Peace for the World: Promoting Peace Through English Language Teaching Texts

Peace for the World: Promoting Peace Through English Language Teaching Texts

Published on September 4, 2017

Ali Mansouri Writer, Researcher, Consultant

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“Education shall be directed toward the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.”

Article 26, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

All the nations of the world want peace and aspire to live in peace. Only bad, irresponsible and corrupt politicians would like to take their peoples to wars to divert their attention from their incompetence, corruption and dictatorship. They forget, or seem to forget, that wars are destructive and do not solve any problem.

Most people mistakenly believe that the topic of peace and war is for governments and politicians to deal with. The rest of the population have nothing to do with this topic. Though there has recently been an increasing awareness among many people that peace is a matter for every citizen of the world to engage in and promote, there are still large sections of society who still believe that peace is a political issue rather than a general issue for everybody. This includes the field of English language Teaching. In fact, in some countries your work contract includes an item that prevents you from engaging in politics including talking about peace and war in the world! In other countries, you are not allowed, as a civil servant or a teacher, to engage in any activity the government may deem political; otherwise you will certainly lose your job. This is why you do not find the topic of peace and war dealt with in English Language textbooks that are locally-produced. The writers are timid and too scared to talk about such a global issue. You therefore find a lot of praise for the “fictional” great achievements of governments in all fields and aspects of life, including peace for the world! The writers themselves are educated and instructed to be superficial in order to save their skin.

On the other side of the coin, we find a completely different picture with many international English Language Textbooks published by many international publishers. You find the writers well-educated and fully aware of the importance of peace not only for business and education but also for life itself to keep going. Besides being attractively designed and well-written, these Page 2 of 4

international textbooks contain many articles and even whole lesson units dealing with the topic of peace and war. They do not deal with the topic from the “imperialist” point of view as some might think or claim, but from a humanitarian angle promoting peace for everybody including their enemies. So it is really worthwhile for English Language Teachers, especially in foreign language situations, to look for articles and texts that promote peace and teach students how to eliminate hate from their hearts and their lives. This is quite possible in most colleges and universities, especially in the private sector, where the VC and Assistant VC do not care about anything except filling in their own pockets with money in any way possible, legal or illegal.

Most of them do not care about peace and war.

These “peace” texts can be used for direct teaching in the classroom, for assignments, and for testing. The following is a very good example of such a text. I have found it very useful for teaching and testing on a number of occasions. *“In 1941 my mother took me back to Moscow. There I saw our enemies for the first time. If my memory is right, nearly 20,000 German prisoners of war were going to be marched through the streets of Moscow. The pavements were full of onlookers; soldiers and a line of police kept them off the streets.

The crowds were mostly women — Russian women with hands roughened by hard work, lips untouched by lipstick and thin hunched shoulders which had borne half the burden of the war.

Every one of them must have had a father or a husband, a brother or a son killed by the Germans.

They gazed with hatred in the direction from which the line of the German soldiers was going to come.

At last, we saw it.

The generals marched at the head, massive chins stuck out, lips folded proudly. They tried to show that they still felt superior to their peasant conquerors. ‘They smell of perfume’, someone in the crowd said with hatred. The women were clenching their fists. The Russian soldiers and policemen had to work hard to hold them back. All at once something happened to them.

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They saw ordinary German soldiers, thin, unshaven, wearing blood-stained bandages, walking with difficulty or leaning on the shoulders of their comrades: the soldiers walked with their heads down.

The streets became dead and silent.

Then I saw an elderly woman in broken-down boots push herself forward and touch a policeman’s shoulder saying: ‘Let me through’. There must have been something about her that made him step aside. She went up to the line of the German soldiers, took from inside her coat something wrapped in a coloured handkerchief and unfolded it. It was a crust of black bread. She pushed it awkwardly into the pocket of a soldier, so exhausted that he was walking very slowly.

And now suddenly from every side women were running towards the soldiers, pushing into their hands: bread, cigarettes, whatever they had. The soldiers were no longer enemies.

They were people.”

*The text is adapted from McLean, A.C. (1978). Horizons: Advanced Readings in English.

London: Longman.

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