Escolar Documentos
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APRIL 2016
I
PEACE EDUCATION
INTRODUCTION
Peace education is an indispensable component of quality basic education.
According to UNICEF (1999), peace education is the process of promoting the
knowledge, skills, attitudes and values needed to bring about behaviour changes that
will enable children, youth and adults to prevent conflict and violence, both overt and
structural; to resolve conflict peacefully; and to create the conditions conducive to
peace, whether at an intrapersonal, interpersonal, intergroup, national or international
level.
As we all know, in some parts of the Philippines, promotion of peace is still a
challenge. This paper would like to introduce subjects related to peace.
actors,
such
as
non-governmental
(activist)
organizations
and
international conflicts, most of which involve powerful feelings of ethnic and communal
identity.
then, involves the cultivation of a peaceful consciousness and character, together with
an affirmative belief system and skills through which the fruits of "internal disarmament"
and personal integration may be expressed. Transformation unites doing with being,
task with experience.
From the standpoint of the transformation paradigm, spirituality implies insight
into the deep interconnectedness and sacredness of all levels and compartments of
reality. It is innate to the person, and may be understood as a universal human "attempt
to grow in sensitivity to self, to others, to non-human creations and to God" that
recognizes and seeks to accommodate the presence of the divine in all actions and
relations. Recognition of this divine presence and claim begets spontaneous loyalty,
which cannot be restricted by boundaries of religion, race, class, or gender. This
universal loyalty, in turn, inspires actions born of loving commitment to the wholeness
and integrity of creation. The personal has become the political in the most creative and
inclusive sense possible, as we seek to make public life reflect non-partisan spiritual
value. We become present in the moment, yet responsible for a shared and hopeful
future inspired by the injunction, "If you want peace, be peace. Be an instrument of
peace."
Developing the use of heritage and contemporary creativity as tools for building
peace through dialogue
Since its origin, UNESCO has been working towards a truly global movement for
fostering a culture of peace and non-violence worldwide and has been designated by
the UN General Assembly as the lead agency for many prominent global initiatives for
promoting peace.
From the Teachers Guide to End Violence in Schools, UNESCO made the following
proposals to build a culture of peace to face situations of violence within educational
establishments.
1. Advocate a holistic approach involving students, school staff, parents and the
community.
2. Make your students your partners in preventing violence.
3. Use constructive discipline techniques and methods.
4. Be an active and effective force to stop bullying.
5. Build students resilience and help them to respond to lifes challenges
constructively.
6. Be a positive role model by speaking out against sexual and gender-based
violence.
7. Be an advocate for school safety mechanisms.
8. Provide safe and welcoming spaces for students.
9. Learn violence prevention and conflict resolution skills and teach them to
students.
10. Recognize violence and discrimination against students with disabilities, and
those from indigenous, minority and other marginalized communities.
Transmitting knowledge is only one part of what teachers do. They also make an
essential contribution to the emotional and cognitive development of children, and play
a central role in social development and change. Although some students may
unfortunately experience violence in their homes, teachers can provide them with
alternative ways of being by modelling constructive, non-violent behaviour and by
fostering empathy and peaceful conflict resolution skills.
While teachers have a key role to play in stopping violence in schools, they
cannot tackle violence alone. Because the causes of violence in schools are multifaceted, stopping violence in schools requires multi-dimensional actions engaging all
members of a schools community in a holistic manner. Parents, social workers,
community leaders and institutions must work side-by-side with students, teachers and
administrators.
At the heart of the holistic school approach is a human rights-based approach to
education. This addresses the right of every person to quality education and respect for
human rights. A rights-based approach increases access to and participation in
schooling as it fosters inclusion, diversity, equal opportunities and non-discrimination. It
improves the quality of education by promoting student-centred and participatory
teaching practices and by creating a safe learning environment, both of which are
fundamental for learning to take place. Respect for human rights supports the social
and emotional development of children by ensuring their human dignity and
fundamental freedoms, which are necessary for students to reach their full potential.
Moreover, respect for human rights lays the groundwork for a culture of peace by
fostering respect for differences, which is critical to violence prevention. The daily
practice of a human rights-based approach leads to the creation of a rights-based
school, a safe environment conducive to learning where teachers and students together
enjoy and fully benefit from the educational process.
Personal Reflection
As I read the subjects related to peace, I realized that it is really a difficult issue.
Its not just about our own safety but for all the living things in this world. Peace is not
just about the absence of conflict but also the presence of harmony, unity and solidarity.
As a Christian, what can we do in the promotion of peace? Most especially here
in Mindanao where conflict is not new to us anymore. Bombing, Wars between our
Muslim brothers and other crimes related to destruction of peace always seen in the
news.
