Last week, I visited Elmdale Public School in Ottawa where Grade 6 students were engaged in what might be our country’s most important lesson: how to resolve conflicts peacefully. The classroom buzzed with energy as students role-played scenarios of disagreement, practicing active listening and compromise instead of escalation.
“We’re teaching them skills they’ll use their entire lives,” explained Sarah Nguyen, who has taught at Elmdale for twelve years. “These aren’t just classroom tools—they’re citizenship fundamentals.”
As our communities grapple with increasing incidents of youth violence and global tensions dominate headlines, the case for comprehensive peace education in Canadian schools has never been stronger. Yet implementation remains inconsistent across provinces, creating what education advocates call a “patchwork approach” to conflict resolution training.
The concept isn’t new. Peace education programs have existed in various forms since the 1980s in Canadian schools, but recent data from Statistics Canada shows concerning trends: reported incidents of youth conflict in schools increased 14% between 2019 and 2022, suggesting current approaches may not be sufficient.
“When we teach math or science, we don’t make it optional,” notes Dr. Marcus Williams, Education Policy Director at the Canadian Centre for Peace Studies. “Yet something as fundamental as helping young people navigate conflict often gets treated as an afterthought in our curriculum.”
Williams points to British Columbia’s model, where conflict resolution has been integrated into core social studies requirements since 2018. The program doesn’t just teach students how to handle disagreements; it encourages them to understand root causes of conflict at personal, community, and global levels.
The BC approach shows promising results. Schools implementing the curriculum report a 23% decrease in playground incidents requiring teacher intervention, according to provincial education data released this spring. More impressive are the qualitative outcomes—teachers report students independently using mediation techniques without adult prompting.
Ottawa teacher Michael Chen has observed similar patterns in his classroom after implementing peace education techniques. “I watched two students who were arguing over classroom resources stop themselves mid-conflict, take deep breaths, and actually use the exact language we’d practiced in our peace circles,” Chen told me during my visit to his Grade 4 classroom at Riverview Elementary.
Yet despite these successes, challenges remain. Education funding varies dramatically across provinces, and programs viewed as “supplementary” often face cuts when budgets tighten. The federal government’s recent $25 million commitment to anti-violence programs in schools, announced last month by Education Minister Patricia Hajdu, represents progress but falls short of establishing national standards.
Parent advocate Jeanne Larivière from QuĂ©bec City believes uniformity is crucial. “A child in Nunavut deserves the same training in resolving conflicts as a child in Toronto,” she said during a recent school board meeting I attended. Her grassroots organization, Parents pour la Paix, has collected over 8,000 signatures petitioning provincial education ministers to establish minimum requirements for conflict resolution training.
The movement has gained momentum following endorsements from the Canadian Teachers’ Federation, which released a position paper in January calling peace education “essential curriculum for democratic citizenship.” The paper cited research from the University of Toronto showing students who receive formal conflict resolution training demonstrate improved academic performance and decreased absenteeism.
What would comprehensive peace education actually look like in practice? Experts suggest it must go beyond occasional anti-bullying assemblies to become integrated across subjects.
At Mapleview Secondary in Winnipeg, history teacher Devon Wilson demonstrates this integration beautifully. When teaching about historical conflicts, Wilson has students analyze not just what happened, but explore alternative outcomes had different resolution strategies been employed.
“We’ll look at something like the October Crisis and break down communication failures, power dynamics, and missed opportunities for de-escalation,” Wilson explained. “Then students apply those same analytical frameworks to conflicts in their own lives.”
Critics argue schools already face curriculum overload, but proponents counter that peace education doesn’t require separate classes—rather, it provides practical applications for existing curriculum. When students learn to communicate effectively about mathematical reasoning or literary interpretation, they’re practicing the same skills used in conflict resolution.
The economic argument is compelling too. A 2021 study from the University of British Columbia estimated the costs of school-based violence and conflict—including administrative time, counseling resources, and decreased academic achievement—at approximately $425 per student annually. Even modest investments in prevention show significant returns.
Indigenous approaches offer particularly valuable insights. The Kahnawake Education Center near Montreal incorporates traditional peacemaking circles into their daily practice, where students learn consensus-building through circle discussions. The practice predates European contact and emphasizes community harmony over individual wants—a principle increasingly recognized in mainstream conflict resolution theory.
“We’re not reinventing anything,” explains Elder Margaret Whitefeather, who helps facilitate the program. “These are ancient practices that work. When young people understand they’re connected to everyone in their community, they make different choices about how to handle disagreements.”
Back in Ottawa, I watched Ms. Nguyen’s students complete their role-play scenarios. One pair struggled with a particularly challenging scenario about excluded students during group work. Their initial attempts at resolution fell flat, but with gentle guidance and persistence, they found common ground.
“It’s messy sometimes,” Nguyen acknowledged after class. “Real conflict resolution isn’t neat or quick. That’s exactly what they need to learn—that working through disagreements takes patience and practice.”
As I left Elmdale that afternoon, I passed a bulletin board where students had posted their “peace pledges”—simple commitments to handling conflict differently. “I will listen first,” read one. “I will breathe before responding,” promised another.
Small steps, perhaps. But if multiplied across classrooms nationwide, they represent our best hope for communities where differences don’t automatically trigger division—a lesson that extends well beyond report cards and graduation.
