Education and Conflict: Complexity and Chaos

vi Contents PART I V Strategic responses to conflict...

Author: Lynn Davies

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vi Contents

PART I V

Strategic responses to conflict

9 Education in immediate times of conflict

141

143

10 The aftermath of conflict: rebuilding society

165

11 Conflict resolution within the school

183

PART V The complex adaptive school

201

12 Education for positive conflict and interruptive democracy

203

Bibliography Index

Acknowledgements

225 242

Thank you to: • •

• •

all the people whose minds I have plagiarised for this book; all the young and, er, older people who have inspired me through their examples of positive resistance people in the Centre for International Education and Research and beyond who read drafts, told me what to cut out, and provided everything from encouragement to jugs of margaritas — Clive Harbcr, Michele Schweisfurth, Gordon Kirkpatrick, Chris Williams and Hiromi Yamashita my husband Chris Davies who also applied his ideas around tree surgery to cut out the surplus my daughter Anna for being an oasis of peace.

Part I

The terms of the debate

1

i

Chapter I

I ntroduction The nature of conflict

There are no signs that the world is becoming a less conflictual place. Peace agreements are signed and conflict breaks out in another place, or resumes in the old one. The spread of international human rights conventions is barely able to contain the rise of various fundamentalisms, claiming rights to land as well as to ideology. Rewriting boundaries means new or resurgent ethnicities, and demands for recognition and autonomy. Violence against children may be legally prohibited in some countries, but domestic violence, school violence and child sexual abuse does not go away. Conflict is part of our lives, and it is difficult to foresee a time when there will not be a struggle for resources and when those seeking or maintaining power will not use some form of conflict in power interests. Highly 'educated' or qualified people have been responsible for major atrocities in recent human history — as with medical doctors in Nazi Germany as well as South Africa. The nature of conflict is however shifting. As Eade points out, it is almost routine to begin the discussion of conflict-related emergencies by stating that contemporary wars are fought not on demarcated battlefields, but in the towns, villages and homes of ordinary people. Ninety per cent of today's war casualties are civilians and four out of five refugees and displaced persons are women and children. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet bloc are thought to have intensified these trends and ushered in the New World Disorder (Eade 1996). Some 7 million children worldwide were either killed or injured by conflict over the last decade alone, and more than 10 million are still affected by the violence they have witnessed or participated in (Ecole et Paix 2001). Terrorism is claiming new victims and new martyrs, as well as generating the dangerous 'war on terror' heavily promoted by the USA. Yet conflict resolution and prevention is grossly underfunded. In 2001 Britain was spending twenty times its contribution to OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) on continued military operations to `contain' Saddam Hussein (Mathews 2001). NATO countries spend approximately $413 billion on 'defence', which is 215,000 times the OSCE budget. As Mathews points out, the result of such policies is that in conflict areas

4 The terms of the debate

around the world, warlords have instant access to weapons, and attention is concentrated on the violent — while potential bridge builders and peacemakers have few tools and fewer resources. This book considers whether education can become part of these tools. Education spending is still less than defence spending in most countries of the world, but is nonetheless a sizeable chunk of the economy. Landmines cost less than $10 each, but once laid cost $300—$1000 to clear. De-mining lags far behind the placing of new mines, so that there are now over 110 million mines strewn over past and current battlefields; their removal would cost over $33 billion (UNICEF 1997). Landmine education also mops up some of the education budget in affected countries, as will be discussed later. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council, with supposedly a keen interest in peacekeeping, are also the main suppliers of arms, accounting for more than four-fifths of weapons sold (Rihani 2002). Arms sales are linked to foreign policy; the Middle East, a lucrative market for the USA and Europe, has, as Rihani points out, 'the perfect mix of attributes: abundant oil money, leaders willing to start a fight at the least provocation and a long history rich with grievances' (Rihani 2002: 221). New Labour's promise to follow an ethical foreign policy with regard to the sales of British weapons abroad was forgotten soon after it won the election in 1997. Arms are marketed assiduously, with huge subsidies to foreign buyers. The figures show clearly that the expenditure on arms has not promoted peace. In 1994 it was calculated that 4 per cent of the sum spent by developing countries for military purposes would have been enough to achieve universal primary education, cut adult illiteracy by 50 per cent and educate women to the level of men (UNDP 1994). It is probably an even smaller fraction now, with the increasing sophistication and cost of weapons. The sale cf arms is of course a very complex web across a range of buyers and sellers, so that arms sold by one country can in the end easily be used against them, an irony not often admitted. UN peacekeeping forces die as a result of arms produced by the West. With arms easily accessible, internal conflicts are militarised; when wars break out they are prolonged; when wars end, peacekeeping operations are endangered, and the burden of peacebuilding is exaggerated by the need to try to collect millions of small arms that have been infused by western arms-dealers into the prevailing social and political disorder (O'Sullivan 1999). This book examines the relationship of education to such conflict and such contradiction. It does not paint a picture of schooling as a rescue operation, nor work on the premiss that a continuation of our present education systems will of necessity eventually lead to a more peaceful and collaborative world. There is little evidence so far that the formal systems that we have had in place for over a century in many parts of the world have directly made the world a more 'rational' or ordered place. The people making the decisions

Introduction: the nature of conflict 5

on both sides of a conflict—whether in India and Pakistan, in the Middle East, in Northern Ireland — have been 'educated' in the sense of 'schooled', but will still see armed conflict as a solution — sometimes the only solution — to territorial claims. The fact that it is in the interest of many economies that other countries live in perpetual tension so that they purchase arms is not something that appears on the school curriculum. It is not just that schools do not all do 'peace education', but they do not tackle the uncomfortable economic and political issues which might enable the next generation to demand a more ethical foreign policy. This book argues that there are grave omissions — or contradictions — in the curricula of both stable and conflictual societies, omissions which contribute to a continued acceptance of war. There are also elements of the process and ethos of schooling which foster a lifelong predisposition to hostility — also often glossed over. The World Bank Report A Chance to Learn: Knowledge and Finance for Education in Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, has a section on 'Extensive Armed Conflicts'. This documents the brutal facts of one African in five living in a country severely disrupted by war, a growing number of perpetrators of violence being children, and conflicts destabilising the region as a whole, eroding investor confidence, disrupting trade routes, accelerating the spread of HIV/ AIDS and sending refugee populations into neighbouring countries (World Bank 2001a: 25). The report is then curiously silent on how or whether education should respond to this. Instead it focuses on the conventional areas of universal primary education, alternatives to existing service delivery, costsharing, language of instruction, physical infrastructure, teacher—pupil ratios, health education, locally produced textbooks, technology, vocational training: education of nomads, teacher training and teachers' conditions of service — it would seem everything but any direct attention to conflict and peace. This is extraordinary. The section on 'measuring progress' does not even hint at progress towards peace, relying on indicators of reading ability. The gender/equity sections discuss access to schooling, but have nothing to say about the role of education in combating gender-based violence. There is a mention of Colombia's aim 'to develop citizen skills', and conflict is mentioned in terms of problems of violence between nomads and farmers, but basically, conflict is seen as a contextual (a diversionary?) issue rather than one to be addressed head on through the education system. Given that this text is within the 'human development' series, it is a great pity that a body as influential as the World Bank does not appear to want to take a radical stance in prioritising peace. Nonetheless other bodies and arenas are acknowledging the centrality of the issue. By the time of the 1990 World Conference on Education for All in 1990, in Jomtien, a connection had been made between declining school enrolments and armed conflict, although the actual Jomtien Declaration and Framework made only limited reference to such armed conflict. The


Amman mid-decade review in 1996 devoted one of its round table sessions to Èducation in Emergencies', identifying escalating violence caused by growing ethnic tensions and other sources of conflict as an 'emerging challenge' for education (Tawil 2001). The World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000 introduced into the Dakar Framework for Action that EFA initiatives must take into account the needs of children and adults affected by armed conflict. How exactly should this be 'taken into account' though? Tawil asks these questions: If one of the principal functions of education is to ensure social cohesion, what do violent breakdowns of social cohesion tell us about the content and function of formal education? How does formal education contribute to the breakdown of social cohesion and the outbreak of internal conflict? Conversely, in what ways can formal education contribute to the reinforcement or rebuilding of social cohesion? (Tawil 2001: 294) I would add some further puzzles. Why do some schools remain resilient in the face of war, while others collapse? How can a school simultaneously seem to be a force for good and a force for evil? How can religious education do likewise? Are the ways of doing peace directly opposite to the ways of doing war? What are the 'rules of engagement' for peace? Can a country declare peace on another country, and can schools help in this declaration? These are all the questions for this book. As the above discussion has implied, the relationship of education to conflict is not just about conflict societies — it is a global issue in which stable countries are also implicated. And conflict within the school occurs in any political context, with increasing concerns about violence and disaffection among students. These two arenas are intricately interlinked, as I will try to show. On one level, of course, all life is conflict, and it may be difficult to know where the boundary falls between the inevitable everyday cut and thrust and the full-scale war — or whether to talk of a boundary at all. In parallel with the concern about armed conflict and violence, this book also advances the notion of 'positive conflict' — the necessary way in which social progress occurs and challenges are made to injustice. My aims in this book are fourfold: (a) to demonstrate the crucial contemporary importance of an analysis of the relationship between education and conflict (b) to trace connections between wider conflict and school-based conflict (c) to provide a theoretical framework for understanding which can also be used in practical ways (d) to advance the use of positive conflict and interruptive democracy in education as a way to allow the emergence of more appropriate learning.


1

It can be seen that I hope for multiple audiences. I do think that the link between conflict and education is a grossly under-analysed area. This is not surprising, as it is uncomfortable for policymakers and curriculum developers. It is safer to focus on literacy and numeracy, on the number of desks and the achievement of measurable targets. It is significant that much of the curriculum work and materials on rights, non-violence and peace education comes from NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations) outside the main state frameworks. I want to see conflict brought into the mainstream, to encourage both risk-taking and networking. The aims and range of this book are in some ways hopelessly ambitious, but what I attempt to show is that everything is interlinked, that you need a robust sociological theory as well as examples of good practice, and that you need some sort of vision as well as descriptions of everyday 'reality'. A central position of the book is that we all have agency, but that we need a range of alliances to sustain real change. If the book has multiple audiences, it is because we need multiple connectivities. As a teacher educator, I like Murphy's (1999) idea of 'an open conspiracy'. If we are to do anything about conflict, it will need an open conspiracy of a large range of people in and around education. I should at this point reveal where I come from in this book. It is from a history of working around deviance, around gender issues, around democracy and around education management — all within international contexts. Pupil deviance, teacher deviance and government deviance are closely intertwined in most parts of the world. Short periods of work in Kosovo, Bosnia and Palestine over the last few years have given me practical insights into responses to conflict, and certainly will have underpinned the interest in complexity. Management training with United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) officials in UK and Jordan has also been a learning experience, as is teaching human rights education and citizenship education to experienced international participants. Theoretically I often come at conflict from a feminist standpoint and have been influenced by feminist writers and researchers on conflict and masculinity. However, to arrive at complexity theory means an eclectic mix of feminist theory, deviancy theory, management theory and development theory. Friends ask whether this book is my life's work, and in some ways it is. But it is a life bombarded by other lives, other rationalities, other absurdities. I acknowledge debt to them all. Structure of the book

The ordering of this book has been difficult, because of the overlapping nature of all of the discussion and the predicament of fitting a non-linear subject into a linear framework. Nonetheless, I do want to try to build an argument, and isolate some areas before reassembling them. After this introductory chapter, Chapter 2 sets out the framework of complexity theory which will

Introduction: the nature of conflict


underpin the book. Part II focuses on the roots of conflict and their implications for education. This is somewhat artificially carved up into the three areas of economic/class relations, gender, and ethnicity/identity, acknowledging their interconnections but arguing that there are distinctive contributions that each 'field' makes to the conflict debate. Analytically it is necessary to tease out such contributions, if only to avoid the paralysis that comes from seeing everything as inexorably linked. The irony or paradox of complexity theory is that the sum is not reducible to its parts, yet to understand connectivity we do need to look at those parts. Part III moves more directly to review the interface between education and conflict in terms firstly of how war or violence affects educational institutions, and secondly (or conversely) how education can contribute to war — or to peace. It must be stressed again that these chapters are not just about 'wartorn' societies. Conflict spreads historically and spatially. The contribution of education to war is not just in military training camps, but in 'normal' competitive, authoritarian, non-critical pedagogy the world over. Similarly, the contribution to peace can range from very specific 'peace packages' used in refugee camps to 'normal' democratic, rights-based, cooperative education which can also be found all over the world (although, I would have to say, far less frequently). Part IV contains four chapters delineating strategic responses to conflict. I have initially followed the convention of distinguishing conflict and postconflict societies, while admitting that the strategies overlap hugely. In the ì mmediate' conflict chapter I look at rapid educational response and humanitarian aid, as well as refugee education; in the 'aftermath' chapter I focus more on the issue of rebuilding society and restoring public and political culture. These two chapters are followed by one that focuses specifically on conflict resolution within the school, showing how the techniques used in conflict resolution at international levels equally apply to classrooms and relationships in an institution. The final chapter sets out my argument for interruptive democracy and positive conflict, for the deliberate introduction of certain sorts of conflict within a school in order to create a generation of learners who will challenge injustice and the folly of violence — and whereby the complex adaptive school can be an agent of change in the community and beyond. Definitions of conflict, war, violence, protest and peace

It would be useful to begin with how this book sees and uses the basic terminology. Coser (1956) had a simple definition of conflict as involving struggles between two or more people over values, or competition for status, power and scarce resources. He later added 'in which the aim of opponents is to neutralise, injure or eliminate rivals' (1967: 8), which seems somewhat

9

extreme, in that it does not include consensual resolution. Roche (1996) similarly defines conflict as 'the playing out in violent form of political relations'. For this book, I prefer a wider concept of conflict, in line with Agerback's delineation of 'dispute': In the sense of dispute, conflict is of course universal in the politics of family, community and nation. In that sense, any dynamic human system is by nature a conflictive one, encompassing the play of opposing interests. The crux lies in how such conflict is managed. So long as the social and political processes provide channels for dialogue, participation and negotiation, conflict plays a constructive role. Where such channels are blocked, and yet basic needs go unmet, then resentment and desperation build up. The outcome is protest, repression and violence. (1996: 27) Such a description links the universal nature of conflict with the more crucial question of where it stems from and what people do with it. Many conflict resolution books start out with definitions of conflict, definitions which are actually about causality and process. From Isenhart and Spangle's (2000) list of definitions from a range of authors, for example, one could summarise that conflict is: • • • •

a real or apparent incompatibility of interests or goals a belief that parties' current aspirations cannot be achieved simultaneously a struggle over values and claims to status, power or resources an intermediate stage of a spectrum of struggle that escalates and becomes more destructive.

In organisational psychology on the other hand, there is a traditional distinction between cognitive conflict and affective conflict. Cognitive conflict is overt, related to the task; affective conflict happens at the more subtle, process level and relates to group maintenance and interpersonal dynamics. Cognitive issues focus on roles, policies and resources and enhance group performance. Affective issues focus on norms and values, and supposedly reduce performance and satisfaction. Apparently, people are able to tell the difference between the two, and whether conflict is about affective states such as hatred and jealousy (Thomas 1992). I would hazard however that it is unlikely, especially in education, that there is clear water between the two states. Even a conflict about something functional, such as curriculum policy, is likely to mean people taking positions related to their identity. If the question is solved after a simple debate with people putting forward views and counter-indications which are persuasive enough for a consensus

Introduction: the nature of conflict I I


to form, then this is not actually a conflict. If something becomes a conflict, then affective issues are bound to emerge. The nature of escalation and the question of time together mean that definitions of 'conflict' therefore may revolve around a temporal or 'stage' issue, that is, at what point a difference of opinion actually becomes a conflict. `Crisis', for example, is defined by Roche as 'a critical juncture in a process at which a radical change becomes necessary. Thus a crisis represents a period of transformation, or transition when disaster threatens. Disaster is defined here as the situation that occurs when crisis outstrips the capacity of a society to cope with it' (1996: 23). Hence instead of attempting to deal solely with events produced by different types of change, we must try to shape and guide the forces which produce such events, in order to 'change the nature of change itself' (Roche 1996: 23). Perceptions of the history of a conflict become crucial for looking at points of intervention and 'coping'. As Cockburn (1998) points out, conflicts (such as in the Balkans, or Northern Ireland) are portrayed by the media and other commentators as based on age-old, primordial ties — wars are thus seen as inescapable and will never end; they will just vary in intensity. Yet a more careful reading shows that these wars are modern — not just fought with modern weapons, but with modern goals — sovereignty, statehood or citizenship, as well as resources. Focusing on 'age-old' rivalries also underestimates the part played by twentieth- and twenty-first-century world powers such as the USA, Britain and Germany. Who is fighting whom can change all the ti me, including who are allies and who become the refugees in whose country. This is another argument for complexity theory, to help understand the dynamics of change in conflict. Shifts in the nature of armed conflicts are also relevant to discussing the role of education in different countries (Tawil 2001). Since the end of the Cold War, violent conflicts have increasingly taken place within, rather than between, states. In 1999, only two of the twenty-seven major armed conflicts observed throughout the world were international. Yet this picture can change, and will be influenced by 'international terrorism' within and across countries. I then come to the question of whether 'war' is the same as 'armed conflict' and/or 'violent conflict'. Arnhold et al. (1998) in their book on Education for Reconstruction distinguish three forms of 'war': intercountry belligerence, civil war, and ethnic and religious conflict, all of which mean physical destruction and disruption to education. Even after a political settlement, hostility will persist. We should not conflate the three forms of conflict — interpersonal aggression, public order and organised war — as they have legal distinctions. Definitions of 'war' may also have a gendered component. Kelly asks, 'Does militarism construct a particular form of brutal (or brutalised) masculinity? When is a war a war, and what constitutes peace from the perspective of women?' (2000: 47). She points out how the term 'sex war' was commonplace

in feminist rhetoric and analysis in the 1970s. This was intended as a powerful metaphor, to challenge the limited definitions of war, and is less used now after some trivialisation by the media. However, the need to understand gender relations as a potential ongoing site of conflict is still there, particularly in terms of sexual violence and the forms such sexual violence takes in national or civil armed conflict (see Chapter 4). 'War' is generally used now in a range of metaphorical discourses, and this has educational implications. There are also different definitions of violence, not of all of which include arms. Cairns says we must distinguish interpersonal violence from intergroup or political violence, the latter defined as 'violence perpetrated by one set or group or people on another set or group of people who were often strangers to each other before the violence occurred' (Cairns 1996: 10). Yet in civil war such as in Bosnia the groups were only too familiar; I am not sure about this definition. Zwi and Ugalde (1991) distinguish four main types of 'political violence', although recognising that they overlap considerably: • • • •

structural — resulting from the maldistribution of resources and political power repressive — by the state or others in which social groups are targeted because of their religion, ethnicity, political beliefs, etc. reactive — a reaction against the repression experienced, or conversely by privileged groups against reforming government combative — the use of force to preserve or gain power, possibly linked with outside intervention such as the 'low intensity' wars of Mozambique or Nicaragua.

I find Jamil Salmi's (1999) typology one of the most useful for this book. He offers an analytical framework to define violence and distinguishes four different categories: • •

• •

Direct violence relates to physical acts resulting in deliberate injury and killing (murder, genocide, rape, torture, forced resettlement, forced labour, slavery). Indirect violence refers to violence by omission — lack of protection against poverty, hunger, disease, accidents and natural catastrophe, or victims of persecution; also mediated violence which is the result of deliberate human interventions in the natural or social environment (defoliants, pesticides, embargos). Repressive violence refers to human rights violations — of freedom of thought, speech, religion, freedom to vote, go on strike, form a union. Alienating violence is the deprivation of a person's higher rights such as psychological, emotional, cultural or intellectual integrity. This includes racism, social ostracism, cultural repression and living in fear.


Obviously, some occurrences may fall into several categories — for example, slavery. Salmi asks, can the same analytical framework be applied to the concept of education? At first sight, he says, they do not fit well together, as the former (violence) refers to harmful situations which cause people to suffer, and the latter (education) to a positive process of intellectual and moral growth. Yet they have many points of intersection: schools can be violent environments, and at the same time education can be a powerful instrument to reduce violence and improve human rights (Salmi 1999). The notion of schools as violent has resonances of course with Bourdieu's (1977) concept of 'symbolic violence' — the way that schools repress and do harm to children through labelling and the power of words rather than through physical violence. Many writers on conflict also distinguish not only between interpersonal, social and political violence but also between overt and covert violence, with the latter referring to 'symbolic or structural oppression' (Tawil 2001). I shall return to this in Chapter 7. One aspect of conflict which has been specifically investigated for education is protest. Robert Adams's (1991) book Protests by Pupils traces the history of collective protest over the last two centuries, arguing that this had received scant attention from researchers. He outlines the characteristics of pupil protest as sixfold: interruption (to the process of schooling); temporariness; groups of pupils (collective action); expression of a grievance; achieving/demanding a change; and action as part of a continuum (of practices and relationships). Collective protest is the dimension of disruption which covers boycotts, sit-ins, walkouts and riots. The strategies and tactics include confrontation (ranging from actual violence against staff or property to silent resistance); alliances (with parents, teachers, media); diversion (ranging from absenteeism to satire); and subversion (sabotage and reprisals). Adams gives examples of all of these, across a range of countries. Adams talks of the 'silence' of the sociology of the school on this issue, compared to radical sociology in general which examines in detail industrial unrest such as strikes. He considers that structuralist sociology, which locates knowledge and culture in the superstructure of power, then ignores the knowledge and culture of young people. There has of course been a mass of sociological literature on pupil deviance, but he is probably right that specific political struggles have received much less attention. They are important for my book, in that, as we shall see in Chapter 12, pupil protests may constitute a form of positive conflict which is to be encouraged rather than suppressed. Also important are the definitions of non-violent action, as well as violent action. Non-violent direct action is characterised by withdrawal from contact, silent protest and shunning of the authorities, and social techniques such as petitioning, ostracism or avoidance. In educational terms, it also includes 'economic' techniques, such as boycotts of school or college, blockades, strikes, slowdowns, picketing, blocking entrances, vigils, demonstrations and marches. It also includes propaganda. There are inevitably


disputes about whether 'non-violence' can include sabotage or damage to property (Adams 1991). While this book will be drawing a host of parallels and interfaces between political conflict and within-school conflict, it would be cautious about going down the road of depicting the school as a battleground, or as a simple repository foutiysical and symbolic violence. It would be an insult to those who have experienced the real horrors of war to paint schools as equivalent, however nasty some of them may be. Perhaps the most vivid definition and description of civil war (and what constitutes 'arms') is Kate Adie's: Civil war is domestic violence writ large: the bread-knife and the fear at the top of the stairs. All your neighbours become a suspect family, and no one will intervene. You shriek among familiar surroundings and no one else takes much notice. You appeal to the authorities — and they're rather embarrassed. And when the uniforms finally arrive they never understand the intensity of what's going on. Nor can they have a solution. Civil wars are nasty, vindictive, and redolent of vendetta and revenge. Memories are vivid — for the events take place in and around the home. The local shop is burned out, the bakery becomes an ammunition store, the farm machinery plant an arms factory. Names of the dead are recognized — the people along the street. Also the names of the people who did the killing. The conflict is called a war, but has no rules of war, for everything is legitimised in' the name of survival. You kill cattle and burn houses full of useful belongings, just because they belong to the wrong people. And a Red Cross is meaningless — because there is talk of ambulances ferrying arms and fighters to the other side. Besides, your people do it too. Superstition rears its medieval head, for there is faith in the past and your struggle is rooted in past injustices. So bodies are not left untouched, and even graves not left quiet. And you never wish to live next door to your neighbour again. The foreigners call it ethnic cleansing. But you fear the bread knife, in the middle of the night. (2002: 255-6) The themes in this description will be returned to again and again in this book — fear, revenge, memory, identity, legitimisation. But I can see no good in civil wars, and I can see some good in schools. I am not a de-schooler. This book also looks at what schools do and can do for peace — which again needs a brief definition here.

14 The terms of the debate Peace is a process: a many sided, never-ending struggle to transform violence. . . . Stable peace is a relatively rare state. . . . Peace is often compared to health, in that it is more easily recognised by its absence .. . Absence of war is often described as a negative (`cold') peace, and is contrasted with positive (`warm') peace, which encompasses all the aspects of the good society that we might envisage for ourselves: universal rights, economic well-being, ecological balance and other core values. (Fisher et al. 2000: 10) Most definitions therefore now agree that peace is more than just the absence of war. It can be linked to the 'quiet, mundane, feminine' (Kelly 2000: 48). For writers such as Enloe (1987), a peace meaningful to women would require not just the absence of armed and gender conflict at home, locally and abroad, but also the absence of poverty and the conditions which recreate it. The classic definition is that of the United Nations: 'Peace includes not only the absence of war, violence and hostilities . . . but also the enjoyment of economic and social justice, equality and the entire range of human rights and fundamental freedoms within society' (United Nations 1993: Paragraph 13). To look at whether schools are peaceful places, we need to see whether pupils and teachers enjoy justice, rights and fundamental freedoms. This will be the task of Chapter 8.


• •

•

•

•

Theories of causes of conflict

A book on conflict should say something about causation, especially if we are trying to see where education 'fits' in this causation. Again, this is an even bigger field than definitions, so what I do here is simply list some of the theories, in order to be able to return to them later in their relation to education. Isenhart and Spangle (2000) provide a good summary of the theories and their various authors or protagonists; for the purposes of brevity I summarise their account even more here.

•

•

•

• •

Attribution theory: People make sense of their world by assigning qualities and causes to people and situations, frequently attributing positive consequences to their own actions and negative ones to the actions of others. They may develop overgeneralised labels to explain others' behaviour, and assign blame. Equity theory: Conflict is seen from the perspective of distributive justice. People become distressed or angry when they feel they are not receiving their fair share of something they value. Field theory: People's actions are a product of contextual forces, with a push and pull based on expectations, commitments and loyalties. Each setting, such as family, community group, work or educational context,

serves as a psychological field where competing attitudes create safe or hostile climates. Interacti onist theory: Conflict is a product of continuous negotiation about what is valued, how behaviours are to be interpreted and the meanings of events. Psychodynamic theory: People approach problems from one of many unconscious states, such as anxiety, ego, fear, aggressiveness or guilt. Internal tensions build up to a point where they demand release, often in destructive ways. Displacement occurs when parties unable to direct their anger to the source of their frustration direct it to a more accessible target (a pupil?). Social exchange theory: This is based on market analysis. People make choices based on self-interest and weigh up benefits and losses. Conflict arises when people perceive that their rewards are too low, their costs too high or when they anticipate resistance in meeting their goals. Phase theory: Conflict proceeds through a predictable sequence of behaviours; behaviours that ignite conflict can be identified; specific behaviours tend to perpetuate or escalate conflict. Therefore triggers and monitoring are important. Systems theory: Groups possess 'organisation' as do biological organisms. They are homeostatic in that parties will adjust their communication to achieve or maintain equilibrium. Conflict arises when the system or one sub-system breaks down, or members exceed their functional roles to create imbalances elsewhere. Transformational theory: Conflict is not necessarily dysfunctional, but a vital social function where tensions are released and new communal norms are established or refined. It forces parties to deal with deeper social issues.

In my view, complexity theory is able to combine many of these, and I will return to them in the next chapter. I will be proposing: Complexity shutdown theory: Negative conflict arises when there is a lack of connectivity, of feedback, of use of information and of willingness to benefit from diversity.

War stems from linearity, from simplistic purities, not from complexity. On President Nixon's wall was rumoured to be a sign saying 'I have made up my mind, don't confuse me with the facts'. A joke then, but frighteningly salient now. `Frozen struggles' are those where resolution is unlikely and de-escalation difficult, because of rigid perceptions, incompatible values, poor communication, perceptions that the situation is win—lose and needs advantage over others, and rigid and unchanging perceptions of self in relation to the rest of



the world. This would characterise Northern Ireland and the Middle East. It has been suggested that moving away from frozen positions can begin with gradual, reconciliatory initiatives, such as that used by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat prior to the Camp David meetings in 1978. This is to enhance trust to the point where at least communication can begin. It must be restated that not all the theories relate only to the 'negative' end of conflict, but can relate to positive conflict as well. A certain amount or type of conflict is necessary for a functioning democracy, whereby challenges are made to injustice or to incompetent governance. My concern is when positive or transformational conflict shifts to negative, or when there was never positive conflict in the first place. This relates to 'spirals' of conflict, or conflict escalation. Spirals of conflict

In relation to public policy disputes, Carpenter and Kennedy identify the sequence of events common to conflict spirals: 1 Problem emerges. 2 Sides form as controversy grows. 3 Positions harden as parties become narrower and more rigid in their perspective. 4 Communication stops and parties become adversarial. 5 Conflict goes outside the immediate context as parties look for support and power. 6 Perceptions become distorted and parties lose objectivity. 7 Sense of crisis emerges as community divides into factions and coalitions. 8 Uncertainty arises about outcomes as options for parties become fewer. (Carpenter and Kennedy 1988: 17) A specific sort of spiral occurs through triangulation. This is not quite the triangulation in research methods, but when one party seeks the alliance of a second party — a pupil persuading a parent that the teacher is unfair, unreasonable or abusive. This may perpetuate blaming. Isenhart and Spangle also identify lace-saving' — the defensive, image-protecting behaviours when parties perceive threats to their social identities. This is particularly true of school students, with fragile identities constantly under threat both from teachers and from peers. 'Face-threatening' occurs when one party casts doubt on the competence, motivations or truthfulness of another. Steps to end conflict get bogged down as parties devote energy to protecting their i mage instead of resolving issues. 'Threat inflation' is very evident in contemporary international hostility (Woollacott 2003) and will be returned to in Chapter 5 in the discussion of fear.

