Peace Day

A Day of "Solid"arity
After our peace lesson on Tuesday was math. The lesson was on solids and I had them cut sectors out of paper and make them into cones. From the dimensions of the sector, they calculated the radius of the base and cut it out. But by the end of class, they were all wearing the cones on their heads. It was so funny to see 45 cone heads that I went and grabbed my camera for a picture. Note the peace signs.


This Tuesday, Sept. 21^st, was International Peace Day. The African Union declared that this year would be a “Year of Peace and Security in Africa.” It’s supposed to be a time of reviewing and strengthening peace initiatives on the continent. As part of this, most schools set aside time to have a lesson on Peace. At our school, we were given a lesson plan (I’m almost positive it was written in America), and each class was assigned a teacher to give them the lesson. I was given my Senior 1 class. Since the lesson was a bit too heavy with political and social development language for 12 and 13 year olds, I decided to just give them some questions to discuss in groups. Here are some of the questions we talked about:

What are some examples of times or places without peace? Do you believe that there will be a time when there is Peace all over the world? What would have to happen to bring about peace? Who are some famous people who have fought for peace? What do you think about the following statement: “Peace is not achieved through a few large acts, but through many, many small actions.”

One student raised her hand and said: “when there is peace, everyone will be rich.”

“Well, maybe not rich, but no one will be in need of money,” I responded.

“No Teacher, everyone will be rich in spirit.”

After the discussion, I wrote up some of the lyrics to “Imagine” and we listened to the song several times. By the end of the second repeat, they were all singing along or swaying in their seats. Here’s what they were singing:

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
No Religion too.
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace.

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man.
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world.

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one.

I started tearing up listening to them: Every single one of them had written down Rwanda 1994 as an example of a time without peace, but only two people said that they thought world peace was impossible.