by

Once upon another lifetime in a place called Camp Kasota there dwelled a tanned, reasonably handsome young man who was known as the "capital c" camp convener for the Alberta Conference Young People’s Union of the United Church of Canada. Nestled on the shores of a lake called "Sylvan" was a large dining hall complete with an attractive yet rustic kitchen and an imposing stone fireplace. The cabins on the periphery of the dining hall were lined by bare rafters and contained metal bunks: army surplus doubles, each tiny cabin holding about six to eight young women or young men. The recreational programs included swimming, canoeing, singsongs and campfires, stories and mealtime shenanigans. The educational venue was invented by the young people themselves so that the worship and study sessions bore witness to the natural concerns, deeper spiritual, social and sexual issues which were on the minds and hearts of the people aged from 18 to 25 plus.

These young adults met on benches by the sand and rock shoreline or higher up on blankets strewn across the grass and under the swishing poplar trees. What truly concerned them could, if they wished, be expressed, argued about, put into action, pondered and questioned further, or built into further discussions, programs and camp themes. Their interests and activities could also be written about in "The Crusader" their conference paper which was mimeographed on a gestetner machine in the tiny house owned by Phyllis and Tom Harris on eighth avenue and eighth street west in what is now part of the core of downtown Calgary.

As Camp Convener I had the great satisfaction of being in on the final planning stages for camp themes: advertising the camps, setting costs for kitchen supplies and inviting guest speakers. I was simply one of the many who loved to lead a singsong, conduct challenging worship services, and engage in the courting processes which were, to speak succinctly omnipresent and perhaps omnipotent.. I met many gracious young women here, not the least of whom was a quiet petite woman who was later to become my wife of more than 35 years.

There were things to be learned from these informal practices in which everyone’s view was valid, made so because we truly knew each other and every comment expressed on a political, theological or personal issue, revealed something more about a friend, someone we all cared for and wanted to know better.

These informal discussions were filled with exhilarating debate and questions: "Why are we here and what really is our purpose?", " If God exists why does she or he allow the troubles we have?", "What can we do politically that is congruent with what we really believe?", or "How do we interpret these old scriptures so that they carry some life and substance in our everyday social and political lives?" Personal/sexual questions were always present: "Where does sexuality fit in our society or religion?", "What practices and understandings keep sexuality healthy or makes it unhealthy?"

I cannot cite precisely the actual questions of more than forty years ago, but I can assure you they were the essence of an empowering learning experience and an instrument of peace-full education. The equality of all participants, the empowerment each felt by virtue of the acceptance of their views by the others and the sense that what they thought truly mattered, was what seemed to me to be the essence of sound and exciting learning. I later tried to carry the grounded feel of the grass, the relaxed swaying of poplar trees and the openness of the sky into the classrooms of universities.

Accordingly, informality in organized school settings when it feeds respect and concern for each other, including the teacher, is in my view, essential. We all want to know more about each other and the more we do appreciate about one another the more we realize that no question or comment is irrelevant. Every question or statement reveals something about what the other person thinks, intends, cares deeply about. I prided myself that in my final year of teaching at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, when students knew this balding, gray-bearded guy was retiring, I was still known by the third generation of some families who had attended MSVU, as "Larry." That ability to call me by my first name always seemed to me to be a measure of my success as a teacher. I felt it as a supreme compliment.

The structure and setting of Camp Kasota because of its peer-organized process and natural relaxed environment led to an understanding of learning as shared communication, a focus on one’s own and one’s group process, a welcoming spirit which extended to newcomers and peer leaders. Contrariwise, the structure and setting of most schools and universities is quite unlike that of a summer camp. And why should it not be, you might ask?

Allow me to comment on that question by reminding you that in the majority of schools and colleges students are expected to have little or no say in the design of program or curriculum, nor are they expected to "teach" one another. Rather than appreciate one another as vast resources of information, life experience, personal issues and dreams, as was the case on the warm summer grass, the cold classroom gives pride of place to the teacher as expert, the one who holds knowledge and controls the channels by which it is to be conveyed.

The "school structure and process" is carefully designed to ensure that certain contents called "courses" are "taught". The Kasota framework was designed to ensure that any matter of interest to the participants was ripe for mutual exploration and was by definition "content". No young adult sitting under the fluttering poplar leaves expected that a peer or visiting speaker would define goals and understanding for anyone but themselves. Each young person saw their peers and visiting speakers as sharers or co-learners, or in the case of those somewhat older, mentors, with whom you could bounce off ideas and questions, freely and openly. One always had a sense of the number of free-thinking spirits about the group on the lawn, those gathered at a kitchen table, the spirited talks around chores: peeling spuds or washing dishes, or the quieter pondering that lay about the bright coals of a dying campfire.

It is true that some people had more knowledge in one area or another. A few of us were studying politics and theology so that may have given us an edge in some forms of critical scriptural analysis, creative worship or analyses of current events. But others knew about the workplace, had traveled widely or had careers and experiences which had expansive variety, intellectually, geographically and experientially.