The notion of 'runaway norms' found in discussions of conflict escalation is an interesting one: the group conforms to patterns of behaviour that seem normal to members but appear contentious or polarising to others. The norms become justification for heightened distrust and insults directed at other groups. Behaviours produce reciprocal behaviours in the other groups, and conflict can spiral. Particular and specific requests or goals become or reach the level of a 'common cause' such as fighting injustice. One particularly important aspect is that of interpretation of conflict and of history, as we shall see. Isenhart and Spangle cite fascinating studies showing that married couples only recall 35 per cent of what they talked about in the past hour, and people recall only about 9 per cent of what they actually talked about days earlier. Hence there is much dispute about what really was said or happened. One only has to watch people of any age doing the endless 'Oh no I didn't, Oh yes you did' routine to be aware of the importance of writing and rewriting the script in the 'moves' of conflict. The use of language in conflict

Language is a vital issue in human conflict, both in justifications and in terminology for resolution. Poerwawidadgo (2002), for example, distinguishes six levels of the handling of conflict, moving through negotiation between disputing parties (without the help of a third party), conciliation (also without help), mediation (with help), arbitration (third party decision), litigation (through courts) and legislation (through legal codes). In this progression we can see a continuous decrease in the power of disputants to manage their own conflict. However, we can also discern interpretive questions here, for example in the actual difference between negotiation and conciliation, between litigation and legislation. This brings us on to the crucial question (particularly for education) of analysis of language choice. Who are the terrorists and who are the freedom fighters? It was interesting how Kosovan Albanians changed from being plucky little revolutionaries to hardened terrorists overnight when they started attacking Macedonia. Death becomes 'collateral damage' in US parlance, with 'surgically clean strikes'. Ronald Reagan apparently referred to one nuclear ballistic missile as 'the peace-maker' (Cohn 1987). Cohn's research on the language of nuclear scientists notes that these early bomb projects were permeated with imagery about babies that confounds humankind's overwhelming technological power to destroy nature with the power to create. This irony relates to the significant question of the use of metaphor — such as the borrowing of the notion of 'the war on drugs' or 'the war on terror'. Metaphor, as we shall see, is important for complexity theorists: as Waldrop (1992) drily commented, had policymaking is about finding the wrong metaphors.


Chapter 2

Conclusion

Complexity theory and conflict

This introduction, in discussing the nature of contemporary conflict and the various theories of causation, by definition paints a somewhat grim picture. The book tries to build up a balance sheet. There are three basic positions: that on balance education contributes to negative conflict; that on balance it makes no difference; that on balance it is a force for peace. As will be seen, education can do all of this simultaneously; but I am interested in the overall verdict, the tally. And, whatever the balance, I am interested in the spaces for positive conflict and for possible shifts in the role of education towards a `healthier' contribution. At the end of each chapter we will see where we have got to on the accounting. I can reveal now that formal schooling does not fare well. Yet the book will equally point to two, linked, aspects of hope: that schools arc capable of contributing to peace; and that we are not all, as individuals or collectivities, totally determined by structures of power or wider violence. The next chapter outlines the theoretical framework which supports this glib assumption.

A problem in educational theory is that there has been a neglect of theorising to explain the differential contribution of schooling to national or global tension. One strong emphasis within the sociology of education has been on its contribution to inequality, looking at reproduction of social class or gender relations. The reproduction of conflict has received far less attention, except in institutional terms with studies of deviance and labelling. Studies within the psychology of education can give us insights into individual conflicts within the school and the aetiology of aggression. Yet we lack a suitable theoretical framework which can explain the macro issues of how education can act to reproduce conflict on a global scale, or conversely how some educational arenas are active in the struggle for peace and how some schools in conflict zones are resilient while others crumble. It is interesting and significant that both those working on complex humanitarian emergencies (e.g. Roche 1996) and those generating new ways to analyse educational organisations (e.g. Fullan 1999; Brooke-Smith 2001) are drawing on the insights of chaos and complexity theory. This is perhaps more immediately understandable when talking of disasters and catastrophes, but has been shown to be equally relevant to complex and inherently unpredictable systems such as schools (Davies 2000a). This chapter sketches the theoretical framework of complexity theory which will underpin the rest of the book. Complexity is not just one body of theory, but a collection of often disparate fields of study, including artificial intelligence, game theory, computer science, ecology, evolution and philosophy. It is not a 'grand narrative' in terms of an overarching explanatory theory of behaviour, but more a way of seeing connections and possibilities. While it reveals vast global connectivity, one of the benefits of complexity theory is to isolate where small changes can have disproportionate effects. It is simultaneously depressing and exhilarating. As Byrne argues: Complexity/chaos offers the possibility of an engaged science not founded in pride, in the assertion of an absolute knowledge as the basis for social programmes, but rather in a humility about the complexity of

ms of the debate the world coupled with a belief in the potential of human beings for doing something about it. (1998: 45) In complexity and chaos theory, a central feature is the study of 'complex adaptive systems' (CASs), otherwise called dynamic or non-linear systems. These can be physical systems such as the weather or the brain as well as social systems such as the economy. This is more than just saying that institutional systems such as schools, or global systems such as economic relations, are complex — this would be a truism. Complexity theory has a number of specific insights which have profound applications both to education and to conflict. I will select only six, those that to me have the most relevance. These are non-linearity, amplification, self-organisation, attractors, information and the edge of chaos. Non-linearity

This is the insight — or insistence — that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In a linear system, the components can act independently, not affected by other parts of the system. Sound is a linear system, as is light. Yet much of nature is not linear, including our brains. As Waldrop explains, the sound of an oboe and the sound of a string section may be independent when they enter the ear, yet the emotional impact of both sounds together may be very much greater than either one alone — which is what keeps symphony orchestras in business. The economy is not linear, in that millions of individual decisions to buy or not to buy can reinforce each other, creating a boom or recession. 'Indeed, except for the very simplest physical systems, virtually everything and everybody in the world is caught up in a vast, non-linear web of incentives and constraints and connections' (Waldrop 1992: 65). The misunderstanding of this is why the school effectiveness movement was destined to fail, in its simple cause-and-effect, factorial, decontextualised models of change (Harber and Davies 1997; Byrne 1998; Brooke-Smith 2001). The greater the complexity, the greater the unpredictability. Schools as CASs are not easily subject to simple external changes towards 'progress'. History is littered with examples of curriculum innovation that has not had the effects intended, because the linkages inside or outside the organisation were not understood (or were deliberately ignored). A case in point is much vocational education, which disregards the status questions of identity as well as the economic questions of existing markets for skills and products. As Roche points out, natural and social sciences have tended to concentrate on those aspects of change that are smooth, linear, ordered and predictable — in other words, those that are easier to analyse, or those that have been described as leading to 'tame' problems. But rapid, discontinuous, turbulent

Complexity theory and conflict 21 change (such as a coup d'etat or a sudden currency devaluation) has tended to be ignored, basically because it is more difficult to analyse and handle. However, most development problems are 'wicked', not 'tame', and involve just such types of discontinuous change. An analysis of 'wicked' (or turbulent) change can illuminate how we can support people to cope with and promote change, and as well as how we might organise ourselves to do so. ( Roche 1996: 16) In looking at 'conflict and education we are of course looking at the 'wicked' end of change, not that related to marginal curriculum tweaking or changes to the staff duty roster (although those are of course turbulent to some). For Stacey, 'the task that justifies the existence of all managers has to do with instability, irregularity, difference and disorder' (Stacey 1996a: xx). Schools and education systems have to be acknowledged as not only inherently turbulent, but inherently unique in the way that they adapt to an external intervention (such as peace education or citizenship education). Complex systems are interdependent, such that regulation at one level produces characteristics at another level. It is not a one-way chain of events, but a two-way system of determinant interrelationships. Boundaries and boundary conditions are keys to understanding this. The inspectorate is dependent on schools for its survival, not the other way round. So changes in the ways that schools work will produce changes in the ways that a schools inspectorate works — a feature not often commented on. A concept therefore often used is that of complex nested systems, with each system nested within a larger one. Complex nested systems can be nearequilibrium, or they can be 'dissipative' or far-from-equilibrium. Stacey describes organisations as 'paradoxes': They are powerfully pulled towards stability by the forces of integration, maintenance controls, human desires for security and certainty, and adaptation to the environment on the one hand. They are also powerfully pulled to the opposite extreme of unstable equilibrium by the forces of division and decentralisation, human desires for excitement and innovation, and isolation from the environment. If the organisation gives in to the pull to stability it fails because it becomes ossified and cannot change easily. If it gives in to the pull to instability it disintegrates. Success lies in sustaining an organisation in the borders between stability and instability. This is a state of chaos, a difficult-to-maintain dissipative structure. (1996a: 349)


the world coupled with a belief in the potential of human beings for doing something about it. (1998: 45) In complexity and chaos theory, a central feature is the study of 'complex adaptive systems' (CASs), otherwise called dynamic or non-linear systems. These can be physical systems such as the weather or the brain as well as social systems such as the economy. This is more than just saying that institutional systems such as schools, or global systems such as economic relations, are complex - this would be a truism. Complexity theory has a number of specific insights which have profound applications both to education and to conflict. I will select only six, those that to me have the most relevance. These are non-linearity, amplification, self-organisation, attractors, information and the edge of chaos. Non-linearity

This is the insight - or insistence - that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In a linear system, the components can act independently, not affected by other parts of the system. Sound is a linear system, as is light. Yet much of nature is not linear, including our brains. As Waldrop explains, the sound of an oboe and the sound of a string section may be independent when they enter the ear, yet the emotional impact of both sounds together may be very much greater than either one alone - which is what keeps symphony orchestras in business. The economy is not linear, in that millions of individual decisions to buy or not to buy can reinforce each other, creating a boom or recession. 'Indeed, except for the very simplest physical systems, virtually everything and everybody in the world is caught up in a vast, non-linear web of incentives and constraints and connections' (Waldrop 1992: 65). The misunderstanding of this is why the school effectiveness movement was destined to fail, in its simple cause-and-effect, factorial, decontextualised models of change (Harber and Davies 1997; Byrne 1998; Brooke-Smith 2001). The greater the complexity, the greater the unpredictability. Schools as CASs are not easily subject to simple external changes towards 'progress'. History is littered with examples of curriculum innovation that has not had the effects intended, because the linkages inside or outside the organisation were not understood (or were deliberately ignored). A case in point is much vocational education, which disregards the status questions of identity as well as the economic questions of existing markets for skills and products. As Roche points out, natural and social sciences have tended to concentrate on those aspects of change that are smooth, linear, ordered and predictable in other words, those that are easier to analyse, or those that have been described as leading to 'tame' problems. But rapid, discontinuous, turbulent

Complexity theory and conflict 21

change (such as a coup d'ilat or a sudden currency devaluation) has tended to be ignored, basically because it is more difficult to analyse and handle. However, most development problems are 'wicked', not 'tame', and involve just such types of discontinuous change. An analysis of 'wicked' (or turbulent) change can illuminate how we can support people to cope with and promote change, and as well as how we might organise ourselves to do so. ( Roche 1996: 16) In looking at conflict and education we are of course looking at the 'wicked' end of change, not that related to marginal curriculum tweaking or changes to the staff duty roster (although those are of course turbulent to some). For Stacey, 'the task that justifies the existence of all managers has to do with instability, irregularity, difference and disorder' (Stacey 1996a: xx). Schools and education systems have to be acknowledged as not only inherently turbulent, but inherently unique in the way that they adapt to an external intervention (such as peace education or citizenship education). Complex systems are interdependent, such that regulation at one level produces characteristics at another level. It is not a one-way chain of events, but a two-way system of determinant interrelationships. Boundaries and boundary conditions are keys to understanding this. The inspectorate is dependent on schools for its survival, not the other way round. So changes in the ways that schools work will produce changes in the ways that a schools inspectorate works - a feature not often commented on. A concept therefore often used is that of complex nested systems, with each system nested within a larger one. Complex nested systems can be nearequilibrium, or they can be 'dissipative' or far-from-equilibrium. Stacey describes organisations as 'paradoxes': They are powerfully pulled towards stability by the forces of integration, maintenance controls, human desires for security and certainty, and adaptation to the environment on the one hand. They are also powerfully pulled to the opposite extreme of unstable equilibrium by the forces of division and decentralisation, human desires for excitement and innovation, and isolation from the environment. If the organisation gives in to the pull to stability it fails because it becomes ossified and cannot change easily. If it gives in to the pull to instability it disintegrates. Success lies in sustaining an organisation in the borders between stability and instability. This is a state of chaos, a difficult-to-maintain dissipative structure. (1996a: 349)


Dissipative systems are both 'limit-bounded' and 'limit-testing', which means they are constrained by their boundaries but also pushing at the edges and creating change — as children do with parents. In terms of conflict and postconflict intervention, the notion of complex nested systems has resonances with the ecological approaches modelled on Bronfenbrenner (1979). In their work with children who have experienced conflict, Miller and Affolter (2002) talk of 'nested layers of actors and relationships'. They recognise how the 'target population' of children is embedded in concentric rings of relationships and influence, with the child's well-being embedded in the welfare of the family, parents' well-being embedded in income-earning opportunities and relationships with peers, the efficacy of local institutions embedded in regional networks and national policy environments and so on. The degree to which political leaders engage in a type of governance at macro level that fosters security and trust — rather than retraumatisation and renewed violence — influences the well-being of children. Similarly, in looking at the effects of political violence, the complexities become apparent. Gibson (1989) puts forward a four-level 'dynamicinteractionist' model for understanding how the stressors of political violence interact. These levels are the actual events experienced; characteristics that affect the ability to cope, such as development, gender or temperament; the family and social support; and the political and economic context. He then adds a fifth level of the material and ideological structure of society, to understand the essential political nature of conflict. Not only are there different interacting variables, but children are active in processing and giving meaning to their experiences. A constructivist approach to the impact of violence challenges the view of children as passive reactors, instead seeing children as incorporating experience into an already constructed social context ( Richman 1993). We can start to sec the importance of complexity theory for 'agency' and action. Initial conditions and amplification

This relates to non-linearity in the revelation that the slightest change in one place can cause tremors everywhere else. A phrase used is exquisite sensitivity on initial conditions. This has been referred to as the 'butterfly effect' — the notion that the flap of an insect's wings in China could change the course of a hurricane in Haiti a week later. Tiny perturbations do not remain tiny. This is of course cause for both alarm and optimism, as we shall discuss later. In non-linear dynamics, there is feedback in which internal or external changes to a system produce an amplifying effect. A yawn, epidemic or lifestyle can spread through a population. Courtney Brown's analysis of US environmental policy includes data on a heap of variables such as environmental degradation, political structure, citizen attitudes and electoral outcomes.


It shows how political and policy choices in the USA can produce environmental damage across the globe. Such analyses additionally show how arms escalation also produces increased tension and the likelihood of war (quoted in Eve 1997). Human systems differ from nature in that in social systems, the perturbations of far-from-equilibrium conditions can originate in the values and actions of humans themselves. Byrne (1998) talks of non-linear transffirmation after the Second World War in Britain, essentially value driven and the product of collective actions. In the period of reconstruction, the majority of the British electorate (Labour and Liberal) recognised that through an act, the way they cast their vote, they could determine the kind of post-war society which would be created. This always begs the uncomffirtable question of whether war is then necessary for radical transformation. Certainly, war has enabled a gender repositioning of women, with women being central to a struggle in countries such as Eritrea or Vietnam - albeit sometimes slipping back, post-conflict, to a previous attractor state (see pp. 27 29). Formal definitions of chaos all include the notion of apparently random irregular but recurrent behaviour which amplifies small uncertainties, and 'frees analysis from the shackles of order and predictability' (Crutchfield quoted in Gleick 1988). It is certainly an end to a reductionist or determinist approach. For Lewin (1993), chaos is a subset of complexity. If chaos theory is about showing how a few interactions can produce immensely divergent behaviour which looks random but is not, complexity is about how interactions in non-linear systems may produce an emergent global order. This seems to have resonances with structuration theory, the 'recursive relationship' between the whole and the parts of a system (Giddens 1984). What scientists try to do using these concepts and theories is modelling as with computers, drawing up complex models of effect and probability. Sonic phenomena are unstable — the spread of AIDs, the failure of Betamax. Others remain stable — for example, the correlation between educational attainment and income level, between education and birth rate. What is being looked for in terms of policy and policymaking, when using complexity theory, is to identify the point at which a multiplier effect happens. In positive terms, this would be the search for the 'gentle action'. Relating this to the impact of education, its multiplier contribution to conflict can he deliberate (as in terrorist training camps) or it can be unintentional (such as selection functions setting off a train of events which alter people's perceptions of self and others on a large scale). I look at this more in Chapter 7, exploring how education contributes to war. Either deliberate or unintentional, there can be sensitive dependence on initial conditions.


Self-organisation

However, it is not just confusion and random amplification. What happens is matter's incessant attempt to organize itself into ever more complex structures, to adapt, to survive. There are 'forces' of order and self-organisation which form patterns, as in a snowflake — what Stuart Kauffman (1.992) refers to as 'order for free'. At the same time as chaos is the acceptance that life is robust, it is continuously overbalancing and correcting itself as we do, unconsciously, when walking on two legs. In social organisation, people who are trying to satisfy mutual needs unconsciously organise themselves into an economy through myriad acts of buying and selling — this happens without anyone being in charge or consciously planning it (Waldrop 1992). So we need a theory which is 'capable of seeing nature as a "self-organising" enterprise without succumbing to anthropomorphism or mystifying animism' (Reed and Harvey 1992: 359). Complexity theory, it is argued, can provide this. Complex systems for Fullan (1999) 'self-organize' and exhibit periodic consolidation because the process is driven by (a) intense interaction and communication, (b) knowledge creation in relation to selected problems and (c) a value system that knows a good outcome when it sees it (Fullan 1999: 24). Self-organisation has implications for 'leadership' of course. The brain, as the most complex adaptive system that we know (albeit one that is not known well) has no leader, no master neurone. Leaders may not actually direct anything but just be the grit in the machine, the deviancy amplification mechanism which kickstarts the system into new self-organisation. There is debate about whether fish schools and flocks of birds actually respond to a 'leader' or are good examples of self-organisation, whereby individuals react to movements of their immediate neighbours, and where group-level patterns of activity arise spontaneously. Does group behaviour in classrooms or football terraces have the same self-organisation? Stacey writes: Complex adaptive systems consist of a number of components, or agents, that interact with each other according to sets of rules that require them to examine and respond to each other's behaviour in order to improve their behaviour and thus the behaviour of the system they comprise. In other words, such systems operate in a manner that constitutes learning. (Stacey 1996b: 10) Such learning systems then form a coevolving suprasystem that creates and learns its way into the future. With self-organisation, a CAS is a system of semiindependent agents that interact more or less randomly to influence each other's behaviour. The agents then realise when their interactions have left them better or worse off according to a 'fitness criterion'. Kupers (2001), writing on complexity and management, gives the example of a group of door-


to-door salesmen who meet randomly to exchange ideas and gossip. The right combination of a fitness criterion (more sales) and random encounters (feedback loops) leads to greater efficiency, much more efficient than the traditional method of having each salesperson report back to a central marketing entity. If we are an employee or an element in an ecosystem or a participant in an educational institution, we are 'bouncing around' randomly interacting with other agents in the system; the one thing you know is what is 'good' or enhances survival. This web of very local and random interactions, occurring without following any explicit directives, leads to an increase in the fitness of the entire system. This is contrasted to a system where you wait for an explicit instruction for every move. This has huge implications for learning and behaviour in complex systems such as education systems or schools. Senior decision-makers tend to assume that because they have imposed order (in terms of pupil groupings, timetables and curriculum) it follows that interactions are not random, and that the decision-makers' fitness of purpose is students' or teachers' fitness of purpose. Yet the more important interactions in terms of consequences may be the more random bouncing around against each other in playground or staffroom. This 'servant leadership' and acknowledgement of the contribution of all participants (including students) is the key to understanding both order and change. Kupers argues for 'having just enough rules to limit randomness in the organisation to where it is fruitful, but not so many as to put the organisation into a state of equilibrium. The organisation will function best when poised at the edge of disorder' (Kupers 2001: 18). Strangely, Kupers then goes on to say that 'designing the rules to achieve this balance is probably the most important and challenging task of the leader', which seems to negate the previous set of insights. My understanding of complexity in management and in conflict would be that any 'rules' would need to be established as part of a holistic, non-directive process (i.e. in schools by the students in collaboration with teachers) — not 'designed' by a leader. Rules would become part of 'emergence' — the creative recognition of new order. There is admittedly a debate here within those applying complexity theory to social science or management. Battram (1998) argues that organisations do need some hierarchy — or the building burns down while we are in a meeting to decide the response to a fire. Can there be too much connectivity? Is it more roads, less speed? Apparently, it is more efficient to let pilots talk to each other and coordinate their own behaviour than to have air traffic control, particularly in a combat situation. But this works only in the context of an overall agreed goal — to stop the enemy. The question is whether you have every message sent everywhere, and people can pick what they want (like radio cab drivers); or whether the role of the hierarchy is to set the conditions and selectively remind of the goals. Complex adaptive systems apparently constantly make predictions based on their various internal models of the world. These are not passive models,


but can come to life and 'execute' in order to produce behaviour in the system. Obviously, efficient organisations try consciously to predict by making a business or marketing plan. Models are also often 'inside the head', 'as when a shopper tries to imagine how a new couch might look in the living room', or a timid employee imagines the consequences of telling off the boss (Waldrop 1992: 177). Anything that we call a 'skill' or 'expertise' is an implicit model — or more precisely a huge set of operating procedures that have been inscribed on the nervous system and refined by years of experience. All CASs 'model their environment' — constantly seeing and imagining patterns, testing ideas, acting upon them, discarding them again. They acquire information about their environment and their own interaction with that environment, identifying regularities in that information, condensing them into a 'schema' and then acting on the basis of that schema. There are competing schemata, and the results of the action in the real world feed back to influence the competition among those schemata. (Would an example be punishing students and their parents for truancy versus making schools nicer places to be in?) There is an 'outward urge' of the system, seeking to improve, not to retreat to the core of the identity like a hedgehog. But, as Waldrop asks, where do the models come from? Who programmes the programmer? Ultimately the answer is no one. This was Darwin's great insight, that an agent can improve on its internal models without any paranormal guidance at all. It simply tries the models out and sees how they work in the real world — and, if it survives the experience, adjusts the model to do better next time. This is the basis of cognition and learning, and hence the hallmark of the 'learning organisation'. Clearly, 'trying the models out' involves an element of risk, and the fearful or highly stable organisation will not reach emergence, not strike the equilibrium between balance and turbulence. It needs to be acknowledged here that morality is not automatically part of education as a complex system, or as part of emergence. When a CAS changes, it does so for survival and new order. This has nothing to do with whether such change leads towards social justice. In one part of the education system perhaps new tests are introduced (supposedly in the interests of standards). The net results are an increase in polarisation and an increase in corruption. Schools seek to maintain their place in the league tables, and hence falsify the results or leak the questions. This is new, creative, behaviour for some schools. It may be evolutionary, but there is nothing inherently progressive about it in terms of the greater sum of human happiness. As Lewin points out: Competition abounds, each species jostling with its ecological rivals . . In the end, each species may be improved — that is, be faster, tougher to eat, or smarter than it once was — but none would have achieved an absolute advantage over others. Progress has occurred (if we may use that


word), species may be better at what they once did, but none is any better off. Leigh Van Valen's Red Queen effect— all species running continually to remain in the same place — is a popular image. So is an arms race, for obvious reasons. (Lewin 1993: 148) Lilian (1999) perhaps recognised the essentially amoral nature of complexity by putting together complexity with 'moral purpose' in his argument for democracy in schools. Yet while I agree with him that equity makes sense economically, in terms of the social cohesion which can help economic growth, I am less sure that it is destined to happen in evolutionary terms. 1 t depends what sort of society we are evolving into; and the level we are looking at. Fullan draws on Goleman's work on emotional intelligence, which concludes that as work becomes more complex and collaborative, companies where people work together best have 'a competitive edge'. Fullan sees this a possible 'profound evolutionary reason for being optimistic' (Fullan 1999: 41). Yet at the next layer up, competition is then apparently still the game: he collaborative organisation has become more competitive (that is, creating winners and losers) and is surviving through not collaborating with competitors. I suppose the logic is that if all organisations were collaborative, competition would reduce and only collaborators would be left. I hope, but am less optimistic, that it is the cooperative rather than the self-centred evolution that will prevail; but the jury is out. It depends whether we want to wait for the long-term evolution. Apparently even predator/prey relationships are generally beneficial for both species, although destructive for immediate prey. If evolution is adapt' mg to meet one's needs, coevolution is adapting to meet each other's needs. Again, this is where a simple Darwinism does not work, nor a simple market economy view. It is not the survival of the fittest, because if the foxes eat all he rabbits, foxes will also die in the end, as there are no more rabbits to eat. Parasitism and symbiosis are important. It is not a dog-eat-dog world, but one with strategic alliances. However, I argue that in school clustering or higher education consortia, such alliances may be just competition one stage removed. The agency and reflexivity that distinguishes us from rabbits means little acceptance by human rabbits of their long-term value in the Great Scale of Things, and every likelihood of conflict.

Attractors Most complex systems exhibit what mathematicians call attractors, states to which the system eventually settles, depending on the properties of the system (Lewin 1993). 'Strange attractors' (strange because they are not always explicable to us) are the system's 'preference' for an organisation of microstates (such as atoms, or possibly individual people) into a specific


range of macrostates. Research and models have been drawn up, not just in mathematics, but in children's friendships, teenage pregnancies and the `collapse' of the Soviet Union. As Eve (1997) comments, in a sense, the Soviet Union is still there. None of the populations was destroyed, the towns still exist. Perhaps the Soviet Union just entered a new phase, like ice becomes water. An attractor is not a 'force' of attraction, but depicts where the system is heading — like a boat drifting in a slow current, rather than a magnet. A dynamic system has 'multiple attractors'; and cultural evolution would have attractors equivalent to bands, tribes, chiefdoms and states. An education system is itself a strange attractor, but contains within it other attractors, periods of stasis punctuated with periods of change, like sea creatures caught in a whirlpool. We are so accustomed to mass education systems as permanent features of our society that it takes an effort to remember that they have been (and may remain) a very temporary constellation. They have been with us a shorter time than Coca-Cola (invented in 1857), and may indeed be a `hiccup in history'. Complexity theory enables us to see education systems as particular sets of strange attractors coming together to enable adaptation to new turbulences in society. An attractor is not the same as being 'attractive' in the sense of 'nice' — often quite the converse. One important area for conflict is the nature of social exclusion. Social exclusion is an attractor state for individuals, households and even neighbourhoods (as systems nested within spatially more extensive containing systems). As Byrne (1998) points out, this is not a matter of personal capacities, and not solvable by supply-side labour-market-oriented policies. Work can be excluding if it is grossly exploitative. Work paid at a rate below the cost of the social reproduction of the labour power might be better regarded as concealed unemployment, as the OECD (1997) acknowledge. Social exclusion is a system property which arises when key social parameters, or control parameters, such as unemployment, pass crucial values. It can be challenged by redistributive economic or fiscal policies, by post-tax incomes and by benefit levels, strong job protection and labour market inflexibility — not features of many contemporary capitalist societies. Social exclusion of course impacts on schools and on school order in terms of the cultural/social capital of students and their orientation towards education. Linked to attractors is the notion of bifurcation. At crucial transformation points the system seems to have two possible trajectories into which it can move and it 'chooses' between them on the basis of very small differences in the values of controlling parameters at the point of change. In science, control parameters might be temperature, pressure, volume, etc. In social science, control parameters can be labour markets, degree of social inequality, ethnicity and unemployment. In educational institutions, Brooke-Smith (2001) talks of control parameters as connectivity, variety and diversity, power differentials, rate of information flow and anxiety.


