Middle School kids write about Peace (2006 contest winners)

[SoCalDem]

http://www.rpec.org/Essay2006_middle.php

2006 Peace Essay Contest
Middle School Winning Entries

First Place
Peace Essay
Matthew Disler Collegiate School, Richmond, gr. 6

Peace. What an elusive thing to be talking about in our world today. I mean, with the whole conflict in Iraq, and the India-Pakistan border problem, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there doesn't seem to be much peace in the world. In my religion, the Jewish faith, people believe that one day there will be a time called the Messianic Age where there is no war, hate, or violence. It will either come when there is no fighting in the world or there is so much violence that God has to send it to save the Earth from total destruction. The Messianic Age is the ideal, the perfect world. But we don't need that to create peace. For peace, we need to simply try to achieve a time where people aren't hurtling themselves at each other's throats.

However, there is no point in creating peace now if our descendants simply return to fighting. To prevent this, schools should show students the horrors that occurred in times when peace is absent and people didn't understand each other's culture: the Chinese Cultural Revolution, where uncountable numbers died of hunger, or the Holocaust, where millions of Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals were massacred. Show them photographs of the corpses piled up outside of Nazi concentration camps, or other examples of the results of fighting. Then they should be asked, do they really want this to happen to them? Do they really want a life of sadness and suffering? Because that is what will happen if they engage in violence and peace does not reign.

How can peace be learned? Well, as I was pondering over this question, I found many ways to learn peace, and they are all linked to love. The Christian golden rule is, "You must love thy neighbor as you love thyself. " Jesus was displaying his famous wisdom when saying this, because he gave the basis of peace. If you love everybody around you like a member of your family, then you are probably not going to hurt them. But I know that I definitely do not love everybody in the world. In fact, I could probably say I hate some people. But love can be learned. This is simply accomplished. Make friends. You aren't going to kill a friend. Therefore, the more friends you make, the less people you kill. In class, though, teachers should stress the danger of violence and tell about the sadness that happens because of it. They could have someone come in who was in a war, and have them tell how they felt to be around so much violence and all the bad experiences that it caused. All of this would make students in any school shy away from violence, mine included.

How would I bring peace into my life? I would definitely try to find something good about everyone I see. No matter what they look like, I will try to accept them. This is crucial, since the center of many problems in our world is racial intolerance. For instance, the fight against terrorism is partially a racial conflict because it seems that the terrorists partly bomb us to "hurt those filthy Americans." Since we are now so afraid of them, we not only try to destroy them but discriminate against Muslims, too. This unfair prejudice is basically because of one thing: all of the terrorists happen to be Muslim. So now, out of our fear, we generalize that all Muslims are bad. To help bring peace, everyone must try to be tolerant of others, no matter what race or religion they belong to. If we continue on this example of hate and discrimination, peace may never be achieved. But in addition to tolerating others, we must spread peace throughout our family, school, and community.

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