During March and April, several Fourth Form students volunteered to take part in the Sir James Reckitt Trust-funded Peace Education project.
The project involved three sessions meeting via Zoom with teachers and students from other Quaker schools. We explored themes around peace, violence and non-violence. We also explored what peace meant to us individually and what it means on a wider scale. Here is an overview of what each of the sessions involved, as told by our pupils.
In the first session along with other Quaker schools, we used our own knowledge from before the sessions as well as using quotes and inspiration from famous peace figures to have a developed conversation. From this, we broke out into groups mixing school pupils up and answering questions set by the host. To end the session everybody put three words into answer form to create a picture of words of what everyone thought was peace.
By James & Mathew
In the second session of the peace project, we listened to other people’s views on peace and what it means to them. We also learned about different types of violence and people who took a peaceful stance to resist different types of violence and conflict around the world. We then discussed what peace means to us and how we can show peace in our everyday lives. In this session, I think that it was very interesting to see other peoples views on peace and learn about people standing up to conflict and violence in a peaceful way around the world. It was also good to learn how to lead a peaceful lifestyle in our own lives.
By Steven and Mikulas
On the third session, Ellis Brooks of the BYM Peace Education Team led a session on activism and non-violence. He spoke about different conflicts that have happened in the world and we learned about different types of peace. We also talked about how war affects everyone and how people combat it. We spoke about asymmetric conflict, where one side is much more powerful than the other and what we should do in these situations. We were asked to come up with subjects that should be on a peace curriculum in schools. This project helped us understand more about how peace can be achieved and what problems we would face and why peace is important for everyone.
By Isabel, Ink and Billy
Visit the Quaker website to learn more about peace education.