EDUCATION FOR PEACE: LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT

Abstract

This article presents the results of a pedagogical research, which objective was to find out through a documentary-bibliographic study how education for peace in Latin American research space is currently conceptualized. The authors found that there exist two main lines in the approach to peace education: realist-pragmatic-positivist and idealist-critical. The representatives of the first line (Vera-Poseck, Carbelo-Baquero, Vecina-Jiménez, 2006; Landazábal-Cuervo, Cardona, Ruiz-Manzanares, 2009; Cajigal-Molina, 2017; Caldera-Montes, Aceves, Reynoso-González, 2016, among others) choose to promote the peace culture through different academic and cultural events (courses, workshops, forums, conferences, colloquiums, seminars, festivals, exhibitions, cultural weeks, talks, etc.), which purpose is basically to explain to the population the negative effects of conflict, violence and the benefits of “living in peace and harmony”. They conceptualize peace education from the positivist position, pragmatic pedagogy, educational technology, resilience pedagogy, among others. Educational researchers who are supporters of the second line (Freire, 2012, Jares, 2001, Pérez-Viramontes, 2018, Quiroga-Trigo, 2012, Savater, 1997, among others) operate from the categories of dialectical philosophy and neo-Marxism, the historical-cultural approach, the critical theory, the radical or critical pedagogy and theories of cultural reproduction, the resistance pedagogy, the pedagogy of the oppressed, the border pedagogy, the complex thinking and pedagogy in complexities, the intercultural pedagogy and cultural relativism. They seek for man to build his own systems of ideas, knowledge, theories, to be a subject from his real perspective, a concrete and contextualized ecosocial minimum (microsystem) related to the whole through intercultural communication and logical pluralism. They consider that the conflict is natural, it is not negative in itself and it has an enormous possibility for development; that violence is not an evil phenomenon but an element of the human condition that needs to be reasonably attenuated by the use of no less natural impulses of cooperation, harmony and peaceful order; that insubordination is a sign of vitality and intelligence, which should be channeled towards social creativity and not towards violence.