Teacher Training
in peace and democracy education

and creating responsible world citizenship

Click here to print this page

© Copyright 2007, Hope Flowers School.
This page may be printed out
in single copies for personal use only.

This section outlines Hope Flowers School's proposed teacher training course, which aims to expand peace and democracy education in Palestine and reduce radicalisation amongst young people.

In recent years, Hope Flowers has been requested by other schools in the West Bank, including UNRWA schools, for assistance in training their teachers in peace and democracy education methods. This arises from difficulties encountered at these schools in student attainment, behaviour at school and psychological problems amongst children, many of whom are affected by traumatic experiences and difficult circumstances. Also teachers have themselves been affected by trauma, burn-out and stress-related pressures that teachers in far more peaceful countries also experience.

Hope Flowers School has thus designed a two-year teacher training course in which three teachers from each school may be trained, allowing them then to return to their school to train other teachers and to contribute to changes in the culture of their schools, according to the principles we have developed over time.

We intend to continue with developing the course and seeking funding internationally. However, it is a lengthy process. Meanwhile, we give details here of our proposed training course, and we welcome ideas, contacts and funding leads.

As far as we are aware, there is no similar teacher training course in the world. The special circumstances of Palestine, with its 60-year conflict, plus the founding vision of the Hope Flowers School, provides a unique basis for research and development of such a course. Our eventual hope is to assist schools and educationalists in other countries to set similar courses in motion, drawing on our experience and expertise.

Human rights-based education

The Hope Flowers School works on the following premise: we believe that every act of violence is a result of an unhealed wound. This is central to our approach and to the success of our work thus far over the last twenty years.

The proposed educational project contributes to creating a culture of peace in the following ways:

• By giving teachers the ability to give students a good all-round education, young people's life-chances are raised and therefore they are less likely to become frustrated and violent as they grow up;
• By integrating peace education and social training into their education, students learn about engaging constructively in society. They become clearly aware that they can work with their situation using non-violent and forward-moving means;
• Teachers and their students are taught skills to help them handle difficult and intense situations where violence rears its head - these include dealing with people with differing views, speaking up for themselves, negotiating positive solutions, managing tricky group dynamics, and preventing frustration and violence from boiling over;
• Teachers are shown how to give students counselling and therapeutic help, to deal with trauma arising from personal and local experiences they have had - this permits them to deal with anger and distress so that they cease being factors stoking the fires of violence. This goes beyond ordinary peace education, addressing the emotional and psychological factors influencing students' feelings, their success in life and their capacity to avoid being drawn into conflict;
• They are taught about other faiths and beliefs, and they meet people from other walks of life, enabling them to see strangers as humans with an understandable viewpoint. This decreases polarisation, stereotyping and dehumanisation;
• They are trained in group processes such as compassionate listening and democratic practice (running and participating in meetings, articulation of ideas and feelings, managing pre-conflict and conflict situations) so that they can take proactive measures to avoid conflict and polarisation and contribute to conflict resolution;
• Teachers are given personal attention to help them manage their own trauma and difficulties, so that they avoid unconsciously promoting stereotyping, polarisation and violence - this is important and a unique aspect of the methods developed at the Hope Flowers School;
• Teachers are trained in recognising the signs of trauma in students and referring them to counsellors. They are trained in working constructively with symptoms of trauma and frustration in the classroom. They are trained to act as behavioural role-models, so that students may increasingly take their cues from their own teachers' behaviour and attitudes;
• Wider community work with students' families and neighbourhoods, helping build a virtuous cycle and culture of non-violence. It eases the tendency of schools and communities to counteract each other, making families and neighbours fully aware of what children are being taught and engaging them in the process of building peace and democracy;
• Since Palestinians value education highly, these methods contribute to social development outside schools by setting positive social standards, providing tools for managing community problems and introducing social safety-valves for those times when unease and conflict are escalating. They give younger people greater power to influence their environment and devote their energies to constructive work and projects. These have a conflict-preventing and conflict-reducing effect.

Tolerance versus radicalisation

Radicalisation has two key elements: it is a symptom of frustration and a symptom of change. Regarding frustration and the polarisation, projection, victimhood, alienation and dehumanisation accompanying it, the methods taught by the Hope Flowers School have both an immediate and a generalised longterm effect in reducing frustration levels and increasing positive modes of action. They help people understand their differences more clearly, articulate and negotiate their positions and engage constructively with difficult social situations.

Regarding change, it helps them proportion issues that concern them more clearly, giving them tools for managing change constructively - understanding emergent ideas, dealing positively with emotions, formulating plans for effecting change and negotiating a fair and workable interface between new and old realities. By turning frustration into positive moves toward structured change, it is transformed into positive action and non-violent social activism.

