C&E

Conflict & Education

Informed Policy. Improved Schools.

-An Interdisciplinary Journal -

Engaged Research.

Conflict, Education and Curriculum

Contemplating Past, Present and Future
Julia Paulson
Bath Spa University United Kingdom

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Abstract
The review, revision and/or reform of curriculum are often a part of educational action in post-conflict context and as such are an important element of the practice of education in emergencies. This paper focuses on one important facet of the process of curriculum development in situations affected by violent conflict: the development and implementation of curricula about recent violent conflict. The creation of narratives of the past is inevitably a contested and political process and, as research demonstrates, recent conflict makes these processes even more difficult and even more important. The paper explores the importance of curricula about the recent, violent past in terms of its meaning for the past, the present and the future. It revises recent research, that deepens understanding of the challenges to developing and implementing such curriculum, and searches for avenues through which research might contribute towards creating opportunities for curricula that adequately and usefully considers the violent past.

Keywords: Curriculum, truth, narratives, reconciliation. education _____________________________________________________________________________________

Introduction

urriculum review, revision and reform are among the educational responses commonly employed in post-conflict situations. The INEE Guidance Notes on Teaching and Learning (2010) read:
Curriculum review is carried out in order to assess whether the learning content, teaching methods, and structure and progression are meeting the learners needs and ensuring their overall development and psychosocial protection. In addition to traditional content, including literacy, numeracy and standard content for the

country, the review of curriculum and its subsequent adaptation and/or development should address the needs and rights of all learners and their changing environments. Examples of immediate needs include eliminating biases, conflictinciting materials, and ideologically-loaded content or integrating key thematic issues, such as life skills (e.g. health promotion, psycho-social support, conflict resolution, environmental awareness and DRR) (p. 2).

This passage does a good job of summarizing the various issues and aims at stake in the review and (re)development of curriculum following violent conflict. In this short paper I will focus particularly on the challenges and opportunities to

Paulson, J.. (2011). Conflict, Education and Curriculum: Past, Present and Future Trends Conflict and Education, 1:1
(cc) 2011

www.conflictandeducation.org

Paulson (2011)

the development of curricula in the areas of history, civics, social studies, etc. These are the various subjects through which educational systems aim to foster learning about identity (national, regional, etc.), history (again, national, regional, local, global, recent, distant, etc.), government and governance, citizenship and other social and cultural issues. Once, these themes were primarily addressed in classrooms through the subject of history, but now in many education systems around the world history is no longer a taught subject and subjects like social studies and citizenship deliver this kind of content.

The Past
In most societies recovering from violence, questions of how to deal with the past are acute, especially when the past involves memories of death, suffering, and destruction so widespread that a high percentage of the population is affected (Cole, 2007, p. 1).

Whatever the subject through which ideas about identity, history, governance and belonging are taught, these are particularly interesting issues for educationalists. They offer learners narratives of the past and visions for the future and encourage individual students to locate themselves, their families, communities and nations within these narratives. Of course, the determination of such narratives and visions is inevitably a contested process. The presence of recent conflict adds additional challenges to the development of narratives about national and local history. Wellknown examples like the Rwandan decision to postpone teaching history for ten years following the genocide (Freeman et al., 2008) and the creation in Bosnia Herzegovina of three parallel education systems that each maintained distinct historical narratives (Jones, 2011) demonstrate that recent conflict makes the processes of developing curricula about the recent past all the more difficult and contested and, I argue, important. This short paper explores why curriculum about recent conflict is so critical by focusing on the past, the present and the future and highlighting potential and problems.

nderstandings of the other, narratives of group identity, historical attachments to land, language, culture, discursive justifications of divisions, difference and inequality can all play into conflict and its causes. These, along with the way the conflict itself and its roots and consequences, are narrated in the postconflict period will likely have consequences for the maintenance of a fragile peace, and for longerterm possibilities of reconciliation, social cohesion and a deeper, positive peace. Researchers are increasingly convinced of the importance of a coming to terms with the past for the individual psychological wellbeing of victims of violent conflict as well as for the collective identities of groups and nations.