Conflict affects systems all the way down a nested hierarchy. Here the bifurcations may happen at the 'top' of the system, as a government decides to go to war or not, or a political or military wing decides to take violent paths or not; the likelihood of people being involved in conflict is at the same ti me random (as in Kashmir) and patterned (male, poor, of a particular ethnic/religious group). AIDS, war and terrorism can 'jump over the fence' and affect everyone; nobody is isolated in a complex society. Bifurcations can lead to 'butterfly attractors'. In educational terms, we have a discontinuous/polarised pattern of inequality, and the tendency in educational systems to reward high achievement and penalise failure operates as a positive feedback loop in intensifying social divisions. The whole argument about whether education can or cannot 'compensate' for society is based on a false notion of independence: instead education is part of that society, densely interacting and nested — and implicated in inequality. The butterfly attractor is so called because of polarisation into two 'wings' or extremes. Tuberculosis is a disease of societies which are in the attractor state of being relatively highly unequal. This, as is argued on pp. 41-42, is t rue of conflict too. Information

What is critical in complex systems and their ability to adapt and survive is i nformation. Survival has to do with gathering information about the environment, and responding appropriately . . . bacteria do that, by responding to the presence or absence of certain chemicals and by moving. Trees communicate chemically too. Computation is a fundamental property of complex adaptive systems . . . any complex adaptive system can compute; that's the key point. You don't have to have a brain to process information in the way I'm talking about it. (Lewin 1993: 138) Again, there seem to be some parallels here with structuration theory (Giddens 1984), that is, the complex interplay between agency and structure, but complexity takes this further. Structuration theory does not of itself start to explain when people and their actions arc determined by social or economic structures and when they act agentically ---- only that the possibilities are there. One of the great insights of structuration theory is the exposure of how structures are dependent on agents on a daily basis for their continuation. The great puzzle then is why we 'choose' to continue, to reproduce, or not to challenge, and conversely why or at what point we 'choose' to upset the apple cart. Complexity theory starts to illustrate the power of information and feedback — for individuals, for organisations, for countries. In educational



terms, for me the edge of chaos emerges when there is sufficient information to create doubt. This is not information just to bring order, homeostasis or reproduction, using simple feedback loops (and where, in the human world, discourse, ideology and discursive formations become central). This is instead information which shows that alternatives are possible — and that people can have agency. Particularly in trying to change or improve a system, one seeks the 'emergence' achieved through positive non-linear feedback. The obvious example is the human brain, which constantly organises and reorganises billions of neural connections and pathways in order to learn profitably from complex and sometimes confusing experiences. A school cannot reorganise its connections with anything like this speed and sophistication, but it can certainly i mprove its feedback processes. The most tantalising — but currently salutory — aspect of a foray into complexity theory is the realisation of how little we know about communication and the transmission of information in complex adaptive systems. The brain is not just 'a computer made of meat'. There is certainly a place for intuition. There is a place for feelings, and chemistry. We communicate through music, for example, but have little idea of how the information actually flows. 'Think of musical melodies; they are messages that we feel we understand, yet we are quite incapable of saying what they mean. The existence of music is a permanent intellectual scandal, but it is just one scandal among many others' (Ruelle 1993: 135). Music has a similar and even more mysterious role in complex systems, beyond the scope of this book (although see Tame 1984), but has a similar function to humour — of binding people together and enabling the expression of emotion. It is no accident that oppressive regimes sometimes ban music. For our purposes in examining the nature of information for conflict and peace, we have to look at 'truth' and 'myth'. The power of rumour and distorted information is significant. An instructive account of the religious conflict in Ambon, Indonesia shows how this was triggered by wrong information (Poerwawidagdo 2002). While there had been a centuries-long tradition of peaceful coexistence between Christian and Muslim, a quarrel between two young people quickly spread into a massive conflict resulting in hundreds of deaths and destruction of property. It was fuelled by rumours about impending attacks, purposefully spread to provoke fear and defensive violence. Wrong information can be used intentionally by the political elite or the military; fear has a strong amplifying effect. Our question might be how to spread a rumour about peace. Is fear so much more powerful than happiness? Poerwawidagdo argues that withholding information for the sake of social and communal peace is morally correct and ethically appropriate. But it is a debatable point. The power of information also includes the power of networks and networking. It is significant that Al-Qaeda has changed tactics. Previously there were training (educational?) facilities in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the

recruitment of young men to go there. Bin Laden's main assets had been the training facilities he could offer to any young Islamist activist wanting instruction in terrorist techniques and a cadre of experienced motivated operators. 'But a new al-Qaeda is taking shape. It is dispersed, amorphous and composed of a huge range of different units who share little other than a fierce desire to combat what they see as the "Zulm" or tyranny of America and the West' (Burke and Beaumont 2002: 15). The tactic of sending men out to forge new groups overseas — instead of bringing volunteers to Afghanistan for training — has become the cornerstone of this new Al-Qaeda. New alliances of militant organisations are forming all the time, 'against the infidel'. As long as there are hot headed, angry young men susceptible to these people's message then there will be a problem . . . All you need is one man to convince six more that they have to strike and you've got a terrorist cell. In many countries there are people who are just waiting for contact and leadership. Often there are fully fledged terrorist organisations looking for new directions. (Islamabad analyst, quoted in Burke and Beaumont 2002: 15) I shall return later to a case study of Al-Qaeda; it is brought in at this point to demonstrate the complex interface between information, education, networking, group identity and a sense of agency which lies at the heart of initiatives for conflict or peace. The edge of chaos

Finally, in the search for adaptation or for survival, complex systems apparently get to self-organised criticality. This is sometimes called the edge of chaos, or phase transition. Here is a delicate balancing point between stability and total mess, one where change and new or 'better' order is possible. Such èmergence' is more than Darwin's natural selection. We are not just the product of random mutations, but something more: what apparently has been unearthed is a creativity within nature. In humans, culture emerges on a separate level of organisation or abstraction from the individuals, organisations or beliefs that constitute it. The edge of chaos is where information gets its foot in the door in the physical world, where it gets the upper hand over energy. Being at the transition point between order and chaos not only buys you exquisite control — small input/big change — but it also buys you the possibility that information processing can become an important part of the dynamics of the system. (Lewin 1993: 51)


The edge of chaos is not in fact an edge, but a zone, a class of behaviours. Learning operates on the edge of chaos. Complexity is the state that allows information to organise and reorganise itself, that allows the person to construct new and more complex meanings. Are we just a mass of information strung together? Chaos starts to explain how social systems are reproduced from cycle to cycle but never in exactly the same way: The dissipative systems paradigm assumes social order is not always possible, nor is it necessarily desirable. It does not begin, as does the Parsonian project, by asking the Hobbesian question, 'How is order possible?' Instead it addresses the more perplexing question, 'How do mechanisms producing social order, periodically produce chaos and pave the way for radical social transformations?' ( Harvey and Reed 1994: 390-1) In the emergence arising from complex adaptive systems, this can be relatively sudden, a 'spontaneous order'. Apparently, features such as the eye are difficult to explain through random mutation. Systems do not usually evolve themselves into nothingness, but typically add new features on. The mechanism for selection is 'communicative success' (which relates to the power of information mentioned above). Phase shift processes are differential leaps or evolutionary breakthroughs rather than incremental development. Interestingly, then, chaos does not mean randomness; it is a different form of order, or a precursor to order, not its antithesis. Chaos can actually contain order. It has been conceptualised as extremely complex information, rather than as an absence of order (Hayles 1991). Unpredictability comes not just from the magnification of infinitesimal local disturbances to create large global changes, but from our inability to compute all the variables. A week is a long time in politics. People come unstuck trying to explain and find patterns for 'economic miracles' — a year later and the economy might have collapsed. Chaos is liberating, albeit within boundaries: People can certainly make history because reflexive agency can influence crucial information changes in systems where the modulating role of information over energy is absolutely significant, but they do so from a given starting point, i.e. not in circumstances of their own choosing. (Byrne 1998: 6) Brooke-Smith very effectively developed the concept of 'mutation': The school perhaps is stable and mature with highly traditional leaders and deeply conservative stakeholders. All the agents have become well adapted to each other. There is little pressure for systemic change or

Complexity theory

and conflict 33

development. However the agents cannot forever remain static, because of the slow drip of time and eventually one or more agents may experience a 'mutation'. Perhaps an ageing head retires and a new person brings in a cascade of ideas, people and practices. Maybe a firm is in the same static condition, but there is a major technological breakthrough. (Brooke-Smith 2001: 10) And Outhwaite cites the virtue of a realist view here, in that it enables us to see the parallels between our own causal powers (and liabilities) and those of other physical objects: 'Like the higher animals, we can choose to initiate certain causal sequences made possible by our causal powers. Unlike them, we can reflect on those powers and formulate long term projects' (Outhwaite 1987: 22). Some effective behaviour therapy in schools is based on this insight: attempting to show firstly that antisocial behaviour does initiate a train of events; secondly that the disruptive child is (partially) powerful in this sense; and thirdly that he or she can reflect and has short-term and long-term choices. I was concerned initially that complexity theory did not contain a theory of power, but of course it is in these initiations leading to amplifications and bifurcations that power in social systems lies. It may be the theory of power par excellence. In talking of self-organisation, we should not however ignore the role of chance in bringing systems to emergence. Quantum mechanics apparently accepts uncertainty and chance. Much current management and accountability practice (such as quality control) seeks to model an organisation as accurately as possible and to eliminate chance. Random events are seen as a nuisance rather than a desirable instrument for change — and order. Yet in complex systems, chance has a much more positive role than its reputation in the mechanistic system (Kupers 2001). For conflict analysis, I like the concept of fro zen accidents: chance events from the past become an integral part of life. The carbon-based form of life on Earth is the classic example. CASs are affected by the incorporation of success ive frozen accidents as 'regularities'. A simple example of such 'lock in' is the QWERTY keyboard, introduced initially to slow down typing because the keys got stuck together. Rihani (2002) cites attitudes to women, multiparty politics, international trade, concepts of beauty, censure of incest and the family group as all being found appropriate at some stage and then included in the framework. I might add formal education systems as a `frozen accident'. The acceptance of market mechanisms as the 'only' form of social and economic structure is another frozen accident. There then is an unending contest between these eventually conservative elements and the need for adaptation. In the concern about peace in and through educational systems and institutions, what we are seeking for, paradoxically, is the 'edge of chaos' — where emergence occurs. All of us will have examples of where small perturbations

Complexity theory and conflict


can generate impressive effects — the relaxation of a rule, the pupil who suggests being involved in staff recruitment, the teacher who refuses to do the literacy hour, a school council that challenges the status quo. There is an irony that conflict resolution can be seen as a return to normality, whereas what we need is new departures and risk-taking. In complexity terms, it is better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission. I mplications: AI Qaeda versus the post pessimists -

-

Let me take a 'case study' as an example. If schools genuinely wanted to engage in peacekeeping as a core emergent goal, how could they match Al-Qaeda? The destruction of the World Trade Center was an act which had disproportionate effects, not only in the number of people killed and the demolition of property, but in the billions of dollars wiped off economies across the globe. There was apparently a black joke going around the FBI that they wanted to find Al-Qaeda's chief economist in order to offer him a job. So if we take Al-Qaeda as an example of a 'successful' organisation in its own terms, how do we analyse this in complexity language? Briefly: •

Non-linearity: The whole of Al-Qaeda is certainly greater than the sum of its parts. Different rationalities combine: suicide bombers, the cult of the martyr, religious fervour, anti-capitalism, anti-Americanism and many more. • Strange attractors: This is the question of group identity, the need to 'join the cause', feel part of a divine mission. • Self-organised criticality: The US was wrong of course to assume that if it managed to get Bin Laden, or neutralised him, terrorism would cease. This is the mistake of a concept of a 'war on terror'. Terror is not a single nation state which can be 'conquered'. The Al-Qaeda network is huge and disparate, but is self-organising. It searches for supremacy, in a Darwinian survival of the fittest, but is also highly creative and coevolving in its strategy. • Initial conditions: That small turbulences have a disproportionate effect has been true of isolated acts of terror, and was true of September 11th. The awareness of initial conditions is what makes the network attractive to individuals: together with the mission is the knowledge that one can actually do something for the jihad; there is a feeling of agency. • Information: There is a very successful information system, hidden from the major agencies; there is an eleven-volume Encyclopedia of Jihad to provide practical skills; also a highly efficient training system in cells in many parts of the world. • Edge of chaos: Perhaps this is the archetypal example, in the search for emergence, for a new world order.

31

The question therefore is that if one wants to replicate the efficiency of Al-Qaeda, except for promoting its direct opposite, peace, then does one play the same game? We have seen from Northern Ireland and from Israel/ Palestine, that in situations of uneasy truce or fragile peace, it takes only a couple of individuals to fan the fires and create disproportionate disturbances overnight. Unfortunately, the converse does not seem to be true, that a couple of individuals can create a disproportionate peace. For this, very broad and strong bandings of people are needed who are comfortable with notions of multiple identity, who have enough in common to work together but recognize enough difference to value and cope with diversity. How can one work towards a world as a complex adaptive system mostly devoted to cooperation and non-violent, democratic forms of conflict resolution? Do complex adaptive systems actually want this? The English education system does not seem to be self-organising towards a mode more adapted to the twenty-first century — quite the opposite, with the return to archaic forms of testing, selection and control. The world system (if it exists) similarly makes little progress towards fulfilling long-term survival needs. The knowledge that we are destroying the ecosystem is slowly having an effect, on some countries, sometimes. But others ignore the information, because of the power of other sorts of 'information' and networking — including emotional and territorial information. Within complexity theory, we can call on at least two directions for change. The first is the major cataclysm that can force a real radical emergence, a sudden leap to the edge of chaos, compelling reconsideration; the second is the small system nested in other systems which can work at the boundaries, and create the tiny perturbations which can have amplifying effects. It is this second possibility which is of interest to educators for peace. We would be looking at the groupings of people who can act and network to display alternatives. The dimensions are: •

•

Attractors: The need is for a secular group identity which is not exclusionary. There is a tension here. All of us need to 'belong' — but that may well construct 'the other'. In global citizenship education, there is the argument that we should therefore acknowledge multiple identities and multiple loyalties — in complexity terms, multiple attractors. An example to counter Al-Qaeda is a group of young people I met in Kosovo called `the post-pessimists'. These were school students, self-organising, comprising both Albanians and Serbs, working for peace across the divide. They acknowledged their inevitable national loyalty, but could put that together with a loyalty to the group and to its work. (I will look at similar groups in Chapter 8.) Faith in small turbulences: This is the view that every individual, even every child can make a difference. The post-pessimists flew in the face of despair in their optimism that they could and did act — and indeed they did have influence as far up as the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK)



administration, together with international campaigning and a website. Complexity theory gives a new meaning to the term 'value added', which here means the value that can be attributed to the agency of a student. • Non-linearity: This means the neurons firing on all systems, and school students being part of this, and equally able to make change; but it also i mplies much greater connections with movements outside schools and with networks in other countries. The UNESCO Associated Schools Network (ASPnet) is an example of such a non-linear network (also in Chapter 8). Schools' linkages with other movements has been a neglected area, in the UK at least, whereas in countries that have active school student unions, this enables alliances with other trade unions or representation on regional and national bodies (Davies and Kirkpatrick 2000). The European Youth Against Violence network is a promising forum. • The power of information: A crucial dimension of any group or any sense of agency is learning about society, power and how change works. Here is revealed the importance of education for democracy, and learning about the political system, rights, citizenship and global citizenship. Injustice is tackled through understanding of causes, not through tit for tat. • Fitness of purpose: Finally there is the tricky question of a value system. As said earlier, self-organising systems lead to improved efficiency, but that has no particular moral base. My view is that the argument and the demonstration for peace needs to be for what works, not for what is `good'. Here the counter argument to terrorism and revenge is the argument for compromise, for complementarity, forgiving something to enable others to gain security or save face. We teach conflict resolution skills not just to be nicer to each other, but because they are effective. In the end is `justice' perhaps a dangerous term, perhaps only marginally better than `fight the good fight'? Post-pessimism then is an attractive notion, but whether it has the appeal of a jihad remains to be seen. A secular peace has to be better than a holy war, but it is more difficult to find the conscripts. Complexity theory would by and large refute the notion of a leader, and would not suggest the 'Jesus wants me for a sunbeam' approach which implies no critical challenge. Any counter movement to Al-Qaeda needs criticality in two senses: self-organised criticality, and critical thinking. Conclusion

Complexity theory may indeed be no more than a frozen accident like a particular religion. But for me it has the 'best fit' for now. Its attraction is not just for analysing conflict and education, but for indicating avenues for change. It is not just a metaphoric transfer from the natural world. Chaos/complexity is inherently systemic, yet without being conservative, and acts as a challenge

to positivism on the one hand and to post-modernism on the other. While talking a lot of 'systems', it is not a simple return to systems theory in the Talcott Parsons sense. These models were of equilibrium or near-toequilibrium. Far-from-equilibric systems are very different. Mouzelis in Sociological Theory: What Went Wrong? (1995) critiqued post-structuralism and demanded a sociological theory which related micro, individual action to macro society, related the conscious agency of individual, collective social ;tutors to social structure, and explained discontinuous and fundamental changes in the character of the social system as a whole. Byrne (1998) argues that complexity and chaos resolve these demands; and, for our purposes, the application of the concepts to conflict and to education seems to confirm the wssibilities. If as I posited in the introduction, 'complexity shutdown' is a source of itegative conflict, then opening up and recognising the power of connectivity alid information might be a radical means to peace. Unless the whole world suddenly gets to the edge of chaos, we appear to be stuck with schools for the next few decades at least: complexity theory enables a more refined analysis of their impact on global events and global futures while pointing to real enues in which they might make a 'wicked' difference. both

Chapter 3

Economic and class relations

The aims of the next three chapters are to outline some of the antecedents to conflict, and to identify the role of education within such roots. The section starts with economic and social class relations, not necessarily because I take a simple Marxist stance that everything comes back to the economy, or to the means of production, but because the economy underpins so much national and international tension. The struggle over scarce resources has an economic base, and, although there are resources of status and power linked to other social dimensions such as gender or ethnicity, the divide or polarisat i on between rich and poor remains the most stark and is at present the most prone to increase. The World Bank 2001 poverty projections suggest that up io one billion people might still be living on less than $1 per day by 2015 ( World Bank 2001b). Rich countries of course make war on poor countries; but internally to a country, both absolute and relative poverty are the critical sources of tension and violent demands. As Clements points out: The zone of conflict is one where there are fragile economies and weak politics subject to vigorous and unrestrained assertion of ethnic rights leading to secessionist impulses. Over the last three years 92 per cent of the world's most violent conflicts have been internal. (2001:9) Conflicts that appear to have a religious or ethnic origin can often equally be traced to economic divisions. Contributions to the UNESCO 2001 Symposium to mark the International Decade for a Culture of Peace and NonViolence demonstrated the complexity. Tanada (2001) recounted in her reflections on the Mindanao conflicts between 'Muslims' (Moros) and 'Christians' that it would be erroneous to attribute the centuries-long conflict simply to religious differences. She argued that unless the history of economic displacements of Moros from their ancestral lands during decades of colonisation is fully understood, peace will be elusive. Similarly, in Sri Lanka, the initial tactics of political, economic and social domination by the ethnoreligious majority contributed significantly to the rise of separatism by the

42 Roots of conflict: implications for education

minority. Any analysis of Northern Ireland will state that it is not just about Catholic versus Protestant in terms of religious belief, but about power and control, employment and housing. Both Catholic and Protestant factions claim that the differences are not only religious, they also are differences in peoples . . . All that being said, social class differences play a significant role; the Protestants having always been favoured by English colonial rule and having better jobs and housing . . . it might well be said that the British practised their brutal colonial treatment on the Irish before they took the show on the road to India and Africa. ( O'Sullivan 1999: 150) And while the Arab/Israeli conflict is about religious and national identity and 'place', it is also about the control of water. These are truisms, but they are important in any task of targeting educational strategies for non-violence and peace. If one makes the obvious connection that real and perceived economic injustices are likely to generate conflict, then where does education stand within this? The role is ambiguous. On the one hand, there is the conventional human capital analysis that education can serve to lift a country out of absolute and relative poverty (and implicitly therefore ameliorate poverty-related conflict); on the other hand, there is the argument that education reproduces— or actually exaggerates — social divisions, therefore contributing to the likelihood of tensions. Within this reproduction argument, there is however a strand which would claim a legitimising — and therefore palliative — role for education. By managing to attribute economic inequality to 'ability' and to academic success or failure, schools personalise inequality so that people do not challenge their position. This chapter briefly outlines firstly the now well-known analyses of the historical and continued role of education in social reproduction and social exclusion, examining the tensions arising from such exclusion and frustrations. It then looks to the future in two directions, the future of globalisation and the future of class conflict. For globalisation, it appears that in spite of over a century of formal education in most parts of the world, there is no evidence that gaps between rich and poor are closing, with increasing globalisation both of economic inequality and of conflict. Class conflict on the other hand is the analysis of where the action or disorder is directly between the working class and the owners of capital, not always an immediate offshoot of overall social inequality. While beginning to explore the future for participatory democracy in engaging productively with economic inequality and class tensions, my argument in this chapter will be that the balance sheet is currently not on the side of education. It is a somewhat depressing picture.


43

Reproduction, production and social exclusion

'There is a long tradition of analyses of the role of education in social reproduction, which need not be rehearsed too much here (Bowles and Gintis 1976; I3ourdieu and Passeron 1977). Writers such as Connell have now refined reproduction to talk of 'constant constitution', the dynamic interaction between the reproduction and production of social structures, highlighting our social practices within those social structures. 'Social structure must be seen as constantly constituted rather than constantly reproduced. And that makes sense only if theory acknowledges the constant possibility that structure will be constituted in a different way' (Connell 1987: 44). This has resonances with complexity theory of course; and the notion of our practices as educationists in the process of social constitution has parallels with Giddens's 'agents' (1984). There are other new complexities too: Byrne claims that we are seeing a 'Brazilianisation of advanced capitalism' — a threefold division among the very affluent, ordinary and poor. There is increasing socio-spatial segregation within cities, and that is the basis of problems of social order. The loss of blue-collar industrial employment (both male and female) has generated the urban form as 'butterfly attractor' in which neighbourhoods are either relatively secure and prosperous or socially excluded and deprived. Certainly it would appear that analysis more recently — and a lot of policy — has shifted to concerns about social inclusion and social exclusion. All ends of a political spectrum will be concerned about the socially excluded as a possible source of conflict or violence; the differences between them may lie in the identificat i on and treatment of 'the problem'. Apple (2000) argues that some of the favourite reforms of the Right — voucher plans, national or statewide curricula, and national or statewide testing — reproduce or even worsen inequalities. What start out as improvements arc usually transformed into another set of mechanisms for social stratification. Epp (1996) argues that stratification in school is part of dehumanisation, damaging to students who are 'other'. Diagnostic labelling of those who are not 'normal' may command an amount of government funding in Canada, but discards most of the population. 'The definition for "normal" provides a distorted picture of human offspring which includes aspects of society that are culturally relevant only for a small, Eurocentric, male portion of the population' (Epp 1996: 18). Even the more casual ordering of individuals as 'a little slow' or a 'disruptive element' is dangerous, because it allows for the further stratification in 'classist, sexist, racist and hetcrosexist' ways. In her discussion of pathology, Martineau (1996) rehearses the argument that we need to begin unpacking the multiple and insidious ways in which public policy has served to construct and maintain poverty, while simultaneously making its victims bear responsibility for such state-constructed poverty. The rhetoric around 'youth at risk' is a 'ritualistic chant of failure


and salvation'. We need to be 'saved' from such children, and they need protecting. Instead, Martineau argues for a politics of 'childhood as praxis' approach, which interrupts our adult-centred images of human agency: Classifying children as deviant threats or innocent victims is misleading and short-sighted because it fails to nurture their abilities to act in the world. The politics of childhood acknowledges that children have the capacity to increasingly influence, participate in, and contribute to the larger social world. ( Martineau 1996: 45) Again, this is a more complex and interactive approach than 'intervention', with a restoration of agency. All over the world, formal education may contribute to the multiple processes that lead to social exclusion and divisiveness. This can be deliberately built into the structure, as happened in South Africa under apartheid. Unequal access to school formed a complex pattern according to whether schools were in rural or urban areas, white farms, homelands, townships in white-designated areas and so on. It was not a straightforward ethnic divide (Graham-Brown 1991). Following the state of emergency in 1986, militant young people began to build a semi-underground youth organisation, and widespread intimidation, troops and police patrolling schools, detention and imprisonment of young people did not deter them from resisting (Adams 1991). More often now there is a more subtle and less overt form of educational di &rentiation and tension. Heynemann and Todoric-Bebic (2000) argue that a structure of inequality gives rise to differential identities, posing a challenge to a unified sense of national identity. The failure of formal education in its nation-building and distributive functions undermines the legitimacy of existing power structures and exacerbates political and social tensions. Bernal is very direct in her analysis of cause and effect in Colombia: 'Marginalisation, social inequity and exclusion, fomented by the school, deprive many Colombian citizens of legally participating in society. As a result, they may then adopt illegal ways and carry out violent acts' (1997: 37). Wright (1997) has the same analysis for Sierra Leone, as does Graham-Brown (1991) for Sudan. In Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, the inequalities led to demands for more and better education, but the authorities often regarded education as a direct threat to their domination, so that teachers, academics and indeed books were targets of repression and censorship. 'All parties in the conflict regard education in its broadest sense as part of an ideological battleground' (Graham-Brown 1991: 142). Students who protested were 'disappeared', and teachers received death threats. In Honduras, the government eliminated courses in sociology, economics and political economy after student strikes.

Economic and class relations 45

Before the 1990-1 civil war, Rwanda was regarded as one of Africa's educational achievements, with more than 60 per cent of children in primary school and a government which spent 22 per cent of its national budget on primary education. Unfortunately, some of the factors which incited the war can also be detected in the school system: only 6 per cent of children could enter secondary education. The frustration was heightened by a biased quota system for secondary and further education, aptly spelled out by an Oxfam analyst: 'No-one feels they are being treated fairly. Education is falling between quality and scope . . . it is neither democratic nor equipping the student with skills . . . It is no longer a guaranteed passport to a better life'. (Arnhold et al. 1998: 48) Likewise in Nepal, a study by Skinner and Holland (1996) found students' use of schooling both to support and to oppose the official agendas of the state. Young people have embraced schooling as a strategy to challenge dominant constructions of caste, religion and gender, and to assert their place as active agents in society. Yet entry into the new social category of what Skinner and Holland call 'the educated person' also opens up space to generate 'new divisions, new distinctions of privilege, and new forms of disdain' (Skinner and Holland 1996: 274). Formal qualifications provide symbolic capital with which to impose alternative status relations. As always, then, people find ways not just to circumvent but to appropriate policies and structures that are supposed to generate inclusion. Private education is a particularly divisive element within UK society. The value system I hat justified the inequality, the buying of privilege, also rejects the ideas of citizenship, inclusion and universalism. The fact that the European Convention on Human Rights upholds the right of parents to educate children as they wish, does not mean that it was envisaged that a whole stratum of society would establish a near monopoly of access to the key positions of power. (Porter 1999: 72) The intersection of class with religion can be another source of monopoly of wealth. Apple, in his book on the new right in USA, explores how religious interests and conservative Christianity have appropriated neo-liberal economic agendas, that is, 'the combination of capitalism and . . . the moral life as ordained by God' (Apple 2001: 16). 'Thick democracy' is replaced by the thinner democracy' of possessive individualism; communities are replaced by shopping malls. Capitalism and Protestantism are symbiotic in many ways. He quotes the conservative 'moral economist' Michael Novak, who


stated in 1990 that 'personal economic initiative is a fundamental human right and to exercise that right is to fulfill the image of God inherent in every man and woman'. Novak's advice to 'intelligent, ambitious and morally serious Christians and Jews' is that 'they will better save their souls and serve the cause of the Kingdom of God all around the world by restoring the liberty and power of the private sector than by working for the state' (quoted in Apple 2001: 157). The commandment 'thou shalt not steal' is about preservation of property, not wealth redistribution to the less productive. Religious education of this type will act only to cement self-interest and inequality. The conclusion from this section is that even without market economics (but particularly within them), elites will appropriate education for their own ends; and there is no sign in some countries that social reproduction through education is decreasing. Indeed, social exclusion may be increasing and even condoned by right-wing education policymakers. Verdict: Education for Conflict 1; Education for Peace 0. Globalisation of economic inequality

How will globalisation impact on such economic differentials and the resulting conflicts? Although most of the world's most violent conflicts are on the surface internal, there are huge economic interests behind many (all?) international conflicts. As Toh pointed out, any attempt to rebuild a 'peaceful' Afghanistan must go beyond mere attempts to 'resolve conflicts' between leaders. It has to take into account the structural violence which pre-dated September 11 including the strategic interests of powerful states in a politically 'stable' and 'friendly' Afghanistan that is amenable to hosting pipelines that open up the huge oil and gas reserves in the Central Asian Zone. (Toh 2001: 5) th

,

Similarly, there are grounds for why America cites the breaking of UN resolutions in Iraq but not in Israel as a reason for their invasion, and that is oil. As one anti-war banner in New York read, 'How was it that our oil came to be under their sand?' Globalisation has severely undermined old concepts of national economic sovereignty, and there are few countries able to withstand external and internal currency flows, many of which have nothing to do with trade and everything to do with currency speculation. It was no accident that the September llth terrorist attacks were directed at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As Jenkins (2001) reveals, the rich world now spends $1 billion a day subsidising its farmers to shield them from Third World


47

competition. This amounts to a $1 billion-a-day tax on poor countries, six ti mes the amount spent on aid (including educational aid). He points out that if you stopped the subsidies, you could forget about the aid. This would be an all-win game for the taxpayer, consumer and Third World alike. Yet western leaders will not do this, for fear of alienating their own constituents or voters, or their strategic alliances within the rich world. The hypocrisy of politicians' claims to want to alleviate poverty and to prevent povertyinduced conflict is picked up on in the press, but there is as yet no concerted mechanism to create policy change. And as always, such discussions rarely appear on the school curriculum. Our concern would be a particular version of globalisation — the spread of neo-liberal market economics — which has had particular impacts on national social and economic structures, including education. James Porter (1999) in his book Reschooling and the Global Future has an excellent and stringent critique of the unthinking acceptance of the dominant economic theories of competitive equilibrium and the free market as a 'partial and inadequate explanation of reality'. A fundamental error has been to continue to depend on the methodology adapted from the physical sciences of the late nineteenth century. 'It is also interesting to note that the linear methodology. . . was very different from the approach of the earlier classical economists who constantly referred to dynamic change, irregular fluctuations and catastrophic i mpacts' (Porter 1999: 30). As Porter points out, the techniques of nonlinearity are particularly appropriate for analysis of the economy. The competitive view is being promoted by the idea that the operation of a market economy is incompatible with collective responsibilities. In the countries most influenced by the concept of the perfectibility of the market mechanism there are also elites that are well served by the idea that any restraint on their freedom by the state is an intrusion on their personal liberty. The class system founded upon the merits of individual choice permits the higher class to choose exclusive education and to ensure a protected sub-culture that enables them to organise and sustain power and influence . . . the political policies derived from the economic theories of the New Right have led to an increase in the gap between richest and poorest, and the effects of the pursuit of a pure market economy have led to a value system based on exclusion and inequality. (Porter 1999: 31) Joseph Stiglitz, a 2001 Nobel economics prize winner (together with the 2002 Nobel prize winners Daniel Kahneman and Vernon Smith), is a strong critic of the notion of the efficiency and rationality of markets. Stiglitz tells of how long ago, John Maynard Keynes had described the stock market as based

48 Roots of conflict: implications for education not on rational individuals struggling to uncover market fundamentals, but as a beauty contest in which the winner is the one who guesses best what the judges will say. Stiglitz emphasises that different market participants have different (and imperfect) information, and these asymmetries in information have a profound effect on how an economy functions (Stiglitz 2002: 17). The importance of information is of course a key element in a complex adaptive system, as we saw in Chapter 2. Yet it would appear that influential proponents of simplistic market economics are still with us. Currently in England, we see top-up fees, specialist schools, parental 'choice' and various forms of privatisation of education. Government concentration on nationalistic and economic factors in controlling public services has resulted in a reduction in the role of the state with regard to traditional democratic concerns of equity, justice, security and welfare. The link between conflict and this faulty model of economics is increasing polarisation (or bifurcation) between the elites and the dispossessed. The important insight from Porter is that the marginal efforts to ameliorate this divide are failing to stem the ultimately disastrous descent into a world 'that is so split that many will assume that violence is the only available way to seize wealth or power' (Porter 1999: 39). Structural adjustment, too, has taken the free market into the global arena. This has effectively forced countries to reduce all public expenditure on health, education and welfare. Many have experienced political and social crisis situations that have resulted in the overthrow of democratically elected governments in favour of regimes that can then deliver the deeply unpopular measures that have been required by the World Bank. Porter once more has a vivid description: It is the pervading hopelessness and cynicism of' the economically abandoned that may prove to be the most dangerous and ultimately destructive element — leading, as it is already doing, to irrational, hysterical, and dehumanising actions around the globe. Support for terrorism has its roots in the desperation of the reviled, the poor, the ignored and those that have no opportunity for a decent life or for influence or power in the existing situation. In such circumstances, education is marginalised and democracy is seemingly unattainable, but the conditions for destructive violence within and between nations will continue to grow. The means for creating destruction are daily becoming more sophisticated and global. (Porter 1999: 39) The conclusion from this section is that education not only appears powerless in these global forces, but through joining in (or being forced to join in) simplistic market ideologies, actively contributes to elitism, marginalisation and potential violence.

