The Development of Views On Conflict, War, and Peace Among School Children

This article continues a line of thought presented by Peter Cooper in JPR 1965, No. 1, by relating the formation of 'war' and 'peace' concepts in children to some of Jean Piaget's developmental dimensions.114 subjects in the age groups 8, 10, and 12, chosen from different socio-economic levels, were interviewed with a fairly comprehensive instrument containing among other items a set of questions designed to tap ability of reciprocal reasoning.1) The subjects seem to know much more about war than about peace. For both concepts they concentrate upon the 'concrete' aspects (war as fighting, killing, dying, weapons; peace as respite and inactivity) rather than upon the more 'abstract' aspects (war as a conflict situation; peace as something which must be actively obtained and maintained).2) The relation is greater between ability of reciprocal reasoning and the concrete aspects, than between ability of reciprocal reasoning and the more abstract aspects of war and peace concepts.3) Socio-economic level is related to conception of concrete aspects of war and peace, but subjects from high socio-economic level do not necessarily conceive of peace as something which must be actively obtained and maintained more than do subjects from low socio-economic level.On the basis of these findings the author hypothesises that the subjects may not have been given the opportunity to apply their growing mental capacities to the development of an active peace concept, and that much more can be done in this direction through education.