Educating for Peace: Meeting with Ziauddin Yousafzai, Malala's father

Can we develop a curriculum for peace education?

That was the question today in our second meeting with Malala's father, Ziauddin Yousafzai. In our spring, 2014 meeting we started the conversation; today we hoped to develop some concrete action steps to take us forward.

Ziauddin is well-known as a peace activist from Pakistan. His daughter, Malala, recently co-won the Nobel Peace Prize. The New York Times has an excellent documentary that tells their "back story" before she became famous. To watch the video click below:

The Making of Malala

Today's meeting brought together about a dozen educators and academics at University of Waterloo's Conrad Grebel College. As we talked about how we could work together to develop a peace curriculum for students in Pakistan, I kept coming back to two key questions:

1. How can we, as western educators, even begin to conceive of (or contribute to) such a curriculum? What could we offer?
2. How can a peace curriculum lead to peace? I'm a strong believer that a "living curriculum" (i.e. lessons learned from our interactions with each other) supersedes a written one. Yet, one without the other is problematic as well.

I don't have answers for the above questions.

What I was struck by was the suggestion of one of the other educators at the table, a gentleman from Congo who has been part of an African peace initiative sponsored by Mennonite Central Committee. Esau suggested that we should not worry about the specific details of a peace curriculum; that should be designed and developed locally. What we can all contribute to is a framework for what peace education should be in a global sense. That is, what are the universal aspects to peace education that parents, children, and teachers can work toward no matter where they live?

I learned a lot today.

Some I learned from Ziauddin and the other guests who were from Pakistan. But I also learned from a new friend from Congo who taught me (once again) that I have much to learn from my colleagues from other parts of the world.

I am intently looking forward to spending more time with Esau to discover what peace education can be.