By Marie Mulvenna

Addressing a special workshop on Justice, Peace and the Catholic School, Ms. Patricia Mische, director of educational development of Global Education Associates, told assembled archdiocesan educators that “education for justice and peace is a matter of survival and well-being.”

Ms. Mische, speaking on the subject “The Globe: The Community School,” said, “As educators we can maximize the potential for justice and peace in ourselves and our students, while minimizing our capacity for violence and hate and re-tooling our capacity for aggression into constructive uses of human energy.” She said such education in peace and justice “will not flourish after one brotherhood or United Nations Day celebration, “but must be a total and daily growth process.”

She termed peace and justice a human possibility, saying as powerful as was the capacity for violence, so too was the human capacity for love, reaching out to others, for forgiveness and reconciliation.

Ms. Mische said educators and all beings can afford no longer not to educate “ourselves and our children in non-violence and justice.” She said: “This means awakening all of us to the responsible uses of our rational powers, to make decisions and to choose life styles commensurate to the needs and crises faced by all humankind.”

Terming education in justice and peace as “pragmatic” and not merely religious and humanistic, she said it was an absolute necessity for human survival and advancement, part of a larger educational framework sometimes called global education.”

Referring to the shrinking global community due to mass media, jet travel, space explorations and business networks, she said educators were part of a growing global education network where increasingly transnational approaches to education were being sought. “Students have to have understandings and skills necessary to function responsibly in this world community.” She said, “Urgent problems face our earthship for which this world’s children need special preparation.”

Covering the varied serious world crises, Ms. Mische, who also heads the summer institute at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, cited hunger as the number one problem facing mankind. She related that each year the amount of arable land declines due to such causes as erosion, strip-mining, paving, expanding population – “all humanly caused and therefore humanly avoidable.”

She said the population explosion will double the world’s present population by the year 2000. “There is not enough food to feed all those presently living,” she said, stating that in the next six weeks 10 million will starve in Bangladesh – a figure she said would “wipe out Atlanta seven times over.” Double the population of the United States will starve before the end of 1975, she said, stating “if fewer are to starve and the earth is to support its people, the eating habits of men must change.”

She cited “ecocide” and disregard for ecology as major changes in nature’s order with current destruction so rapid that natural healing processes cannot keep pace.

“War is the greatest single threat to nature,” she said and also cited war preparation including nuclear testing as harmful to the balance of nature and the important ozone belt which protects us from the dangerous effects of ultraviolet rays. “It is as vital to sustaining life on the planet as oxygen in the atmosphere.”

She listed pollution, disposal of wastes, the great variety of toxic substances found in many areas of the world as a great deterrent to relying on the ocean to help global hunger.

“Our students will move from the age of affluence to the age of scarcity,” she noted, saying America was the world’s greatest consumer and waster, using 40 percent of the earth’s resources with six percent of the world’s population.

“If everyone is to have enough, we of the affluent nations will have to learn to get by on less.”

“Isolation,” she said, “is not the answer.” Global cooperation and a “shared global vision of our common destiny is essential.” She said there was no hope in interdependence and in signs of concern blossoming in many educational institutions, indicating an awareness that peace and justice needed cooperation.

In order to help students in the area of global education, Ms. Mische said several approaches were necessary. These include a “holistic” approach which she described as one making whole the person and the world. In addition, she listed a futuristic approach seeking alternatives and said the entire global education was a life-long process.

She told educators they cannot merely add a unit but must have a change in focus, beginning with individual persons, their values, moral development, behavior, dealing with conflict and the choosing of responsible life styles.

The whole earth must be seen and each student as a citizen with similarities and differences, she said. Students must understand others through interdependence, sharing world heritage as well as interaction and communication. She cited the need for more image explosions which she defined as heroes of justice and peace, the fuller use of media, books, drama and music to bring home the point.

“We who inhabit the earth at this time live in a period of such rapid transition that world has never before experienced. History has not given us touch points. We do not yet know the terminus of that transition – whether the journey ends in chaos and destruction or greater human advancement. As educators, we play a significant part in determining which it will be.”

In a dialogue session, Ms. Mische said that children cannot act on words alone and asked, “Are we ready to do ourselves what we say must teach our children to do?”

Following a luncheon based on the book “Diet For a Small Planet,” which featured meatless items, participants took part in a survey questionnaire, highlighting attitudes prevalent in schools on peace and justice as well as the response to such teachings. One sister said although the Church had a clear teaching on justice and peace it had not always expressed it fully, thus leaving the feeling that it is a new program, just now being presented.

Some felt parents needed additional education through adult education on the topic with the total parish community educated positively on peace and justice and the full meaning of the subject.

Recommended approaches included simulation games, role playing, field trips, total school philosophy, use of liturgy in specific peace events, research into family history and ethnic backgrounds, panel discussions, drama, international programs, live contact with persons in other areas of the world, contacts with local resource personnel such as consulates, embassies, government officials and missionaries.