Today I had the opportunity, together with other colleagues in the Embassy, to attend a lunchtime presentation on peace-building and conflict prevention held by PATRIR’s Kai F. Brand-Jacobsen. Kai has been working on conflict prevention since he was a teenager and now, after many years and many projects across the globe, has developed a very coherent and well-structured approach to this issue.
While most of us regard conflict as the moment when an outburst occurs, this is often not the case the problem has actually been dormant and brewing for sometime. It is his belief that prevention, just like in medicine, is vital to keeping the “health” of an environment, be it a personal relationship, a social group or a bloc of nations. One interesting finding related to the armed conflict was that it did not offer a solution to the original problem but rather worsened it.
Teaching school-children about conflict prevention, just like with any other field of study, would bring a long-term benefit for a better understanding and management of conflict and its solutions. Kai argued, and I agree, that we study maths and music from an early age to have a well-rounded education, and not necessarily because we think this would make us accomplished mathematicians or music producers.
Do you think conflict prevention should be taught in schools?