The peace education imperative: a democratic rationale for peace education as a civic duty

This paper articulates a normative philosophical justification for Peace Education as a civic duty understood from within the imperatives of democratic political legitimacy. A normative philosophical rationale is present that outlines how and in what ways valid public justification is the source of political legitimacy in a democracy, which in turn gives citizens a justified claim to political rights (including a right to justification) and an education that develops the knowledge and capacity to participate in public justification and critique. From this perspective, political education is a civic duty. It is also argued that democracy faces in two directions, inward toward the basic structure of society and outward toward relations with other nations and peoples. Given this dual nature of democracy it is argued that a basic civic duty to provide peace education as a form of democratic, global, political education to all future citizens is morally imperative. It is argued that we need to educate future citizens as global agents of justice, building a formidable bulwark against arbitrary power and constituting the means for the realization of a just peace. Peace education should be affirmed as a civic duty at the heart of democracy in an interdependent world.