Transforming Worldviews

Abstract

Current approaches to peace education tend to focus on specific issues or themes and leave many broader questions about the nature of peace and the means for its lasting establishment in human individual and collective life unanswered. Particularly in the contexts of injustice, violence, and war, peace education programs that have the power to transform worldviews from a conflict orientation to a peace orientation are needed. Such a transformation requires an integrative view of peace as a psychosocial, political, moral, and spiritual condition and depends not merely on reducing conflict but on actively creating unity. This article reviews current trends in peace education and presents the case study of a unique primary and secondary school program called Education for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina that has demonstrated transformative results among intrapersonal, interpersonal, intercommunity, and interinstitutional relations.