Economic and class

111

relations 49

I nternal class relations: the next frontier

But will there be a return of active class conflict to challenge such marginalisation and exclusion? Here we need to glance at neo-Marxist approaches, where the relations of production are both the cause and the arena of inevitable class conflict which is the driving force of history. 'Relations of production form the foundation for the legal, political and ideological superstructure of the state, all of which reflect and express class interests and so the law, politics and ideas are equally arenas of conflict' (Stewart 1998: 8). For Gramsci, the concepts were of domination, subordination and hegemony, with education and propaganda successfully winning the active consent of the ruled by the ruling class. As Stewart points out, 'This confuses the clarity of the pure Marxian class struggle by a chaos of conflicts between different groups and interests, based on status as well as economic advantage, competing for power and space' (Stewart 1998: 8). For Bennett et al., 'A hegemonic order prescribes, not the specific content of ideas, but the limits within which ideas and conflicts move and are resolved' (Bennett et al. (eds) 1981: 59). This is an important insight for our purposes and for complexity theory or structuration. We are not totally controlled or brainwashed, but are subject to attempted limitations on freedom of thought or intellectual mobility. We cannot think the impossible. Hegemony ensures that the attractor state remains static, or that, if there is movement, it settles into a not dissimilar attractor state. The reproduction of class interests is a classic and well-documented case. Education is, of course, central to this hegemony, as ideological legitimations of class are both conveyed and (re)constructed on a daily basis, through use and limitations of our cultural capital. This was well portrayed in Fuller's (1991) revealing book on Malawi, where acceptance of the colonial education system and its (stratified) outcomes was one device to shore up the 'fragile state'. Carnoy and Samoff's analysis of Mozambique also talked of fragile legitimacy, with all citizens accepting that schooling provided the most direct route to social mobility. `The maintenance of the exam system benefits urban dwellers and groups already favoured under colonialism, notably the public sector, but it also underlines that the schools-are-for-selection ideology has fairly wide acceptance, even in revolutionary Mozambique' (Carnoy and Sameff 1990: 298). Cuba, too, while promoting a socialist, collectively oriented society, does not always encourage the collective to participate in the larger political decisions that affect its future: the serious questioning of policy and bottom-up influence on political leaders is relatively absent, so much so that there is little motivation to exert undue energy in being innovative and highly productive, not only in politics, but in other aspects of daily life. . . . [W]e have little idea


how school socialization in Cuba affects the expression of dissent, because dissent is not generally expressed openly and institutionally. (Carnoy and Samoff 1990: 192) What then is the future for class conflict and its resolution? For a very interesting and relevant analysis I turn to Rubenstein (1993). He argues that since the 1930s, conflicts between social classes in most modern capitalist states have been dealt with as 'negotiable interest-based disputes'. Those studying conflict resolution in terms of 'deep-rooted' conflicts have had little to say about class conflict. The studies that attract their attention have been primarily those between ethnic, racial, national, religious or ideological groups, particularly as relating to identity. These conflicts also pose 'quantitative' questions, that is, economic issues (as in Northern Ireland or Eastern Europe), but one cannot frame them simply as economic, `bargainable' differences. Suppose, however, that one or both parties to a conflict presents itself as representative of an entire class claiming the right to reorganize the politico-economic system. This 'class struggle' situation characterizes a number of conflicts of recent concern, including the violent struggles in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Peru and the Philippines. Or suppose that a prior 'social contract' regulating the labor-management relationship has broken down, and that no legitimized system has replaced it. This seems roughly to describe the state of affairs in the former Soviet Union and many nations in Eastern Europe. ( Rubenstein 1993: 148) It would appear that relegating class conflict to a clash of 'interests' acts in fact to reproduce social structure. The notion of 'interest groups' assumes general acceptance of the whole social framework and that human needs are satisfiable within this framework. It is not the province of interest groups to reconstruct the existing system of power, norms and need-satisfiers. Their role is to represent their members' interests and gain temporary economic advantages within the social contract. Interest groups may in fact be organised across social-class lines (such as women's rights, religious interests or even teachers' rights). The 'working class' has become little more than a sentimental fiction. And then at the point that these workers find their own interests threatened, 'they also discover that the absence of class-wide, classconscious organisation has rendered them defenseless — incapable of challenging the system that ties the output of goods and services to immediate profitability' (Rubenstein 1993: 152). Thus, what is sometimes called 'dispute resolution' in the labour-management field today frequently turns out to be a form of management consultancy in which third-party experts advise


companies or governments how to minimise conflict with workers in the absence of an effective labour representative. Such consultancy is clearly not classical conflict resolution which begins with deep analysis of the problem, in the Freirian or transformative sense. The latter would have the goal of assisting severely alienated parties to analyse causes, to imagine methods of reconstructing or replacing the system that is generating it, to 'cost out' various conflict-resolving options, and to i mplement the options agreed upon. In class terms, this would mean complete social transformation; but as the ruling classes seldom consent to limit their own power, significant changes in the social constitution can, it seems, come only from mass violence. Marx of course always thought a peaceful transition to socialism was possible, and denied any invariable connection between violence and radical change in class relationships. This may be held out by normative and institutional changes in the former Soviet Union, the Eastern European states and South Africa. But where does this leave education? Are class conflicts played out in schools, or has the growth of 'interest groups' repressed any class consciousness? There is a tradition of writing on pupil resistance which has been linked to structural dynamics, such as Paul Willis's (1978) classic analysis of a group of working-class boys and their creative interpretations and reworkings of their positioning within schooling and within capitalism. My own book Pupil Power: Deviance and Gender in School (Davies 1984) attempted a similar subcultural analysis, only with a group of girls, and found some parallel resistances, albeit with a more nuanced repertoire of response. While the girls were certainly working class and while they were certainly resistant, they drew on a wider range of oppositional scripts than could be attributed to a unified social-class subculture (confirmed also in later analyses such as Quicke and Winter 1994, Callender and Wright 2000). Adams (1991), too, in his book on pupil protest, is uneasy about a simple link between social class and resistance or protest, or between outside movements and schoolbased resistance. For him: specific incidents are created uniquely . . . there are similarities between the activities of protesting pupils and the protests of adults at the time. Yet it is probably going too far to subsume resistance by young people as part of trade union or working class history. Not all school rebellions are linked to socialist movements . . . More fundamental probing is needed of the conditions under which young people are subjugated. Their circumstances need exploring in their own right. They are not merely a youthful version of adult working class experience. (Adams 1991: 25) However, Adams concedes that while the position of being a pupil (`pupillage') cuts across all social strata and there is common subjection,


additional strata (such as class) implying extra conflicts are imposed. He quotes Humphries' work on pupil strikes: 'children's resistance within schools can best be understood in terms not of generational conflict but rather of a broader class conflict, in which the working class community became increasingly alienated from, and antagonistic towards, the bureaucratic state schooling system' (Humphries 1987: 257). Much will therefore depend on the degree of bifurcation, and whether it can be openly attributed to social class and economic positioning. It is significant that educational policy language in western countries such as the UK has shifted to 'inclusion/exclusion' rather than class, for this embraces a wider forum including ethnicity and disability, and draws attention away from the power-based roots of disadvantage. Yet such masking may be counter-productive in the long term. Rubenstein argues that the analysis and resolution of class-based conflict (along with racial, ethnic and religious struggles) constitutes the 'next frontier' for conflict resolution. For if class conflicts are left to be settled by the methods of power politics and dispute resolution, the incapacity . . . of all current industrial systems to satisfy basic human needs will generate both structural and political violence at increasingly intense and destructive levels. It seems astounding — does it not? — that so few commentators in the US have linked the growing anarchy in American cities, where death by gunfire has become a principal cause of youthful mortality, to serious problems rooted in that nation's system of production. ( Rubenstein 1993: 156) Is participatory democracy the answer?

There seems then an urgency in thinking about how to tackle class conflict and the growth of an impoverished 'underclass'. The alternative to power politics and dispute resolution appears to be proper participatory democracy (PD) -- and here is where education can be at the forefront. Hatcher (2002) describes the process of PD in Porte Alegre in Brazil. This is internationally known for its radical democratic participatory budget process, recently extended to the state level. Participation in budget policy doubled to 378,000 people over three years, and is still growing in both quantity and quality, because — as a community secretary explained — 'people start interacting and meeting each other and communicating with each other about this process and consequently calling more people to participate. That is why it is a process, it is not just a ready-made formula' (Hatcher 2002: 57). In parallel is the school constituency which aims to enable popular participation in education policymaking at two levels: the local school and the state education system as a whole. This has been a process organised since 1999, working out issues and themes through representatives of school communities,


53

civil society organisations, public organisations and higher education institutions. This was followed by regional launch meetings and the election of coordinating committees in each school and at regional level. Sixty thousand people took part in local meetings to discuss the draft policy text, with the poorest areas participating most, and with a strong presence of women and young people. The education policy is extremely radical, replacing for example selective and classificatory evaluation (seen as an instrument of exclusion) by participatory, diagnostic, investigative and emancipatory forms of evaluation. Porte Alegre, interestingly, has rejected representative or western liberal democracy, and Hatcher sees this as a model of deliberative democracy. He distinguishes between negotiation and deliberation: while negotiation is a process of bargaining around fixed positions, deliberation is a process of dialogue aimed at agreeing on a common project. (This has parallels with Rubenstein's analysis of the limitations of `bargainable' positions.) The budget process does not just aim at each district determining its own needs, but forces each entity to place its demands in relation to others. Through dialogue — what is referred to as a 'network of conversations' — social solidarity is created. Hatcher admits nonetheless that the process of constructing a popular movement is not without conflict. It is a continual process of trying to identify and construct common interests and reconcile conflicting interests. There was resistance from teachers preferring traditional methods, and from unions who refused to participate unless teachers had a pay rise. However, this is seen as natural: Contradictions between the party, the movement and the government are normal, given the conditions we find ourselves in . . . We must deal openly with these contradictions, treating them as political questions. We can resolve them, but not eliminate them. Contradictions serve as a motor, enabling us to synthesise different factors, and move forward. ( Hatcher 2002: 60) PD is seen as a 'collective process of self education', a practical laboratory in which subordinate social layers — the working class and its allies are creating themselves as the potential future leading force in society. Hatcher warns however that it might crystallise class conflicts between the popular classes and the political and economic elite, if at the national rather than local level. Yet other countries too have started to provide clues into educational ways to tackle oppression and class exploitation. I give just one other example here, Bougainville. The freedom struggle of the people of Bougainville, according to Toh (2001), is not just an assertion of the right to political and cultural self-determination away from Papua New Guinea control. The massive opening up of Bougainville to mining by transnational corporations,


with the blessing of Papua New Guinea, generated billions of tons of heavily polluting and health-damaging wastes. Thus effective resolution of the conflict would clearly be interdependent with environmental care and sustainability. Nonetheless, education can make a start. Examples are given of the 'coconut revolution' in which communities undertook grassroots and self-reliant initiatives to educate and restore or build more just and sustainable environments, including coconut-derived fuel and organic agriculture based on indigenous knowledge as well as human rights education. One hopes this will become an example of 'amplification'. While the above examples seem thin on the ground, they do give indications at least of the potential of education and educationists to take a radical position to challenge economic inequalities — through popular participation. Conclusion: educational strategy

If we accept the logic that social exclusion leads to conflict, and that much education currently reproduces exclusion and class differentials, then what are the spaces for change, and who should engage in this? Firstly, there is involvement in the pressure for economic change itself. Porter quotes Galbraith as arguing for an economy that has strong macro-economic action, public investment and job creation, in order to break the underemployment equilibrium. Education should contribute to a future that is unequivocally envisaged as inclusive and requires the conscious sharing of resources and power with those who are presently excluded. It can only be fully effective if there is a democratic government that is prepared to argue for such a vision, to challenge the hegemony of' the elites that currently control the economic agenda, and offer realistic alternatives to the prevailing economic system. (Porter 1999: 41) This means freeing education from the bogus quasi-market theory that has predominated in recent years. It also therefore means university economics departments being prepared to construct such different economic models and futures — unlikely, as Porter admits. Sociologists of education, too, might be singled out by Hatcher: A major limitation of the academic debate on education in Britain is the absence of a discussion of collective resistance. The focus has been on an analysis of changing configurations of power — government policies, modes of state regulation, market forces. The subjects of these processes have usually been conceptualised as individual teachers and parents, subjects of new forms of' regulation or more or less competent market players. The instances of collective resistance, albeit limited — campaigns


by parents and teachers against cuts in spending, against privatisation, and opposition by teachers to merit pay — have seldom gained the attention of academic analysis. (Hatcher 2002: 63) This is indeed a crucial omission and silence. From complexity theory, we know that information and connections are key to change, and academic analysis would be part of that connectivity in the educational world and in the educational press. One has to ask whether the rise of the need to get funded research as opposed to unfunded investigation has led to limited arenas for investigation — those matching the managerialist government project and certainly not those revealing structural resistance. Has the UK government and their DFES looked at the Brazilian model, let alone paid anyone to research the implications? For Apple, we need to 'interrupt' dominant discourses (for example, making whiteness strange, not the norm). Interestingly, he argues for religious education in schools, as a way of forming strategic alliances — dangerous perhaps, but a way to pry loose some of the groups currently under the Right umbrella. For him, it would also show the good work various schools are doing. I would go along with this as long as religion is also taught as being strange rather than the norm, and humanism and atheism are not always categorised as strange or 'aberrant'. Currently, 'non-believer' has the same connotations as 'non-white'. In class terms, it would seem that making exclusion and hierarchy 'strange' would be a key task for schools. This is not pointing the finger at the child on free school meals, but an analysis of social division which enables the old collective 'class action'. Ironically, a full class consciousness openly taught in schools might avoid the more seemingly ` mindless' forms of violence which are the result of frustrated hopes or obvious hypocrisies. As Stewart reminds us in her book on conflict resolution, while the causes of conflict may be structural and/or ideological, emotions are a key ingredient. Greater ease of communication makes people aware of differences between living styles and this recognition has both intellectual and emotional components; people would not fight if they did not feel injustice and did not have feelings about their situation. Without the spark of emotion, the fire of conflict would not blaze . . . emotions produce behaviour patterns which signal motivations and intentions from one person to another and these produce reactions. (Stewart 1998: 10) This sounds an obvious point, but it is important to be reminded that class relations do not of themselves produce conflict, only firstly the perception of them as unjust and secondly the feelings generated that lead to sets of


behaviours in response. This was the Freirian task, not just to 'raise the consciousness' in peasants of their exploitation, but to provide a literacy which would enable the expression of protest and pressure for change. The task was to turn latent conflict into real conflict. While some behaviour modification and some conflict resolution is tuned to suppress emotion, this is not the stance of this book. I like Oxfam's definition of the 'global citizen' as one who is 'outraged by social injustice'. If emotional literacy is to find its way into schools, it is not just to enable us to speak and voice, but to be sufficiently enraged and motivated to want change. Challenging information, as always, is also key. Lustick and Miodownik look at why some just absorb information and do not seek to influence, while others aggressively seek to exert influence and resist contrary evidence. For them, 'apathy and fanaticism act as brakes on the speed with which deliberative discourse can spread convincing arguments through a polity' (Lustick and Miodownik 2000: 28). What is needed is then the usual combination of widespread knowledge about class relations and exclusion together with outrage about their continuities and the skills in participatory or deliberative democracy to generate alternatives. This in fact would be the essence of good citizenship education — one that is 'interruptive' of class relations. It would be interruptive of unjust gender relations, too — to which I next turn.

Chapter 4

Gender and violence

This chapter explores the interface between gender relations and conflict. It has been argued that conflict analysis has tended to ignore the way a gender perspective could enrich understanding of the motivations of different actors and the links between the personal and the institutional/political (El-Bushra 2000). Immediately however the same debates emerge as with all gender and feminist analyses. Can 'women' as a category be analysed as having a special relationship to social phenomena (such as peace)? Or does this lead to an 'essentialist' approach which devalues women's (and men's) huge withinsex diversity? How does one recognise and respect 'difference' without reifying 'it' as perpetual, closed and unchanging? (Yuval-Davis and Werbner 1999.) Phis chapter will look at arguments from both sides of this tension, certainly being very wary of claiming that women or men are 'essentially' more peaceloving or aggressive, and being also wary of particular sorts of victimology. Reardon in her UNESCO publication Education for a Culture of Peace in a Gender Perspective argues that: In a culture of war and violence, human inequality is assumed to be natural and violence in the pursuit of social and political purposes is legitimized as necessary and inevitable. Gender roles are cast in the mould of these assumptions and beliefs. Ideologies of 'gender apartheid' are deeply embedded in the war system and the culture of violence. ( Reardon 2001: 21) Her argument is that devising a peace system as opposed to a war system requires an 'authentic partnership' between men and women. She would appear to tend towards the essentialist approach in claiming that such a system would take fully into account the potential and actual roles of women in public policy and peacemaking as advocated in UNESCO's Statement on Women's Contribution to a Culture of Peace in Beijing in 1995. It seems incontrovertible however that women do have a different relationship to some of the elements which link to conflict: environmental degradation, poverty, human rights violations and war itself, including 'security'.

58

Roots of conflict: implications for education

Women, with very few exceptions, have not taken part in the management of international security. The Women's International Network on Gender and Human Security is developing a 'security inquiry' to enable educators, students and all citizens who value participatory learning to work towards new concepts and policies of global human security (Reardon 2001). Thus initially two broad areas of the interface between gender and conflict emerge. Firstly, there is women's and men's differential relationship to the causes of conflict (including masculinity/femininity as a source of violence and including women's absence from the decision-making about war and peace). Secondly, there are the gendered effects of conflict (including different effects of war and changing gender roles). This chapter begins with discussion of such gendered contributions and effects, and then turns to education in terms of gendered violence and strategic responses. Dominant masculinity and militarism

I begin with the concept of multiple masculinities and hegemonic or dominant masculinity. There are many ways to be male and to be female, but some versions gain credibility and prominence over others. In many countries and contexts, hegemonic masculinity is that characterised by misogyny, homophobia, racism, compulsory heterosexuality, the importance of confrontational sport and the use or threat of violence and fighting. Constructions of masculinity frequently emphasise the ability to be violent and uncomplainingly to endure pain (Morell 1998). The idolisation of rugby, football and cricket players contributes to forms of masculinity which stress the importance of physicality, power and competitive success and which establish levels of aggression as socially acceptable (Messner and Sabo (eds) 1990). Not only this, but there is the message that disputes can be resolved by physical violence. While the 'New Man' image (the man who participates equally in childcare and housework and emotionally and practically supports his money-earning partner) is gaining ground, it is still not widespread. Similarly, as we shall see, women do have the capacity to be violent (in war, or punishing children) but hegemonic femininity does not stress this, instead promoting i mages of frailty or beauty. In complexity terms, hegemonic masculinity and femininity are attractor states' to which peoples and discourses are drawn. Fisher et al. in their book on Working with Conflict acknowledge that violence against women has deep roots in many societies. Tor example, the idea of what it means to be masculine is formed, in many societies, in opposition to the definition of femininity, so that violence against women and children is seen as the rightful exercise of authority' (Fisher et al. 2000: 48). Studies of male violence among Christian groups, similarly, have shown authoritarianis m in male—male relationships, but also how a nco-patriarchal sense of masculinity may be erected on a lay fundamentalist' basis. 'The ideology here is not only one of "I hit her because she is mine" but also often "I hit her because

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she needed it"' (Holter 2000). A revealing Norwegian survey showed that male acceptance of domestic violence was related to two main features: having experienced bullying, and having experienced violence in the family, mainly from the father. Patriarchy is therefore a two-sided affair — not only an ordering of men above women, but also an ordering within each gender, with patriarchal power-holders above men in general. Masculinity theory is a theory about how power-holders are able to use and exploit masculine traits (Holter 2000). Contemporary work on AIDS education has found that attempts to simply educate young people about AIDS, about taking precautions or 'saying no', often fail unless they take into account the culture of 'rightful' relationships in the local environment. Our work on Ugandan schools, for example, showed that expectations that girls would be empowered through knowledge of AIDS and HIV were not met unless girls were simultaneously given the skills and confidence to analyse their situation and to resist automatic subordination by males. Such subordination was only reinforced by the male domination of decision-making and of power within a mixed school (Davies and Mirembe 2001). Morrell (2000) also comments on the experience of AIDS education, where community based 'peer education' methods have proved the most effective in changing dangerous conduct. As we shall see in Chapter 11, skilled conflict resolution often requires skills in negotiation, but negotiation assumes some parity in power and status — which girls in an authoritarian and masculinised culture do not have. For O'Sullivan (1999), 'gender-specific forms of violence occur where male dominance is institutionalised in social, political and economic systems'. He argues that female genital mutilation 'violently discriminates against women' (O'Sullivan 1999: 26), and he draws attention to the World Bank's identification of violence as a major risk factor for ill-health and disease among women of reproductive age. This hierarchy of male dominance is accompanied by the presence of violent social structures. Eisler (1988) names this a 'dominator model', based on the use or threat of force — and characteristic of the human rank orderings in male-dominant societies. Interestingly for complexity theory, Eisler distinguishes between such domination hierarchies and what she calls 'actualisation hierarchies' — the progressions from lower to higher ordering of functioning (such as from cells to organs), which operate to maximise the organism's potential. Domination hierarchies, in contrast, inhibit personal creativity, reinforce the 'basest' human qualities and suppress compassion, empathy and the striving for truth and justice. The interesting feature of the analysis of hierarchy within and across gender is that it moves away from essentialism, in its location of violence in a social ordering rather than in a physiology. An important reminder is that hegemonic masculinity is not all-pervasive. Reviewing the figures on participation in war, in aggression and in domestic violence, it is clear that males predominate. But as discussed at the beginning, this should not lead us into the


essentialist trap that all men are basically (or biologically) aggressive. As Connell points out: Almost all soldiers are men, but not all men are soldiers. Though most killers are men, most men never kill or even commit asssault. Though an appalling number of men do rape, most men do not. It is a fact of great importance, both theoretically and practically, that there are many non-violent men in the world. This, too, needs explanation, and must be considered in a strategy for peace. (Connell 2000: 22) Also it has to be remembered that, as has been analysed in South Africa, while the main victims of sexual violence are girls and women, the main victims of violence per se are boys and men (Morrell 1998). From this follows the logic that boys also have an interest in confronting violence. Yet dominant masculinity can be closely linked to militarism. Jacobs et al. (2000) state quite baldly that 'it is the case that, in a wide range of societies and cultures, being "a proper man" is inseparable from the capacity to use weapons' ( Jacobs et al. 2000: 11). This is not uniform, of course, and while some studies show the pleasure men get from killing, others trace conscientious objectors and dissent. Yet whenever the creation of boundaries between ethnic-national collectivities involves violent conflict, it is inevitably accompanied by militarisation (Korac 1999). As Enloe (1993) emphasises, militarising transformations are embedded in 'changing ideas about manlinesss — manliness as it supports a state, and manliness as it informs a nation' (Enloe 1993: 247). Cults of the `hero' become symbolic here, as Cohen (1998) analyses for Serbian nationalist propaganda. Klein (2000) talks of the link between masculinity and the military as the dominant gender image in Israeli society. A state of conflict is not the only factor that makes a society militaristic: One needs to consider the extent to which military training is seen as a necessary feature of the training of all male citizens, the extent to which political leaders have military backgrounds and the extent to which military uniforms are a persistent feature of the public sphere. (176) Dominant masculinity and militarism come together in the treatment of women in wartime. Women are not necessarily more protected. Interestingly, research done by several Serbian Orthodox Church women's phone services and women's centres in Belgrade showed that most family violence against women happened after the television news at 17.30. 'This result gives a very specific insight into the forms of victimisation of women during war' (Slapsak 2001: 178). Women's bodies can be seen as vehicles through which the nation/group can be reproduced, but can also be constructed as territory to

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be conquered (Kelly 2000). Rape of women on the 'other side' is a key weapon in the humiliation of the opposing forces ( Jacobs et al. 2000). Rape in the former Yugoslavia was used to terrorise populations, but it was women who carried the shame and who were later shunned and excluded, because they embodied the failure of militarised men to 'protect' their homeland. Korean 'comfort women' abducted by the Japanese also suffered the same fate and 'shame' on their return. Kelly quotes Mezey's study of Bosnia: In Bosnia the women who are raped are feared, hated and despised. . . . This is all the more extraordinary given the close, fully integrated communities that existed before the conflict and the fact that the perpetrators are previous friends and neighbours, colleagues and teachers of the women they later rape and kill. ( Mezey 1994: 589) the word 'teachers' of course stands out for us. Gender, violence and economic position

A socio-economic analysis provides further clues. Some research work links women's economic position with their likelihood of being victims of violence. Godenzi (2000) claims that the lower women's relative economic power, the more likely they are to be oppressed physically, politically and ideologically, and the less likely it is that a culture of non-violence will come into being. The connection between equality and violence is that men's violence towards women occurs less often when men solve their conflicts with other men in a peaceful way; when the prospects of women facing divorce are good; and where women have organised themselves into separate economic entities which men do not enter and control. Education for non-violence may therefore at least partly be about providing economic opportunities for females. This can range from training in micro-credit and women's small enterprises to ensuring that an equal balance of women enter higher education and the formal labour market. But men need also to be economically recognised and stable. Kimmel (2000) suggests that ethnic nationalist violence is the expression of a gendered protest against proletarianisation by lower-middle-class younger men. Where autonomy is denied, or economic mobility thwarted, frustrations are expressed through a gendered and racialised political discourse. He cites the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Basque separatists in Spain, migrant workers in the Baltic states and urban unemployed youth in America. Maitse (2000) would also add apartheid to this list: it dehumanised generally, and it also afforded men i mmense control over women. 'The truth is, we all know that often men do not aggress against the source of oppression. In many respects the perfect victim is always a woman' (Maitse 2000: 212).