If we look again the peace paradigm, we can say that it must be nice if we can
apply all these approaches. I feel bad that we had so many reports and declarations on
promotion of peace but somehow we have difficulty in executing those statements. One
way in encouraging peace is through education, we have to act as a teacher to the
people who needs to know about it most especially to young people. We can do it
formally or in an informal way. The best time to time teach is when the person is still
young. Since personality is still developing for children, if we can educate them about
peace then they can grow upholding those teachings. We also have to instill in their
minds that as a children of God, we have the obligation to promote peace here in our
place.
I believe, as a Creation of God, we have to promote peace in order for us to live
in a safe and beautiful environment. According to Romans 4:19 Let us therefore make
every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. We have to uphold the
words of God to live in peace.
II
Mass Media and Values Education
The Meaning and Purpose of Mass Media
A medium is a channel of communication - a means through which people send
and receive information. The printed word, for example, is a medium; when a person
reads a newspaper or magazine, something is communicated to them in some way.
Similarly, electronic forms of communication - television, telephones, film and such like are media (the plural of medium). Mass means many and the focus is how and why
different forms of media are used to transmit to and be received by large numbers of
people (the audience).
Mass media, therefore, refer to channels of communication that involve
transmitting information in some way, shape or form to large numbers of people
(although the question of exactly how many a large number has to be to qualify as a
mass is something thats generally left undefined - its one of those things that people
know when they see it.
A few weeks prior to Christmas in 1963, Inter Mirifica, the Second Vatican
Councils decree on the Media of Social Communications, came into being thanks to an
approved vote of 1,960 to 164 of the bishops, also known as the Council Fathers.
Ironically, this document with its theme being the media and social communication
essentially went unnoticed because people worldwide were fixated on media accounts
pertaining to the assassination of President Kennedy that had occurred just weeks
before in Texas.
The previous summer saw the death of Pope John XXIII, the election of Pope
Paul VI and the I Have A Dream speech by Martin Luther King in Washington, D.C.
With the Cold War at a chilly low and the Vietnam crisis brewing, the average yearly
income for Americans in 1963 was about $6,000, while the cost of an average house
was $12,000 and a car $3,000. Within this wider context Inter Mirifica struggled to enter
onto the world stage as a relevant set of principles for a world broken, yet limping along
in pursuit of a new, more appealing identity.
Divine Providence would have it that 50 years later Inter Mirifica would find a
climate that made this decree even more relevant and applicable than when it was first
promulgated. The principles and warnings outlined in Inter Mirifica apply most aptly to
the so-called new social media that could not have even been remotely imagined back
in the early 1960s.
Inter Mirifica is both prophetic and providential. Acknowledging that means or
instruments of social communication have the potential of promoting either good or evil,
this is all too apparent with the new vehicles of communication that have become
commonplace in our present culture like the internet, iPad, iPhone, Youtube, and
Facebook. None of these means of communication would have had any meaning
whatsoever when Inter Mirifica was first written. Yet, even for the most casual observer,
it is obvious that this Vatican II decree, Inter Mirifica, speaks directly to those who use
these devices.
On the negative side, these instruments of the new media have become
contaminated by darkness and sin. The most obvious example is the selling of sex that
includes, but is not limited to, pornography that continues to invade the hearts and
minds of the youth and children who have the best grasp of this technology. In fact, the
misuse of these new instruments of social communication has created the so-called
multi-billion dollar porn industry that uses multiple ways to dissuade, yet another
generation of unsuspecting individuals, from choosing lessons of purity and virtuous
living over the filth of pornography. No wonder this 50-year-old document is so relevant
today as, for example, paragraph 10, that appeals to the youth to learn moderation and
discipline in their use of the media to understand fully what they see, hear and read
(and to) discuss them with their teachers and experts.
Paragraph 10 also reminds parents of their duty to see that entertainment and
publications which might endanger faith and morals do not enter their houses and that
their children are not exposed to them.
The Council Fathers could have never imagined how insidiously this moral
contamination would in fact enter the houses so many years later through a vehicle
called the World Wide Web. Nevertheless, their advice is most fitting, minus their
blanket ascent to teachers and experts who, in present times, do not necessarily enjoy
moral competency and integrity, as in the past, simply by virtue of their chosen
occupations.
In the midst of the chaotic moral decay that exists through the Internet and other
social media today, the Church desires to shine the light of Christ into this dark abode.
The Vatican itself is well connected to the social media and, like the first generation of
mass media and social communication such as radio and television, the official arm of
the Church uses the new instruments of social communication while encouraging all
members of the Church to become digital disciples, especially in the context of
embarking upon the New Evangelization. In the words of Inter Mirifica: All the members
of the Church should make a concerted effort to ensure that the means of social
communication are put at the service of the multiple forms of the apostolate [They]
should endeavor to bear witness to Christ in an apostolic spirit (and) in the
pastoral activity of the Church, making a technical, economic, cultural or artistic
contribution. (paragraph 13)
While the Church promotes the social media throughout this conciliar decree, the
Council Fathers simultaneously alert children, youth, parents, teachers, pastors and
bishops to be vigilant in the use of mass media and social communication. They
likewise challenge public authorities to offer authentic moral leadership while stating
that a special responsibility for the proper use of the media of social communication
rests on journalists, writers, actors, designers, producers, exhibitors, distributors,
operators, sellers, and critics. (paragraph 11) Appealing to the good will of professional
media outlets, the Council Fathers also requested respect for the moral law, reminding
these professionals that a great many of their readership and audience are young
people. (paragraph 11)
Personal Reflection
to become a good person, then in the evening shows that promoting violence may be
seen.
