, and no grades. Reading, though, is essential, and since 1982, he has introduced thousands of students to writers they rarely encounter: Dorothy Day, Mohandas Gandhi, Leo Tolstoy, Peter Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, Dan Berrigan, Howard Zinn, Helen and Scott Nearing, Gene Sharp and more. He doesn’t lecture but, he explains, encourages students to ask questions and also question authority, as that hoary ‘60s slogan went. He teaches about war and peace, yes, but also the treatment of animals and women, the Cold War and our post-911 nation security and militarized state. Very opinionated, he says he welcomes challenges and clashes of opinions. He invites guests —corporate and public interest lawyers, pacifists and war veterans, conscientious objectors and pro-draft people, judges, innocent men freed after years spent on death row, Nobel Prize winners, nurses and doctors who serve the poor and most vulnerable among us.