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A parallel link between gender, conflict and education is the conflict over female education itself. The classic case would be the history of female education in Afghanistan (Pourzand 1999). The Taliban's harsh regulations forced the closure of many programmes, including even classes for women in landmine awareness. There was closure ofschools in Kabul, including boys' schools, since many of their teachers were women who were no longer permitted to work. As a result more children were playing outside, risking mine injuries (Ikramov 2001). Amid attacks and even arrests of their staff and the impossibility of continuing many programmes involving mothers and children or girls' education, many agencies had to reconsider their work. In November 2002, nearly a year after the fall of the Taliban, and nearly a million girls having returned to school, there were reports of attacks by 'suspected Taliban sympathisers' against girls' schools near Kabul. Rockets were fired and schools raided and set on fire. Leaflets were left warning parents to keep their girls at home. Analyses were unclear whether this was really about education or about western influence, although it appears that conservative communities in the south still remain hostile to girls going to school. Earlier, in Kandahar, there had been an explosion at a school, and the burning of school tents, attacks normally preceded by warning pamphlets about girls not going to school and women not appearing in public without a burka (Harding 2002). While this attack on the education of girls is depressing, in some ways of course it reveals the power — or at least potential power — of education in liberation. Women's education is resisted by certain groups of men precisely because it can demonstrate alternatives, give routes to empowerment or economic independence and challenge oppression. In an extremely patriarchal society, schooling is not all about reproduction of gender roles, as even basic literacy can provide some avenues to a widening of available roles and relationships. And, as was seen in Afghanistan, underground schooling for girls was designed precisely so that they should not continue to suffer from the extreme exclusion that was otherwise their fate.

Women's role in peace and violence

But are women simply struggling in men's wars? Ikramov analyses Afghan politics as continuing to be dominated by armed organisations recruited from ethno-regional networks: All of these armed networks, of course, are led and composed entirely of men. . . . The principal role of women in Afghan politics during the last 18 years of war has been to function as symbols of legitimisation for political groups led by men. . . . Efforts to resolve the conflict have also suffered from the lack of a domestic constituency for peace, as all of the political actors are warriors. (Ikramov 2001: 32)

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Yet we must be wary of simply portraying women as the bottom end of a hierarchy, as victims, or as excluded from war politics, on two opposing counts: firstly, that they can be active and influential in peace movements, but secondly that they can be at the same time active and influential in war and violence. There are many inspiring accounts of women engaging in conflict areas to try to forge peace. Examples are the Women in the Community joint groups of Arab and Jewish social/community workers (Ozacky-Lazar 2001) and Cockburn's (1998) study of women's groups working across the divide in Northern Ireland, in Israel/Palestine and in Bosnia. The collection by Mathews (2001) provides other examples — the Liberian Women's Initiative, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the Wajir Peace Group in Kenya and Coalition for Grassroots Women's Organisations in Somalia. Networks often include educationists: in Sri Lanka, Samuel (2001) described the Women for Peace formation which included networks of leading academics, lawyers, writers, teachers and media people. Some of this involves working in the spaces — between formal organisations or between formal positions. In the Yugoslav war, Slapsak (2001) reports that women's refusal to subscribe to stereotypes concerning ethnic groups made communication between women on the warring sides not only possible but in many cases the only existing channel of communication. E-mail networks were key, as was the 'patriarchal mentality' which offered unexpected possibilities to women who were considered less capable in politics, missions or even smuggling. These spaces are central to complexity theory of course. Phis was not an idealised picture, more a 'spontaneous creation' of a kind of women's market of information and services — a sort of emergence. However, discussions of male violence and female peace should not ignore the reality that women do participate in violence. We need a far more nuanced understanding of gender within oppression, violence and conflict than is assumed by the earlier Reardon-type position. The edited collection Stales of Conflict: Gender, Violence and Resistance ( Jacobs et al. 2000) provides some disturbing analyses of women's participation and agency in violence and in the oppression of other women, as well as their challenge to it. These include women's involvement in the Klu Klux Klan and in fascist and Nazi movements (see also Rommelsspacher 1999). Both Protestant and Catholic women were present in intimidatory mobs in Northern Ireland; middle-class women supported the Pinochet regime ( Jacobsen 2000). Nuns in Rwanda assisted the police, retired soldiers and other killers to burn alive and massacre in excess of 6,000 refugees (Willoughby-Mellors 2002). We do not need a long list to show that women's positioning within a violent conflict is a complex one, and deeply linked into the class and caste aspects discussed in Chapter 3, as well as the nationalism which I will look at in Chapter 5. Any essentialist link between maternalism and pacifism has to be viewed with some doubt. These denials are painful for feminists. Jeffreys and Basu (1998)

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contrast the highly limited impact of feminist protests against dowry deaths in India with the numbers of women mobilised to support the destruction of the Ayodhya mosque, which sparked massive outbreaks of communal violence. Mukta has a disturbing account of the role of women in the rise of the Hindu right in India, which 'raises salient questions of women's embeddedness within aggressive and violent political movements aimed against the women and men of subordinate castes and the minority religious communities' (Mukta 2000: 164). This has important insights for complexity theory. Other structures are not simply 'overriding' gender, but combining in new ways — there is a more complex caste-gendered politics taking place, where women are carving out a political space for themselves. The analysis has moved from seeing women as 'being used' by men in political movements to concede the 'agential capacity' of women. El-Bushra (2000) makes a si milar point, that women's involvement in violence should be considered not as an aberration but rather as a component of 'agency'. This is an important insight, which can still get overlooked. My own study of female deviance in schools (Davies 1984) examined some of the earlier theories of female criminality which stressed the abnormality of women who deviated from the acceptable norm of feminine passivity or nurturance or motherhood. The study found that in schools such notions were still prevalent, so that girls who were difficult or violent were subject to 'double labelling' in that they deviated not just from norms of the ideal pupil but from norms of the ideal female. Not all teachers had a big enough repertoire to deal with them, especially as the girls could switch between scripts to achieve power or agency — sometimes using femininity, sometimes a more `masculifist' aggression with each other or with teachers, and sometimes pulling a ` maternal' script out of the bag and talking to male teachers as if they were s mall, irritating boys who were interrupting the more valuable work of their own conversations in class. I used 'script' theory — perhaps, in social science, a precursor to complexity theory. So, as always, it is the range within females and males that has to be recognised. Jacobsen (2000) similarly argues that the history of the Northern Ireland conflict does not produce convincing evidence of a categorical preference for peacemaking among women as mothers. 'On the contrary, their positions have ranged from irredentism, through a general "politics of avoidance" and an absolute commitment to non-violence, even at personal risk' ( Jacobsen 2000: 195). Inger Skjelsbxk in another collection, Gender, Peace and Conflict, has an article 'Is Femininity Inherently Peaceful?' and has to conclude from extensive research and oral testimony that it is not. She argues that a more constructive approach might be to look at values and discourses: There is general agreement that the dominant discourses and valuesystems which lead to war are male-related.... [B]ut they are not essen-

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tially male. The value systems do to a large extent coincide with gender, but . . . some women might also be exponents of militant and war-prone values, even in the context of motherhood and care. (Skjelsbxk 2001: 65) So our educational implications would be around discourse and value; and the fact that men can be peace-loving is something to work on, and a cause for hope and anti-essentialism. Salla (2001) therefore points out how some feminists have challenged the arguments posed by Gilligan, Reardon, Brock-Utne and others that women have a special role to play in securing international peace as a result of their socialisation and 'relational thinking'. He contends that women policymakers are just as capable as their male peers of making decisions concerning the use of force, and resort to a variety of ethical and political justifications for doing so. For Salla, women's enhanced participatory role is not just about achieving a 'critical mass' of women, but about reforming power networks so as to eliminate the use of force in resolving conflict. A shift in the analysis thus comes from the fact women in western countries are increasingly forming part of the 'security' arm of their states, whether the police, the military or the various surveillance and control agencies, such as those dealing with immigrants and refugees ( Jacobs et al. 2000). In some contexts, women are actively seeking a role in front-line combat. Jacobs et al. worry that, given the classic liberal or Weberian formulation of the state as a human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory, there has been so little specific feminist examination of the state's machineries for the exercise of violence. We might want to argue that education is part of this machinery of legimitat ion (see Chapter 7). Yet the very complexity and shifting nature of the gender/conflict interface also means a capacity for change, and Jacobsen points out for Northern Ireland that some of the most noticeable changes have been among men. She quotes Cockburn's observation that women were not on the whole pacifists, but that what they were looking for was 'an opening to justice, so that words can replace weapons sooner than might otherwise be the case' (Cockburn 1998: 8). This has implications for dialogue, democracy and education which are developed in Chapters 8 and 12. Gender and violence in schools

As with class, the 'gender regime' in schools is not a pure system, or even a nested system, for as Epstein et al. point out, masculinity and femininity are complex concepts, so that cultures of masculinity are `racialized and classed (and race and class are sexualised)' (Epstein et al. (eds) 1998: 102). Yet gender violence is significant enough to be treated as a phenomenon in its


own right. As I argued above, there are different scripts and different resources drawn upon in the struggle for identity; Giddens's (1984) discussion of resources and routines would be relevant here. In terms of education, there is increasing study of direct and indirect, real and symbolic violence that occurs on a daily basis. Our work on gender, management and culture of schools has shown the prevalence of particular types of management cultures which, like sport, stress competition, aggression and control rather than care and compassion (Davies and Gunawardena 1992; Davies 1998a). Corporal punishment is still a phenomenon in schools in many parts of the world, and is supported by parents and teachers. The restriction of the administration of corporal punishment to the (often male) headteacher only emphasises the power involved. The message that problems can be solved by the abuse of the weaker by the stronger is a highly dangerous one. Sexual violence is also a patriarchal feature which can take place in the school, often by male teachers. There can be the expectation that teachers' sexual 'needs' can and should be fulfilled through relationships with — or rape of — schoolgirls. There are also cases of boys rampaging through girls' schools, with rape almost condoned by teachers (Davies 1992; Astill 2000). Clearly, such cultures of power and oppression can only reproduce wider cultures and behaviours in society. Amy Stambach in her fascinating and deeply nuanced ethnography Schooling, Community and Gender in East Africa describes not only the physical abuse of girls through caning, but also (or alternatively) sexual 'demands' by male teachers which the girls did see as abusive and indeed illegal while admitting they might profit by acceding to these demands (for instance, by getting to see exam questions in advance). One student observer of a disciplinary exchange between a male teacher and a schoolgirl speculated that 'he will probably tell her later that she should come home with him, saying that he let her off lightly at school by not beating her' (Stambach 2000: 145). This however is not just about male lusts, but part of the 'cultural system' of school (and non-school) which 'helps reinforce and revise relationships of power and authority between men and women, between various social spaces and activities, and even between material and ideological differences between local and larger world systems' (Stambach 2000: 132). Student culture, drawing on far-away themes (music, adulthood), acts oppositionally, and is cracked down upon by teachers as anti-authority, and by greater displays of power. In South Africa, the government's Gender and Equity task team, reporting at the end of 1997, found widespread evidence of sexual harassment and violence in the education system (reported in Harber 2000). Harber also reports a survey in 1999 revealing that one in three Johannesburg schoolgirls has been raped or sexually assaulted, but that just 12 per cent knew that sexual abuse was illegal. A large DFID ( Department for International Development) study of abuse of girls at schools in three African countries (Zimbabwe,

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Malawi and Ghana) has catalogued male teachers and older male pupils aggressively propositioning female pupils for sex, 'sugar daddies' preying on schoolgirls and generally high levels of corporal punishment and bullying (Leach 2002). The abusive behaviour of boys towards girls (and also towards more vulnerable boys) is seen as in part the product of a peer culture which stresses male competition and sexual prowess as part of 'learning to be a man'. This is a 'worrying' socialisation process in which male violence is accepted as the norm in adolescent relationships, while obedience and tolerance continue to be expected of girls. This can lead to aggressive male behaviour being normalised and perpetuated in adulthood. Leach of course does not confine gender violence to these three countries, and indeed cites research in the USA, the UK and Europe as well as South Africa and Papua New Guinea which also demonstrates how much this is a reality of life for young people. Sexual abuse is inextricably linked to other forms of violence by teachers, and to verbal abuse (Human Rights Watch 2001). The findings from the DFID study suggest that an environment which tolerates one illegal type of violence (for example, corporal punishment) is also likely to be permissive of other sorts of violence (for example, sexual abuse). The study also recorded abuses such as using girl pupils as free labour to clean teachers' houses or run errands (Leach et al. 2002). Of signficance in the study was that it was the very authoritarian nature of the school t hat allowed gender violence to flourish. Teachers were figures of authority and parents and pupils were discouraged from complaining. Teacher abuse of pupils was ignored or played down by other teachers or the head. Interestingly, the research in Ghana and Malawi showed that, despite attempts to move decision-making in education closer to the 'consumer' as part of the decentralisation process (through the creation of school management committees and strengthened parent-teacher associations) communities also ['eel relatively powerless to take action against abusers. They lack information on the correct procedures to follow in making a complaint and on their rights as parents, and they do not know where to find advice. Our own study of decentralisation in Malawi also found information a crucial issue in terms of knowledge of the meanings of decentralisation and who actually held power under different definitions (Davies and Harber 2003). Socio-economic status is also involved here, as if a girl has been made pregnant by a teacher, the parents' economic circumstances oblige them to ask the head not to report it so that they can negotiate with the teacher to marry the girl or pay maintenance. As said, sexual abuse and bullying in schools is by no means confined to developing countries. A revealing study by Duncan (1999) explored interand intra-sex conflict in secondary schools in England. He was overwhelmed by the seeming omnipresence of gender as a constituent of pupil conflict in school life. Even in interactions that bore no overt



reason for the deployment of sexualised verbal abuse, language was funnelled through this discourse. The interactions ranged from the socially trivial to the physically dangerous. ( Duncan 1999: 6)

an interesting idea, implying a need to take gender analyses far out of the local and national sphere.

Many distinctive socio-cultural practices were found, including sexualised name-calling and verbal abuse; rubbishing sexual performance; ridiculing physical appearance; criticising sexual behaviour; spreading rumours; aggressive propositioning; threatening behaviour; unwanted touching and sexual assault. What happens is the marking out of gender role limits: reminders that relationships are ultimately structured by power and that power is gendered. By incessantly expressing the expectation that boys should be served and provided for by girls, the boys knock back any advances by the girls to assert their personhood as independent of masculine supervision. (This expectation of girls' `serving' boys was a feature of Mirembe's work in Uganda too — see Davies and Mirembe 2001.) 'So, when a girl is called a "bitch" for not giving up her spare pencil to a demanding boy, invisible links are made between female autonomy and sexual perversity' (Duncan 1999: 128). This connection is not a theoretical conceit but a social and physical reality: the ratchet of male response clicks up from trivial name-calling to a denigration of sexual worth due to non-compliance, and thence, ultimately, to a state of 'social non-being'. There is a desperation in boys to control and disrupt inter-female relationships while struggling with their own competitive inter-male friendships. Yet Duncan does not essentialise, and acknowledges complexity: he reveals how only a few boys actually dominate proceedings with any degree of comfort and many girls win their own space in which to develop sociocultural power. This is done through language and insult, through slanders on male sexuality and linguistic role reversals, with girls 'shagging blokes'. Of significance in Duncan's study is the role of the school itself. There is among adolescents a rush for social inclusion in a high-status friendship group. Yet the school is central to this 'rush'. The compression of bodies in a controlled space means a power struggle for dominance. Banding in narrow age-groups takes no account of girls' earlier sexual maturity. School displaces any discussion of sexuality into moral order. This is Salmi's (1999) 'violence by omission', with the school culpable. Within this void, the peer group wrestles with the problem itself. Those damaged by conflict and pain continue their slow progress up the ladder towards socio-sexual maturity and uncertain acquisition of a culturally valued masculinity or femininity. Unlike Connell (1987), Duncan argues that there is a hierarchy of femininities like there is hegomonic masculinity. However, boys' status hierarchy is augmented by the macro-social advantages of masculine power and retains a blurred and fading ideology of global male supremacy which the girls' does not. This is

Increasingly, studies are pointing to homophobia as another feature of hegemonic masculinity in schools which results in violence. Boys who do not play or excel in sport, or who are not inclined to resort to physical strength to resolve differences or who refuse to have sexually oppressive relationships with girls are labelled as homosexuals, ostracised and victimised. Studies relating gender to class look at how some male groups, in particular urban working-class boys, seek confirmation of masculinity through self-alienation from the schooling process, contestation of school authority, low achievement and at times sexual violence, both against girls and against those who deviate from the masculine norm (Arnot 2002). Kaufman underlines the acute fear underpinning homophobia:

H omophobia

There is enormous terror that other boys will discover one's own fears. There is also the enormous fear of ridicule and violence at the hands of other boys. . . I do feel that this specific form of men's homophobia is a product of the broader fear of other men and the fear of not being ` manly enough'. In a culture that defines manhood as an ability to dominate women, dominate other men, control one's own unruly emotions, and display the heterosexuality that is compulsory in our society, it is no surprise that for many men, particualrly when they are young, there is an active hatred of homosexuality. (1997: 17) Kelly, in her study of war and gender, talks of the underpinnings to male supremacy, arguing that men affirm one another through the exclusion, humiliation and objectification of women, and demands that What we need to explore is whether any hierarchical grouping of men, organised as men, creates conditions in which coercive heterosexuality is promoted and enacted. These groupings would include sports teams, private clubs, gangs, secret societies as well as the military. ( Kelly 2000: 57) But I would argue that we would need to include boys' groupings in schools as a source of this affirmation, and certainly 'coercive heterosexuality', as we have seen above. Frank (1996) thus refers to the 'social terrorism' of boys and men in schools. Like analyses of masculinity since the 1980s, he challenges past theorising such as socialisation theory with its reductionist notions of how 'boys become



reason for the deployment of sexualised verbal abuse, language was funnelled through this discourse. The interactions ranged from the socially trivial to the physically dangerous. ( Duncan 1999: 6)

an interesting idea, implying a need to take gender analyses far out of the local and national sphere.

Many distinctive socio-cultural practices were found, including sexualised name-calling and verbal abuse; rubbishing sexual performance; ridiculing physical appearance; criticising sexual behaviour; spreading rumours; aggressive propositioning; threatening behaviour; unwanted touching and sexual assault. What happens is the marking out of gender role limits: reminders that relationships are ultimately structured by power and that power is gendered. By incessantly expressing the expectation that boys should be served and provided for by girls, the boys knock back any advances by the girls to assert their personhood as independent of masculine supervision. (This expectation of girls' `serving' boys was a feature of Mirembe's work in Uganda too — see Davies and Mirembe 2001.) 'So, when a girl is called a "bitch" for not giving up her spare pencil to a demanding boy, invisible links are made between female autonomy and sexual perversity' ( Duncan 1999: 128). This connection is not a theoretical conceit but a social and physical reality: the ratchet of male response clicks up from trivial name-calling to a denigration of sexual worth due to non-compliance, and thence, ultimately, to a state of 'social non-being'. There is a desperation in boys to control and disrupt inter-female relationships while struggling with their own competitive inter-male friendships. Yet Duncan does not essentialise, and acknowledges complexity: he reveals how only a few boys actually dominate proceedings with any degree of comfort and many girls win their own space in which to develop sociocultural power. This is done through language and insult, through slanders on male sexuality and linguistic role reversals, with girls 'shagging blokes'. Of significance in Duncan's study is the role of the school itself. There is among adolescents a rush for social inclusion in a high-status friendship group. Yet the school is central to this 'rush'. The compression of bodies in a controlled space means a power struggle for dominance. Banding in narrow age-groups takes no account of girls' earlier sexual maturity. School displaces any discussion of sexuality into moral order. This is Salmi's (1999) 'violence by omission', with the school culpable. Within this void, the peer group wrestles with the problem itself. Those damaged by conflict and pain continue their slow progress up the ladder towards socio-sexual maturity and uncertain acquisition of a culturally valued masculinity or femininity. Unlike Connell (1987), Duncan argues that there is a hierarchy of femininities like there is hegomonic masculinity. However, boys' status hierarchy is augmented by the macro-social advantages of masculine power and retains a blurred and fading ideology of global male supremacy which the girls' does not. This is

Increasingly, studies are pointing to homophobia as another feature of hegemonic masculinity in schools which results in violence. Boys who do not play or excel in sport, or who are not inclined to resort to physical strength to resolve differences or who refuse to have sexually oppressive relationships with girls are labelled as homosexuals, ostracised and victimised. Studies relating gender to class look at how some male groups, in particular urban working-class boys, seek confirmation of masculinity through self-alienation from the schooling process, contestation of school authority, low achievement and at times sexual violence, both against girls and against those who deviate from the masculine norm (Arnot 2002). Kaufman underlines the acute fear underpinning homophobia:

Homophobia

There is enormous terror that other boys will discover one's own fears. There is also the enormous fear of ridicule and violence at the hands of other boys. . . . I do feel that this specific form of men's homophobia is a product of the broader fear of other men and the fear of not being ` manly enough'. In a culture that defines manhood as an ability to dominate women, dominate other men, control one's own unruly emotions, and display the heterosexuality that is compulsory in our society, it is no surprise that for many men, particualrly when they are young, there is an active hatred of homosexuality. (1997: 17) Kelly, in her study of war and gender, talks of the underpinnings to male supremacy, arguing that men affirm one another through the exclusion, humiliation and objectification of women, and demands that What we need to explore is whether any hierarchical grouping of men, organised as men, creates conditions in which coercive heterosexuality is promoted and enacted. These groupings would include sports teams, private clubs, gangs, secret societies as well as the military. ( Kelly 2000: 57) But I would argue that we would need to include boys' groupings in schools as a source of this affirmation, and certainly 'coercive heterosexuality', as we have seen above. Frank (1996) thus refers to the 'social terrorism' of boys and men in schools. Like analyses of masculinity since the 1980s, he challenges past theorising such as socialisation theory with its reductionist notions of how 'boys become


men', as this does not explain the complexities of 'getting gendered'. As with Connell's analysis, men's and boys' practice of masculinity is always local, temporal, 'ever shifting, intermeshed rather than sequential, with boundaries that materialize only in social interaction' (Frank 1996: 114). This is an adaptive and creative response, within gender as a complex adaptive system in its own right. Masculinity is not just a question of learning a role and carrying it out. Boys revealed how they hid things from other male friends and used violence to demonstrate that they were really male: 'authority and domination were merged into the structure of the personality itself. Fear was often the consequence: fear of physical harm, fear of being excluded, of being ostracized or abandoned, fear of persecution and ridicule, humiliation and rejection' (Frank 1996: 123). As Frank points out, many teachers fail to realise that the values of hegemonic masculinity are also woven into the personality of the boy who carries out the 'non-hegemonic practice'. This is i mmensely complicated, especially if we have to deal with the violence that some men and boys inflict on themselves, including suicide. 'This type of analysis would suggest that changing curricula, language practices or hiring procedures would not suffice' (Frank 1996: 124). Frank nonetheless was able to discover 'spaces' in the very contradictions and tensions of masculinity, where boys could reflect and manage to do things differently, be sensitive, caring, finding non-exploitative relationships, accepting diversity and so on. Yet, like Duncan, he finds the school culpable, arguing that there is little change because of the daily support of hegemonic masculinity, sport and competition in schools. 'Until we begin to withdraw support for it, both individually and collectively, and in the structural arrangements of schooling, we will not change much in the gendered and sexed relations of schooling' (Frank 1996: 125). This has resonances with Giddens's (1984) notion of structures needing support for their continuation. Strategies for dealing with masculinity and violence in education

The final section of this chapter starts to examine strategies for countering gender-based violence. There are some useful manuals for working directly with young men on their perceptions, attitudes and behaviours, including those concerning violence and war (e.g. Bramwell and Barton 1996). Communication skills are essential here, as much research shows that boys in `conversation' make statements to each other, rather than sharing and listening. It is nonetheless difficult for boys to embrace other forms of masculinity. The argument within policy is therefore to tackle the 'gender regime' in total, including decision-making, power, human rights and structures of grievance and anti-sexism. The Commonwealth Secretariat has outlined a training programme to combat gender-based violence (GBV), based on a participatory approach


that brings together government ministries, strategic departments, intergovernmental organisations, multilateral agencies and other 'critical groups' ( Oguli-Oumo et al. 2002). This would match the 'conflict mapping' to be outlined in Chapter 11, identifying a range of stakeholders and not just the actual perpetrators. In this sense it can be seen as a nested system; and, if implemented, one that can lead to different sorts of emergence. Much relies on information: in this instance, it is collecting information about GBV, organising advocacy education and awareness campaigns, organising a GBV forum, disseminating information through newsletters, press conferences, local community radio, undertaking needs assessments, training of paralegals, and educating women, men and policymakers about the law. It is inevitably difficult to assess the impact of 'awareness raising' — always a pillar of feminist activity — but it would seem indisputable that more information at a range of levels can only increase connectivity and alter/challenge the 'rules' of interaction. While addressing the role of public education and of training programmes, the guide does not say much however about education concerning GBV in schools; this is a sensitive topic for teachers, but ought to be addressed directly. In 2002, the id21 website was giving examples of innovative work with adolescents to change gendered behaviour; however, none was part of an integrated government-sponsored school curriculum, and most were projects outside the school setting or by outside agencies and NGOs in collaboration with schools. However, the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation in Johannesburg, South Africa does concentrate on school-based programmes, working often with young males in high schools on the challenges and problems they face. The starting point is to develop responsibility in those who have been violent and to develop a climate of openness and support to permit young men to confront and overcome the need to affirm their masculinity through violence (Harber 2001b). The work of the Zero Tolerance Project Trust in Scotland is a 'developed world' example which shows that violence in adolescent relationships and abusive behaviour in schools are endemic there too, with high acceptance by young men of violence towards females (Leach 2002). Would sport then be part of the problem or part of the solution? The answer is both. Sport which is single-sex, emphasises brutality, confrontation, aggression and status can act only to reinforce tough masculinity and scoring over an 'enemy'. As mentioned earlier, sport valorises violent and aggressive constructions of masculinity. Yet sport which emphasises development of skill, self-improvement and fitness rather than strength, and which can be played equally by both sexes, can in theory channel energy without necessarily promoting hatred of the other or contempt for the weaker. However, without the overall change in culture referred to earlier, it is unlikely that simply having more sport will reduce social violence. People and children will invariably subvert into competition or aggression. I read of a nursery teac

72


reprimanding a boy for playing guns. 'Why don't you go and build with the bricks,' she suggested. A few minutes later, the boy was running about with some bricks going 'bang-bang'. 'What are you doing?' she cried. He said, Ì'm shooting you with my house.' It seems clear that teacher training institutions should raise questions with trainees about masculinity, both as a means of developing alternatives to corporal punishment and to develop counselling skills to deal with boys' (or girls') disruptive behaviour, recognising the emotions and contradictions that lie behind such behaviours. We have been working with the only teacher training college in the Gambia on a project on democratising teacher education (Davies, Harber and Schweisfurth 2002), and it is evident that traditional cultural gender roles as well as intepretations within Islam will need to be surfaced and worked through to achieve a democratic organisation where trainees experience democratic learning for themselves. This is not to throw out all gendered attributes. As Morrell points out, `some of the qualities in "traditional" masculinity (e.g. courage, steadfastness, ambition) are certainly needed in the cause of peace' (Morrell 2000: 30). But a profound finding is that in those societies where men are permitted to acknowledge fear, levels of violence are low (Kimmel 2000). Post-structuralist feminists such as Weiner would attack the notion of fixed and unitary cultural identities, and argue for the recovery of 'hitherto underrepresented forms of the feminine' (1997: 150). I would want to recover under-represented forms of the masculine, too. Schools and colleges should not generate fear through repressive punishment and masculinist domination, but permit the expression of fear — most importantly the fear of war. Conclusion: education for democracy and equality

Gender relations may not be a direct 'cause' of war, but I would argue that they can be highly conducive to it. A very instructive list provided by Kimmel (2000) summarises the themes which anthropologists have isolated as leading to both interpersonal and intersocietal violence. It provides a clue to the holistic, democratic and equitable education which is needed to mitigate such violence. The themes are: 1 The ideal for manhood is the fierce and handsome warrior. 2 Public leadership is associated with male dominance, both of men over other men and men over women. 3 Women are prohibited from public and political participation. 4 Most public interaction is between men, not between men and women or among women. 5 Boys and girls are systematically separated from an early age.