So as a Christian, what can we do about this? We are called to recognize and
celebrate the presence and saving power of Christ and his Spirit in our lives and in the
lives of others. That call means that we have to scrutinize not only our individual lives
but also our collective life as members of local, national and global cultures. The
meanings, attitudes and values, symbols and myths which form the public background
to our private lives have to be identified, examined and judged. If they are found wanting
we should be prepared to challenge them and, as far as possible, change them. Today
that means scrutinizing, challenging and trying to change public culture that is
expressed and mediated by global communication media.
Christian discernment means looking at and listening to our mediated culture with
the eyes and ears of Christ. We are asked to see truly and hear clearly the sights and
sounds of media so that we may know what values and meanings are informing our
culture. But it is difficult to see and hear in a world filled with noise, noise that we take
for granted. We tend to become conscious of the media only occasionally.
III
New Age Movement
Introduction:
The New Age Movement is in a class by itself. Unlike most formal religions, it
has no holy text, central organization, formal membership, ordained clergy, geographic
center, dogma, creed, etc. They often use mutually exclusive definitions for some of
their terms. The New Age is in fact a free-flowing, decentralized, spiritual movement -- a
network of believers and practitioners who share somewhat similar beliefs and
practices, which many add on to whichever formal religion that they follow. Their book
publishers take the place of a central organization. Seminars, conventions, books and
informal groups replace of sermons and religious services.
What is New Age Movement?
New Age movement, movement that spread through the occult and
metaphysical religious communities in the 1970s and 80s. It looked forward to a New
Age of love and light and offered a foretaste of the coming era through personal
transformation and healing.
It is a religious system with two basic beliefs: Evolutionary Godhood and Global Unity.
1. What is Evolutionary Godhood?
1. It is the next step in evolution. It will not be physical but spiritual:
1. For the most part, the NAM espouses evolution, both of body and
spirit. Man is developing and will soon leap forward into new
4. The New Agers have a name for the earth. It is Gaia. Gaia is to be
revered and respected. Some New Agers even worship the earth
and nature.
1. This opposes the Scripture that says that we are not to have
any other Gods before God (Ex. 20:3).
3. Man with God
1. Since the NAM teaches that man is divine by nature, all people,
once they see themselves as such, will be helped in their unity of
purpose, love, and development. The goal is to fully realize our own
goodness. It is obvious that this contradicts Scriptures, c.f., Rom.
3:10-12: "As it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have
turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one
who does good, not even one."
3. Additional beliefs of the NAM view of God are:
1. He (it) is impersonal, omnipresent, and benevolent--therefore, he (it) won't
condemn anyone.
1. The New Age god is impersonal. An impersonal God will not reveal
himself, nor will he have specific requirements as to morality, belief,
and behavior. This is why reincarnation appeals so much to them.
With it, there is no judgment, there is a second chance, a third
chance, and fourth, etc.
Personal Reflection
As I read articles about New Age movement, somehow I get confused. It shocked
this kind of belief is actually existing since they dont even have a formal meetings or
activities. I found the heterogeneous way of thinking to be weird.
The New Age offers man the same deal the serpent offered Eve in the garden. If
you eat of this fruit (in this case the idea that you are divine), you will become like God-knowing good from evil. All you need to do is deepen your awareness of this new reality
by becoming more open to the Christ within. As I read this I cant help but to have goose
bumps. I was raised as a Christian and I believed in Gods existence and His teachings
in accordance to the bible. The New Ager believes that all of life is connected and a
part of the whole. Oneness is a goal to be achieved. Man and God are one. Thinking
that Man and God are women is somehow ridiculous because God is our creator. He is
obviously higher than us. Without him, to whom are going to give thanks for? For me,
this type of thinking shows the arrogance of a man that they dont even need God
anymore. Saying that God is not a person, but that He is an energy that is in all things;
therefore, you are divine, along with the rest of creation. The Scripture, however, is clear
in its teaching that God is a personal being and distinct from His creation. God, the
Father, has a personal nature. For example, God has a will, God knows, God plans and
God communicates. God is distinct or separate from the world, but He is actively
involved with His creation.
As a Christian, I hope this type of movement will not shake our faith with God.
God is the truth, the way and life. No other movement can shake my faith in him.