As we enter the Twenty-First Century, it is easy to assume that worsening trends in violence will be a feature of our lives, whether in our schools, our societies or as a species. Educating Beyond Violent Futures challenges assumptions that trends in violence are destiny, and raises crucial questions about choice and engagement. Drawing upon new research, this book is essential reading for those who want to prepare our children for living constructively in the next century

As we enter the Twenty-First Century, it is easy to assume that worsening trends in violence will be a feature of our lives, whether in our schools, our societies or as a species. Educating Beyond Violent Futures challenges assumptions that trends in violence are destiny, and raises crucial questions about choice and engagement. Drawing upon new research, this book is essential reading for those who want to prepare our children for living constructively in the next century

How can dystopian futures help provide the motivation to change the ways we operate day to day? This book raises and tackles a number of important questions about the future and the lessons we can learn for the present.

This special issue of the Peabody Journal of Education provides a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in peace education reform. School reforms based upon principles of peace education have in common a belief in the power of peace to create a positive learning climate in schools and to address the problems of violence in the broader culture. A peace education strategy for improving school productivity rests upon three main assumptions: 1. Violence contributes to the poor performance of many students. 2. Adults in school settings need to address problems created by violence in order for schools to improve. 3. Anxieties that make it hard for students to master traditional subject matter can best be addressed by a comprehensive peace education strategy that makes school a safe place to learn and provides students with knowledge about alternative nonviolent ways to resolve conflicts. Peace building reforms go beyond responding to immediate forms of violence that may be overwhelming students and teachers to promoting positive images of peace through the study of nonviolence. Written by established experts in the field of peace education from six different countries, this collection of articles not only represents a wide variety of peace education practices from different corners of the globe, but it also represents varying academic perspectives. Educators can play a key role in helping human societies progress toward more sustainable ways of living by implementing peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peace building strategies in school programs. Peace education reforms point to a new way of thinking about schools as vehicles for promoting a peace culture through insights offered by nonviolent theory.

How do young people see the future? Are they optimistic or pessimistic? Do their views vary from culture to culture? Are young people actively engaged in creating their desired futures or are they passively receiving the future? What effect has globalization on youth culture? How is the future taught in schools? These and many other questions are dealt with in this volume of comparative empirical research from around the world on how youth see the future. Generally, youth are considered immature, irresponsible toward the future, cliquish, impressionistic, and dangerous toward self and others. They are considered as a mass market—two billion strong—the passive recipients of globalization. Most recently in OECD nations, youth have become fodder for political speeches—they are the problem that reflects both the failure of the welfare state (dependence on the state), the failure of globalization (unemployment), and postmodernism (loss of meaning and the crisis of the spirit). In the Third World, youth are seen not only as the problem, but equally as the force that can topple a regime (as in Yugoslavia). However, youth can also be seen as carriers of a new worldview, a new ideology. These and other views concerning youth are examined in this volume of comparative empirical research. Studies from around the world provide intriguing answers to questions about how youth see the future and their future roles. This book will be of particular interest to scholars, students, researchers, and policymakers involved with youth issues and future studies.

Exploring the influence ""action"" films have on audiences, this book considers how people relate to and are influenced by such films as Judge Dredd.