Business Daily (Nairobi)
Macharia Munene
10 November 2009
opinion
Kenyans should learn how to lose and the recent Ministry of Education intimation that it intended to introduce "peace education" in schools is commendable.
It has a few obstacles to overcome that include negative attitudes emitted by politicians, and lack of trained teachers and proper curriculum.
The Kenya Institute of Education (KIE) has yet to think through what "peace education" means let alone come up with a proper syllabus and identify appropriate text books on which the pupils will be examined. Still, the effort is commendable.
Peace education, a branch of the fast-growing peace studies industry, is closely connected to an equally fast-growing industry in conflict studies.
Although analysts debate as to which comes first, conflict or peace, the two have a symbiotic relationship because it is not possible to study one without the other.
Conflicts, being frictions arising out of various incompatibilities of interests, ideals, and objectives, are natural and unavoidable and can be positive or negative.
Peace, however, is successful management of negative conflicts or reduction on the intensity of negative friction.
Peace education, therefore, is teaching people to manage or to reduce negative conflicts.
This is the case despite claims by Francisco Munoz at the University of Granada that conflicts are irregular intruders into a naturally harmonious environment of "peace".
Munoz is a visiting professor in a unique graduate programme at UJI in Castellon, Spain, that was started in the 1990s by Vincente Martinez-Guzman with Unesco support.
Prominent professors offer courses on their specialties to graduate students who are also from every continent.
Students, therefore, learn from some of the leading theoreticians and policy formulators in "peace", "conflict" and "development".
They also learn from Martinez-Guzman that peace can be broken into many parts which amounts to "peaces" rather than "peace" in the singular.
Graduates of Martinez-Guzman's programme dot the globe.
They are in UN agencies and in the European Union.
They work for peace, conflict, and development programmes for various governments and as officials of liberation movements.
They are scholars on mercenaries and security, professors in universities, and specialists in peace education.
Kenya has received its share of such specialists and one of them is involved in developing "peace education" at the Laikipia University Campus in Nyahururu.
The newly elevated Laikipia University College is the only university seemingly paying serious attention to "peace education."
With intentions to create a niche for itself by making "peace education" its flagship, it has developed a degree programme with the assistance of Hannah Muthoni.
A product of Martinez-Guzman's programme and one of the few with graduate training in "peace education," Muthoni developed many of the new courses on offer among them "learning to lose."
Part of the reasons Kenyans become violent during elections, argues Muthoni, is because politicians and voters have not been taught how to lose.
Her solution, therefore, is to train school children how to lose and that can be done only if the teachers have been trained on how to lose and how to teach others.
The benefits are likely to be long term and beyond the confines of Nyahururu.
Equipping teachers to teach peace and how to lose, or to accept to lose, is intriguing.
It has the effect of preparing pupils to internalise the culture of "peace" by not despairing or becoming violent simply because of some setbacks.
While it seemingly appealed to those in Nyahururu because Greater Laikipia has been a zone of perpetual conflicts, its application can be national.
It can even involve socio confrontations in sports, particularly where Kenyan football hooligans throw stones after losing games.
Politicians at all levels, and those aspiring to become "leaders", should be taught how to lose.
Prof Munene teaches at USIU, Nairobi.
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