International Day of Peace at the Royal High School, Bath, UK.Pupils and staff at the Royal High School, Bath joined 100 million others around the globe to mark the International Day of Peace. Year 12 and 13 students launched the day with a moving assembly about the quest for an international day of ceasefire led by filmmaker Jeremy Gilley and the huge impact that conflict has on the lives of so many. Throughout the day, all lessons related to the theme of peace and conflict resolution; in Maths pupils analysed the statistical relationship between nations’ expenditure on arms and their ‘peace-rating’, in Psychology sixth form students looked at the process of post-conflict reconciliation in regions such as Rwanda, Year 8 students analysed the lyrics of peace songs in Spanish, German and French and in English pupils reflected on the power of poetry written by those who have first- hand experience of war. See below for further examples. In a symbolic act hundreds of staff and students formed a human peace symbol, a picture of which will be added to the thousands that now adorn the international peace day website. A huge dove made out of hand prints of students and staff hangs in the school as a reminder of the importance of the peaceful resolution of conflict . The day coincided with the visit to our school of a group of Tibetan teachers who run a school for Tibetan refugee children in India. They were particularly moved by the acts of kindness slips that sixth form students gave out to all pupils encouraging them to make a positive difference to each other’s day by ‘ smiling at a stranger’ or ‘giving someone your pudding’. Themed lessons included:Classics : Pupils looked at the Roman Empire as an early EU idea of ‘Pax Romana’ and the idea of spiritually being in with the gods (‘pax deorum’). Psychology : In Psychology we listened to ‘Love and Peace or else’ by U2. We then discussed what the song was about and attempted to interpret some of the lyrics. We discussed Bono’s motivation for writing the song. We examined the relationship between discrimination and violence. The students were asked to come up with ideas on how to get rid of discrimination. They then used the Internet to find psychological studies to support their ideas. English Year 7 We were practising using a thesaurus. Looked at synonyms for PEACE and WAR – and adjectives/adverbs etc. Also did a word puzzle based on used a thesaurus – hidden message if all clues correctly worked out, which was PEACE ON EARTH. Economics :In one of my lessons I related economic theory to the subject of peace and war. I talked about Thomas Malthus, one of the great founding fathers of economics. He predicted that mankind was doomed to periodic bouts of famine, disease and possibly warfare as a way of bringing population back into balance with economic resources. His basic argument was that population has a natural tendency to grow at a faster rate than food supplies, thus leading to any of the above horrible consequences. Warfare is just an aspect of the global competition for resources, especially land. Malthus’s ‘Essay On The Principle of Population’ written some 200 years ago earned the dubious accolade for economics as ‘the dismal science’. There is still a vigorous debate today about whether or not he is fundamentally correct. The ‘Green Revolution’ in agriculture, together with effective contraception does seem to enable the world to feed itself, at least for the moment. But with population projections of a global 50% increase, to 9 billions by mid century, who knows? Furthermore much of modern intensive farming relies on chemical fertilisers produced from crude oil, which may not be sustainable indefinitely. Will we be rescued by more use of genetically modified crops, or will there be a global catastrophe? Pessimists (the neo-Malthusians) also point out that intensive farming contributes to the global climate change, which will in turn harm crop yields in many parts of the world. You can see why economics can sometimes e depressing! Art: In art, we made (with some difficulty!) origami peace doves, then made drawings of them. They can be seen hanging in the upstairs foyer of the art school. German : In year 8 we translated the lyrics of the song ‘Where have all the flowers gone’ and then sang it in German while watching videos which illustrated the lyrics. We also made placards with peace slogans on them. In Year 12 and 13 we studied world maps of conflict zones and analysed the current situation.FrenchWith year 10 and 11 we looked at world issues, brainstorming vocabulary, looking at the use of the conditional i.e. What rich countries could do … and designing a poster. With 6th Form classes we introduced the topic by commenting on images, we then listened to poems about war and talked about them. Finally, some groups managed to write their own poems about peace and war. HistoryMy lessons were all exam classes directly concerned with war and peace – the IB classes were studying the terms and significance of the Treaty of Versailles 1919 – which reverberate to today, particularly in the case of the colonial settlements. Year 11s are deep in coursework on the failure of appeasement and the impact of air attack. BusinessWith year 13 we looked at how international business can work to help developing countries. Also, the impact on business of corrupt regimes in war torn countries.