The degree to which importance, effort and resources have been directed towards transitional justice initiatives in post-conflict countries over the past several decades are testament to the power of the truth telling norm (Kelsall, 2005), which asserts that the past must be reckoned with in order for societies to move forward after violent conflict. Like amnesty for those who orchestrated human rights abuses, post-conflict strategies to forget, or turn the page as the Lebanese government put it, on recent violent conflict have been rejected by the international community in favour of accountability and truth telling. Following this logic, it is essential to uncover, present and understand violent conflict and its causes and effects in order to overcome it 2

(CC) 2011

Paulson (2011)

and build a more peaceful society. With the consensus that understanding the truth about past conflict and its causes comes an obvious role for education in sharing this truth and the never again (nunca mas) message that is also so often associated with transitional justice initiatives.

The Present

in President Garcas government accused a national secondary school textbook drawing on the TRCs work of supporting terrorism (Paulson 2010a). These political incursions into educational territory have dissuaded the development of curriculum about the recent conflict as well as the possibilities for engaging with such materials in classrooms.

ducation about the Second World War in Germany and elsewhere continues to offer a positive example of education about violent conflict that can contribute towards reconciliation and help students make meaning in the present. Germanys willingness to deal with Nazi crimes openly and regretfully within its history curriculum has been evidence to other communities of a reconciliatory stance on the part of the country (Dierkes, 2007). Such positive examples are important to highlight as more recent examples of efforts to teach about violent conflict elicit less encouraging outcomes.

In Peru the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRC) version of the twenty-year conflict has provided the basis for the material that addresses violent conflict within secondary social sciences lessons. The politics surrounding the TRC, therefore, have also limited possibilities for teaching about conflict in classrooms. The TRC attributed responsibility for human rights violations to, among others, the current president, also in power from 1985-1990, and prominent figures in his party. Therefore, the current government has been keen to reject and delegitimize the TRC. The presentation of conflict in the national curriculum using the TRC offered an opportunity for this generalized resistance of the TRC to be focused and government officials directed their criticism at educational materials (Paulson 2010b). The military and Ministry of Defence have intervened in blocking the approval of curriculum resources and a prominent Minister

In Rwanda the curriculum that has finally been introduced after the ten-year moratorium insists upon a single historical narrative in which ethnic identity has been erased in favour of a unified Rwanda (Freedman et al., 2008). Researchers have found that the unified narrative creates tension and confusion when faced with the social realities of continuing ethnic identities and the another official goal for education reform in Rwanda to embrace so called modern democratic methods that foster skills thought to be essential for successful participation in an increasingly global economy, such as critical thinking and debate (ibid., p. 665). The presentation of single, national narrative that erases ethnicity contrasts with the lived experiences of young Rwandans who report that ethnicity is still relevant and still part of how they understand themselves and their country (Kearney, 2011). And, the young leaders that the government actively tries to create, through initiatives like the Ingando camps, recognize the incongruency between the two singular narratives they are expected to adopt one that dictates their national history without space for questions and alternative visions and another that encourages critical thinking and engaged citizenship (ibid.).

These examples both point to the need for polyvocal histories of conflict that explore the lived experiences of individuals and communities in conflict as well as the causes and consequences of conflict as interpreted by official bodies like truth commissions and governments. Even when 3

(CC) 2011

Paulson (2011)

singular versions of conflict are widely accepted, as is the case with the Peruvian TRC, space for alternative perspectives can engage learners in other educational goals (like critical thinking) and can reduce opposition from those (often powerful) groups who disagree with the version presented.

The Future

nother trend that can be seen in recent efforts to teach about violent conflict is to frame educational content about the past almost entirely in terms of its implications for the future. Elizabeth Oglesbys (2007) research explores this phenomenon in Guatemala where learning about the three decades of conflict there is approached from the perspective of building a culture of peace. Whereas in the above examples relying on a single version of conflict was problematic for the politics it inevitably faced, here the version of conflict used is problematic for the politics that it conceals. The materials that Oglesby analyses might appear familiar to other educators who have engaged with conflict materials prepared primarily for peace or citizenship education. Oglesby describes materials that present a broad and generalized culture of violence that has now must be replaced by a culture of peace. Within this narrative the causes of conflict and the actors within it become almost meaningless. Conflict becomes something exceptional, bounded and over making an engagement with its causes and consequences unimportant. In the educational materials that Oglesby studied [s]tate violence is recognized but ultimately reified, as its targets are drained of their identities as historical protagonists (ibid., p. 912). In the Guatemalan case where more than 200,000 people were killed almost entirely (93%) by government military or state sponsored paramilitary (Commission for Historical Clarification, 1999), this educational strategy does not seem to promote a full engagement with the truth. (CC) 2011

