Peace Academy

THE CHILDREN’S PEACE ACADEMY

Philosophical Statement

As the child represents the future, so the long-term peace and harmony of the human species depends, almost wholly, on the kind of gentle, loving children we send out into the world. The new Children’s Peace Academy will utilize the most “cutting edge” child development model springing from the powerful “natural science of the mind”: Evolutionary Psychology. This new discipline reminds us that, when we look at the evolutionary heritage of humanity, we all find our original home in Africa. It also reminds us that African hunter-gatherer society, as representing the original human culture, is the source of our innate hard-wiring ---our deepest nature--- that every newborn carries with them upon entering the world.

As perhaps the most renowned living anthropologist committed to the new evolutionary perspective, Robin Fox states (in the essay “Consciousness Out of Context” from his book Search for Society):

Photo Source: Mongabay.com

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Part of the vast process of "re-examining", "discarding", and " recasting" of various outmoded ideas based on wrong-headed assumptions about the deep nature and needs of the developing child, requires that we develop a new model for educating children. Dr. J. Gary Bernhard becomes the first educator to apply the powerful Evolutionary Psychology, utilizing original African models, to the design of a classroom. Thus, his book “An Evolutionary Perspective on Children’s Education” will serve as the theoretical foundation for design of the school. It carries 2 powerful insights that become immediately useful to the success of the school. As original African elders were very much responsible for passing on the tribal wisdom to the young during the vast majority of human history, so the new Children’s Peace Academy will offer food and lodging, not just for children, but for their grandparents and other elders from their homes in the nearby villages. This approach has worked very effectively in US experimental elementary schools which find much value in utilizing adult retirement homes in close proximity. The bringing together of the very young and the very old is very much in tune with the deeper nature of our original African social matrixes. The effectiveness of the approach is all but guaranteed by the new natural science developmental model.

The second powerful insight is for curricula design at the “high school” level. Since children learn best by watching and copying adults engaged in their work, so the school will offer skilled working adults from the neighboring community the opportunity to practice their craft at the school by supplying the tools needed by each craftsman. The craftsman must also agree to assist the students in completing quality work of their own. The school will prominently display the student projects to facilitate sale, and the proceeds from these products will be divided in an appropriate way between the creative student and the academy, such as to contribute towards the schools continued functioning. In this way, the student develops pride in seeing his work contribute to the well-being of the entire school, as well as toward his own personal well-being.

Both of these insights will also assure that the community feels a deep sense of connection to the school and its continued success. The community will never feel “in the dark” about the goings on at the school! Although Dr. Bernhard’s wonderful book will be the most important theoretical foundation for the school, there was needed a practical expression of a school following closely the evolutionary “child-centered” model that could serve to guide in the structuring of the Peace Academy curriculum. Such a model school must also follow the pattern of providing day-to-day lodging for poor and often undernourished children in a third-world setting as, necessarily, will be the form of the Children's Peace Academy. Fortunately, this model has been found in the Moo Baan Dek school in Thailand. This alternative school is modeled after the revolutionary Summerhill School in England that has, probably, done the most to create a truly “child-centered” educational curriculum. Please refer to the plethora of books written about A.S. Neill’s famous Summerhill School for more detail on how this philosophy fits so well within the new evolutionary perspective. As to how Moo Baan Dek demonstrates its deep commitment to the evolutionary nature of every developing child, see the introductory paragraph of the “Philosophy” webpage from the above-noted web address for the school:

The new sense of ourselves as a problematical and experimental blip at the end of the trajectory of human history has to take hold and everything has to be recast in that perspective before we can even start to think sensibly and constructively about ourselves, our behavior, our values, our societies. All our assumptions...will have to be re-examined and probably largely discarded.

Moo Baan Dek is a living alternative education. Its environment is arranged to help children from even the most difficult backgrounds to learn to love themselves and society. The children learn from nature and their immediate environment. They grow up in a warm and loving atmosphere in which they find understanding and freedom plentiful. Their learning can take place at any corner of this natural school, 70% of which is covered with cultivable land and forest, and is not confined to small classrooms. They learn amongst themselves, with their teachers and with Mother Nature, and gain sufficient self-confidence and awareness before re-entering the wider community.

Any child who has a developmental experience where his deep evolutionary needs are so fully satisfied will not be victim to the severe frustration and confusion that so many other children inevitably face. Knowing that severe frustration in meeting one’s basic and expressive needs is at the very root of human violence, so an optimal educational experience designed by natural science to meet these needs so precisely will, inevitably, result in a child who is happy and content and, thus, least prone to violence ---not only as the child he now is, but as the adult he will soon become!

Dr. Dale Glaebach, Director

Children's Peace Academy