Teaching Peace - A Preface (Leah Wells)

Teaching Peace

by Colman McCarthy

Can peace be taught? And then learned?

When I asked myself those questions 23 years ago, I responded like a journalist. Phone a few academic experts, get their readings and then I’d have my answers. But after phoning the experts and listening to them talk much and say little, I decided to do the kind of legwork and personal involvement that truly gets at the truth. I went to the school nearest my Washington Post in downtown Washington, D.C. and offered my services as a volunteer teacher of peace.

The principal and faculty welcomed me, as did the students. That semester, 25 juniors and seniors enrolled in my course “Alternatives to Violence.” They were able to grasp intellectually what they already had absorbed emotionally: the haunting awareness that their future is threatened, their present enswamped by excessive military, environmental and family violence, and their nation’s past record of nine declared wars and 135 undeclared wars like Grenada, Libya, Panama and the Gulf. The students loved the course, and I cherished their company.

Since that happy beginning, I took “Alternatives to Violence” to four universities - American, Georgetown, Maryland and Georgetown Law School - and two more high schools. In 23 years, I’ve taught more than 6,000 students. With all of them, I emphasized one theme: alternatives to violence exist and, if individuals and nations can organize themselves properly, nonviolent force is always stronger than violent force.

Some students open their minds to this immediately. They understand Gandhi: “Nonviolence is the weapon of the strong.” They believe King: “The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.”

Other students have doubts which I encourage them to express. They do, repeatedly. Nonviolence and pacifism are beautiful theories and ideals, they tell me, but in the real world there are the muggers and international despots.

All I asked of the “realists” was to think about life’s two risks. Do you depend on violence or nonviolence to create peace? Not just peace in some vague “out there” among governments, but peace in our homes, where spouse and child abuse are at record highs, and peace in our schools, where teenage suicide is rampant, and peace in our neighborhoods, where 25 million U.S. households have guns, and peace on our planet, where 142 nations are spending 900 billion this year on arms and armies.

Peace through violence has failed. Nearly 80 million have been killed in wars since 1900, a 500 percent increase over the 19th century. About 40,000 people are killed a month in more than 40 wars and conflicts. More than 10,000 Americans are killed in handgun homicides annually. Those who defend violent solutions have some large numbers of deaths to defend.

Students are hungry to learn nonviolence. They understand it is much more than a noble ideal, it is also a basic survival skill. Learning nonviolence means that we dedicate our hearts, minds, time and money to a commitment that the force of love, the force of truth, the force of justice and the force of organized resistance to corrupt power is always more effective, moral and enduring than the force of fists, guns, armies and nukes.

Yet we still resist. Theodore Roszak explains: The usual pattern seems to be that people give nonviolence two weeks to solve their problem and then decide it has “failed”. Then they go on with violence for the next hundred years and it seems never to “fail” or be rejected.

Few have been doing this with more zeal and commitment than Leah Wells. I came to know her in the late 1990’s when she was a student at Georgetown University. Though knowledgeable about the methods of nonviolence and the philosophy of pacifism—Leah took full advantage of the university’s many peace studies courses--she wanted to move beyond theories and ideas. I asked her to teach a class on alternatives to violence at a public high school in Washington. She was embraced by her students. In addition, Leah helped me teach a course at a Maryland prison for juvenile offenders. There, too, her talents were appreciated. After graduating from Georgetown, Leah became a high school peace studies teacher in southern California. Again, she thrived. She was invited to work for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, the resilient advocacy group in Santa Barbara, California. As word spread of her work—from stories in the Los Angeles Times, from her speaking at student assemblies, from her published articles—she became a leader in the peace studies movement.

What follows in these pages is information that is both practical and inspirational. With Leah Wells’ background, this is not surprising. Because of her authorship, peace education is stronger. Because of her work here, peace education will be taking hold in more places, despite the obstacles coming from assorted bureaucrats and papercrats. No mater. As Leah and everyone else in the peace movement knows, if the path to peace has no obstacles, it probably isn’t leading anywhere.

Let’s not give peace a chance, let's give it a place in the curriculum.

Colman McCarthy, a columnist a The Washington Post from 1969 to 1997, directs the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington. He is the editor of two textbooks: “Solutions to Violence” and “Strength Through Peace: the Ideas and People of Nonviolence.” His recent book is “I’d Rather Teach Peace.” (Orbis)