Filipino children's understanding of peace

This study reports on 10-year-old Filipino children's understanding of peace, war, and strategies to attain peace. In total, 56 children were presented with a semistructured interview consisting of free associations to peace and questions pertaining to the definitions of peace and war and strategies to attain peace. The children were divided into 3 groups that were selected from a rural environment (n=24), and from middle (n=16) and low socioeconomic backgrounds (n=16) in the capital city of Manila. The categorized and coded responses indicated that within the Filipino sample, rural children offered less elaborate responses to the questions than urban children resulting in a generally lower frequency over all of response categories for the rural children. However, Filipino children do not fundamentally differ from their peers in other countries in their understanding of or reasoning about peace and war, but rather in thematic contents by which this understanding is expressed. The emphasis on materially related themes such as the reduction of poverty, the increase of employment rates, and good educational opportunities not only distinguished lower from the middle-class participants but also illustrated differences in the environments in which Filipino children mature.