Educators for Peace officially launched in August 2025 and established as a constituted voluntary association in January 2026. Our core team and board are all serving primary, secondary and university educators in schools and universities in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling.

We began as an informal network of educators. Together, we created a common space to grieve, organise
and mobilise in response to the genocide that unfolded in Gaza following the October 7th 2023 Hamas attack
on Israel. The unrelenting brutality of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, which resulted in the complete
dismantlement and destruction of the territory’s education system, not to mention the hundreds of
thousands of Palestinian children who have been killed, maimed or otherwise injured by Israel, has been
difficult to bear witness to.

As educators committed to upholding social justice and the universality of the UN Convention on the Rights
of the Child (UNCRC), we felt obliged to be more than just witnesses. We felt duty bound to speak out against
what has been credibly described as scholasticide - the killing of learning - in Gaza. To this end, we
organised educator’s vigils and solidarity videos, participated in workplace days of action, organised within
our union, and attended the very many demonstrations that became weekly occurrences in multiple towns
and cities across Scotland.

But whilst a healthy anti-war movement for peace emerged and burgeoned on the streets, we noticed a
pervasive silence in our schools and on our college campuses, even as the events in Gaza spilled over into
regional and international conflict. And so we began, in our respective places of work, to investigate and
explore the reasons for this reticence and reluctance. We organised several workshops on the theme of
discussing contentious topics in the classroom, and addressing the Israel-Palestine conflict specifically.

Through the collegiate discussion and feedback generated by these events, we identified three common
themes:

1. Fear - of getting the subject matter wrong. Teachers did not feel equipped with the knowledge or
   resources to teach about the conflict with confidence.

2. Confusion - over a perceived requirement to be impartial and neutral in the classroom, despite social
   justice being a baseline professional value for teachers.

3. Missing pedagogy - to guide responses to real world issues in the classroom as they happen. What do we
   do when there might not be a text or course book we can refer to for guidance?

With teachers weighing up these challenges, a quick individually conducted cost-benefit analysis would
easily result in a decision to avoid the subject all together. Why should teachers, who we know are already
overworked and stressed, ‘risk’ getting in to something as prickly as this 78-year old, seemingly intractable
conflict?

Because these are dangerous times for world peace and the sustainability of human life on this planet. The
genocide in Gaza is not an isolated event. It is taking place in the context of a global rise in militarism,
populism and fascism linked to widening global inequalities and a misinformation and disinformation
epidemic. And with these movements, racism, misogyny, anti-immigration sentiment and transphobia are
also resurging in our public, political and online discourse.

Education for peace, we argue, has an essential role to play in inoculating our future generations against
regressive ideas. It can equip young people with the knowledge, skills and - most importantly of all - the
values and attitudes to reject and resist war, racism and oppression in favour of peace, social justice and
liberation.

And this is our mission as educators for peace.