The 2006 US Senate Committee report on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs defined radicalisation to be "the process of adopting an extremist belief system, including the willingness to use, support, or facilitate violence, as a method to effect societal change". Methods used by the Hope Flowers School address the formation of beliefs during childhood and teenage years, leading toward increasingly inclusive and balanced beliefs, and they provide tools whereby students and young adults may channel these beliefs more creatively and realistically. This reduces radicalisation and violence, which are closely linked.

In our training programme we will create an awareness of varying forms of violence so that we can address methods of building non-violence, and we will address the nature of conflict in order to address the building of a culture of peace and democratic social development. Participants will learn non-violent communication and action, empowerment and creating civil society, intercultural and interfaith programmes.

Factors contributing to radicalisation

Our training programme takes into account the following factors:

1. Radicalisation itself is often a direct result of violence, where so-called radicals have themselves typically been a target or victim of violence and persecution. Our programme cuts the link between the cause of radicalisation and its effect in the form of violence;
2. Limited belief systems lead to radicalisation and violence. We teach how ideas and beliefs create our reality, and how to re-entrain our beliefs toward constructive ends;
3. Often oppressed or frustrated individuals may feel empathy or solidarity with others who have been victimised or oppressed - such sympathies are often based in personal, ethnic or 'tribal' associations and familiarity. They provide a psychological 'safe territory' for victims. Radicalisation is often associated with ideology, but personal sympathies and feelings of shared oppression feed it. Thus we address personal factors and empower students and teachers to form their own ideas and engage in more constructive acts of solidarity, through actions aimed at reconstruction and reconciliation. Thereby, solidarity is redefined as 'in favour of us and our needs' rather than 'against them and their oppression';
4. The goals of radicalisation are to gain political recognition, to effect change or to enact retribution for previous injustices. Our democracy-promoting education helps turn this toward more constructive ends, helping participants achieve recognition by other means, bring about positive change and engage in reconstruction and socially-beneficial initiatives;
5. Where a society has been attacked and violated, religion and other ideologies naturally become the nexus of community values and social unity. This emphasis on religion often aggregates other issues such as class, poverty, literacy, unemployment and culture. By introducing students to new and wider beliefs and helping them define and address these aggregating factors separately, each factor becomes a nexus for positive action, reducing 'religious tribalism' and antipathy, helping people engage with them themselves.

How our programme acts as a preventive programme

Level 1: "Peace starts with yourself". Level 1 focuses on the wellbeing of the human. It starts with empowering teachers and giving them a feeling that they are valued and taken care of. It involves basic training in psychological counselling and empowerment (helping people connect with their inner power).

Since an important cause of radicalisation is belief systems, our empowerment training helps participants identify their belief systems, clear their beliefs of inappropriate ideas, create a positive vision and then take steps to implement it. Empowerment training focuses on how to empower others to build a vision and a positive belief system. People build their belief systems between the ages of 4 and 13 years old.

This training focuses on training teachers who are teaching students of 4-18 years of age. The short term effect of such training will emerge within ten years, though longer term effects, as former students themselves become adults and parents, will embed more deeply in decades to come.

Level 2: Healing the wounds of war and moving beyond being a victim. Trauma yields a feeling of victimisation. Trauma generally affects a society for three generations. Victims have greater tendencies to violence. Our key maxim, that every act of violence is a result of an unhealed wound, means that it is crucial that teachers receive the chance to heal their own trauma. They are then trained in identifying, dealing with and referring traumatised students to counselling and trauma-reduction training. To ensure cooperation between teachers and school directors a special training for school directors will also be organised.

Level 3: Leadership Skills. The third level provides teachers with skills and tools necessary to build a culture of peace within their schools. This includes the following:

• What is violence?
• The different forms of violence (passive and physical violence);
• Non-violent communication and non-violent resistance (obtaining of justice);
• Communication skills;
• Negotiation and conflict resolution;
• Democracy and civil society;
• Human rights conventions;
• How to build a human rights-based education;
• Interfaith education and intercultural schooling.

Conclusion

Our approach creates overall conditions within which tendencies toward social miscommunication, frustration and violence are reduced - especially amongst younger adults who are most liable to violence and recruitment by extremists. This is the key element of conflict prevention that the school and its methods contribute.

For this to be more widely effective, these methods need to be spread to other schools and areas, so that a broader set of social values and conditions are built up, to counteract tendencies toward radicalisation and escalation of violent conditions across Palestine. Our ultimate aim is to bring a change of educational government policy in Palestine.

This is a pioneering project in its early stages but, having already prepared the way and having become well known since 1984, we start from a strong starting place. The effects of educational models such as this work through in the course of a generation. The longterm nature of the conflict in Israel-Palestine makes this work internationally significant.

HOPE FLOWERS SCHOOL

EDUCATION FOR PEACE & DEMOCRACY

PO Box 732, Bethlehem, Palestine

Tel: +972 2 274 0693 / 4975  Fax: +972 2 274 747084

E-mail:

www.hopeflowersschool.org