12 Justice and Peace Class

This “Justice and Peace” is a class designed to investigate military ethics, causes and effects of power struggles, war crimes, human suffering, conscience, humanity and the roles of governments. At the heart of every discussion is the development of conscience in this interdisciplinary course that merges 19 credits of Level 2 Achievement Standards from Classics, History, Religious Studies and Social Studies. This course is for students who wish to explore big ethical questions, collaborate and further develop an educated mind and an educated heart.

This year the students from 12 Justice and peace had the opportunity to embark on a social justice journey outside of the classroom as well. Most significantly this mean being a apart of the Youth in Custody report, the Edmund Rice Street Retreat and also organising the Global Peace Week event.

Peace Week at St Thomas of Canterbury College. 7th – 11th August.

This year at St Thomas of Canterbury college we celebrated peace week with several activities that signified the important message of peace and love. One of these activities included a mufti day, and on previous mufti day occasions our students have brought a gold coin donation or a non-perishable item of food to raise money or food supplies for a local charity or church group. This year however, students from the Justice and Peace class at St Thomas decided to get the boys from the school to donate an item of clothing to St Vincent De Paul as an act of peace and kindness to people that are completely in need.

On Friday, the 11th August at the school wide assembly we had several special guests that came along to see our message of peace and promote it as well. This included our guests from STVDP and after a short speech presented the clothing to Clodagh Ward. Mrs Ward discussed how the clothing will help some of the most vulnerable people in Christchurch and appreciated our generosity. As a school that has special values based on the human rights of social justice, compassion and empathy we are very pleased to work with St Vincent De Paul and look forward to working with them in the future.

Chris Leader