Educating for peace in the midst of violence: a South African experience

How do we educate for peace in a context of pervasive social violence? This paper explores this question as it presents the development and evaluation of a South African peace education programme at pre-school level. The programme comprised a pre-school curriculum and a teacher development course and was developed in conjunction with a team of pre-school teachers from diverse backgrounds working in a variety of settings within two South African provinces. The results of the evaluation provided strong evidence that the peace education programme resulted in a drop in aggressive behaviour among the children of the target population. The results also indicated that the teacher development course was well received by the teachers and facilitated their growth in a number of areas. Thus, the study indicated that peace education can have considerable positive impact in a country that is recovering from years of political and social violence