Peace: Can It Be Enforced?

The final of our three youth submitted blog entries. Bryan offers his perspective of Peace and the trouble with enforcing it. I encourage you to read and comment – share your thoughts and stories with us too!

By Bryan Shipon, Sophomore at William Penn Charter School

I think that peace is something that is talked about a lot, but not always enforced. In defense of schools, it is almost impossible to actually enforce peace. For example, the other day I was at a club meeting at my Quaker school. Specifically it was a business club meeting. We were talking about something and a fellow student jokingly said "you wanna rumble?” (or something along those lines). I responded to this by saying “No, I don’t fight, this is a Quaker school.” The boy eventually engaged in a playful fight, as the two were laughing. But, it was a fight nonetheless. At school, we are often reminded of peace with quotes at meeting for worship, posters around campus, etc. I think that some kids at the school don’t care about the feelings of others, but only about being “cool” and fitting in. From what I have experienced, this is not just a problem at this school, but with teenagers in America as a whole. Enforcing peace with teens is a very delicate thing.

I do think that peace does exist at this school. It doesn’t get the attention that hurtful acts do. In this world, it does seem that nice people and nice acts don’t get the attention that the bad things do. Just turn on the news. Here in Philadelphia, you see news of murder, robbery, and rape on the regular rather than so many good things that happen here with nonprofits. Philadelphia gets a bad reputation in the country, especially when it comes to sports fans throwing snowballs at Santa Claus. This city has a lot of good people, and they tend to get lost through the acts of a few stupid people. For me, peace is almost like a handicap parking spot. You see it, but when you get close, there’s a reason why it doesn’t exist. Just a few people can mess it up for the masses.

Recently at school, we were called into a mandatory assembly at lunchtime. The head of the Upper School spoke to the students. He said that he “doesn't use this word often, but (he was) disgusted”. He certainly had reason to be that way with the way some students had been acting on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. Students were saying some hateful things to their own classmates on sensitive subjects like race, religion, and sex among others. Students and teachers alike later commented that they never had seen him that mad.

It is hard to know exactly what peace is. One of the definitions on dictionary.com on peace is “absence of mental anxiety.”1  Clearly, in modern society that is nearly impossible. You are always stressing about something whether it be school, work, relationships.

Peace does not have a single authoritative expression.2  So, it cannot really be enforced. What are you going to do to enforce peace, punish someone who is acting non-peacefully? Spank them? Throw them in jail? That’s not really peaceful.

1 "Peace." Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, n.d. Web. 26 Feb. 2013.

2 QICadmin. "Friends Peace Testimony." Quaker Information Center. Quakerinfo.org, 26 May 2011. Web. 26 Feb. 2013.