By Kimberly Foulds

If to the victors go the spoils, then a sense of anxiety clouds the hope around education in states emerging from conflict. Many countries emerging from conflict-Bosnia and Herzegovina, Guatemala, Germany, Rwanda, South Africa, and South Sudan for example-have looked toward a revised history curriculum as the foundation for new directions in national narratives and sustained peace. As is often the case, education is the silver bullet to a nation’s ills. Admittedly, while education can offer students a sense of stability in the midst of conflict and during post-conflict reconstruction, the development of revised textbooks to address the changing environment, and curriculum, is given cursory consideration.

The timing around curriculum revisions is a major concern. Of the examples offered above, all revised curricula during the period following the conflict. The Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies [INEE], however, advocates for curriculum revisions during emergencies. The drive behind this suggestion is the concern that curriculum reform will not be addressed until the transition to a post-conflict society, particularly problematic during protracted conflicts. The situations among stateless peoples, like Palestine, Kashmir, Kurdistan, and Tibet, complicates these dynamics, though this issue remains under-researched. Nonetheless, reform is a contentious and slow process during times of peace. In the midst of conflict, the process is even slower and becomes more controversial, possibly exacerbating existing tensions.

INEE’s Guidance Notes offer a number of recommendations, arguing that potentially conflict-inducing elements remain in curriculum. In practice, however, this is rarely the case. There is a hunger for a simple, even universal, remedy independent of conditions. The contemporary trend appears that this hunger has revealed itself as an avoidance of critical discussions on conflict.

In Rwanda, for example, a superficial peace reigns and the official narrative leaves no room for ethnic identification. Those currently in power are primarily Tutsi who grew up outside of Rwanda, only to return after the rebel army they supported ended the 1994 genocide and took control. Though the minority, their representations of Rwandan history are not in line with the majority of Rwandans. Discussions of the genocide are forbidden. Further, Rwanda banned the teaching of history for more than a decade after the 1994 genocide. With its reintegration, only the official narrative is allowed in schools to support the creation of a unified Rwanda. With perpetrators and victims often coming from the same neighborhoods, even from under the same roof, the absence of the space to critically engage national history produces an uneasy peace, reminding us that the absence of war is not a symbol of peace.

Bosnia-Herzegovina offers an example on other end of the spectrum. The state operates as two distinct entities under one national identity: Republika Srpska and Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the war, each local area created its own curriculum and textbooks. This system persisted post-conflict. The Bosnian curriculum saw Bosniaks as victims, the Croat curriculum offered no history outside of Croatian history, and the Serbian curriculum ignored Bosnians and Bosnian-Croats. International interventions led to a number of changes, including the use of non-transparent markers to black out inappropriate text in lieu of revised textbooks because of time and cost considerations.

There are many, many more examples of how post-conflict states have moved forward with textbook reform. Postcolonial states also offer a number of examples of the challenges emerging governments face. Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina are used here to show that the two ends of the spectrum are ineffective and unsustainable. Moving forward, though the need for a revised history curriculum will certainly remain, post-conflict states appear to prioritize preparing student for the global marketplace over history. The driving need to craft a unified, albeit imagined, community under one national identity through a history that either obscures conflict or reinforces incomplete histories will ensure that peace remains artificial at best. In their study of history curriculum in Rwanda, Freedman et al (2008) put forth the idea of empowering teachers to mediate history curricula and accompanying textbooks by framing history as a democratic process:

We are going to look at history as a series of choices . . . We’ll look at the decision to be a bystander. We will look at the decision to be a perpetrator. We will look at the decision to be a rescuer. And we will look at the decisions of everyday citizens to make a positive difference (681).

The benefit of this framework is in its recognition that there is a significant need to move away from a binary history of aggressor/victim, and an awareness that through major political transformations, the next generation is there, waiting to be educated.

 Kimberly Foulds is a lecturer in International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. 

References:

Freedman, Sarah Warshauer, Harvey M. Weinstein, Karen Murphy, and Timothy Longman. 2008. Teaching History after Identity-Based Conflicts: The Rwanda Experience. Comparative Education Review 52(4): 663-690.

Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies. 2004. INEE Minimum Standards for Education in Emergencies, Chronic Crisis and Early Reconstruction. New York: INEE.

 For further reading on textbooks and post-conflict transformation, the following list offers a few starting points:

Barnes, T. 2007. ‘History has to Play its Role’: Constructions of Race and Reconciliation in Secondary School Historiography in Zimbabwe, 1980-2002. Journal of Southern African Studies. 33(3): 633-651.

Chisholm, L. and R. Leyendecker. 2008. Curriculum reform in post-1990s sub-Saharan Africa. International Journal of Educational Development 28(2): 195-205.

Cole, E, and J Barsalou. 2006. Unite or Divide? The Challenges of Teaching History in Societies Emerging from Violent Conflict. Special report. Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace.

Hodgkin, M. 2007. Negotiating Change: Participatory Curriculum Design in Emergencies. Current Issues in Comparative Education 9(2): 33-44.

Low-Beer, A. 2001. “Politics, School Textbooks and Cultural Identity: The Struggle in Bosnia and Herzegovina.” Paradigm 2 (3): 1–6.

Pingel, F. 2010. UNESCO Guidebook on Textbook Research and Textbook Revision. Paris: UNESCO.

Weldon, G. 2009. Memory, identity, and the politics of curriculum construction in transition societies: Rwanda and South Africa. Perspectives in Education. 27(2): 177-189.

Woolman, David C. 2001. Educational reconstruction and post-colonial curriculum development: A comparative study of four African countries. International Education Journal 2(5): 27-46.