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Proposals for peace, Charles Gellar
Proposals for peace
Charles Gellar considers how students can help
This is a summary of an idea I presented on 19 November 2016 during an ‘unconference session’ at the ECIS conference, where I spoke as an honorary ECIS member for the past 30 years. Over those several years ECIS has played a seminal role in many of the achievements in international education as we know it today. This is particularly true in the development of the world-wide international accreditation program. There were two questions that I felt needed to be addressed.
Firstly, what have international schools contributed to world peace?
Historically, over 150 years ago, after the horrors of the Crimean War, perhaps the first truly international school – the International College at Spring Grove (London) – was established by a prominent group of important individuals, including Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley and Charles Dickens, with the goal of preparing pupils from different countries to be ‘Ambassadors’ for world peace.
Years later, in 1924 – after an even greater holocaust, the International School of Geneva was formed for the same purpose, quickly followed by Yokohama International School in Japan for the children of foreigners after the great Kanto earthquake. Yet only 15 years later, the greatest holocaust in the history of the world occurred, and in 1968 the International Baccalaureate (IBO) launched the IB Diploma with as one of its goals the advancement of world peace. The IBO will be celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2018.
International schools, even those offering an IB programme, can and do get by without the need to wrestle with or even debate the need for universal values, but internationally-minded schools cannot. It is hoped that those who are internationallyminded will work to ensure that a clear and unambiguous statement of universal values is made an essential part of the ethos of international education; that a commitment to justice, peace, and compassion for all be openly espoused and made central in their thought and conduct.
At the ECIS conference, I strongly recommended the outstanding ‘Education for Peace’ curriculum framework for K-12 schools created by the International Schools Association (ISA). It lays out a number of thematic areas particularly on human rights. International schools should give serious consideration to this major contribution to education for world peace.
Secondly, what more can we do?
Yet the impact of all this on the most important issue of the present – international peace – has yet to be properly articulated to the general public.
As Kevin Ruth, ECIS Director, wrote in his letter of 14 November 2015: “At times likes these, we must go beyond our curricula, beyond our politicking, beyond our first world complaints, and seek to create positive impact in our world as deeply and intentionally as we can.”
Those of us in international education and committed to the pursuit of universal values – we all go to conferences, we all discuss these issues earnestly within our own sphere – must break out of this in-house bubble of our own making and make known to the broader public at large what we are about and why. For this reason, I am committed to helping ECIS create a so-called ‘Peace Prize’ to be awarded to students in international schools who make a real contribution to building international understanding. Examples of such contributions abound in International School magazine, in IB World magazine and in the IB Diploma’s CAS program. Such a prize would have the potential to garner public visibility, while at the same time promoting a deep, life-long commitment by our pupils to the service of world peace. Therefore, I proposed the following for consideration by ECIS members:
(a) That ECIS establish an International Peace Prize to be awarded to pupils in our schools who have proposed and/ or worked on projects that have contributed to international understanding in their local or broader school community. (b) In support of this endeavor, that a fund be established by ECIS and other such organizations to grant financial awards in support of such student projects. (c) That these awards be made known to the public at large in a number of ways, particularly via the schools themselves and under the auspices of ECIS. Following on from this, the audience and I discussed these proposals and how they might be carried forward. Everyone thought the Peace Prize was a very good idea, particularly as it involves student projects. They also felt a letter needs to be prepared and sent to schools explaining the idea of a world peace prize and asking for feedback.
I would be interested in what you, the readers of this article, have to say, and whether you have any particular contributions to make to the whole proposal? If so, please send your comments to cagellar@beps.com. Many thanks.
