Peace education during COVID-19
How can we advance research and promote education in the study of the causes of war and the conditions of peace? Just ask any member of the Canadian Peace Research Association (CPRA).
Peace researchers gathered this week as part of the annual Congress of Humanities and Social Sciences, a virtual event this year hosted by the University of Alberta.
PeaceQuest co-sponsored a presentation titled Peace Education and Engagement during COVID-19. Chairperson Steven Staples presented his research on peace education in the Ontario school system during COVID-19. He outlined the research that resulted in the establishment of the Peace and Social Justice Education Community of Practice in 2021.
Learn more about PeaceQuest’s Peace and Social Justice Education Community of Practice
Here is a recording of the presentation by Steven Staples, who is introduced by Prof. Erika Simpson of the Western University, and President of the CPRA.
For Stephen Staples & PeaceQuest 6 June 2021
You asked!
From Nova Scotia, I’m a writer, recent PoliSci major, and retired old leftie.
For about 35 years, off and on, I’ve done some considerable work to establish a Canadian University of Peace because I believe this is the right place for it. But for the means to do it, the irony, I would have accomplished it long ago; no one says nay.
We need to give at least as much validity to the scholarship of peace as we do conflict, and much less to the the culture of war, the tyranization in boot camp, the hierarchy and the propaganda. We have never been in the war business, never attacked any other country, and indeed took umbrage at being coerced by England into two world wars, (where my father was for both, and his brother is still, somewhere north of Vimy).
I’m a cause-fighter, these days from my desk. I do a lot of writing for my network of NGOs that advocate for everything from (alphabetically) animals to women, and researching for myself. I take issue with the age-old attitude toward soldiers by governments when their usefulness is over; the obscene cost of a standing army while children go to bed hungry and young people pay a premium for tuition; and the primitive mentality of settling issues, real or imagined, with the ultimate in violence for very dubious purposes, too often power and legacy.
And, when this is over—our mantra—this convulsive shock, we must never go back to the way we were. That includes the Culture of War. As well, everyone must have a guaranteed income and a decent place to live.
And, I think PeaceQuest and like groups, can en masse, and indeed, have a responsibility, to work to that end. After all, there are many more of Us than Them.
Take care and Merry Canada Day.