This is an important lesson for the education in emergencies community, which is increasingly involved in promoting curriculum revision and reform, often explicitly around areas like peace and human rights education. As discussed above, learning about the past certainly does play an important role in imagining a peaceful future. However, this peaceful future must be imagined against a realistic portrayal of conflict as something social, human and tragically possible and not as an anomally now overcome. Models that engage students in with Second World War by looking at the testimony of survivors of concentration camps and the writings of soldiers and victims of war (Facing History and Ourselves, 2011) might offer more useful examples the peace education approach that Oglesby presents. Conflict, its meanings and the importance of nunca mas can most likely be made most meaningful for young people when learning about it encourages them to ask difficult questions, something not encouraged by any of the recent approaches described here.

Research DirectionsConclusion

or researchers interested in education and conflict, therefore, it will be important to continue to study the ways in which narratives of recent conflict are entering into classrooms around the world. Here I have focused on the kinds of narratives that are making it into educational materials it is equally important to understand if, how and to what effect these materials are being used in classrooms.

As the INEE Guidance Notes on Teaching and Learning become available to those working in post-conflict situations, researchers, and especially local researchers, can play an important role in 4

Paulson (2011)

supporting the design of curriculum about recent conflict that avoids the temptation of a single narrative or an empty denunciation of violence. Researchers can point educators to a variety of

voices and perspectives that can help to bring past conflict and its causes to life for learners and can help them, in the present, to learn important and difficult lessons that are vital for peaceful futures.

References
Cole, E. A. (2007) Introduction: reconciliation and history education in E. A. Cole (ed) Teaching the Violent Past: History Education and Reconciliation Lanham: Roman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Commission for Historical Clarification (1999) Guatemala: Memora del Silencio available from http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/mds/spanish/cap2/vol3/ninez.html#Ref39 (Accessed 20.08.2008). Dierkes, J. (2007) The trajectory of reconciliation through history education in postunification Germany in E. Cole (ed.) Teaching the Violent Past: History Education and Reconciliation Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Ltd. Facing History and Ourselves (2011) The holocaust http://www.facinghistory.org/resources/collections/holocaust (accessed 28.02.2011). available from:

Freedman, S. W., Weinstein, H. M., Murphy, K. and Longman, T. (2008) Teaching history after identitybased conflicts: The Rwandan experience Comparative Education Review 52(4), 663-690. INEE (2010) Guidance Notes on Teaching and Learning New York: INEE. Jones, B. (2011, forthcoming) Understanding responses to post-war education reform in the multiethnic District of Brcko, Bosnia-Herzegovina in J. Paulson (ed.) Education and Reconciliation: Exploring Conflict and Post-Conflict Situations London: Continuum. Kearney, J. (2011, forthcoming) A unified Rwanda? Ethnicity, history and reconciliation in the Ingando Peace and Solidarity Camp in J. Paulson (ed.) Education and Reconciliation: Exploring Conflict and Post-Conflict Situations London: Continuum. Kelsall, T. (2005) Truth, lies and ritual: Preliminary reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone Human Rights Quarterly 27(2), 361-391. Oglesby, E. (2007) Educating citizens in postwar Guatemala: Historical memory, genocide and the culture of peace Radical History Review 97, 77-98. Paulson, J. (2010a) History and hysteria: Perus Truth and Reconciliation Commission and conflict in the national curriculum International Journal for Education, Law and Policy Special Issue, 132-146 Paulson, J. (2010b) Truth commissions and national curricula: The case of Recordndonos in Peru in S. Parmar, M. J. Roseman, S. Siegrist and T. Sowa (eds.) Children and Transitional Justice: Truth-Telling, Accountability and Reconciliation Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

5 (CC) 2011