What is it about?
Three classes of fifth-graders received a 10-week forgiveness education curriculum. The four-phase curriculum focused on children's literature to illustrate forgiveness and related concepts. Educating these students about the psychological process of forgiveness included teaching them healthy ways to express anger and other feelings, understand the perspective of others, and practice empathy and kindness
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Why is it important?
Results from this study illustrate that a 10-week forgiveness education curriculum can be an important component of peace education for fifth grade students. Students showed increased forgiveness toward a specific offender and increased knowledge about forgiveness after receiving the education, and students’ verbal reports illustrate that they enjoyed and benefited from this specific curriculum using children’s literature.
Perspectives
We hope that this article introduces educators and counselors to the idea of forgiveness education as a form of peace education and an approach to decreasing anger in students. There are many misconceptions of what forgiveness is, is not, and what forgiveness and forgiveness education looks like. This article illustrates how forgiveness education can be infused into the curriculum and the importance and benefits of doing so. Readers will learn more about forgiveness by reading this article as well as how promoting forgiveness as a virtue to students can reward the forgiver, the forgiven, and society at large.
Suzanne Freedman
University of Northern Iowa
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Forgiveness education as a form of peace education with fifth-grade students: A pilot study with implications for educators., Peace and Conflict Journal of Peace Psychology, April 2023, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/pac0000676.
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