Here’s a little pop quiz to test your knowledge of history. Identify the following eight individuals: 1. George Washington, 2. Andrew Jackson, 3. Ulysses S. Grant, 4. Colin Powell, 5. Emily Balch, 6. Daniel Berrigan, 7. Jeanette Rankin and 8. Colman McCarthy.
Let me guess: you easily identified the generals but had a tougher time with the last four, right? Don’t feel bad, it’s not your fault. Chances are your high school did not offer you the opportunity to learn about peacemakers.
United States history and culture is defined largely by war. Military officers are hailed as “heroes,” while peacemakers are dismissed as “radical hippie leftists.” Peace is considered a vague, abstract concept that may sound nice in theory but doesn’t work in the real world of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and rogue states.
Across the political spectrum public officials blindly accept the notion that we can only protect the homeland and ensure world peace by spending $500 billion a year on the military. And from kindergarten through college, students learn frequently about the people who fought wars (even more frequently about the people who ordered wars to be fought) but rarely about the people who opposed wars and spoke out against them.
Statistics paint an alarming picture. Around 80 million people were killed in wars in the 20th century, a 500 percent increase over the 19th century. About 40,000 people are killed every month in 50 or so distinct conflicts around the world. More than 10,000 Americans are killed every year by guns, and domestic abuse and teenage suicide rates have reached alarming levels.
It is absolutely vital, now more than ever, that peace be taught in classrooms. If we continue to allow generations of students to grow up ignorant of nonviolent solutions to problems, this country will continue down its well-worn path of violence, which will, as always, simply lead to more violence.
Instead of studying wars and the distinguished generals who managed them, let’s study peace and the humble civilians who created it. Let’s study Denmark’s successful nonviolent resistance to the Nazis. Let’s study how India peacefully expelled the British over the course of one extraordinary man’s lifetime, when it took Ireland 800 years to violently do the same. Let’s study how Oscar Arias Sanchez made peace among four Central American nations whose peoples had previously suffered through cruel dictators and bloody revolutions. Let’s study how Serbian college students peacefully did what NATO bombs could not: oust dictator Slobodan Milosevic from power and clear the way for a democratic government in Yugoslavia. Perhaps most important of all, let’s study how the United States used diplomacy and negotiation, instead of preemptive war, to solve the Cuban Missile Crisis and avert World War III.
It’s time to bring peace studies to UW-Madison. Currently, there are 71 colleges and universities, including bigwigs like Colgate, Tufts and Berkeley, that offer peace studies majors, while nearly 300 more offer undergraduate certificates and M.A. degrees. These include Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Michigan State, Notre Dame, Penn State, Syracuse, Villanova and UW-Milwaukee.
We must recognize what our companion school an hour east has recognized: that peace is just as critical a component for a well-rounded education as math, science or literature. If we here at Madison do not at least have the option to learn about it, we do not deserve to be called one of the best state universities in the country.
Peace isn’t an abstraction. It’s not an “out there” idea. It’s a skill that we as humans must learn if we are to survive, and the best place for us to learn about it is in the same place where we learn about everything else. As the great peacemaker Colman McCarthy has said a thousand times, “Let’s not just give peace a chance. Let’s give it a place in the curriculum.”
Nick Barbash ([email protected]) is a freshman majoring in political science.
