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CONCLUSION

 

I can feel the pressure of a skeptical disbelief that dismisses dreaming as irrelevant. I share an awareness of the obvious gap bet­ween the nuclear nightmare and our individual human possibilities. I stress that I am talking about starting-points and challenges, and about educational work, which is inevitably at a point prior to the exer­cise of power. Without a sense of hope and possibility, we shall dumbly succumb to whatever the drift of events brings us. I am not confident that conscious and deliberate action will suffice to avert catastrophe, though common-sense suggests that world leaders could achieve a lot if they could act together. It is simply that I see hope as well as threat in human capacities, and believe in choosing life.

I can remember years ago being challenged at a student party to present a performance that showed the existential significance of a flamingo egg. Never one to turn down a chance for creativity, I went through a stretching routine evocative of the experience of being com­pletely enclosed in something whose nature I did not know, and press­ing out against encompassing resistance. The punch-line was when I broke through the shell and declared myself a fully-formed flamingo. This image is of our life and our knowledge occurring within eggs that can burst and deliver us into a colder and wider world. We learn about what is inside our eggshell (acquiring skills and conforming ourselves to our world); but there is also a time when the eggshell breaks and a whole new life beckons.

The evolutionary history of the human race can be seen in terms of eggs that nurture whole communities for a time, and then break open, leaving people exposed to new forces, which may be very destructive in their impact. History is littered with secure world views which provided a total explanation of the universe, except for the wider reality which eventually demonstrated their inadequacy. From within our eggshell, it seems impossible not to regard the appearance of cracks in the secure fabric of our world without a sense of fear and vulnerability, indeed, of horror. We have always tended to resist the pain of growth, so that we are dragged kicking and screaming into the future, while firmly turning our face to the past. This is a recipe for severe and traumatic learning. Peace education is important because it offers one possibility for learning a more constructive relationship with our personal and collective destiny.

The nuclear nightmare seems tome to show the insufficiency of a nationalistic and technocratic culture that is dangerously estranged

 

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from the real needs of our planetary civilization and biosphere. The challenge facing our generation is to realize the unity of our global civilization and to create the institutions and relationships that will ensure planetary survival and peaceful community. For this, we need people who can exercise' the nurturing, challenging and constructive powers that build peaceful community. This requirement goes well beyond the possibilities of any educational program; but there is a crucial educational contribution through the development and nurtur­ing of vision. When it comes to peace-making, we all can and should be educators as well as students.