Peace Treaty by our 1st and 2nd Graders

“You came to my land!”

Said a bunch of 1st and 2nd graders to another bunch of 1st and 2nd graders during a free-play session at school. They had divided a piece of the school play area within themselves and two groups had formed. This had led to a fight and some children came angry and upset. 

The area marked in Blue is one land called Miners and the land marked in Red in another land called the Investigators. 
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In a typical setting, when a bunch of children fight, adults might reprimand them or re-establish the rules or leave them with a warning or take away their access to play in the playground or call the parents and complain. Either one of these is a short-term solution, and one cannot be sure if it will lead to character-building or to developing conflict-resolution skills. 

These children will have more conflicts, won’t they? 
What shall they do then? 
Isn’t peaceful co-existence correlated to citizenship and nation-building? 

We decided to take this up in our classes as part of the social science (what we call Citizenship, World and Entrepreneurship) emergent curriculum. 

Part 1: Boundaries and Rules - No. NO. NO!

We gathered them and had a conversation-

F (Facilitator)- We heard that the 1st and 2nd graders have divided themselves into two groups and have occupied two areas of land to play. How did you demarcate your land?
C (Child)- We have drawn a boundary. 

Saying this the child ran to show the F the boundary. 
F- Do you know that countries have boundaries too?
C- Yes like India has its boundaries and the British came to India. (They were doing the story of Indian Independence in the classes and the child connected this discussion with that)
C- When India and Pakistan partition happened, they drew a boundary. 
F- Now can any new person come to India now and do whatever they want to?
C- No. 
F- Why not?
C- Because we have some rules
F- So when you are saying that A came into my land and did this and that K cannot take away stone from my land, what are you referring to? Imagine people come to India and do whatever they want to and when we hold them accountable, they say that it was not written anywhere that we cannot do this.

With this discussion, the children went to their land on the playground, sat in their group and started to discuss amongst themselves and make the rules of their land. 

During the discussion, there was a disagreement between Ar and Sid Ar came to F and asked if he could join another land. In return, the F asked if he is in a country, if the citizen is unhappy with his country can he/she change nationality? Even if they could, will that help the country? The child seemed to understand and went back to his land to figure out his conflicts.

When children wrote their first set of rules, the rules all started from NO. They went 

• No one enter
• No throwing rocks
• No throwing sand

Part two: Value-based Rules and Duties 

The F reviewed it and took it back to them. When discussing the children’s work with her team, the team realized that all the rules are made in the context of what the external person should NOT do. The rules they have made shows that the children are trying to impose and control things that are not in their Locus of Control. 
What they do as the citizens of that land was not very clear to them. 

Zooming out to the issues we have on the national level, aren't we faced with the same scenario where we go into blame and comment on what the other country or another section of the society should have done and not focus on what we could have done? While the stance of the leaders might be this and the different sects do behave like this, on a constitutional level, our country has a constitution that sets values which we can see in the preamble and the constitution talks about how the people of India can uphold the values of the constitution. 

So we took their rules back to them and showed them the journey of the Indian constitution, preamble, fundamental Rights and Duties. 

They drew the difference they felt when they read their rules and when they read the preamble. This enabled me to see what the rules are invoking in the people who are reading it? As a land and as law makers of the land, how do we want our citizens to feel? 

This is what they felt when they read their own rules

Here is what they felt listening to the preamble of the constitution and reading the Fundamental Rights and Duties

After seeing this difference, they thought about how they can redo their rules focusing on what they can do to keep their land peaceful and safe. ​

Children reworking on their rules through discussions and dialogues.

When they redid the rules, the rules were focused on what they can do but they started from 
WON’T. They talked about what they will not do. Here is an example-

To this the facilitator asked- What would you like to do instead. 

The children then had to think about what they would do and we said that when they focused on what they could do, the rules were based on values like kindness. 

Part three: Agreement to Uphold the Rules

The two lands had to now come together to discuss and agree on how they will coexist in peace and maintain security. 

So the next day, the facilitator zoomed out their view and told them a story about the United Nations. Since the Age of Agriculture, people have fought and waged wars for land and resources. More land and resources meant more power. So for thousands of years tribes and later kingdoms and empires have waged war against each other to conquer land and resources. Even when the world moved to the modern era, countries and leaders have waged war for the same. Two such deadly wars were World War I and World War II. The amount of fear and disstruction it brought led the leaders of different countries to come together and create the United Nations. 

The 6 and 7 years old were able to understand this complex turn of events because it sat in their context. 

In their context, the two lands that were fighting now saw that they needed to come together, have a discussion and arrive at a peace treaty. 

Now the children of two lands came together, sat in a circle, wrote down the peace treaty after debates and discussions. 

Wrting down the peace treat.

It was now no longer about my or your land. It was about how we collectively work towards maintaining peace and security.  The discussion was not about my play area or what if I am not able to follow the rules. It was about peace and security. Hence, through debate and discussions, they arrived at agreements that they will offer empathy to each other, they will talk and resolve issues etc. 

By the end of this journey, it was no longer “My land”. It had become “Our land and maintaining peace and security in that land”.

Contributed by Chaitra Neerubhavi, Learning Facilitator at Sparkling Mindz Global School.

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