This was the question I posed today to my 11th grade Modern World History class. “What is peace?”

This question has a context in our class. The semester long question that we are examining is “How do we work towards world peace?” We have been examining how major events in recent history have contributed to or led us away from peace. Yet we had not yet taken the time to determine “What is Peace?”

After working individually, in small groups, and as a whole class, three primary definitions for peace arose from the students. Not everyone agreed on these conditions, and you will notice that two of them seem to contradict each other. Nonetheless, here is what they came up with:

• There is Peace When People Get Along With Each Other - This characteristic allows room for conflict and peace to exist together as long as we resolve our conflicts with nonviolence. This also includes having respect for eachother and treating others as we want to be treated.
• Peace Is the Same as Utopia - Several students identified peace as an absolute condition. This characteristic contradicted the one above because it says that for peace to exist there cannot be any conflict at all. Students also felt that Utopia (and therefore peace) was a subjective concept that could be different for everyone.
• Peace is an Inner State of Calmness - This characteristic dealt with peace on an internal level. Most students focused on peace as an external state, there were a few who pointed out that peace is also a state of mind.

It took us about twenty minutes to come up with these definitions for peace. During this processes students kept wanting to move into the debate of whether or not we can ever have peace. I held them back. If we are to discuss whether or not peace is possible (or the better question, how do we work towards peace) we must make sure we are all talking about the same thing when we use the word peace.

So after about twenty-five minutes of preparatory discussion on what we mean when we use the word peace I let the students loose on the question they were so burning to debate: “Is Peace Possible?” No, never. . . Yes, of course . . . Well, what about in this case . . . The discussions roared.

At least for some students it did.

Not everyone got enthusiastic about the discussion on peace. I take partial responsibility for not framing the discussion well enough or relating it to a specific event. However, what really troubled me was the students who gave a simple “no” and felt no further discussion was possible.

My reflections on the days’ discussions left me with some tough questions. Why do so many students feel that peace is not possible - not just world peace, but even internal peace? What is the role of the teacher to share his or her personal thoughts on the possibility of peace, and the importance of working towards it? What historical events should we study to give us a framework for studying peace, its possibilities, its enemies, and its advocates.

Thoughts?