Over the years I have seen the success of a co-learning style of education. In my last year at MSVU and in my year at Menno Simons College as a visiting professor I continued to make a virtue of necessity (while sticking to my conviction that students can control and richly expand their own learning). The necessity in this virtue of every student a teacher and every teacher a student is that I did not know the ins and outs of the content of many of the new courses I was teaching.

There are many of you, I am sure, who can justifiably claim that I should not have been teaching a course for which I did not have full training and credentials. You may well be correct. My report to you is this, however: in this strange context of not being the expert or authority, a dire necessity did result in a virtue, the virtue of all students seeing that they, like their certified teacher, were in the educational process as equal learners. It wasn’t any easier for me to work at this largely new material than it was for them. Consequently, we could set time aside to ask ourselves what that content should be; what are the concerns that we carry to a given subject area? Following such a heartfelt search we could then fashion our own curricula out of our own questions, issues or concerns.

Suffice it to say that I have seen so many truly creative contributions by students when they envision courses this way that I can scarcely contain my enthusiasm: beautiful artwork, poems, short stories, original music, dramatic presentations and much of this done by people who have never in their lives had an opportunity to do so previously.

I have seen young students express their deepest concerns in matters of personal, familial and community conflict, sharing these matters with a group that they trusted and thus enabling the classroom to become a microcosm of accepted diversity. In the end this is what peace education is truly all about in my view. We can make the classroom a laboratory of shared concerns, values, and means of overcoming misunderstanding and conflict. We can make the classroom and its subject matter fit our innermost concerns and troubles. And we can strengthen one another by our intelligent caring, our application of thought, empathy, and practical tools to make life more joyful, non-violent and full of a sinewed peace.

In the last year or more I have been in the very difficult process of learning some quite different dimensions of living. On the outward side it may not seem to have much to do with peace education. An older peace educator gets divorced, retires, one of his sons dies of suicide, he himself almost dies in what should have been minor surgery, he is locked into self-catheterization for long periods before and after the surgery, he strikes up a new relationship perhaps much too early following a marriage breakup, he moves zombie-like from province to province, is forced to go on EI, begins Old Age Security and CPP, and believes he is finished and dying while fighting the medical diagnosis and concomitant anti-depressives and anti-anxiety medications which go with "a severe anxious depression"..

Inside such a condition one just takes pills like anyone else with a serious illness save that this one can be kept quite invisible; it is of the emotions, mood and negative thinking and one can struggle to hide the excruciating pain and sense of being cut off from all pleasure and joy in life. On the other hand physical disabilities may quite often be all to conspicuous. I have a cousin, for example, whose illness is all too apparent. He is slowly dying with Lou Gehrig’s disease and he lies with tubes keeping him alive as he has for several years. His form of communication is the blinking of his eyes. I would not want to trade positions with him or his dutiful wife who has devoted herself to his attention around the clock, for months and now years. At the same time I do recognize the difference between the more obvious forms of human suffering and those which are not always recognized, many of the latter most common in unpeaceful or highly stressful and violent situations–the very situations which produce trauma, panic anxiety and severe depression.

What does all this have to do with peace education? My experience over these past months has been that we can all be peace educators, even those of us who are apparently impoverished in terms of money, resources, health, position or energy.. Every ounce of our health and strength, our decisions to keep going, to write, to act, to encourage, to love, to take good care of ourselves and those around us, is an act of peace-building.

I was deep in a depression before 9-11, although not for too long, and I came to know a number of things at that time including the fact that horrible events cause traumatic hurt in countless persons. We are not cut off from the violence done to others around the world. We breathe the same air, we taste the same love, or the same brutality. I knew of the death of my counsellor’s grandmother, due because she just gave up on that fateful day. I found myself going almost mad obsessively reciting Bin Ladin, Bin Ladin, over and over again and it would not leave me no matter how I tried to work at gardening or walking. I wrote a letter to the Prime Minister at this time and I realized that my walk across the brow of the hill overlooking Calgary was my own act of courage on that day of planeless skies. Every step was taken with a belly full of anxious depression. How many others, I wondered, might be doing something similar, not giving up, trying to live with courage and trust even on the bleakest and darkest of days.

I noticed that same day a young mother who was calling her little toddler away from the swings and slides of a neighboring park. She promised him that he could come back to play another day but they must get home for lunch. He toddled and waddled along looking at the grass, sky and trees. His mother called gently again and then laid down on the grass and waited for the little guy to stagger his way to her side. When he did she gently drew him to herself and hugged him. And I thought this is what it is all about, this patience, this security, this love of a young mother for her toddler and her patience with him. Here lie the roots of security, confidence, joy and non-violence.

In hospitals, emergency rooms, day hospital programs, on the streets and in the homes of what should be the most defeated of persons I have seen patience and care given by medical staff, government employees and just "ordinary people". I have seen the great poetic genius of a man who lives in a smoke-filled welfare-subsidized apartment. My friend is bi-polar, a reformed alcoholic who struggles with diabetes and hepatitis. Yet I know his commitment to truth, non-violence, faith and peace, and the determination, and even humour, seen in his writing which inspires so many from elementary school children to grandmothers and friends.