6 Initiation of boys is focused on lengthy constraint, during which time boys are separated from women, taught male solidarity, bellicosity and endurance and trained to accept the dominance of older groups of men. Emotional displays of male virility, ferocity and sexuality are highly 7 elaborated. 8 Male economic activities and the products of male labour are prized over female. ( Kimmel 2000: 245) I would like to suggest an obvious counter to each one of these eight themes which could take place in education: 1 The promotion of a range of differing ideals both of manhood and of womanhood. 2 Education for democratic leadership, with skills for both males and females. 3 The encouragement of females into public and political participation. 4 The acceptance of females as prominent and interacting in public life. 5 Coeducation. 6 Education for solidarity between the sexes, and for challenges to dominance. 7 Education for emotional literacy for both sexes. 8 Education for productive equitable economic activity and skill for both sexes, and in equal rights. All the above would begin the process of turning a society and its education system from a simple, rigid, disconnected and bellicose one to a complex adaptive system with possibilities for diversity, connectivity and emergence.

Chapter 5

Pluralism and identity work 75

Pluralism and identity work

As with gender and class, this chapter traces the connections between pluralis m — or diversity — and conflict, isolating where education may be implicated. The range of pluralism — ethnicity, 'race', tribalism, religion — shares with class and gender an importance for identity, but has even more potential for politicisation of conflict. After looking at this potential, the chapter focuses on identity before a critical examination of multiculturalism and antiracism Finally it explores the potential of citizenship education for enabling 'acknowledgement of hybrid identity and acting as an antidote to nationalistic -education Given that pluralism characterises virtually all societies (whether of ethnicity, religion, clan or tribe), the question to ask is whether conflict is endemic. Definitions of pluralism can be positive, as in the Swanultepor-Cs---uat-ien of pluralism as the basis for a harmonious, multiracial society (quoted in Gillborn T995): eittbOrn notes however, as does indeed Swann, the gap between the 'pluralist ideal' and the realities of life in Britain, stating that .

it is characteristic of most pluralist accounts that they rarely scrutinize the line between pluralism as a goal (as an ideological version of how things could/should be) and pluralism as a description of reality (as an analytical framework). ( Gillborn 1995: 7) It is the latter perspective which I am taking here, in looking at the relationship of 'real' pluralism to conflict. Both peace research and security studies have increasingly emphasised the large number of armed conflicts in which the division between opponents is to a significant degree defined by ethnic difference, or other types of difference in identity (Smith 2001). Huntingdon (1997) won a great deal of attention with his 'grandiose' thesis that future conflicts would be shaped by a clash between the worli;1' s v,ev civilisations, but Smith argues that it is important to avoid making a felidi6ut of identity, interest or any other single dimension. His analysis of Huntingdon relates to the problem that on both sides — West ),

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(

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and Islam — leaders are similar in one crucial respect: they expect clash and confrontation. 'They are bitter enemies but best friends, for they need each other. One myth of confrontation easily generates another opposing one. This is why nationalism is contagious' (Smith 2001: 44). Interestingly, Collier in a paper on the 'political economy of ethnicity' (1998, quoted in Rihani 2002) challenges the assumption that diversity would lead to conflict in all circumstances. He suggests that ethnic divisions can have various detrimental effects, increasing patronage and lowering the level of trust among individuals. Yet the societies most at risk are those in the middle of the range of ethnic diversity. Homogenous societies do not have a problem, and those with a high level of diversity are just as stable. Conflict arises when there are a few ethnic groupings, especially when one monopolises most of the rewards. In practical terms, it costs less to initiate and coordinate conflict when there a few large groupings. Yet, as Rihani (2002) points out, on that count oppression and civil war should be lower in Africa — which is not the case. Clearly, there is more to tension than just the number of groups, such as the history of colonialism or borders, the degree of democracy in government and civil society and the overall economic condition of a society. For Rihani, the inescapable element of a functioning CAS is the freedom to interact. When there is oppression (of women, or of ethnic groups) then a nation cannot evolve efficiently. This links back to the conclusion of the previous chapter. Yet there are genuine dilemmas facing an open or 'free' cultural pluralism. Figuera (2000) talks of the conflicts of values, of cultures and of rights. Since cultural pluralism propounds openness to all cultures, how can it deal with a culture which rejects openness? However, the principle is that openness and situated, bounded rationality do not mean accepting any position proferred but mean instead being willing to give a genuine hearing to the reasons for any position held. The respect that cultural pluralism calls for is critical respect. The critique must be carried out in practice. The outcome cannot be guaranteed. (Figuera 2000: 56) For Figuera, there is an 'ultimate court', of reason and of using continuous discourse, not violence. These twin notions of critical respect and constant discourse will be returned to later. Without Rihani's `freedom to interact' and Figuera's 'critical respect' comes a hardening of cultural boundaries, and the politicisation of identity and group. Mustagrudic (2000) comments that the politicisation of every aspect of life by extreme nationalist groups makes the promotion and indeed celebration of democracy and pluralism in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) difficult. In my experience, the sad aspect in BiH in particular is that the


differences are almost imagined: it is not so much toleration and recognition of 'difference' which is needed, but intolerance of the extremism which tries to invent and concretise this. What occurs as a basis of conflict is a forgetting of histories of coexistence and cultural hybridity: 'At the heart of ethnic conflict is a belief in the existence of cultural and ethnic purity, and a concomitant fear of mixing and borrowing. Hybridity, whether ethnic or cultural has to be suppressed, and becomes the site of anxiety' (Silva (ed.) 2002: i). Silva's edited collection on culture crossings and identity in Sri Lanka demonstrates very clearly the denial of a history of multi-ethnicity and cultural mixing which underlies eighteen years of armed conflict. For Cockburn, similarly, ethnicity seldom exists without èthnicism' — the deployment of 'cultural markers' to differentiate the group from others, 'and usually to flag up superiority over them' (Cockburn 1998: 36). Promoters of ethnic culture are often in the business of including-in-order-to-exclude; when ethnic distinctions are stressed, it is always possible to detect a political project. This can be galvanised by injustice, and its engine may be a class elite. Religious apparatuses (all with male priesthoods) often serve as powerful agents of ethnic projects and use them in their own ways. As she points out, the ethnicisation of religious affiliation is something Ireland, Israel/Palestine and ex-Yugoslavia have in common. Jacobsen (2000) also confirms that while religious ideologies per se have not been the principal driving force in Northern Ireland, religious affiliation remains very largely `the touchstone' for locating oneself and others in everyday life. School is of course part of this: 'It is a truism of Northern Irish society that there is a constant process of "placing" people when meeting them in terms of religious affiliation through details of names, addresses, schooling, sports, even knowledge of particular songs' (Cockburn 1998: 184). The school one attended in a divided society is a 'cultural marker'. This leads into the question of how identities are formed and reformed and hybridity forgotten or resisted. Identity

A classic description of identity is by psychologists such as Staub, who proposes that human beings have a set of fundamental needs that press for satisfaction, including the needs for security, positive identity, effectiveness, autonomy, belonging, transcendence and the comprehension of reality. There is debate about whether these needs are actually universal, or reflect western cultural norms, but they seem pretty comprehensive and obvious. A sense of security and positive identity enables people to be open to others and to focus on others' welfare, rather than concentrating exclusively on themselves. When needs are frustrated, on the other hand, people may turn inward toward their own groups and seek fulfilment of their needs in ways that diminish or harm others — through scapegoating minority groups or


advocating exclusivist ideologies. The frustration of basic needs, when combined with other facilitating factors, is often the basis for mass violence (Staub 1989, 1999). Writers on conflict therefore often talk about 'vulnerabilities', and how hose can be played upon. It was not merely Hitler and Mein Kampf which led the Germans and most of Europe to hell. It was, to a large extent, the vulnerability of individuals, in their inability to reflect critically on the words and actions of Nazism and to turn their reflection into action. The same vulnerability led sane people to allow Churchill and Truman to commit those most cynical of atrocities, Dresden and Hiroshima, and to defend and honour these acts in the writing of history. This same vulnerability spawns all manner of bizarre, stupid, violent, anithuman groups, each of which is a crystallisation of individual pathologies consolidated in a manipulative, normative structure. ( Murphy 1999: 89) Anxiety is an objective daily-life state within conflict and also can be turned into a political instrument. Klein talks of Israeli policies, especially military ones, using the Holocaust as a mighty force. The 'enemy from outside', waiting for the opportunity to destroy Israel (according to the siege mentality), served to appeal for cohesiveness and unity within. Yet long ago Coser argued that 'groups engaged in continued struggle with the outside tend to he intolerant within' (1956: 103). Is this a contradiction? Does the identification of outside enemies foster simultaneously coherence and incoherence? Yet it may be that the particular sorts of intolerance that emerge are towards those who do not represent the national ideal (homosexuals, Minorities, refugees, travellers, opposition parties). Social identity theory suggests that how we think about ourselves tends to vary along a continuum, from the perception of self as unique to the perception of self as very similar or identical to in-group members — and stereotypically 'interchangeable' with them. In certain situations (vulnerability?) we become exemplars of them — a process of 'depersonalisation' (Cairns 1996). Collective identity (and identity politics) is therefore a disturbing force. Cockburn is very clear on its power: It is through the creation of.collective identities that ethnic and national movements, and the land-right claims they make, gain their force. The discourses emanating from influential social sources, such as intellectuals and the media, compellingly hail individuals as nationals — 'you who are one of us' — at the same time making it clear who is 'other'. They mobilize culture, tradition, religion, and notions of history and place to evoke a sense of unity, an ethnic or national identity. . . . When control


78 Roots of conflict: implications for education by any group is capable of being maintained without direct force it is always because compliance has been won through processes of identification. ( Cockburn 1998: 10) The women in her study of peace projects (Belfast, Israel/Palestine, BosniaHerzegovina) were suffering 'identity hurt' — a disjuncture between a woman's sense of self and the identities with which she was labelled, was held to account for, or felt seduced by. The women came to the projects strongly marked by highly mobilised ethnicities, 'knowing' each other to be members of exclusive national groups and to have different political affiliations. They had to construct a space which allowed distance, in which differences would be respected, not collapsed into a spurious unity. But it also had to be a space allowing closeness, even intimacy. This seems the classic challenge of pluralism, whether in a school, workplace or community. The question of 'identification' needs acknowledgement of the creative processes in constant identity formation. We are not talking here of 'socialisation', but how individuals and groups actively construct and reconstruct the self — 'a narrative of "I" that is modified continually, if each time only marginally' (Smith 2001: 36). In complexity terms, this is the notion of àutopoiesis' — meaning 'self-making'. The self-making urge is to maintain identity, constantly recreate the self, resist too much change and focus inwards. Our view of the world is controlled by our internal model of it, not si mply by incoming data. Data will at best cause a perturbation, but it will be ignored if the internal model is not interested (which has huge implications for education) — or if it appears to make no difference. Data is not seen as information if we think we already know it. Yet we do use agency to create a viable and satisfying life for ourselves in the context of, or in spite of, our alignment with particular identities. The key seems to be whether we acknowledge our own fluidity and selfmaking. We are uneasy with ambiguity, and may be reluctant to recognise any ambivalence about who we are. As we saw earlier, under pressure, we think more simply, or bind together. War acts like bereavement. Brian Murphy (1999) in Transforming Ourselves, Transforming the World says that we live currently at the 'fulcrum of ambiguity'. This is a postmodern world, with, simultaneously, masses of knowledge and the inability to do anything. Directions are not clear. A great deal of the nostalgia we often see among people who have experienced 'hard times' or crises — war, depression, external emergency — relates to the fact that, for a time, there was no ambiguity; one could live and act with single-minded dedication to a cause and to survival. And I suspect that the recent phenomenon of the proliferation of cults, religious fundamentalism and psychic movements — let alone the conven-

79

tional slavish adherence to the norms of corporatism, meritocracy and the consumer society — is a response to people's need to avoid ambiguity, to escape from freedom. ( Murphy 1999: 35) This analysis goes back, as Murphy acknowledges, to Erich Fromm's Escape from Freedom (1941) and to Revel's The Totalitarian Temptation (1976). Accepting that we need certainty, a 'positive identity', how easy is it for this identity to be a hybrid one? We are probably happy to acknowledge multiple identities in terms of being a woman, a mother, a Briton, a Londoner, a teacher, etc., with these identities taking different saliences at different times; but it is multiple loyalties which are the more fragile. These can someti mes be easily nested — supporting a local football team and then the national one; but the usual test is the 'cricket test' — if you are of Pakistani origin living permanently in the UK, which team do you support? This seems a superficial question, but it emerges very strongly in identity questions such as those that arose immediately after September 1 1 th, and what being a ` Muslim' meant for self and for identification by others. In a useful teaching resource book about Northern Ireland, McLaughlin and Regan point out our multiple overlapping 'layers' of identity from the personal through to the international — and quote different interviewees' views on this. For one, British identity was totally alien and about oppression: ` The Northern Ireland state was built on just one identity and denied the other identities of its people' (McLaughlin and Regan 2000: 33). Another questioned the conventional dualisms: 'people here sometimes imagine that only Protestants can feel British and only Catholics can feel Irish'; while yet another was able to accept hybridity: I would call myself "British-Irish", or "Irish Protestant" or "Ulsterwoman" before I would call myself "British" on its own. "British" means nothing to me, only the Union Jack and the fact that me da was in the British Army. Other than that it means bugger all to me. ( McLaughlin and Regan 2000: 33) The particular importance of 'the Border' is drawn attention to in the resource book, again with people's perceptions inextricably linked to their identities — as a demarcation line, a deep scar, a mental wall, one of a list of crimes, a symbol of the existence of a no man's land. The importance of symbol is often revealed as crucial to identity maintenance and loyalty. The significance of 'the Border' also appears in Silva's (2002) edited volume on Sri Lanka. Such avoidance of ambiguity is a classic element of education, and, importantly, of some religious education. For Michael Apple, evangelicalism is crucially linked to identity, to 'self' and 'other'. He describes how in the


USA, the Religious Right has a sense of justice which is guided by 'hate' for gays. Apple begins a section of his book by asking 'How can hate seem so nice?' `For the majority of conservative evangelicals, they themselves are "nice" people, "real Americans" who stand for things the rest of us have given up on' (2001: 161). The cry is then to pull children out of public (government) schools and put them through Christian schools and home schooling, to train an entire generation of people to understand that religious neutrality is, in essence, a fiction. Apple quotes a home school advocate as saying 'Sending our children to public schools violates nearly every Biblical principle . . . It is tantamount to sending out our children to be trained by the enemy' (Apple 2001: 167). There are satanic threats to family values and `true' motherhood — these threats being feminism or humanism or secularism. Politicians too avoid ambiguity or acknowledgement of hybridity. Smith (2001) points out how the idea that individuals share in more than one identity is inconvenient for a political strategy based on mobilising just one collective identity. Access to a range of identity categories may, depending on the case, be a privilege, an irrelevance, or a source of oppression. During 1992 and 1993 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, for example, the decision to opt for either Serb or Muslim identity was forced upon people at gunpoint. Depending on their decision, they were either killed or had to prove their allegiance to their identity-decision by killing another (Smith 2001: 37). Closely linked to collective identity and purity therefore is the notion of revenge. The Hamas phrase 'We will stop killing their children when they stop killing ours' is a chilling one, but is not exclusive to that movement. The dynamics of the Israel/Palestinian conflict take the shape of retaliatory attacks on both sides — razing a village in return for a suicide bomb. A psychiatrist heading the Gaza community mental health project has studied the suicide bombers and finds two roots: firstly trauma, that they have witnessed suffering or suffered personal humiliation, and second they want to take revenge. 'Arab honour has to take revenge for family honour and dignity. The vehicle is usually Islam, and the trigger is anger' (Eyad Sarraj, quoted in Goldenberg 2002). The settlement of debts is a prerequisite for martyrdom, otherwise the gates of paradise are closed to a bomber. The shaming experience of living under Israeli occupation is also talked about. The first confirmed woman suicide bomber, Dareen Abu Eishi, persistently courted death, even when militant groups turned her away. 'She was a star English student, with a penchant for quoting Shakespeare, but the most important thing about her was her determination to die' (Goldenberg 2002: 5). Education and Shakespeare failed to direct such determination into more peaceful measures. Revenge is of course a key driver of the Al-Qaeda movement. A document reported in the Sunday Times (17 November 2002: 2) attacks America and its allies for supporting Israel, but also criticises US policy in Somalia, Kashmir and Lebanon:


If all these tragedies and mishaps form part of your attacks on us, then it must be legal and common sense that those who are attacked have the right to fight back . . . You should expect from us jihad, resistance and punishment. The document claims God has sanctioned such punishment, that they have the 'right' to attack and destroy not just villages and cities, but `the economy of those who have robbed our wealth and to kill civilians of the country which has killed ours'. Note how the economy is highlighted: this is not si mply a religious or ideological war, but an economic one. Civilians in America and elsewhere can be targeted because they `freely vote' for their political leader and voluntarily pay taxes that are used to conduct 'unjust wars' against Muslims. While in a multiparty state the majority may not in fact have voted for the leader, nor want their taxes spent on war, this is ignored by Al-Qaeda. It is a convenient justification for revenge. One can attack western democracy, economic domination, military might and nonbelief in Islam all in one go. Long historical 'memories' are implicated in revenge. Kate Adie comments on an interview with a Serb village librarian who was clutching a rifle, with a revolver in his belt and a knife in his boot. In his explanation of what happened the day before, he went back to 1943 at least, and also claimed foreign responsibility for the present-day woes. It was an object lesson and I heard it over the years from Croats, Serbs, Bosnians and Kosovans. Everything grew out of history — the theft of a cow, the burning of a village, the driving out of hundreds of thousands from what they had always thought of as home. The events of yesterday — the previous twenty-four hours, such a vital element in my journalistic tradition — were but a recent drop in the ocean in the mighty historical flow. How could you possibly talk of a few hours when centuries were clamouring to be heard? (Adie 2002: 250) History textbooks are prime candidates for an examination of how histories are constructed, in particular who were the victims and who the oppressors (developed more in Chapters 6 and 10). Not only may history books perpetuate the essentialism of the other, and hatred of the other, but they say little of the folly of revenge. Nor do economics textbooks, in terms of how cycles of revenge wars and killings in the end destroy the economies of both sides in a conflict. This is a huge (and puzzling) omission. While such extreme examples of cycles of retribution seem a long way from `normal' schooling, punishment has been, and remains, a key part of the ideology of 'discipline' in the institutions of education and family. A child who 'attacks' the system (by refusing to do homework, be punctual, be polite


to teachers) is subject to routine revenge by that system. The punishments are unrelated to the attack, and are about displays of power (the power of arbitrary arrest in the form of detention, even attacking all civilians by keeping the whole class in). (I will say more about the distinction between punitive/ retributive and restorative justice in Chapter 11.) People who want revenge do not by and large want peace or social change. I think it was Goethe who said, 'Distrust all those in whom the urge to punish is strong'. Punishment is a short-term destruction — whether of an economy, or of a child's ego. In schooling terms, revenge is an attack on identity. Education and difference There would seem to be two tasks for education in not contributing to the essentialist identities which can be mobilised for conflict: the acknowledgement of ambiguity, complexity and hybridity within an individual self, and si milarly, the avoidance of stereotyped portrayals of 'the other'. Unfortunately, much of the historical and contemporary evidence finds schools performing badly on both counts. The problem may take the form of a direct policy for schools which segregates, divides and hence leads to conflict, or of an indirect set of policies which have similar effects. In South Africa, as the classic example of direct policy, education was used to make basic tenets of apartheid normal and acceptable, and also then became a site for struggle (Christie 1985; Harber 2001a). In the Soweto riots, language and identity mixed with overcrowded classrooms and unemployment for black youth to create a highly volatile situation. In Northern Ireland, the denominationally divided education system has long been explored in terms of its role in creating and sustaining community division (Dunn and Morgan 1999). Surveys in the 1970s and early 1980s showed how little young people knew about their counterparts and how few opportunities there were for interactions — even if open hostility was rare. The Education Reform Order of 1989 and initiatives in Education for Mutual Understanding offered an official basis for support of integrated education; yet this generated a new set of problems. When success draws attention to these developments, they then become embroiled in multiple levels of the conflict. 'Any initiative is the subject of scrutiny from every section of the political spectrum and inevitably the object of attack by some' (Dunn and Morgan 1999: 150). A different form of ambiguous policy is that of quotas. In Rwanda, competition for secondary schools and highly selective boarding schools was fierce. The 'national' policy allowed the ministry to set quotas according to ethnic, regional and socio-economic background. This discriminated against the Tutsi and urban families and favoured the Hutu-dominated rural areas (Arnhold et al. 1998).

Pluralism and identity work 83 Some of the continuation of racism is indirect, or, again, Salmi's 'violence by omission'. More recent analyses of schooling in South Africa argue that schools continue racism by not tackling it, or by the composition of teachers (in South Africa 78 per cent white, 13 per cent Indian, 7 per cent coloured and 2 per cent African) in the ninety desegregated schools across the nine provinces. The South African Human Rights Commission Report revealed that:

Hundreds of respondents regard racism as part of their everyday experience. It is manifested in rhetoric, name-calling, stereotyping, labels and anxieties in the classroom, corridors, playgrounds and extracurricular events. Often racialisation is expressed when displays of masculinity become associated with the ability to use racially abusive language and where the exclusion of some learners from (for example) certain sports serves to signify masculine and racialised dominance. (Vally and Dalamba 1999: 57) In the UK, the link to conflict comes from what has been similarly referred to as 'institutional racism'. There have been many studies relating to the continuing gap between high- and low-achieving ethnic groups (Gillborn and Mirza 2000). There is over-representation of certain groups, particularly African-Caribbean, among pupils excluded from school (Osler 1997; Grant and Brooks 2000). Because of this phenomenon, there are debates about whether this is actually institutional racism or a 'macho' anti-learning street culture; but the fact remains that there is differential experience of schooling based on ethnicity and that this differential experience will not foster social cohesion. Various sorts of government funding earmarked for ethnic minority achievement have been criticised as enshrining a problematic view of black people, placing them outside the community in cultural and linguistic terms ( Grosvenor 1997) . It is admittedly a complex arena, and 'institutional racism' is perhaps too si mplistic a notion. Callender and Wright (2000) provide data from two separate programmes of research in the UK, one on white teachers' interactions with black African-Caribbean pupils, the other on black AfricanCaribbean teachers' classroom philosophies. There emerge intersections with gender and masculinity mentioned in Chapter 4: black boys recognised that they were more likely to experience negative attention from teachers because of their masculinity; they appeared to respond forcefully to the label of 'marginalised other' (through interactions and school treatment) and admitted to more vehement responses to such treatment than those of their female contemporaries. Yet twin processes of inclusion and exclusion were being played out, with black teachers indirectly encouraging empowerment. 'As a consequence, when Black pupils move from school to school, classroom to classroom and teacher to teacher they are positioned, repositioned and position themselves according to their racialised and gendered identities' (Callender



and Wright 2000: 233). In this sense, bifurcation is not necessarily occurring, but a creative process of identity formation, of 'self-organisation'. Where the bifurcation is more definitely taking place, and the threat to social cohesion is greater, is in de facto racialised schools. In Bradford, which was one scene of extreme ethnic tension after September 11th, Asian areas are segregated from white areas. Most schools are either mostly Asian or mostly white. One in four primary schools in Bradford is more than 70 per cent Asian, while half are totally white. One 15-year-old boy who goes to a school that is only one-third Asian reported, 'There's no mixing. There's just our gangs and their gangs.' A recent survey found that more than half of Bradford youth believed that they would never achieve their goals in life. Bradford City Council is therefore trying to set up a Youth Parliament to foster meetings from people of all backgrounds, and to twin schools who serve different communities. There are mixed-race football teams; and the local curry house is organising 'exchange visits' between Asian and white estates (Harris 2002). These attempts at some sort of mixing must be set against the growth of `faith-based' schools in the UK. This growth is fuelled by two interest groups: apparent evidence that religious denomination schools do better than secular schools and lobbies by Muslim parents for schools equivalent to voluntary aided state Christian schools. While the achievements of denominational schools are ambiguous, and student intake together with parental motivation certainly play a part, the simple but false equation being made is that more religious schools will raise standards. The Muslim lobby has an understandable set of arguments, that in a so-called multicultural Britain, they should have the same rights to state supported education as other religious groups. I would contend from all the international evidence of religious schools that this would be a highly regressive step. While religious schools will claim that they advocate tolerance of all faiths, nonetheless the central message is that their religion is so important that children must be educated separately from others, in order to maintain the mission. 'All faiths are equal but mine is more equal than others.' I would argue strongly that the only hope for education making a contribution to peace is a secular education which genuinely allows for religious difference while not privileging tin.e religion over others (or over a humanist or secular belief system). I would disagree with Tawil at this point. He talks of threats to social cohesion, related to the role of education. As an instrument in the process of nation-building, schooling destroys the traditional social bonds of the extended family, the clan or the group and institutes a direct relationship between individuals as citizens and the nation-state. Tension between the local culture and the national culture being imposed through schooling often leads to conflict. (2001: 295)

He mentions the collapse and reformulation of what Benedict Anderson (1983) called 'imagined communities' as at the heart of numerous internal armed conflicts, but indicts the schools here, in that the increasingly competitive and contradictory values, attitudes, beliefs and world views transmitted by schools and other agents of socialisation threaten social cohesion even further — especially as the relevance of the nation-state model of organisation to the lives of individuals and communities diminishes. I would agree about the competitive and contradictory values, but replacing these with 'imagined communities' of solid bounded religious groupings is a hostage to fortune. Gerald Grace, in his book on Catholic schools in England (2002), talks of the importance of 'spiritual capital'; yet Al-Qaeda also have spiritual capital, masses of it. Unless spiritual capital is set within a framework of universal human rights, then it can be yet another tool for domination in the same way as economic and cultural capital. Are multiculturalism and anti racism the answers? -

I want to examine now whether the varied educational strategies around pluralism solve the issue of identity formation without essentialism or the creation of 'the other'. During or after conflict (at local or national levels) there are three conventional approaches to 'race' and education: assimilation to the dominant group (as in Israel's 'melting pot' educational policy); multiculturalism (in South Africa, captured as the 'rainbow nation'); and antiracism (the active challenge to discrimination or injustice based on race, ethnicity or religion). I think there is a fourth, which I term ùneasy pluralis m'. This I found was the experience in BrCko in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where there was no_universal acceptance that the country was now multicultural, but recognition that they could not afford any more war. One policy problem is that the models of race relations often used in analyses of race and education stem from experiences of ,immigration rather than of civil war — it is difficult to expect tolerance and rainbow nation discourses when homes have been destroyed and families tortured and killed. At its best multiculturalism is an 'interruptive rhetoric' which destabilises the false liOniogeneity of the 'nation' and publicly highlights the fact that the political community is a complex cultural and ethnic aggregation of indigenous groups and immigrant settlers (Yuval-Davis and Werbner 1999). It is an important antidote to assimilationist tendencies of the nation-state; however, ironically, there is a danger that it can reify cultures and communities as internally homogenous, fixed and bounded collectivities, rather than constantly dynamic and merging. While we all use cultural resources of social networking and exchange to create connections and power, these cultural resources are not linked necessarily to òne culture' — if that exists. I am uneasy therefore with Parekh's (2000) image of `community of -


communities' as an ideal for the multicultural society: it still appears toreify `the community' as an identifiable source of bounded identity. Rather than multiculturalism, then, many working in or with the Council of Europe prefer the notion of 'interculturality', which looks at cultural relations and the more dynamic processes by which cultures and cultural titiCS ''hift through interaction (Camilleri (ed.) 1995). Yet the language of intercultural education can still stress 'otherness', as is sometimes found in Camilleri's collection — 'an appreciation of different cultures', 'approaches to other ways of life', 'communication between representatives of different cultures' — as if such cultures were solid enough to have representatives. The very identification of 'cultures' about which to learn and with which to interrelate can constitute an essentialist act. Here I would prefer to work within Homi Babha's (1994) case for acknowledgement of 'hybridity'. He challenges the constructions and èxoticisation' of multiculturalism and cultural diversity, which stress recognition of difference, and prefers admission of long histories of cultural and ethnic mixing. The 'hybrid subject' is to be valued for straddling multiple cultures and identities. We can see that this fits well with the agency and creativity of complexity theory, as the original 'is repeated as something different — a mutation, a hybrid . . . at once a mode of appropriation and of resistance [to the mother culture]' (Babha 1994: 111, 120). Many writers in Silva's collection on Sri Lanka draw on Babha, showing the 'hidden history' of hybridity of culture, art or music and challenging the notion of single or pure cultures. Hybridity inhabits what Babha calls the ìnbetween' space, or Silva's `cracks' of identity. It is an empowering force for individuals (except of course when outlawed in extreme nationalistic or purifying times). Hybridity has some connections with Gillborn's (1995) 'plastic ethnicity'. He cites the critiques of school anti-racism, which, like the multiculturalism before it, assumes that racists can be made to see the error of their ways by educationists who simply provide better or more rational explanations. Ethnographic studies of multiethnic schools have suggested that racism can actually be a feature of staffroom culture and teacher perspective (Mac an Ghaill 1988). Racism for Gillborn 'comes into play as a reflection of wider stereotypes and in the working through of institutional pressures (e.g. to keep order; to select and encourage "able" students; to control "troublemakers")' (Gillborn 1995: 11). He thus questions simplistic forms of antiracism as just about colour or white racism or black victims, or about simple redistributions of power, and draws attention particularly to the 'symbolic, moral and doctrinaire anti-racism' which the Burnage report criticised after the racist murder in Manchester in 1989. He prefers the notion of 'plastic ethnicity' to demonstrate the uncertainty of the interaction with class, gender and race, and to show how ethnicity is 'fluid' and 'moulded'. 'Hence, the young Muslims protesting on the streets of Bradford are no less implicated in the creative politicized reworking of ethnicity than "Blacks" and


