Can peace be taught? And then learned?

When I asked myself those questions 22 years ago, I responded like a journalist. Phone the academic experts, get their readings and I'd have my answers. But after phoning the experts and listening to them talk much and say little, I did some legwork. I went to the high school nearest my office in downtown Washington, D.C., and offered my services as a volunteer teacher of peace.

The principal and faculty welcomed me, as did the students. That semester, 25 students enrolled in my course — "Alternatives to Violence." They were able to grasp intellectually what they already had absorbed emotionally: the haunting awarness that their future is threatened and their present is enswamped by excessive military, environmental, economic and family voilence. We read from two texts I edited: Solutions to Violence and Strength Through Peace: the Ideas and People of Nonviolence. We studied Gandhi, Tolstoy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Jeannette Rankin, Emily Balch, Jane Addams and a long list of proven peacemakers. The students loved the course, and I cherished their company.

Since that happy beginning, I took "Alternatives to Violence" to four universities — American, Georgetown, Maryland and Georgetown Law School — and two more high schools. In 22 years I've taught more than 6,000 sutdents. With all of them, I emphasized one theme: alternatives to violence exist and, if individuals and nations can organize themselves properly, nonviolent force is always stronger than violent force.

Some students open their minds immediately. They understand Gandhi: "Nonviolence is the weapon of the strong." They believe King: "The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence."

Other students, who like to call themselves realists, have doubts. Sure, nonviolence and pacifism are glorious theories and let's all hug each other after we read the Utne Reader in our hot tubs, the but in the real world there are muggers and international despots.

All I ask of these snappy-talking realists is to tune out for a moment the allures of violence and consider the success of nonviolence. Since 1986, six brutal or corrupt governments have been driven from power — not by violence but by organized nonviolent resistance: in Poland, the Philippines, Chile, South Africa, Yugoslavia and Georgia. Twenty years ago, who would have thought that possible? But we stay skeptical. Theodore Roszak explains: "The usual pattern seems to be that people give nonviolence two weeks to solve their problem and then decide it has failed. Then they go on with violence for the next hundred years and it seems never to fail or be rejected."

Many students come from households where verbal, emotional or physical violence is rampant. For them, learning conflict resolution is essential, if only as a basic survival skill.

I have no illusions that enrolling in a course on the philosophy of nonviolence and reading a couple of books on the literature of peace will cause governments to start stockpiling plowshares, not swords, or that the Peace Corps will replace the Marine Corps. But I do know that unless we teach our children peace, someone else will teach them violence. I know that if violence, whether fists, guns, bombs or armies, were effective, we would have had a peaceful planet eons ago. Hannah Arendt wrote: "Violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is to a more violent world."

In a world where an estimated 40,000 people die every day from hunger or preventable diseases, and where the United States alone spends more than $1 billion a day — about $12,000 a second — on the military, peace education is in its infancy. Plenty of obstacles lie ahead. No matter. If the path to peace has no obstacles, it probably isn't leading anywhere.

This article originally appeared in the November/December 2004 issue of World Ark magazine, a publication of Heifer International [2]. Used with permission.