Peace Education in Two Elementary

This paper describes a case study in which two teachers attempted to bring peace education to their classrooms. To date, the most prevalent approaches to peace education center on a curriculum or a program. The two teachers rejected such curricula and programs in favor of an approach that emphasized the importance of the environment in developing and nurturing positive behaviors and preventing negative ones, predicated on the assumption that "children learn what they live. " Their approach to peace education was through an environment focused on relationships, i.e., how people interact with one another and with nature. The teachers in this study were overt in their efforts to deal with power relationships within their classrooms. Hierarchical structures were adjusted to give children a real and on-going voice, time structures were altered to provide children with choice, and grouping was heterogeneous to take advantage of the cultural diversity that existed in both classrooms. The teachers exhibited the type of connecte