87

"Coloureds" staking their place(s) in the new South Africa' (Gillborn 1995: 19). Presumably, if ethnicity is fluid and multidimensional, then strategies to counter ethnic oppression must be equally fluid and multidimensional. The attractor state of racism is a hard one to shift, and a massive information load will indeed be necessary. Also, it may be that economic differences and bifurcations take over in terms of causes of violence. One question then would be how anti-racism tackles migration. In globalisation terms, while the spread of particular economic ideologies can be a negative force (as I argued in Chapter 3), the spread of human rights as underpinnings for policy can be a positive force for peace. Increasing migrations and mobility of people (and languages) may be another. Admittedly, refugee populations and 'asylum seekers' will often mean the mobilisation of fearful racism by neo-Nazi groups, and may be seen as 'problematic' for schools. Yet in the longer term, intermixing can lead to useful hybridity. Singh (2002) reminds us that most first-generation Americans (or Australians or Brits) are fully versed in the dominant popular culture, even when their homes are a tight, conservative connection with 'the motherland'. 'They may encounter. racism and discrimination, but they still consider themselves Americarrs or Australians; they are Americans or Australians with a difference, and this difference is something only they can define' (Singh 2002: 135). This is an important insight. Education should not be in the business of defining people's creative working of difference for them, under simplistic portrayals or defences of 'mother culture'. Efforts to 'preserve' or 'celebrate' distinct cultures, as in some multicultural policies in the UK, may be counterproductive: it would be better to acknowledge hybridity as a positive identity, not as a source of tension or reductionism to a lowest common denominator. Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses were shocking to some in their challenge to purity, celebrating instead hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, peoples, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelization and fears the absolutism of the pure. Melange, hotchpotch, a bit of this and that, is how newness enters the world. It is the great possibility that mass migration gives the world. ( Rushdie 1991, quoted in Rajasingham-Senanayake 2002: 45) This identification of 'how newness enters the world' is complexity theory's èmergence'. The favourite food in England at the moment is apparently Tikka Masala. But only we in Birmingham could have invented the Tikka Masala Balti Pizza. With chips. English, on the other hand, is the Tikka Masala (or McDonald's) of the linguistic world. While there are concerns about globalisation and the imperialism of 'international' languages, I would argue they are within themselves



great hybrids and have a force for creative working of both differenee--and unity. Feuer Verger, while talking of the importance of bilingualism few Jewish and Arab Israelis, also comments on how English is perceived as essential by both sides: -

of the nation for which it speaks several hundred years into the past and claims the same long life for national traditions — even when these traditions may be barely one century old. Rajasingham-Senanayake (2002) usefully breaks down the 'invention of modern national histories into three strands: a) selective forgetting of culturally mixed and hybrid pasts; b) constructing authentic, pure and stable present 'ethnic' identities; and c) projecting far hack in time scientific identity categories and classifications that are essentially modern socia-political formations. Werbner and Yuval-Davis (1999) would perhaps aclil or incorporate emotional invention to this, the evocation of sentimental beauty of landscape, cuisine, music and language as well as sacrifices of national heroes and collective moments of joy, mourning and extreme danger — all deep passions. The question is whether the citizenship or civic education curriculum can do much to challenge nationalist subjectivities and identities — whether it would have the emotional appeal and 'passion'. In being a 'citizen of the state' or even a 'global citizen', do both nationality and citizenship then imply 'imagined communities'? Nations are imagined 'because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion' (Anderson 1983: 6). Whether nationalism is a force for good or ill depends on its exclusionary or open nature, and what sort of regime it generates. Citizenship may be the same. Will citizenship acknowl; edge real hybridity, or become another superficial ragbag of unchallenged pure states'? And will the twenty-first century be a century of regionalism as the twentieth century was of nationalism? (Clements 2001). The key dilemma is the treatment of difference. Citizenship is supposed to provide a set of common universals. Implicit in it is a charter for human rights which envisages a 'humanity without frontiers'. For Heater (1990), the idea and practice of citizenship derives from 'identity and virtue', with identity based on social reciprocity and sharing of 'common interests, territory and pride'. This sounds dangerous; yet while Heater acicnowledges that citizenship is only one among many identities that an individual may feel, he claims its exercise can- satisfy our identity needs and has the potential to! moderate the 'divisive passions' of other identities that can generate intense„ emotions and antagonism, such as nationalist conflicts, religious wars, racist persecution, or subjugation of women. It is the 'political identity par exee i-' lence' (Heater 1990: 2). This sounds exemplary, although I am not clear that we yet have evidence of this. Can we spot citizenship at 100 yards, and distinguish it from nationalism? Citizenship education programmes will be based on this ideal, but we do not know it works, and 'tames passions'. What sort of research would enable the distinction between those with a predominantly citizen identity and those with a national one? Heater does argue that the national culture must come to embrace, though not suffocate, the group culture; but he also -

Its cultural imperialism is accepted by both sides, like it or not. Israelis are pragmatists; there is wholehearted agreement in this vision: English is neither yours nor mine; it is what we all need to succeed. English traniscends the conflict, the cultural borders, the animosity. English is the world. (Feuerverger 2001: 76) Where the imperialism might occur more would be in insisting on 'standard' forms instead of acceptance of Malaysian English, Taiwanese English or Mexican English. 'Possession' of English can of course be a source of differentiation and status (hence th--g-rowth of language schools); but this is so only ifwe curatirme -to demand ure' fowls— This has the same mythology as ethnic purity — and the same source of tension. —

From nationalism to citizenship

I want finally to look at whether citizenship education will resolve issues around identity, culture and difference. -Citizenship education has been revived for a number of contemporary reasons, many linked to real or p Otential conflict. Fogelman (1997) cites low levels of participation in local and national elections; a perceived rise in intolerance, xenophobia and racism; and the apparent alienation and marginalisation of some young people from mainstream society. Is then this new emphasis on citizenship education an antidote to extreme nationalism or to factionalism within a citizenry? Will it address the dangers of a facile multiculturalism? Much civic education or citizenship education has been geared to the strengthening of _the...nation)sta te, and to patriotism (Davies 2000b). This would seem dangerous for our concerns about national and international conflict. An emphasis on being !BriOsh', for example, immediately_saises questions about who belongs, as well as implying a superiority over other nationalities. It may play down other categories of difference and exploitation within a 'nation', such as gender (Manse 2000). It is interesting that nationalism is a comparatively recent phenomenon, in its strongest sense. Its emergence was a major political force in the nineteenth century, with the need for a larger identity than the village. The continued vitality in the late twentieth century seems to owe much to the impact of major socio-economic change, such as the collapse of state socialism in the former USSR and Eastern Europe (Smith 2001). Yet as was noted with regard to collective identity, nationalism almost always projects the existence -

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'90 Roots of conflict: implications for education

argues that we should rid ourselves of the obsession with the 'nation-state', and see citizen identity as applied at various levels through the national, the regional to the global. This seems to have parallels with the distinction made by McLaughlin and Jucevicience between civic nationalism and ethnic nationalism: Civic nationalism is democratic in character, envisaging_ the nation as a community of equal, rights-bearing citizens, patriotically attached to a shared set of political practices and values. In contrast, ethnic nationalis m sees national identity as based on ethnicity rather than citizenship and law. While civic nationalism can be rational, flexible, pluralistic and morally rich, ethnic nationalism is tempted by irrationality, fanaticism and authoritarianism. It is more likely to be 'nationalistic' in the sense of the term which implies the inherent superiority of one nation over others.;'' ( McLaughlin and Jucevicience 1997: 27) Miller in fact argues for the complementary juxtaposition of nationality and citizenship, since 'nationality gives people the common identity . . . to conceive of shaping their world together. Citizenship gives them the practical means of doing so' (1992: 94). But within citizenship, what are the 'practical' ways of tackling difference? Unterhalter (1999) argues that writers on democracy and education such as Patricia White have developed a notion of citizenship (and therefore education for citizenship) that fails to take account of difference. The tendency is to view citizenship in terms of universals that everyone, despite or because of their differences, should try to recognise and respect. There are strengths to this approach, but also problems. It tends to represent education as a homogenising process, where difference (such as gender) is viewed as an obstacle to be overcome. Difference can be empowering or it can be disempowering, but the universalist view proposes either 'tolerance' (and a suspension of critique) or accommodation with dominant paradigms: 'Neither approach subjects citizenship, education or difference to critical scrutiny; education is always linear, citizenship always the goal and difference always somehow deviant or marginal' (Unterhalter 1999: 104). Unterhalter's critique of linear causality and ignoring the richness of education's complexity 'even for the worthy objective of citizenship and equality' resonates with critiques of school effectiveness mentioned in Chapter 2. Werbner and Yuval-Davis's approach to democratic citizenship is much more about ambiguity and contestation, not bland commonalities. Democratic citizenship as a social and political construct . . . opens up spaces and arenas of freedom — of conflict, unpredictability, intimacy, the right to be different — while restricting and structuring these spaces

by procedural hedges about limits. It orders conflict, channels and tames it; it labels and classifies collective differences; it determines how, where and when difference may legitimately be 'represented', and who counts as 'different' in the political arena, itself a social construct. Citizenship defines the limit of state power and where a civil society or the private sphere of free individuals begins. (Werbner and Yuval-Davis 1999: 2) Flow to translate that into a curriculum would then be the big contemporary challenge. Is this the concept of 'service'? Much civic education material coming out of the USA talks of 'service to America' (e.g. CNCS 2002). Yet D'Amico (2000) rejects some of the current martial, social or maternal models of citizenship in the USA and argues instead for a concept of 'pluralist citizenship' attending not only to the legal equality of individuals but also to diversity and human rights for all in the larger global society. The interesting point about D'Amico's analysis, which moves it on from vague notions of global citizenship, is the subversion: she rejects a simple enforced 'national service' because it remains service to the state rather than to other people in communities. Rather, civic or community service (not as a sentence for those convicted of crimes, which delegitimises service) or work in a service profession should be recognised as an act of citizenship, as should public dissent and civil disobedience, which clearlyt 'a.ke seriously the responsibility of the citizen to hold the state accountable for its actions. (D'Amico 2000: 119) .

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This has interesting implications on two counts: firstly that teachers would t hen be recognised as engaged in 'acts of citizenship' through their profession; but secondly, that they might have to teach skills of public dissent and civil disobedience, in order to encourage future generations to insist on the accountability of the state. This is not part of the current National Curriculum in England, and indeed, I could see a proportion of teachers at least being wary of such promotion. But it is a lovely idea. From all the above discussion, citizenship education therefore will be an improvement on nationalistic education only if it: (a) values hybridity and plastic ethnicity, including regional and global identities (b) has a critical approach to difference, enabling analysis of when this is valuable or destructive for individuals, groups and social cohesion (c) promotes skills and dispositions towards public dissent as well as public service.


Part III

Conclusion

the balance sheet of education for conflict or peace, I would then indict schooling on many counts: segregated education, whether by ethnicity or religion; creation of 'identity hurt'; perpetuation of essentialist notions of `the other'; reinforcement of acceptance of revenge; and promotion of nationalism. Yet while this chapter has shown how pluralism can be a source of conflict, it has also indicated how conflict and hybridity can be sources of creative working towards peace. The search for identity is inevitable, but is easily harnessed into antagonistic, dualistic attitudes; education has instead to valorise how we are all 'special' in the way that we creatively put together a number of different markers to form and reform our own complex, hybrid identity. At a national level, complexity similarly shows how divisions traverse each other: class alliances cut across region or ethnicity; gender alliances cut across nationality or class; religious associations cut across ethnicity or region; political parties unite people otherwise divided by race or religion. 'Strategic essentialism' may be useful — mobilising temporarily around an identity in order make a protest (such .as gay or green rights) — but this is tactical, not rigid, and should in fact draw together diverse groupings. Paradoxically, then, conflict sustains a widensolidarity. Yet to counter essentialism and the fracturing of particularism, some ground rules are necessary — and I will argue in Chapter 12 that these come from democracy and rights. Constant dialogue across difference requires procedural frameworks, Figuera's 'critical respect' being just one. Citizenship education may provide this mix of hybridity and of rules essential for a peaceful working out of dissent, but much will depend on its interpretation and appropriation for particular ends. On

The education/war interface

Chapter 6

The effects of violence on educational institutions

This group of three chapters looks at the interactive, mutual effects between social conflict and education, beginning in this chapter with how conflict affects education and moving on in the next two chapters to how education can affect conflict. Just as the types of violence in a society will be reflected in school (Salmi 1999), the types of conflict will be reflected too. If it is ethnic conflict, then we will see ethnic tension in schools, or between students of separated schools/systems. If it is an arms culture, this will percolate schools. Repressive systems, where human, civil or women's rights are ignored, are hardly likely to have schools characterised by a respect for children's rights. Fearful societies have fearful schools. Yet while it would appear obvious that violent conflict must affect all social institutions, of particular interest to the notion of complex adaptive systems is that of adjustment and mutation. After outlining the various dimensions of effect — infrastructural and psychological — this chapter examines the notion of 'resilient schools': how some schools remain opeiational even in the midst of extreme conflict or danger. This will tell us something about the way a system responds to threat. I nfrastructural effects

Save the Children argue that children are damaged by war on at least three interrelated levels. First is the direct experience of war or violence against themselves or the adults who care for them. Second is the damage done to society round them, through which their ability to learn and develop is mediated because of the loss of security and sense of their place in the world. Finally is the disruption to educational opportunities, in that conflict destroys schools and school systems as well as people (Molteno el al. (eds) 1999). In some countries, schools and universities aresspecific military targets, the most striking examples shelling of the University of Sarajevo being one (Arnhold et al. 1998). The University of Pristina and the National Library in Kosovo were also badly hit by the war, although, as I observed, some of the decline in the buildings was because of neglect or occupation by soldiers.

96 The education/war interface

Educational institutions are often appropriated for other uses, such as military purposes, administrative use or refugee shelters. In Iraq, 5,500 (40 per cent) of the educational institutions were destroyed following the hostilities of the Gulf War 1991-2, sometimes from military action, but more often from looting or vandalism (Arnhold et al. 1998). The Iraq War of 2003 also saw looting of educational buildings, including museums. One principal in Kosovo talked to me of returning to take over his old school in July 1999 at the end of the NATO bombing. It is a graphic portrayal. Me and three or four other teachers met together, we came to the school, the door was locked. We didn't know what we would find inside. The military had been here during the air strikes. A cleaner, a refugee from Croatia, was here, living in one of the rooms. KFOR were nearby, and we asked them to come in with us. We thought there might be bombs. The classrooms were also locked, and we unlocked them with knives. We found signs of the military, uniforms . . . There wasn't much physical damage. Some materials had been taken — the computers, the printers, the photocopier. But we found some furniture — it had been taken from the shops by the military. . . . In September we started the school. The biggest challenge was we didn't know whether staff were alive, or the pupils. There was some information that one of the 16 year old students had been massacred. Many students had lost parents, and we did not know how to contact them, how to help them. In the private houses, all the documentation had been burned. So we had to make a new register according to how the teachers had remembered names. We see a destruction that was more than physical, encompassing systems, knowledge, networks in learning. Registers may seem a bureaucratic feature, but they are at least a list of who belongs and who should belong. In Somalia in the early 1990s, apart from the destruction of school buildings, all educational records were wiped out. Teachers left the profession en masse, and market traders would wrap their packages in pages torn from school textbooks. In Rwanda, schools were used as congregation points for mass killings; others were looted, occupied or mined by retreating soldiers to claim more victims and deter reuse (UNESCO 1999). The violation of 'the place of learning' seems particularly horrific in situations of genocide. The first target of the genocide in Rwanda was Tutsi men and boys. 'Educated Tutsi men and women were particularly targeted as the university was "cleansed"' (Arnhold et al. 1998: 48). Survivors of the genocide reported that in some cases teachers murdered children who attended their own classes. Schools were sought out as sanctuaries at the height of the genocide, only to become the scene of some of the worst massacres.

Effects of violence on educational institutions

97

Graham-Brown (1991) describes the common and disparate effects of conflict on education in Mozambique, Nicaragua, Sudan, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, South Africa and Namibia. Migration from rural war zones to the cities caused overcrowded classrooms, shift systems and the need for accelerated primary schools at night for those children who were working. For Mozambique and Nicaragua, efforts at transformation after liberation struggles were then overtaken by further destabilisation. In terms of infrastructure, it appears impossible to disentangle the combined effects of war and economic crisis, although effects specifically of war are the terrorising and brutalisation of children, as well as mutilation. In war zones in Nicaragua, the danger for teachers of being identified with the government were exemplified by the numbers of 'popular teachers' who were killed or kidnapped by the Contras. There is however an interesting comment by Wright (1997) on the 'abduction' of teachers and students by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone. There is apparently an 'unusually high proportion' of exteachers and ex-students in its ranks — suggesting an element of free will. 'It is indeed one of the most cruel ironies of the rebel war that as the nation turns in on itself in conflict, so much of its useful human resource is being used to destroy so much that has been achieved in the past' (Wright 1997: 25). And reintegration of teacher-soldiers will perhaps be even more difficult than reintegration of child soldiers — although Chapter 7 will argue that a lot of schools across the world have teacher-soldiers anyway. Conflict continues to affect schooling on a daily basis in some countries. In January 2001, during the second intifada, teachers in Palestinian areas told British MPs that they were struggling to maintain a normal curriculum because pupil numbers had been affected by arrests of children by Israeli soldiers as well as by injuries and some violent deaths. On the days of big Palestinian demonstrations, attendance at schools was neglible and Israeli shelling prevented many pupils and teachers leaving home. Israeli security checkpoints often stopped them reaching school if they risked the streeets. One school near Bethlehem was missing twenty-one children, all in prison. Pictures of child 'martyrs' appear on almost every wall in the school, and at another school a home-made poster, possibly the result of an English lesson, read 'Big shame, Israeli soldiers enjoy killing Palestinians'. At the Bethlehem school, the manager was able to fill a large bag with CS grenades, tear-gas canisters, plastic and rubber-coated bullets collected from his playground (Abrams 2001). There are long-term effects on the governance and staffing of education. Save the Children reported in 1998 for Sri Lanka that only 76 per cent of schools were functioning. It was difficult to overcome the problem of children uprooted from their homes. If the war came to an end, it would be possible to spend one-third more on education. But with no hopes of cessation, the burden falls on the schools. In another publication, Save the Children admit


that despite the overwhelming case for international agency support, the record of provision is still very patchy. Civil war creates the most difficult environment in which to support sustainable civil actions. Buildings may be destroyed, the people who might use them may have to flee, the authorities that might in times of peace be expected to manage them now have urgent agendas in which running schools hardly features; and they may in fact be incapable of governing in the normal sense because their legitimacy as a government is under threat, or there are rival authorities, or none. ( Molteno et al. 1999: 95) This can be accompanied by the exodus of well-trained people to foreign countries. The universites of Sarajevo and Pristina both suffered this. In Bosnia, the ministry of education (Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina 2000) reported that during the war, many teachers fled their place of residence heading for third countries or they changed their working posts (particularly foreign language teachers). Whether academics return depends at least in part on the future the country holds: the brain drain is worse in poor countries such as Rwanda (Arnhold et al. 1998). Refugee students are also increasing, with their own set of financial and integration problems. The other legacy of civil war can be a divided education system which is then difficult to reintegrate. The official sixty-three page description of the education system of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina has only a very brief section on 'Education in the War Period', with a terse paragraph describing how during the war, the education system was broken down into three parallel and independent education systems: Significant differences emerged in curricula, especially in terms of teaching native language and literature, history, geography, music and arts. In spite of difficult, sometimes dangerous, life and working conditions during the war, the teaching in almost all parts of the country was continuously delivered. (Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina 2000: 8) In fact, it was later found by practitioners and consultants during curriculum harmonisation that the differences were quite small. While nationalistic textbooks had started to be used (as I discuss more in Chapter 7), given the history of centralised curriculum under communism in the region the syllabus did not differ vastly, with the major differences being in the number of classes allocated to a topic, or whether a topic was covered in seventh grade or eighth grade. Textbooks (and presumably the teaching) did contain biased and sometimes inflammatory material regarding other groups, but the methods of teaching language and literature, and the goals of schooling,

Effects of violence on educational institutions 99

were almost identical. Yet during the 'harmonisation' period, while the teachers from the three groups were working together very amicably, there was still insistence that they were three 'nations', and that national songs and ` mother tongue' should be retained. Is it ever possible to return to pre-conflict harmony? Trauma and long - term psychological effects

In parallel to infrastructural and economic impacts, those working in the therapy arena will speak of the short-term and long-term psychological effects of violence, in terms of trauma:Armed conflict has a disproportionate impact on the children in the areas affected by it. While traumatised children are initially a byproduct of violence, eventually they threaten the future stability of any community, since they have no way to deal with feelings triggered by the war, except through disturbed behaviour. This itself reduces social stability, making the entire community vulnerable to outside pressures. (Buwalda 1996: 67) In Sri Lanka, a survey was conducted of several hundred school children in three different districts affected by armed conflict — the first investigation of the seventeen-year war's psychological impact on Sri Lankan children (Chase 2002). In Battacaloa District, the child's family life involved household displacement, orphanhood, separation and loss from refugee migration, extreme poverty and the absence of care providers (mainly women) who are working in the Gulf States. The district is known for high rates of suicide and recruitment to militant groups. Over 40 per cent of children had personally experienced conflict related violence (e.g. home attacked or shelled, being shot at, beaten or arrested). Over 50 per cent had close family members killed violently, including disappearance of a family member following abduction or detention. Severe levels of post-traumatic psychological distress were found. Severe stress-related disease has been reported from refugee camps in Rwanda (Arnhold et al. 1998). Even in a supportive environment, some children may never recover from war. Cairns (1996) does show how some children appear resilient to long-term trauma from violence, but other studies reveal how early experiences of violence and abuse can do irreparable damage to the human brain, particularly in the centres of emotional regulation and memory, increasing the likelihood of aggressive behaviour in adulthood (Teicher 2002). An interview with a school principal in Kosovo in November 2001, after formal schools had resumed for about sixteen months, revealed that certain features still characterised current teaching: stress and trauma; family

1 00 The education/war interface

breakdown that had occurred during the war; the issue of relationships between school and the family and community; and the fact that young people who had been abroad during the conflict were not familiar with `things here'. A history teacher in the school talked of it taking one month to `calm' the students because of stress, with the need to work in special groups. The teachers were traumatised and stressed as well, and needed 'to be worked with'. An interesting comment was that 'we cannot maintain discipline as we would like'. Instead the teachers had to be close to the pupils, and convince them what to do. This may in fact be a positive move, as the i mplication was that strict and external discipline would not work for traumatised pupils (as it may not for non-traumatised pupils either). Pyschological reconstruction appears to be a long-term process, requiring long-term commitment from aid and educational agencies; it has to be remembered that teachers too need psychological support. Attitudes to war and to nation

This leads to concern about attitudes and values. Richman asks the questions How are children affected when they are exposed to stereotyped images about other ethnic, religious or social groups, which lead to fear and distrust and can be exploited for factional reasons? . . . What is the result of indoctrination used to reinforce national identity and ideas of hatred and revenge, and of role models who are violent? ( Richman 1993: 1289) Punamaki (1983) conducted revealing studies in this area, investigating attitudes of three samples of 11-year-old Palestinian children in the Occupied Territories, Israeli Aran children and Israeli Jewish children. She found that the first group had experienced more violence and loss, but that all groups were generally favourably inclined towards war. Approval of war as a means to solve problems was especially noticed among those Palestinian children who had suffered most. Interestingly, there were no gender differences, perhaps because both sexes were actively involved in conflict. In another Palestinian study (Kanaaneh and Netland 1992), children who scored highest on measures of 'national behaviour' and 'national identity' were those who had been exposed to the most political violence. National sentiment seems to act as a buffer against depression and anxiety in the face of a chronically frustrating situation. Richman comments that it would be of interest to know how 'nationalist attitudes' relate to actual behaviour, and whether they persist once the violence stops. But a study of Palestinian adolescents found violence becoming the norm. Domestic violence was widely accepted as part of Palestinian culture, and upbringing would involve parental violence. Teachers who were respected


by both students and parents were those who hit their pupils. Twenty-four per cent of the young people reported having been beaten by Israeli soldiers; only 3 per cent had never participated in street confrontations with Israeli troops. Thirty-nine per cent had participated in school fights, 14 per cent admitted to bullying other students and 93 per cent had damaged school property. Student accounts suggested that violent behaviour is imitative and connected with experiences of violence and aggression from Israeli troops, as well as within the home and school. It was a seamless web (Abuateya 2001). Yet this is not just in overtly conflictual societies. Social violence reaches into the school, for example in a country like the USA: where gun violence has become a major public health hazard, schools are not immune. In many urban schools, passing through a metal detector is the first daily 'educational' experience of a student. Police officers and dogs on patrol are part of the regular school landscape. High school killings have increased (Salmi 1999). Harber (2000) discusses graphically how schools are affected by violence in South Africa. The culture of violence in the society is the result of forty years of gross economic and political inequality (classic bifurcation); of social dislocation caused by the displacement of whole communities; of violent repression by the apartheid state unavoidably precipitating violent resistance to it; of the widespread availability of guns; and of partiarchal values and behaviours. Thus the daily press regularly carry articles about children seeing teachers or principals gunned down or police rescuing besieged schools from rampaging pupils, or organised gangs coming onto school premises. This far surpasses the violence which is reported in some US schools. South African youth may be desensitised and acculturated to violence as a way of life. Child soldiers

A particular form of 'acculturation' is found in child soldiers. Article 38 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations 1989) states that it is 'the obligation of States to respect and ensure respect for humanitarian law as it applies to children. . . . [N]o child under 15 [should] take a direct part in hostilities or be recruited into the armed forces'. The reality is that wars around the world increasingly involve child soldiers, despite this prohibition. This involves everything from serving as spies to walking through minefields. The status involved is significant: Wright reports how young people once on the fringes of society were now thrust into centre stage as rebel fighters: 'what many failed to achieve through the process of schooling was now being realised as society looked up to them to determine the outcome of the civil strife' (Wright 1997: 26). Children may see soldiering as a means of finding security, protecting themselves from victimisation, or supporting a liberation struggle; others are coercively recruited, subjected to physical abuse and forced to commit acts of violence against their families or home communities (Miller and Affolter 2002). Once captured, they would be forced


to commit an atrocity that would sever ties with their community. They would be told that refusal would be met with death. Imperviousness soon sets in. A 15-year-old ex child soldier (who had been a child soldier for five years) explained 'I was scared the first time my commander ordered me to shoot someone. But once I discovered how easy it was to kill, it didn't bother me any more' (Arnhold et al. 1998). As many as 15,000 boys, some as young as six, served as soldiers in Liberia's seven-year civil war that ended in 1997. Similarly, during the Iran/Iraq war in the 1980s, youths spearheaded attacks at the war front in response to a promise that if killed they would go straight to heaven (Rihani 2002). Miller and Affolter quote an 11-year-old former child combatant in the RUF, Sierra Leone: I was ordered to kill an old woman. When I refused, I was tied up and beaten. They threatened to shoot me instead. Then I did something to her. It happened in some village nearby. I took part in burning four huts there, and later burned five elsewhere. I didn't want that either. ( Miller and Affolter 2002: 16) They then relate: In the other corner of the room, another trauma worker talks with a 10-year old girl, who is still unable to sit properly after several months of sexual abuse by the rebels. . . . Many of the children were present when their parents were killed. ( Miller and Affolter 2002: 16) According to one United Nations survey in Rwanda in 1996, one in three children who were interviewed admitted to seeing children killing other children during the civil war (Arnhold et al. 1998). UNICEF (1989) in their book Children on the Front Line also raise the problem of children coming to know a lot about adult behaviour during the war, with this knowledge a burden during the subsequent process of realignment of power between families. Once hostilities cease, child soldiers face dual challenges — the pain they have endured and the pain they have inflicted. They may be ostracised or rejected or stigmatised by community; they have their own trauma; and they may respond aggressively to others. They may return to violence as a means of fulfilling their needs. In Monrovia, up to 60 per cent of school children are former child soldiers who often resorted to violence as a means to solve their problems. They may have been given drugs to dull pain and conscience, and to enable them to commit violent acts, and may be addicted. The very structures to help the former child soldiers regain a sense of normalcy, such as families, schools, community groups or traditional societies, may have been ravaged by the war. Interestingly, 70 per cent of children in


Liberia said that they thought returning to school would be the best way to rebuild their lives, but the national education system lay in tatters (Miller and Affolter 2002). In the next chapter, we look more specifically at how the 'training' of child soldiers is brutally conducted. The damage would seem irreparable. Yet Chapter 10 is able to describe some of the valuable work done with child soldiers by humanitarian and educational agencies to begin the process of healing or demilitarisation. This leads to the question of resilience. Resilient schools/children

Save the Children talk of the potential of education to foster resilience, using the three levels of damage to the individual, the society and the school system. At the individual level, they pinpoint criticism of the 'therapeutic' or `trauma' model. One reason is that scale makes it impractical — no one denies that civil war is traumatising, but potentially the entire population can be designated as in some degree trauma affected. More fundamentally, the individualism of western therapeutic responses sits poorly in many cultures in which it is far from normal to encourage children to talk about their anxieties. 'While individual children may respond well at the moment of receiving such support, they are unlikely to receive ongoing support from adults in their community to carry that through, and the end result may be more damaging than therapeutic' (Save the Children 1998: 92). They therefore look for more collective ways to respond. In Lebanon, support was mediated through many different groups in society, strengthening the adults as well as the children. In Liberia, where the children had no community, the approach was to create safe 'spaces' (social as much as physical) which could to some extent substitute for the loss of a secure wider society. The aim here is that children eventually go out from this protected environment back into the disrupted world in which they will have to survive in the longer term. This is a very important point: the notion of 'post-traumatic stress disorder' i mplies some defining event which is now over, and that helping children through this will integrate them back into normal society. This is not the case for many conflict situations, and survival skills are more crucial. A major question is resilient or sustainable for how long? In Lebanon, no one predicated that a political solution would take more than fifty years: a sustained input to the same communities on the same programmes is not normal practice because of the danger of creating both human and financial dependency ( Molteno et al. (eds) 1999). As Lisa Payne Points out in her book Rebuilding Communities in a Refugee Settlement (1998), settlement programmes — in contrast to refugee transit camps — seek to provide an opportunity for refugees to become more independent, by giving them a chance to develop their own livelihoods and integrating them within the official structures and systems of the host population.

