‘Duck and cover’: the evolution of peace education at the beginning of the nuclear age

Abstract

This article will provide an historical analysis of the various trends within the field of peace education/peace studies during the beginning of the nuclear age. It will provide an overview of how peace education grew from noted grassroots organizations to school-based programs and in academic societies devoted to peace education and conflict resolution. The historical record of the past 50 years or so provides a progression of peace education/peace studies from an antidote to the science of war to a comprehensive examination of the causes of violence and related strategies for peace. Furthermore, this analysis offers a thorough examination of the evolution of peace ideology after the World War II when weapons of mass destruction presented a direct threat to humankind’s existence. While peace efforts have always been a part of American history, the burgeoning field of peace education/peace studies gained academic credibility as a direct result of developing atomic and nuclear weapons. To a great extent, we are still living in the first nuclear age and attempts to oppose war and promote social justice inside and outside schoolhouse gates should be understood through the lens of history.

Keywords:

• cold war
• nuclear weapons
• peace education
• conflict resolution
• World War II
• anti-nuclear peace groups
• Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy
• civil defense drills
• freeze movement

Notes

1. ‘Duck and cover’ as used here has two meanings. The original meaning from the 1950s refers to civil defense drills carried out in public schools as a protection against anatomic war. The absurdity of this strategy became evident to anti-nuclear activists of the 1970s and 1980s. Here, ‘duck and cover’ refers to the absence of any focused efforts on the part of educators to criticize the US Government for it embrace of nuclear power.

2. Stomfay-Stitz (1993). The attack on the credibility of developing peace education programs in schooling can be traced to the World War I period when the public schools first became ‘seminaries of patriotism.’ States such as New York and California passed loyalty laws requiring public school teachers to take an oath of loyalty. In New York City, for example, numerous teachers were fired for not being zealous enough in promoting the war effort or because of their socialist beliefs. The popular Quaker schoolteacher Mary Stone McDowell at Brooklyn Manual Training High School was fired from her position because of her religious pacifist beliefs. One member of the New York City Board of Education, General Thomas Wingate, was widely quoted for proclaiming that a drunken teacher lying in the gutter is far less dangerous than one who refuses to support the war effort. One of the most popular prewar peace textbooks, guided by Fannie Fern Andrews, A Course in Citizenship, which contained lessons on tolerance and diversity based on stories and poems from nonWestern cultures, came under fire once the USA entered the war. A second edition, published in 1918, was retitled, A Course in Citizenship and Patriotism, and tailored to support the rightness of the special moral mission endorsing President Wilson’s call to arms.

3. Interestingly, all three works were published in the same year, a reflection of the growing concern in the wake of the renewed arms race during the Reagan years (Boulding 1988; Harris 1988; Reardon 1988).

4. Consortium on Peace, Research, Education and Development, Global Directory of Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution Programs (2000), 10–14 & ff.

5. Howlett and Harri, 207–209.

6. http://www.esrnational.org/store/ (accessed August 24, 2011).

7. For brief histories of this organization, consult Howlett and Lieberman (2008, 511–518), Wittner (2010), and Williams (2009).

8. Howlett & Lieberman, p. 513.

9. Refer to the Society’s web site: www.peacehistorysociety.org.

10. Specifically, the study of peace history has been conducted from three distinct parameters. First, conflict management, which involves achieving peace through negotiation, mediation, arbitration, international law, and arms control and disarmament. Second, social reform, which involves changing political and economic structures and traditional ways of thinking. Third, a world order transformation, which incorporates world federation, better economic and environmental relationships, and a common feeling of security. Like peace educators, these historians generally see themselves as engaged scholars, involved in the study of peace and war, and in efforts to eliminate or, at least, restrict armaments, conscription, nuclear proliferation, colonialism, racism, sexism, and war. As a social reform movement, the work of peace historians presents alternatives to the policies they oppose.

11. A complete bibliographic listing of these works is found in Howlett (1991) and Howlett and Lieberman (2008).

12. http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/offer/cjpe-so.asp (accessed August 24, 2011).

13. Supporting this assertion is the Studies in Peace Education Series by Information Age Publishing and edited by Edward Brantmeier, Ian Harris, and Jing Lin. This particular series emphasizes the transformative nature of peace education. Also consult, Lopez (1989), Sloan (1982), Cancian and Gibson (1990), and Eckhardt (1988) and Alonso, Alonso and Howlett (2009).