I have witnessed at first hand the hard struggles of people who have for years had very little in the way of material goods and how they continue to share and trust that somehow they will manage. Here, so often, are the meek who care for their environment, who avoid waste at great costs to themselves.

I do not intend in any way by these comments to say that I have been in places where others of you have not been. All I mean to say is that the "Kasota-like" learning goes on here as well and that all of these struggling people are peace educators. Whoever says that peace is wishy-washy idealism, let she or he walk in the shoes of my 94-year mother where there is non-stop, day and night pain and yet observe her beautiful countenance, her much beloved cheerfulness welcomed by young and old alike. Let the skeptic walk in the shoes of my poet friend or others who I know struggle with deep anxiety and depression or physical incapacities, and yet keep going.

A good friend recently wrote to me about her father who was a quadra-amputee. It was following those amputations and a long and challenging recovery that he met and married, his partner, then fathered his daughter, who, much later in life, became my friend. He also rode horseback and a motor cycle across four provinces; drove automobiles with "standard transmission", clutch and brake; went fishing, deer and duck-hunting. Today his daughter, my friend, displays his same strong character as she contributes immensely to the well-being of others, having recently returned from a visit to Africa reporting on cultural and political conditions in some of the poorest regions there.

My answer to the question; "Who is a peace educator? and where does it all begin? is that it begins in our understanding, courage, our own wish to live and make things better. To see the injustices around us may mean acting politically in some wider venues: provincially, nationally, internationally. But sometimes these avenues for building love and courage are much closer to home, in the family, in local institutions like schools, hospitals, churches and the workplace. Once we see the hurt and the need for comfort in ourselves and those around us then we can begin to reach out to those immediately closest to us and build from there.

When I was in a Mood Disorders Day Hospital one very heavy young man was suffering from panic anxiety, one form of which was the fear of high open spaces.. I used to hold his arm and steady him as we walked through the rotunda of the hospital which had wide cathedral ceilings conducive to anxiety attacks. Privately I felt comforted that I could do something for someone else given my own state of anxiety and depression. When it came time for me to leave the program this thoughtful young man offered me several gifts: a bike map of the city I was then living in and a book on the province’s bike paths. He knew exactly where my own health should lead me.

The educators who practice peace are everywhere: the young mother in the park, the anxious young man; the 94-year old great-grandmother; and the school teacher or college professor who learns with her or his students, sees them truly as FRIENDS and all that follows from that view of the other in terms of co-learning, sharing, truly caring.

My former wife and one of my daughters as nurses used to speak of patients in a children’s hospital and their parents by referring to "the mom" and " the dad". The expressions always bothered me somewhat. I think I am beginning to understand why. Anything that makes a client of another, any words that delimit another human being: "patient", "student" "consumer", etc., are counterproductive. Such words and the ideas behind them tend to straightjacket individuals, tuck them away inside a file folder, dismiss them from our deepest concerns, identification and love. And when we do this we open the door to hurt and violence. When we attempt to "be with" others in our family, in our classrooms, in our religious institutions, private organizations, workplaces or further afield we enlarge our understanding, our learning about peaceful relations.

Elise Boulding is very good on these matters in her discussions of cultures of peace because she sees how peace education is part of our everyday lives. Every time we back away from an unnecessary quarrel or intercede by comforting opposing parties or bring warmth and humour to an otherwise stressful situation we are acting as educators of peace. When I mention Elise Boulding’s discussion it may be important to distinguish between passive, aggressive and what the stress management experts correctly call "assertive" behaviour. There is an effectual distinction to be made here between the strength of non-violent passivism and passivity. To assert one’s self in daily living is to strengthen one’s beliefs in action, to "speak one’s peace" without harm to either one’s self (passivity) or the other (aggression).

This discussion of everyday peace-making and assertion brings me to mention one last matter that I am beginning to re-learn and that is the importance of taking healthy care of ourselves, giving ourselves the rest, love, exercise, wholesome food and fun with family and friends that builds the well-being out of which we can act as peace educators.. I was impressed by my colleague Vicki Mather when she said that she would have to limit her participation at this conference because she had already taken too much time away from her family. Sometimes the most difficult of lessons is that peace education starts with one’s self, loving one’s self, forgiving one’s self, taking responsibility for one’s self. In the end the education for peace will be as effective as this resulting inward wholeness.

Who then is a peace educator? I am! You are! Not simply because we are teachers or educational administrators but because we are who we are as: persons, women, men, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends, partners. We may choose to apply these generic and familial roles with care and intelligence as we take our place as vocational educators, as we become students, teachers, workers, managers, parents, religious and corporate members and leaders–all of the vocations and directions in which we choose to offer our energies, ideas and concerns. Our convictions and experiences, ideas, insights, research and study which challenge and strengthen us to live joyfully, non-violently, courageously even in the darkest and most dangerous of situations, are integral to an empowered, communitarian education. This peace-full education is built upon friendship, courage and love for one another even, or perhaps, particularly in our diversity.