Maryknoll is no stranger to advocating for Justice and Peace around the world. The Society had the Office of Justice and Peace, while the Sisters had the Office of Social Concerns. These offices combined in 1997 to create the Office of Global Concerns, a joint effort for advocacy and education. I have written about these offices previously in my blog post on the Founding of Global Concerns, but recently I discovered something new.
Tucked away into our Book collection is a short manuscript titled Teaching Peace written by Maryknoll Sister Anna McAnany. The book outlines a program created by Sister McAnany, separate from Maryknoll’s other Peace initiatives. This piqued my interest, so I dug deeper. Here is what I found about Sister McAnany and her ministry.
Sister McAnany on establishing a Peace Program in Wai'anae
A Lifetime of Teaching
Before we get to the Peace Education program, let’s first learn a little about Sister McAnany herself. Anna McAnany was born on July 10, 1908 and was interested in education from the beginning. Before becoming a Sister, she worked as a Children’s Librarian in her hometown of Philadelphia. She entered the Maryknoll Sisters on October 28, 1930 and was sent to Hawaii, where she would spend the next 65 years.
Her first 40 years in Hawaii were spent in primary education, teaching the peoples of Oahu. Sister McAnany’s early focus was on religious education with the island’s Filipino, Japanese, and Portuguese populations. Over time, she shifted her focus to native peoples and peace education.
Peace Education in Hawaii
Following the Vietnam War, Sister McAnany saw a need for teaching new generations about peace. When asking the local parish kids why they didn’t want to go to school, the top reason was “violence”. This spurred her to create a new peace program at Wai’anae High School in 1981. The program would grow over the next decade to encompass most schools on the Wai’anae Coast.
Sister McAnany’s program became quite popular across Hawaii and with international peace organizations. In 1991, a documentary, titled Teaching Peace, was created to highlight her service and dedication to peace education. She also appeared on Maryknoll’s Radio Program, Voices of Our World, where Sister McAnany describes the origins of the program. You can listen to a clip of the program on the left. Finally, she published a set of lesson plans in 1995, a book titled Teaching Peace.
Sister Anna McAnany had a big impact on peace education in the Hawaiian Islands, and the program began to spread around the world. Sister McAnany noted that schools in Germany wanted to translate and use her book, despite the fact it was written for Polynesian cultures. She wrote: “The German teachers replied that they had studied our book, liked it, and knew it would appeal to their students also. This pleased us because we like to think of peace as a theme that would appeal to all people regardless of ethnic background.“
I read through the Preface and Introduction of the book. I was not surprised when I found several nuggets of wisdom sprinkled throughout these sections. Below you can find a few of her writings that struck a chord with me, and hopefully will with you too.
Teaching Peace with Sister Anna McAnany
Teaching Peace, Preface, xi
The individual Family is but a microcosm of the whole world. What happens in the family is going to be very important for the family of nations, for it is there in the family that we can learn either generosity or selfishness, prejudice or openness, hate or love. We must give time and effort to teaching good human values. We cannot expect that good things will just naturally happen. If we care enough for the future of our world, we will put our effort into this.
Teaching Peace, Peace Education, 1
The goal of peace education is to see the relationships in nature, in family, and in community and to appreciate that unity, and to see how as we grow in power and love, we share and support one another. Our dream is to help each student realize she or he is an integral part of the whole creation and is responsible for its growth, to see he or she is vital to the whole community and lives in unity with it all…
Teaching Peace, Peace Education, 2-3
This peace education program is an attempt to understand the signs of the times to seek a remedy in education. How can we turn things around so as to give hope to our young people? The mission of education must be to free the child to hope, to dream, to imagine a new world, a new future… Students must understand that they stand on the edge of a precipice planning for a future that is not yet revealed to anyone. They must go beyond looking at today’s crises, the chaos that surrounds us, and call upon their creative power to bring forth a new world, a new vision.
