The following was published by Queen's University "Education Letter" No. 8 in July, 2009, relating to my work with Canaidan Centres for Teaching Peace.
Education is more than teaching; it is but one aspect, a part often mistaken as the whole. If one were to reduce this word education down to its ultimate root, a curious word emerges: educe, meaning “to draw out from”. I appreciate this word when discussing the meaning of peace education; it becomes an intense spiritual and visual metaphor. Peace education is a process to draw out peace – from others to ourselves, and from ourselves to others.
For over two years now, my work with Canadian Centres for Teaching Peace (CCTP) has been focused on the development of Peace Cafés – public community spaces working towards a culture of peace and nonviolence within the communities they are contained within. Numerous discussions at CCTP’s annual peace education conferences noted the challenges present in evolving school curricula. These discussions led to new ideas for multi-faceted approaches to peace education – including the thought of creating an Institute for Peace Education – which, after a large amount of creative discussion and exploration, metamorphosized into the more decentralized and community-based Peace Café concept.
It is not apparent to everyone at first how cafés can contribute to the health and education of a community, and that is an aspect of what is quite exciting about Peace Cafés as a concept. Once one explores how peace education functions in a community context, places such as Peace Cafés are arguably akin to vital organs within the community body, much like a school, library, government, or emergency services.
The quick description I use for a Peace Café is that which has some or all of the following: a space for dialogue, fair trade/local/ethical food & drink, public events, a library of peace, leadership, and social justice resources, an available array of workshops and courses in group and personal development, and available consultants (Peace Café guides) to assist groups and individuals.
So where does the peace of Peace Café come from? I often come to speak of peace as a process, mirroring Gandhi’s notion that peace is the journey following a rainbow, not a (utopian) pot of gold. If one applies this distinction as an axiom in a formal education system, peace is the coursework, not the exam; it is the writing, not the essay; and it is drawn from the student in learning, not granted by the instructor in evaluating.
This means of course, that peace education (as with any worthy education) does not and can not cease at graduation. It must concern itself with a whole life journey, a continuous process that is frequently reflective, engaging with others experiences, and helping to draw out – educe – peace from communities.
Communities exist to share something common with one another: physical proximity, beliefs, heritage, interests, and many other identifiers. They have a way of being capable of so much more than the mere sum of all individuals contained within, often exponentially; this is ostensibly why human beings continually see value in creating them. Communities have their own spirit, a life of their own, they live and die by their (in)ability to maintain a sense of sharing, solidarity, and security.
Educing peace from that community spirit requires an approach not unlike what peace education is to the individual – it requires continuous, active stimulus, and recognition that the mere process is as vital as breathing is to our bodies. With peace being a process and not an end goal, educing peace is something that should be infinitely perpetual. For this, much like a living being, it requires physical space and an ability to acquire and accumulate knowledges and resources. It demands something like a Peace Café.
Why a café, though? Public community space is seemingly at a premium in Canada today. In the last one hundred years, our societies have increasingly been moving indoors, into private (and corporate) spaces, and away from communal public spaces. The history of the café in Western society has gone through a particular process: the community discussions once held “around the fire” came indoors to be around tables at public houses and cafés, the former transitioning into the paradoxically privately owned “pubs” and the later becoming one of the last refuges for public informal gathering and discussion.
It is true that few cafés can be truly identified as public, as most are businesses based on monetary profit first and foremost. One would think this would mean we’re seeing the end of truly public spaces for informal gathering and interaction; however, there is something curiously compatible between the business model of a café and the need for public spaces in communities.
The café relies primarily on a customer who usually meets others within the café space, and due to this generally free and open space, will pay for a pleasant drink, and perhaps a snack or small meal. It is my own pet theory that the rise of popularity in cafés in recent years despite, their oft-criticized premium prices, is due to an overwhelming need for individuals in communities to have public conversation space. In short, one could postulate that a plurality of consumers do not mind paying more of their money, if they can also get a comfortable place to sit, and talk. Building peace and community might come about without anyone necessarily realizing it. Cafés can represent an elegant symbiosis between public interest and business, fitting comfortably into the mandate of peace education.
The Peace Café project is developing and active in many communities in Canada and is intended in many ways to be an informal peace school project, a supplement and complement to formal school systems. As we educe peace from our communities, that peace can only spread further into our institutions. For schools, this incursion of peace can translate to increasing public support for curricula changes that include peace education as an essential component; for our civilization, this can only mean a transition to sustainable cultures of peace.