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http://weeklywonk.newamerica.net/articles/fear-hope-peshawar/
Pakistan - Peace
Curriculum Teaches Hope in Dangerous Peshawar +
Photo: UK
Department for International Development
March 19, 2015 –
Peshawar, Pakistan, is my city. If you try to imagine what it’s like there,
peace is probably the last thing you’d think of. Peshawar, Pakistan, which
borders Afghanistan, is one of the most dangerous and unstable regions in the
world. It’s where, late last year, militants attacked the Army Public School,
killing 150 children. It’s where, in recent years, 40,000 civilians and around
4,700 security personnel have died as a result of roadside bombs and drone
attacks.
It’s also where I
run my own school for boys and girls. In this school, I have created a peace
education curriculum – the first of its kind in all of Pakistan. It’s a
curriculum that has helped me cultivate my school as an enclave of tolerance .
And it’s one I’m confident can scale across the country, and even around the
world.
The idea for the
curriculum came in 2009 when, as a result of the bombings that had become a
near daily occurrence, I saw my country and province transform around me.
The idea for the curriculum
came in 2009 when, as a result of the bombings that had become a near daily
occurrence, I saw my country and province transform around me. Many men, women,
boys and girls had begun to suffer from psychiatric disorders (and many still
are). Then and now, girls in my school tear the limbs off their dolls, acting
out the mayhem around them. My youngest students, in a heartbreaking expression
of feelings they cannot articulate, often draw pictures of guns and ambulances
and dead bodies. As they say, war is hell.
Like my students,
I was and am often afraid. But fear is a strange bird: if you let it take
hold of you, you are lost forever. But if you face it down, it runs away. I
made the second choice. Back in 2009, the question I asked myself was how I
could destroy fear. I knew I had to defeat it with something that I was good
at: teaching.
My sister, who
runs the biggest organization on conflict transformation in Islamabad,
Pakistan, gave me the idea to work on peace education. After a fruitless search
for peace-focused curriculums on Google, I decided to create my own. In the
first weeks I taught two topics – diversity and tolerance – and elected two
students from each class as the “peace angels. ” They were tasked with
resolving conflicts of smaller scale within the class and help teachers in
running the peace education projects smoothly. They were also to help in
monitoring art and sports competitions.
Within weeks, I
saw that the students were becoming calmer. They began to question the teachers
about the causes and effects of the ongoing conflict, and how could they put an
end to it. I could also see that even some of the students who had been
particularly aggressive and uncooperative were becoming more tolerant and
respectful of each other’s views.
But that wasn’t
enough. I wanted to adapt and improve the curriculum – and I wanted to
convince other educators around the country to use it, too. One of my
first steps towards improvement: engaging mothers. After all, they play a
crucial role in the mental and physical growth of their children. I formed a
“Mothers Group” that comes fortnightly to the school and introduces the
students to a guest speaker – also a mother – who has been affected
by terrorism. As she shares her story with the students and answers their
questions, the students come to understand how people suffer because of
someone’s hatred or intolerance.
I also reached out
to local madrassas which are considered by many to be nurturing grounds for
extremists. We invited the madrassa students to join us for a Literature for
Peace week, where renowned writers, poets and columnists came to read excerpts
from their writings about peace and tolerance. These students, along with
children from my school, also went to a church on Easter to broaden their
understanding of religions outside of Islam.
Today, I’m hard at
work innovating my curriculum and advocating for the inclusion of peace
education in the provincial school curriculums throughout Pakistan. Although it
hasn’t yet been included, we’ve made progress: In my province, pictures showing
men holding guns or swords have been removed from school books. On the title
pages of those same books, peace messages – like “ we want peace on our
soil”– now appear.
But how do we
finish the job of countering the fear – and making sure that children all
over Pakistan, and the world, are learning messages of peace early on?
This is a great
start. But how do we finish the job of countering the fear – and making
sure that children all over Pakistan, and the world, are learning messages of
peace early on? We need to make peace education compulsory at all levels of
school; perhaps this could even be a facet of a country’s National Action Plan,
which is a legislative framework that promotes women’s roles in peace and security,
adopted by 48 countries around the world so far. And those of us in the field
need international support – in particular, support from leaders who control
peace negotiations and others who make policy affecting security in countries
and communities undergoing conflict.
We need this
international support now more than ever; just one peace curriculum cannot
alone extinguish the fear in my country. Recently while I was traveling away
from home, my daughter told me that my son did not eat his lunch at school that
day because he was afraid that the extremists would attack as they did at the
Army Public School. Of course, his fear is not unfounded. As we are seeing
increasingly around the world, even in places thought to be stable, no one is
safe.
A handful of
extremists are playing with our lives. Many more of us are peaceful, and yet we
have not been able to control the menace of violence – perhaps because we
are not all acting as one force. The international community needs to rise and
act together to condemn armed conflicts and all kinds of war. Collective
efforts are what’s required to destroy fear and put an end to violence.
*About the Author
- Bushra
Qadim Hyder is the Executive Director of Qadims Lumiere School and Master
Trainer in Peace and Conflict Transformation for PAIMAN TRUST.