February 22, 2015
16 sixth-grade- students of Japanese International School in Munich had
been learning about a special topic on “Children in the World” through their
academic year and created a new Kids’ Guernica peace painting. They learned
about the World War I and II and
also
studied several current serious social problems in the world such as starvation,
child soldier and child labor.
In their life, they found many things which were
made by the almost same age children. Their affluent life depends on the hard
labor of children in developing countries. The sixth grade students realized
that their daily life is closely connected with the serious problems of
children in the world.
When they visited Berlin as a school excursion, they could
have an opportunity to listen to some talks on the experience of Cold War and
the life of East Germany. They also participated in a workshop of creating
pictogram with children from ten different countries: China, Syria Morocco,
Poland, Ghana, Romania, Iran, Lebanon, Brazil and Japan. Each country has a different
social background but their wish for peace and happiness is the same.
After this learning, they expressed what they had learned in this study
in a piece of huge peace painting.The title is “Rainbow Crayons”. It means that
the world has various problems such as war, child labor, child soldier and
starving but each one should show his or her own color and work together to make
a picture of a huge rainbow of peace on a new big canvas called “Future”.
When they saw other children’s Kids’ Guernica paintings, they found that children’s
wish for peace was the same all over the world. It could give them a hope for
the future.
