Work in Progress

Keynote Address: “Educate for Peace Begins with the Skills We Choose to Value”
by Paul MIKOV (Former) CEO, Bons-Ai.Org
Delivered virtually on January 24, 2026 | at the #CompulsoryPeaceICTsEdu Campaign#7 in support of the #EducationDay2026.

Educating for Peace Begins with the Skills We Choose to Value



[LMGlobal.Org] Thank you, Ambassador [Rodrigo A] Carazzo and Bircan. Thanks for the invitation again to join this great group and to address jointly and reflect together.

Thanks for the invitation—delighted to be part of this group, not least because of the great and good number of young people here.

I will begin with my thesis in a sentence or two.
Since this is a virtual presentation, it’s—and it’s not based on my own experience, not necessarily the easiest to follow an argument being developed virtually over 5-10 minutes. So in order for you to perhaps place what follows in—in the context of the main emphasis here, I will begin—with a thesis.
And my thesis is that unless our education systems around the world become more intentional about instruction and education of children and youth around skill sets that are conducive to and supportive of peace, and conducive to the formation of hearts and minds of youth so that they become individuals that seek and love peace—we will not succeed in the aspiration that Ambassador Carazo so nicely laid out earlier: that if we want peace, we should be preparing for peace and working towards it.

So that’s the—the broader thesis, and I’m going to in particular reference three skills, or a skill set of three skills, that I and many others in the field consider to be crucial and consequential—for peace around the world.

As we all know, education systems are rightly being asked to do more than prepare young people for specific exams or for their eventual employment. They are being asked to prepare them for becoming—when they begin to engage in society—to become positive citizens, making contributions to their communities and also contributing to positive coexistence in a world where there is significant degree of pluralism. A world that is quite fragile and—and a world where societies have increasingly become interconnected.

This is especially important since we all know that peace, after all, is not only the absence of conflict. You may have a very diverse pluralistic society and on the surface of it—without there being conflict—it might appear that it is a peaceful society, but that may not in reality be truly the case. Peace is the presence of understanding, cooperation, judgment, and shared responsibilities. And those capacities are actually learned. They’re not inherited through DNA in their entirety, but they’re actually learned and they are trained and they’re attained in every individual’s life.

When we look honestly at the drivers of conflict—the present situation in our world has multiple conflicts—and those of us that have had interest in really understanding the genesis and the development and the contributing factors of these—these conflicts, we inevitably realize that whether they’re interpersonal, social—or geopolitical conflicts, that there are patterns there that are strikingly similar, but also fundamentally very human.

For instance: inability to collaborate across various differences in individual societies or across societies at the global level; failure to communicate with empathy and clarity; or weak critical judgment in the face of preponderance of propaganda that is being served upon the millions and millions of the world through mainstream media in particular. Misinformation or polarization or simply human fear. These are—are not failures of human intelligence. They’re actually failures of skill development.

Yet, our education systems rarely treat these three skills—collaboration, communication, and critical thinking—as core developmental outcomes—. Unfortunately, the vast majority of education systems around the world have turned time spent in a classroom as proxy of learning and education and holistic formation of an individual—and education has by and large been quite academic and in some cases overly abstract to the detriment of development and learning around these sorts of skills.
We speak of them—of these skills—but we rarely teach them deliberately, almost never measure them rigorously, and we don’t credential them credibly. If we want peace-loving societies made up of peace-loving individuals, we must take seriously the idea that peace itself is built from skills that develop over time.

Let me be explicit about the three skills that I just referenced at the center of this work:
Collaboration: Collaboration is really the capacity to work with others toward shared goals, especially when perspectives, power, or interests differ. It is the foundation of democratic participation and conflict resolution.

Communication: Communication is not just expression—the ability to simply express oneself. It is listening. It is adapting, persuading without coercion, and conveying ideas with respect. It is the skill that turns disagreement into dialogue rather than division.

And then Critical Thinking: It is really a skill—that is—that amounts to an ability to evaluate claims, weigh evidence, and make reasoned judgments especially under conditions of uncertainty. It is our strongest defense against propaganda, manipulation, extremism or misinformation.

And sadly, it seems that today in 2026, there is an enormous manifest lack of critical thinking among too many of our societies, not least in the United States, that—make millions of people fall for pure lies, complete propaganda and nonsense that might be propelled by some of the most prominent media in this country or around the world, many of which have global reach. And that is really to a significant degree a consequence of individuals and audiences lacking critical thinking. This ability, this skill.

Now, these are not soft skills as they’re often called. They’re not just soft skills, I should say. They’re not just as they’re called in other domains internationally, especially 21st-century skills. Nor are they simply life skills. They’re really the infrastructure of peaceful societies and peaceful coexistence.

Despite this, most education systems still assess what is easiest to test, not what is most consequential for society. So, all of the testing that those of you that are young—and I see some of you are probably still in—in school, in college—, you know everything about being tested, you know everything about assessments—it’s usually testing these core disciplines: science, mathematics, etc.

But—we have not really developed the ability to assess, test and measure these—, types of abilities and skill sets that are absolutely consequential for society, its prosperity and its well-being. We reward individual performance over collective success.

BOOKLET of the Session