- published: 15 Jun 2013
- views: 39050
Peace education is the process of acquiring the values, the knowledge and developing the attitudes, skills, and behaviors to live in harmony with oneself, with others, and with the natural environment.
There are numerous United Nations declarations on the importance of peace education.Koichiro Matsuura, the immediate past Director-General of UNESCO, has written of peace education as being of "fundamental importance to the mission of UNESCO and the United Nations". Peace education as a right is something which is now increasingly emphasized by peace researchers such as Betty Reardon and Douglas Roche There has also been a recent meshing of peace education and human rights education
Ian Harris and John Synott have described peace education as a series of "teaching encounters" that draw from people:
James Page suggests peace education be thought of as "encouraging a commitment to peace as a settled disposition and enhancing the confidence of the individual as an individual agent of peace; as informing the student on the consequences of war and social injustice; as informing the student on the value of peaceful and just social structures and working to uphold or develop such social structures; as encouraging the student to love the world and to imagine a peaceful future; and as caring for the student and encouraging the student to care for others" .
Prem Pal Singh Rawat (Hindi: प्रेम पाल सिंह रावत; born 10 December 1957), also known as Maharaji and formerly known as Guru Maharaj Ji and Balyogeshwar, teaches a meditation practice he calls Knowledge.
At the age of eight, he succeeded his father Hans Ji Maharaj as leader of the Divine Light Mission (Divya Sandesh Parishad) and as the new Satguru (lit. Perfect Master) to millions of Indian followers. Rawat gained further prominence when he traveled to the West at age 13 to spread his message. His claimed ability to impart direct knowledge of God attracted a great deal of interest from young adults, and many saw him as an incarnation of the divine. Under his charismatic leadership, the Divine Light Mission (DLM) became the fastest growing new religious movement in the West, though it was sometimes described as a cult. Rawat also attracted media attention, being ridiculed in the US for his youth and his supposed divine status, with journalists noting luxury automobiles and multiple residences made available to him by his followers.