As we have emphasized previously, education for peace, to be effective, must be informed by an incisive understanding of the culture of war.
And who knows better the culture of war than refugees? In the rich countries we consider war as a distant event that we see only on the television screens. Even our warriors now sit in air-conditioned offices in the US where they guide remote-controlled drones that can destroy whole villages on the other side of the world. But the refugees are coming from those villages. They know what war is all about.
Let us listen to the refugees! Let them teach us that we must abolish war, that we must stop the bombing, stop the killing, and find non-violent ways to deal with conflict.
Of course, as the articles this month in CPNN indicate, it is the right and humane thing to welcome and integrate refugees into our societies, into our homes as Michael Moore demands.
But more than that, our future depends on what we learn from these refugees. If we do not learn from them to abolish war, our children and grandchildren will be the next generation of refugees. Our empire is crashing and when the culture of war crashes, it may come about through war (1914, 1939) or through economic collapse (1929, 1989). In either case it is the common people who suffer. Cities and regions become unlivable and the people must flee from their homes. Now this happens on the other side of the world. But unless we learn and change to a culture of peace, tomorrow it will happen here!
Let us listen and learn from the refugees!