ZIMBABWE: TEACHING PEACE IN CHALLENGING ENVIRONMENTS. LESSONS FROM THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (NUST), BULAWAYO

Abstract

Although the United Nations, governments, and other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are putting efforts into promoting peace education in Africa, challenges remain due to “challenging environments”. A “challenging environment,” as defined in this paper, is an environ ment that neither fully permits nor bars the teaching of peace. This is typical of environments where peace is introduced, especially in third world countries. When the UN and prominent NGOs advocate for peace education, governments are often willing and quick to comply, but nu merous challenges hinder the teaching of peace. Based on practical experiences in establishing a peace course across faculties, the authors draw several lessons from the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) experience. Tasked with the mammoth goal of establishing peace programs, the authors faced challenges in cluding: (1) an unstable economic and political environment; (2) student demonstrations linked to economic challenges; (3) large classes and few lecturers; (4) a lack of teaching materials; and (5) being housed under a different department. Experience has shown that it is possible to teach peace in such environments, provided certain tactics, such as being creative in sourcing materi al, are used. Peace education has limited teaching materials, and even if the materials were to be purchased, acquiring enough books for a large number remains a challenge. As noted by the authors, they resorted to creative ways of finding teaching materials, including assigning different topics to students and then combining the research to create a material base, using newspaper articles to test conflict resolution skills in students, etc. Creative teaching methods include adopting a student-centered approach rather than a lecturer-centered one and transforming the environment through engagement in conflict transformation programs. As part of community engagement, the lecturers participated in transforming campus conflicts through the NUST Campus Dialogue Initiative, as well as providing community training in churches and government institutions. Keywords: Teaching, peace, challenging environments, lessons, NUST.