Poetic Peace Education: A Curriculum Connecting the Mind, Body, and Heart in Workshop Spaces

Abstract

AbstractIn this chapter, we discuss the use of poetry in peace education curricula and explore what we call a poetic peace education approach. This epistemological, pedagogical, and curricular reorientation focuses on using poetry to dynamically engage learners’ minds, bodies, and hearts in peace education contexts. Our emphasis on multiple ways of knowing and being in the classroom is in response to a series of interlocking crises facing peace education and recent critiques that peace education has become less effective and less peaceful due to its overly psychologized and hyper-cognitive approaches. In response, we seek to explore and expand on new paths forward for peace education that have been advocated by scholars at the Cambridge Peace and Education Research Group. These works approach the crises and critiques facing the field as an opportunity for creative transformation of peace education praxis and collectively point toward the power of the arts in learning about peace. Using these texts as a foundation, this chapter specifically explores how poetry can support peace education in becoming a more affective, responsive, and peaceful learning process. To do so, the chapter also draws on examples from our US and UK peace education classrooms where poetry was infused with critical explorations of masculine gender norms and higher education epistemologies. In its discussion and conclusions, this chapter braids together peace education literature, original poetic texts, personal teaching reflections, and our collaborative analysis to illuminate the challenges facing peace education curricula and the potent potential of poetic peace education alternatives moving forward.KeywordsPeace educationPeace and conflict studiesPoetryArts educationHigher educationCritical masculinities