PEACE EDUCATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Peace education has become an important issue nowadays and a major concern for researchers and educators all over the world. Peace education has been introduced into many educational institutions either as separate programs or integrated within the various subject materials. Hoping to cause some positive change, post-war countries started adopting such programs. Research shows that the sooner children get introduced to the knowledge of peace and practice the skills related to it, the greater the chance is that they will become positive change agents in the future. While peace programs are being introduced into schools worldwide, it seems that attempts to do so in higher education are still minimal. Consequently, I believe that school teachers have become more qualified to educate their students for peace than university professors although one cannot deny that many universities are now offering courses or even degrees in peace studies such as conflict resolution and transformation. However, where offered, such programs are by exclusively the departments of political science in some universities. As such, I argue that, as in many schools, peace related student learning outcomes should be introduced into almost every general requirement course, if not all, offered by every department at higher education institutions. As a result, learners who do not have the chance to get introduced to such programs throughout their school years will have the chance to do so at the university level.