Peace as a Global Language Conference 2003

How to link knowledge with action and then connect that to our lifestyles and lifeworks? How to develop the abilities needed to find problems, conceive solutions and actually implement them? This is a report of our efforts to become an active global citizen from the “passive, apathetic and indifferent student”.

Kazakhstani independent organizations and public movements were in the vanguard of the democratic reforms in Kazakhstan, raising the public awareness and pushing the government to protect human rights. Since getting independence the number of NGOs rose significantly. At present, there are about 2000 NGOs in post-Soviet Kazakhstan.

Join us to share your ideas for methods and materials for education as a tool for the personal growth of students and teachers.  Of special interest are nonauthoritarian, feminist, constructivistic, holistic, collaborative, and critical approaches, learning as transformation, critical reflection, and joy,  and honoring of diverse student and teacher voices.

From chemical production to dams, engineers and scientists are more responsible for shaping our world than any other profession. Politicians, businessmen and consumers are driving forces, but ultimately it is the engineer and scientist who implement technology. This presentation will look at ways of making ethical and environmental issues an effective part of learning materials for Technical English.

Amnesty International assigns each of it's chapters around the world a prisoner of conscience: someone imprisoned for their ideas or beliefs. This presentation will discuss some of their circumstances with the hope that this small amount of recognition will give some voice back to those who have been otherwise silenced.

In this presentation, I will describe a course focusing on rights and rights activism taught at Kanda University for International Studies. I will discuss the structure of the course, the successes and failures experienced, and students' reactions. I will also offer suggestions as to how teachers can use existing and easily available material to teach about rights in a variety of contexts.

There is always a structure in the classroom, and the structures we use on a daily basis form character. A teacher cannot choose not to impact on character formation. An important question is the direction of that impact. Traditional classroom structures (individual worksheet work; having students raise their hands one at a time to be called on) if not balanced by cooperative structures, have a demonstrable negative impact on character and diminish our long-term hopes for peace. In this experiential plenary session, we will examine a fifteen-virtue model of character and analyze the impact of traditional and cooperative structures on virtue acquisition. Finally we will explore how structure forms character which in turn impacts on long-term prospects for peace. To help you build character in your classroom, and increase our long-term prospects for peace, come learn structures like Three-Step Interview, Paraphrase Passport, and Corners.

T Newfields: Deconstructing Cinderella - Helping Students Explore Their Own Myths; M Steele: Letters for Peace-"Letters for Peace." My students have been writing letters to Bush and Prime Minister Koizumi about their thoughts on war with Iraq. I will show that, contrary to the complaints of many foreign language teachers in Japan, Japanese students DO have opinions and often very strong ones, and that they are certainly willing to share them when asked. Letters will be displayed, and an analysis of the letters will be given.

With the advent of the year 2001, we have entered into new century and new millennium, but today humanity is standing at the crossroad. Humanity is facing a terrible challenge of its own existence due to violent social order. THE BGGEST AGENDA OF 21ST CENTURY IS- "HOW TO SAVE THE HUMANITY?" This Paper has attempted to highlight the global recognition of Peace as a matter of common concern to save the Humanity. The Part I - deals with the World Crisis and Challenges of 21st Century. The Part II - deals with the root causes & violence & violent conciousness. The part III- signifies the importance of "Peace" for oneness of Humanity through 'OSHO' Model of Human Transformation.

"Respect for Peace and the Enviroment as Revealed in Selected Haiku" This presentation reveals how writing haiku and haibun (prose and haiku) enhances a respect for the sacredness of life and protection of enviroment. The presenter will introduce her research on haiku with the theme of peace from various war zones, and end with a short reading of international haiku. "Too Green?: Relationships Between Ecological and Social Problems"- This presentation will focus on the conflict between successful "green" campaigns and the social, economic, cultural, and environmental problems they sometimes create for local and indigeneous communities, in the context of the presenter's novel, "All Worldly Pursuits" and other writings.

This award-winning video promotes global awareness, problem solving skills, social responsibility and world citizenship, featuring the United Nations, Sting in the Amazon rainforest and young people around the world. After showing the video (25 minutes), participants will discuss its potential for peace education and classroom teaching.

Discrimination is a key concept in the study of racism. Jane Elliot's gave people a chance to experience discrimination through differential treatment based on eye color. This paper reports on the results of a similar experiment conducted in a Japanese university class. Students' reactions to the experiment will be presented.

CANCELED! Whether at home or abroad, conflict exists in our everyday world. Yet how do we make sense of it? In this workshop, classroom tested ideas will be used to demonstrate that just thinking about peace is not enough. We must also do activities that will actually promote world peace.

Throughout the 1990s, and in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the print and electronics media in India have been doing their best to generate awareness about same-sex love. However, to the man in the street and in fact the man in the clouds (India's elite), same-sex relationships are still typified by the word 'homo', literally and figuratively a four-letter word. Two media stories, in which I was personally involved, help me prove my point. One was a TV show entitled "We the People" (ironically, a phrase borrowed from the Constitution of India) aired on NDTV (a satellite channel) on July 6 this year, on which I was a panellist. My opponents, who were seated centre-stage, while I was, so to speak, on the sidelines, included a priest and a lawyer. The other was a fictitious letter I was asked to write for GENTLEMAN magazine, on behalf of a father who discovers that his son is gay. The next issue of the magazine promptly ran another fictitious letter to the son by a real-life journalist, then employed with India's leading daily THE TIMES OF INDIA, asking him to disregard his father's advice in order to preserve the sanctity of society. My presentation includes reading out both letters, that represent very diverse points of view, and throwing the issue open to the house for discussion.

This presentation discusses some of the benefits of developing reading skills and literacy on global issues in order to promote peace and intercultural understanding. Students who view second language learning as an "intellectual investment" are likely to engage in community scale projects and develop self-directed learning strategies.

Human security, a concept describing an alternative to a world of violence and oppression is little understood by most educators and citizens. It is an idea in "the becoming". The language we use to define and describe it, and the way we integrate the concept into language teaching may have a significant influence on what the idea becomes in the practice of politics.

In this roundtable discussion, mental health professionals and those who have struggled with mental illness in Japan will share experiences and ideas for building awareness and empathy so as to destigmatize and constructively assist mental health sufferers. Issues include lack of awareness of medication and therapy options and job discrimination.

Waldorf Education is based on the pedagogical, social and anthropological insights of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), who led to new impulses in medicine, science, religion, philosophy, economics, architecture, agriculture and the arts. This workshop will include some practical activities with sound, color and natural materials.

To help teachers create peaceful classrooms where students can learn to be workers for peace, this workshop will examine the ideas of world-renowned peacemakers including the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Desmond Tutu and Mother Teresa, about what individuals can do to be bearers of peace in their own communities.

This session demonstrates an alternative way of teaching CR(Conflict Resolution) at all-level classes. Our intention is to explore the way in which the participants can express their conflicts with their body and transform them within the framework of the practice of CR. The session consits of two parts: the fist part is to clarify what conflict is. Then, the second is an activity "Complete the Image," which is one of the activities of "The Theatre of the Oppressed."

This roundtable discussion will focus on human rights abuses in different cultural contexts. The discussion leader will argue for the need to overcome cultural relativism that dictates that one ought not to criticize values and practices found in other societies. The audience will be invited to share their comments and experiences.

We defend peace! was the main slogan in the 1949 Budapest World Youth Festival in that activities took place under the banner of peace. The object of this work is to describe how the idea of peace was manifested in the Festival analyzing the Festival-line and with reference to characteristic presentations.