104 The education/war interface The construction of schools is part of this settlement, together with health centres, boreholes and roads. The book traces the three to four years of the Ikafe/Imvepi settlement in a remote corner of Uganda up to 1998. It was a period of huge insecurity, because of West Bank Nile Front (WBNF) armed rebel incursions into the camp as well as threats to the agencies running it. While it seemed impossible that refugees could be thinking of anything beyond safeguarding their personal property and lives, some apparently longer-term issues remained important — such as education. It was common to be told that refugees stayed on in Uganda throughout all the troubles si mply to educate their children. Many schools in southern Sudan were not operating, and even when they were, pupils might be abducted to fight in the army or the SPLA; higher classes had to be taught in Arabic, which discriminated against many of the southern Sudanese children. So ensuring that children got an education of some sort was such a high priority for most refugees that schools continued to function throughout the insecurity. Temporary centres were established without any materials whatsoever, and it was only the very young children who were kept away, by parents being afraid of being separated from them in case of an attack.

Effects of violence on educational institutions

105

war. Even if the structure and content of the education system would be forced to change in order to accommodate to an often brutal and dangerous environment, schools in some form would continue to be a source of stability. . . They [those mobilised to teach] had to depend on their teaching instincts. . . [T]hey had to improvise and innovate out of necessity. . . [I]n many ways, decisions about what to do in a school, including what should be the structure of a school under conflict, fell on these individual teachers. Teachers became school makers in ways that before April 1992 seemed unimaginable. (Cohen 1998: 149)

Children even continued to attend classes in one Point [community] after four girls had been abducted (and two raped) from their school by WNBF rebels. Students sat through their Primary Leavers Examination with armed WNBF rebels walking up and down the aisles as they wrote. (Payne 1998: 47)

Similarly, Miller and Affolter observe of Project DiaCom in Bosnia how while teachers were not responsible for the war, they took responsibility for promoting peace. 'It is a powerful moment for de facto decentralisation, when former dependency on central authority transforms into reliance on self and i mmediate community' (Miller and Affolter 2002: 88). Other community members can become involved in teaching (although this may raise questions about certification and compensation vis-a-vis government trained teachers). An instructive account of Nepal by Riseth (2002) concerned the uprising of the Maoists against the government, which involved atrocities and brutal killings. Here it was the headmaster who was resilient. The Maoists had killed about thirty teachers, and demanded that the school close. They wanted the children to join them instead, and made them carry their ammunition. The Maoists were insisting that the children follow their educational agenda.

Kate Adie talks of Gadaffi's revolutionary zeal in Libya, and his attempt to abolish all sorts of things — savings accounts, ownership of more than one house, tourism, luxury cars and barber's shops. 'However, when he announced the end of primary schools, in the belief that parents didn't do enough to educate their own children, tempers got a little frayed' (Adie 2002: 286). Here education remained resilient, one assumes.

` We do as they say. They might have to listen to a speech by one of the leaders or sing their songs. . . . We are being pressured from both sides. The Maoists suspect us, and the army wants us to tell them where the Maoists are. But we don't know. The Maoists killed 2 teachers here 2 months ago. The Maoists said that one of them was with them, but he was not.'

Once, in a move of genuine radicalism, he did away with the police — an experiment which lasted just a few hours. However, he sneaked in a curious experiment in which he dressed children in police uniforms to control traffic. They proved to be remarkably effective. (Adie 2002: 286)

Two other teachers have fled to India, and the head also has to pay 200 rupees monthly to the Maoists, with others paying more — usually one day's salary out of every month. Unusually, he is not afraid to speak out against them:

But a key to resilience is of course the teachers. Cohen relates of Bosnia: During the war, teachers, like many educators, serving in various capacities throughout the system, made conscious decisions to keep schools functioning. They expressed a powerful belief that education was one of the foundations of life in a stable society and should remain so in time of

`The uprising was initiated because the rebel leaders wanted their share. Ordinary people don't support them. Some join to take revenge in personal matters. It is difficult to find work here. If you join them and carry a few boxes and shoot, you get a salary. There has also been some forced recruitment. Some also join because they share the ideology. Our future looks very dark.' ( Riseth 2002: 22)


Here the head was playing a very difficult balancing game, realistically acceding to Maoist demands while trying to keep the school open. This is extreme adaptation. The classic example of resilience is of course the parallel system in Kosovo ( Davies 1999a). The Serbian government abolished the parliamentary autonomy of Kosovo in 1989 and transferred rule over the province, including its education system, to Belgrade. In 1990 a series of laws were passed mandating a unified curriculum to be taught exclusively in the Serbian language. All ethnic Albanian primary school principals were replaced by Serbs. Approximately 6,000 teachers were dismissed in 1990 for having taken part in demonstrations against the government, and the rest were dismissed when they refused to comply with a new Serbian curriculum which largely eliminated the teaching of Albanian literature and history. Twelve thousand primary teachers lost their jobs in one day. Ethnic shifts were introduced in previously desegregated schools, with Serbian students having classes in the morning and Albanian students in the afternoon. Alternatively, the primary schools were physically divided, sometimes with brick walls or metal fences down the middle. Numerically, Serb students constituted about 10 per cent on average, but they still occupied more than half the time or half the premises. The Albanian students' classrooms were not financed, equipped or heated by the state; some schools were completely closed to Albanian pupils. By 1991, the 'defiant' teachers and professors — including most of the personnel at 68 secondary and 400 primary schools — stopped receiving their salaries from the Serbian state. Albanians were excluded from school and university buildings and not allowed to use the National Library. Over 100,000 Albanian books were pulped. The reaction to what was seen as 'foreign occupation' by Serbs was the establishment of what came to be called the 'parallel education system', which continued from 1991 to 1999. Albanian teachers and lecturers set up their own Albanian language education system in private houses, cellars, garages and small areas of existing educational buildings. By 1995 approximately 375,000 school students at all levels including special education, and 12,200 university students in 20 faculties were studying in the shadow system, with about 20,000 teachers. Numbers declined as the decade wore on, but even by the end, there were still an estimated 267,000 Kosovan Albanian children in parallel schools. It was a classic example of 'self-organisation' in complexity terms. The financing was self-organised. Contributions were collected in the form of a tax, raised through trade unions and the parallel tax authorities, and were supplemented by aid from the USA and other western countries. The curriculum was inevitably one to promote Albanian nationalism, importing textbooks from Albania. The parallel schools, while openly conducted and therefore officially tolerated, were at the same time subject to repression. Teachers and organisers were frequently subjected to arrest, intimidation and


beatings by the Serb police — particularly at the end of the school year when examinations were being taken. It is admitted in all quarters that the parallel system suffered many difficulties, and should not be romanticised. Apart from the physical conditions, parts of the curriculum were out of date, senior teachers very old and younger ones left their jobs because of unstable incomes. Schools tended to be run by party directives through a political cadre. Teaching methods were often authoritarian and sometimes brutal, and motivation was hard to sustain. Yet the parallel schools were a massively important symbol of both liberation and competence. By demonstrating their ability to run an independent education system, Albanians argued that they proved the ability to run their own parallel state. As the historian Noel Malcolm pointed out, by setting up the institutions of a separate republic, the Albanians of Kosovo engaged in a strategy of political 'as if': To behave as if Kosovo were not part of Serbia might seem, in the short term, sheer make-believe; but if the strategy were persisted in for long enough, foreign governments might eventually feel obliged to admit that they were the ones who were engaging in fiction when they continued to treat Kosovo as a mere region of the Serbian state. ( Malcolm 1998: 348) This has deep resonances with the ideas within complexity theory of 'modelling'. As outlined in Chapter 2, a complex adaptive system is one that is able to model new configurations, designing different ways of operating. For Kosovans, the 'as if' strategy was hugely powerful, not just in maintaining their autonomy, but in turning that 'virtual' system into a real one in the long term by communicating its success and 'fitness of purpose'. A principal of a school which had resumed work in 1999 recounted to me the differences between that and the parallel school in private houses: Ì thought that the job we did in private houses was better! In 1992-93 the internationals were impressed by the full classes.' He talked of motivation because of the parallel system and because of resistance. 'It was also a motivation for the teachers.' This was now being lost, he felt, and young people did not express motivation for education, only for personal, immediate things. I am reminded of the Cyprus situation, where a high motivation for education is explained as a response to the Turkish occupation which caused massive displacement of communities and a sense of insecurity, in which education came to be regarded as 'the one possession which could not be taken away' ( UNESCO 1997). A final but different form of resilience can come from alliances to create safe schools in contexts of a violent society. This has been remarkable in South Africa, where the Community Alliance for Safe Schools (CASS) started in 1997 and represented Business against Crime, the police, provincial


governments, higher education and NGOs as well as school stakeholders. Harber (2001b) reported on a pilot project in three schools to improve school security, through a range of structural and organisational features. Pupils reported a reduction in the 'culture of silence' whereby they were afraid to talk about crimes and provide information, and felt that serious signals were being sent to learners and outsiders that crime and violence would no longer be ignored or tolerated. Respect for the police had increased — a historically difficult and suspicious relationship. Spin-offs included the emergent phenomenon that the three schools acting together, and in conjunction with the police, could create change (for example in the siting of bus routes). Connectivity is the key to creativity and the avoidance of fatalism about conflict or violence. Conclusion

In the face of destruction and oppression, where does resilience come from? There are two obvious directions: looking back, recreating what was there; but also looking forward, the sense of working towards a new future, the modelling of a better world . Both are surrounded by three dimensions: first the 'wartime spirit', the resistance, the sense of agency, of doing something in the face of adversity; second, innovation or improvisation; and third, connectivity — working with others, getting help, publicising what is going on. This is education with a deep social purpose, and while the content may be traditional, the aims and effects are startlingly transformative. Our concern would be how to inject that into peacetime schools.

Chapter 7

War education

In dialogue about the role of schooling following conflict, hard questions should be asked: How is violence embedded within the routine operation of classrooms and practices of child discipline? How do examination systems promote failure and economic exclusion? How do prefabricated materials create dependency rather than stimulate creativity and resilience? How do formal institutions weaken informal community knowledge systems and resources?. ( Miller and Affolter 2002: 9)

Miller and Affolter are, as I am, curious about the how the fundamental structure of schooling tends to go unchallenged in post-crisis settings — in spite of its èmbeddedness' in the conflict itself. Yet a glance backward at pre-crisis education may reveal how schooling was used to fuel social conflict, deepening inequities and promoting ideologies of devaluation (Bush and Saltarelli 2000). This chapter works its way though education's contribution to war, from the more obvious ways in which children are trained for conflict or fighting through to the 'routine', more hidden, although pervasive features through which children learn to be conflictual — violent schools, curriculum and textbooks, and the culture of examinations and fear. Children prepared for conflict

The previous chapter identified the phenomenon of child soldiers as an effect of war. Their training (not education) would appear the most obvious form of direct preparation to be violent. Draisma and Richman (1992) reported boys abducted by Pol Pot in Cambodia being trained in brutal warfare and participating 'with glee' in their horrific activities. Similarly, young boys in Mozambique inducted into Renamo were trained to commit atrocities using a mixture of humiliation, deprivation and beating. Children are however not always abducted into training: it seems that many of the Ugandan boys went to military academies with a view to remaining in the army (given rates of

War education I I I


unemployment in civilian life). As Miller and Affolter point out, 'For soldiers, social conflict provides steady work' (2002: 33). However, training for combat is not confined to specialist camps or military schools (as was discussed in Chapter 4). There is a history of much happening in normal schools under the name of 'defence'. In South Africa in 1972 a new compulsory subject was introduced into white schools in the Transvaal — the Youth Preparedness Programme. The government began to say that South Africa was experiencing a 'total onslaught', that various groups were plotting to undermine South Africa (boycotts, sanctions, growing world sympathy for Frelimo (Mozambique Liberation Movement), ANC (African National Congress), MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola), etc.). Hence children needed to be physically and morally prepared for the hard ti mes that lay ahead. So there was a linkage between moral and physical decay and physical danger. 'If we fail, we can say goodbye to Western civilisation as we see it today, and to all the values that have been characteristic of our civilisation through the ages' (Dr A. L. Kotzee, director of education in the Transvaal, quoted in Christie 1985). Some of the compulsory components were emergency planning, fire fighting, drilling and marching, drilling, shooting and orchestra, shooting and self-defence, vocational guidance and moral preparedness. The first five emphasised military kinds of activities, and they linked with the South African Defence Force in the use of various manuals. There was an emphasis on ceremonies and rituals which 'prepare' children physically and at the same time 'imprint' military attitudes and values. This is common to child soldier training currently. Militarised holiday àdventure camps' were also organised for coloured and Indian children. Participants were encouraged to develop 'leadership, patriotism and military discipline' (Christie 1985: 148). Newspaper reports in Kosovo at the end of the conflict in 1999 spoke of discovering a Serb school where military training aids were used to instruct children how to use mines and booby traps. Textbooks included diagrams on how to find and attack a tank's weak spots and how to set a mine beneath the ground in long grass. Significantly, however, these instructions were in Albanian, although later reports provided evidence that the instructions had also been found in Serbo-Croat. The implication is that both Serb and Albanian children had been taught bomb-making techniques at different periods of the school's history. The 'defence' curriculum was deeply ingrained in both sides (Davies 1999a). Military training is also ingrained in both sides of the gender divide. In Kosovo and South Africa, both boys and girls had 'defence' in school. In Taiwan too, I-Ru Chen gives a graphic account of her schooling in the 1980s in a girls' senior high school. In every senior school there were military officers (education officers) working under the Department of Discipline. These people supervised our life closely and gave us two hours' military training, or nursing and

simply medical training (for girls only) every week. Once a year we were taken to military camps to practise with real guns, because of the belief that we might need to defend ourselves anytime. During our school years, we had military manoeuvres every year to know where to hide in case of war . . . As the shadow of war was always there, a military influence was very visible in the campus, and remains so today. I remember once a young military officer mentioned that a student living in the dormitory complained to her that she had not resealed a letter after reading it. The officer apologised and promised that she would reseal letters next time. Occurences like these were hardly questioned. (Chen 2002: 8/9) The military officers lived with the students in the dormitories at university. The pervasive atmosphere of the military certainly had an effect on school ethos and management, and a lifetime effect on the students. Violent schools

Militarised schools may or may not be internally violent places. Yet many `normal' schools are places of routine violence of a range of kinds — between students, and between teachers and students. One clear reason is the context of the school within a wider culture of social violence and its inability to contain this. A typical example is reported for contemporary South Africa, with disadvantaged schools operating in a culture of violence, crime, gangs and drugs: Owing to a number of historical factors, many South African children were born, reared, have matured, married and died in violent situations. Some have become so immune to violent actions that they see violence as both an acceptable form of expression and as a way of channeling their emotions. (Independent Projects Trust 1999: 35) One researcher asked young men in Alexandra township why it was so easy to kill. Their answer was 'We are used to people dying. We see death every day, we no longer fear death. To us death has become a way of life' (Motsei 1998, quoted in Harber 2000). This is a similar desensitisation to that experienced by child soldiers. AIDS has of course added to this experience of people dying. Mansour (1996) refers to the ÌntifSda generation', forced to be aggressive as the Israeli army invaded their daily lives, whether in the school, the home or in children's nightmares. The pupils of today are simultaneously 'the young people of the Intifada', the same who just the day before were demonstrating and throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. But I want to move on to sec whether schools are simply powerless contexts for youth violence, or whether they amplify it. When student groups take


over the teacher's 'micro-powers' in acts of extortion or violence, Bernal admits for Colombia that the roots may originate in the popular militias and guerrilla groups outside. Yet she cites ethnographic studies showing how the authoritarianism of school and the fragility of the school judiciary system are constant elements in social relations. It is necessary to realise that new forms of violence have appeared, replacing the ruler, the donkey's ears, the dunce's cap and the punishment corners, which were abolished several years ago in Colombian schools. . . . [T]he threats, screams, mockery, punishments, humiliation, public insult, and in some cases, physical aggression, are characteristic of the way conflict is manifested . . . among classmates and their teachers and among students themselves. (Bernal 1997: 35-6) The point for my analysis is that violent schools are not just to be found in overtly violent cultures. Harber (2002) provides a complex overview of `schooling as violence' which locates much violence in authoritarian compulsory schooling the world over. Epp and Watkinson's (1996) Systemic Violence is a classic book which reveals the 'complicity' of schools in Canada in supporting violence, dehumanisation and stratification. These are damaging to disadvantaged students, but have negative effects on privileged students as well. The authors define 'systemic violence' as including 'any institutionalised practice or procedure that adversely impacts on individuals or groups by burdening them psychologically, mentally, culturally, spiritually or physically' (Epp and Watkinson 1996: xi). This covers a lot of ground, as can be imagined. It is the unintentional consequences of procedures implemented by well-meaning authorities in a belief that the practices are in the best interests of students. People are following protocol; they are not 'to blame'. And some students may benefit, such as those who succeed. Many of the contributions of the book graphically describe how schools do harm to pupils; I refer below only to those aspects which appear to continue cycles of overt violence and conflict, while acknowledging that many aspects (for example, female oppression or compulsory schooling) can indirectly maintain a conflictual society. There is a massive literature on bullying (or mobbing as it is referred to in Europe) which cannot be gone into here. Its links with a long-term propensity to violence are obvious. Worryingly, it seems to be on the increase in many countries and admitted publicly, for example in Japan ( Japan Ministry of Education and Science 2002), and schools are patchy in their capacity or willingness to deal with it. An indicative study is MacDonald's in Canada which collected data from students and authorities in junior high schools about their perceptions of the nature and frequency of school violence and of the authorities' responses to it.

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Over half the male students and 35 per cent of female students had experienced physical forms of violence — fights, bullying, punching, hitting, grabbing, verbal threats, theft of or damage to property. Twenty per cent had observed weapons at school. A key finding was that administrators at the schools perceived violence as less of a problem than the students did, and believed that teachers were more aware than students thought they were. Administrators thought students more satisfied with the treatment of victims and perpetrators than they were, and were more confident that students would inform the school. An interesting observation was: teachers and administrators are faced with a seemingly impossible task. The public expect educators to maintain violence-free schools, but any initiative taken by the schools to reduce violence is often perceived as a failure of administrators to have 'maintained order and discipline'. Why would a school implement an anti-violence programme if their school was at the optimum in terms of student safety? Such pressure to maintain a positive image constrains administrators' motivation to request resources for school violence reduction. ( MacDonald 1996: 90) One could say the same about anti-racist measures in schools in the UK — often with the accusation that they actually exacerbate racism. Teachers in the UK are increasingly and understandably willing to report student violence against them, but schools may be less willing to portray this as part of any endemic culture of violence in the school itself, preferring to locate isolated individuals who need attention or exclusion. MacDonald rehearses the point that adults would not be expected to put up with the violence that children experience in school on a daily basis — they would not be expected to endure insults directed at body size, clothing or accent. It would be rare in the workplace to be shoved up against a wall, knocked to the ground, or attacked by a group of colleagues for coffee money. Adults would be in a position to ameliorate such conditions. Yet this is a reality for an increasing number of students. It is the silence of schools which leads to the long-term damage. Smith et al. (1995) conducted a highly revealing study in Canada which found a positive correlation between high levels of victimisation and subsequent delinquency. Many students in the study expressed a preference for taking matters into their own hands. This again links to lack of awareness of staff and/or the 'code of silence' in schools. Or there is a view that school is si mply a reflection of violence outside, as described earlier for South Africa and Palestine; yet significantly, Smith et al.'s study found that victimisation rates were higher at school (81 per cent at school and 69 per cent elsewhere), thereby challenging the view that youth violence is a problem more prevalent in the larger community than in schools. As MacDonald points out, 'Our

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114 The education/war interface youth are growing up to accept physical and psychological conflicts as part of

an everyday school milieu' (MacDonald 1996: 91). This has horrifying implications — with parallels to the child soldiers mentioned earlier who became inured to violence and death. There is also the problem of the acceptance of critical pedagogy. Leroy (1996) describes girls' fights and disputes in an inner-city classroom, often the more hurtful because it involved treachery from 'friends'. Yet while teachers and counsellors wanted to know what to do, a `liberatory curriculum', or open pedagogy enabling them to speak about their lives is not always welcomed — as attested even at higher education level. The girls remained silent. Sharing stories with peers gave them ammunition to use against them. Sharing stories with teachers could disrupt their lives. To speak about their experiences, the girls needed privacy and support — sometimes adult intervention in the family. We should not be naive about 'dialogue', and the possibility for teachers to intervene in pupil violence. But by not intervening, by not creating an atmosphere where uncomfortable and controversial issues can be aired, teachers are guilty by omission. Teacher education therefore becomes similarly implicated. Mijatovic (1999) says that in the transition from socialism and communism to democratic capitalism, in the thirty or so countries once under the umbrella of the Soviet Union, educational institutions have hardly contributed towards societal democratisation. There is a lack of experience and competence among teachers to teach democratic principles and the curriculum also fails to meet criteria for 'education for democracy'. In teacher training institutes `we can observe that instead of instilling democratic values among students, a political tug-of-war has emerged between rival political factions for control of the educational process and to determine how funds are spent' (Mijatovic 1999: 32). The South African Department of Education report talked of many colleges having become 'sites of political contestation' and being 'pervaded by a set of negative cultures of dependency, entitlement, resistance to authority and violence' (South African Department of Education 1995: 52). This is hardly likely to turn out teachers conversant with critical pedagogy. Teacher training may even be the site of formal indoctrination into violence. Hitler achieved this, by taking over teacher training institutions, requiring teachers to swear an oath to train teachers in Nazi ideology and even taking over their professional organisations (Cairns 1996). However, lest we think this is history, a similar form of teacher 'socialisation' is now being reported in Zimbabwe. Teachers are being forced into 're-education' camps run by war veterans, and ordered to denunciate Blair to pupils as an evil gay-loving recoloniser, and to present Mugabe, Castro, Gadaffi and `Hitler' Hunzvi as great heroes. They arc to tell children that Al-Qacda and bin Laden are doing the right thing. Even more sinister still, teachers are also taught how to kill silently, to strangle enemies of the state with their shoelaces (Lamb 2003).

Physical punishment

One very specific way in which schools contribute not just to the acceptance but to the legitimisation of violence is through corporal punishment. This directly contravenes the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and is illegal in many countries which are signatories to the convention. Yet it still persists in overt and covert form. While it is now illegal in South Africa, for example, it is reported to be still commonly used and still supported by many parents and students — albeit with some contradictions. Morrell's study of 750 school children found that among African students in township schools there was a strong public endorsement of corporal punishment. At the same ti me, the majority of students whose public discourse supported it said that they felt anger, hurt and sadness at being wronged in relation to corporal punishment and felt positive feelings towards consultative mechanisms with teachers (1999). Harber (2000) also draws together studies showing the continued acceptance of corporal punishment, even by a minister for education. Beatings are seen in many cultures as a normal enforcement tool to help students to learn better. Salmi (1999) reports that in Morocco, most primary teachers work with a rulers, a stick or a piece of rubber garden hose which is freely used to hit the children. I have seen similar uses of pieces of fan belt in classrooms in Zimbabwe. There is the view that 'children have always been beaten at home and in the street. If teachers take up a different system in school, they become too spoilt and one cannot control them any more' (quoted in Salmi 1999: 10). Corporal punishment and school bullying is also widespread in socially cohesive societies such as Japan, where pupil suicides bring the issue to international attention. While bullying does occur in countries that do not have corporal punishment, in those that do, a model of physical violence to solve problems or to exact revenge by teachers can only contribute to this culture. From a physiological perspective, threat can limit the brain's capacity for learning. Under conditions of threat, the human brain tends to 'clownshife, that is, lose its capacity for creativity and higher-order synthesis, as it seeks safety in familiar patterns (Caine and Caine 1997). These familiar patterns may well include violence; as the brain 'downshifts' from empathy, the cycles continue. Corporal punishment may be legitimised from many different cultural strands. Hwang (2001) makes the interesting argument for Chinese cultures that the ideas of Confucianism are complicated, and in practice their ethical thrust tends to result in corporal punishment for students. Confucians believe that the natural laws of ethics can be revealed by sages and be passed on by the 'morally cultivated': it is not difficult to see how the ethical leadership of teachers may eventually turn into the high-handed surveillance of student behaviour


in a traditional Confucian society, leading ultimately to the rising misuse of corporal punishment. . . . As a way of expressing their concern and expectations for their students, teachers can become relatively harsh. Eventually, teachers may think that corporal punishment is just a kind of growing pain for students, and students may think that they would be less likely to improve if not punished. (Hwang 2001: 328) Hwang cites various studies of attitudes towards corporal punishment in Taiwan that show that while most teachers, parents and students think that persuasion is the best method for 'correcting' a student's behaviour, large majorities of each thought that a moderate level of corporal punishment was acceptable. Teachers' stated reasons for giving corporal punishment related to behaviour problems and rule-breaking (including 'improper grooming'); however, students reported that the major reason was poor academic performance or late assignments, and violations of the principle of 'respect' such as disobedience, retorts or talking in class. 'Teachers can label students according to different categories of misconduct, and eventually carry out the punishment on those whom they decide deserve it' (Hwang 2001: 329). The implication of this analysis is profound, and takes us further than the old labelling theories of deviance. Here, the teacher's right to classify and violate is not just within a 'professional' culture, but goes deep into Confucian culture and ideals of the ethical leader. If all are not equal in terms of being a moral agent, then students cannot decide their own rules of conduct, nor expect equal rights. Morality and discipline are externalised. Such obedience to ethical leaders can create a stable society — but it also means that people can be easily harnessed in the cause of conflict. Ideologies and 'normalising' discourses around morality and punishment would need to be analysed. Epp draws attention to the acceptance of certain sorts of language usages — which presumably translate into other languages. When a child forces another to do his or her bidding, we call it extortion; when an adult does the same thing to a child, it is called correction. When a student hits another student it is assault; when a teacher hits a child it is for the child's 'own good'. When a student embarrasses, ridicules or scorns another student it is harassment, bullying or teasing. When a teacher does it, it is sound pedagogical practice. (Epp 1996: 20) In interviews, students in her study remembered their schooldays, of which the most unsettling feature was the range of minor infractions that had provoked punishments: strapped because of not completing homework, hit for not singing loud enough, for not understanding the maths assignments,

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for not drinking their juice; fingers smashed on the desk for not holding the pencil correctly. There is now 'zero tolerance' of violence by students, yet teacher violence was — and is — tolerated and indeed supported. Martineau (1996) reports that as recently as 1975, 93 per cent of a sample of US parents approved of corporal punishment as an acceptable form of discipline; in 1995 it was still a significant 65 per cent. However, Martineau is even more concerned about a new form of 'abuse', which is the diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder, with one million children in the United States on Ritalin in 1996 — probably even more now. ADD children are described as inattentive, impulsive and hyperactive, with three-quarters of them boys. They are classified as 'at risk' in the same way that English as a second language (ESL) students in the inner city are, and deviant and feeble minded children were in the eugenics age. Growing up on tranquillisers, ironically, may lead to addictions and afflictions later on, and the takers will not necessarily be more peace-loving people. At this point, I want to embark on the tricky question of school 'discipline', and the participation of students in maintaining this. On one level, it would seem democratic (and more efficient) to involve school students in furthering the codes of conduct within a school; yet clearly much depends on how this is done. Schools routinely use prefects or monitors to police other children; in some instances it is not clear that codes are internalised, and that children are genuinely learning alternatives to authoritarianism. Let us listen to I-Ru Chen in Taiwan once more: Some students . . . were asked to be 'student inspectors'. This system was prevalent at every level of school education until today. We wore armbands like policemen and helped teachers to discipline other students.... I spent about two weeks each semester hanging round the train station in the morning and afternoon. My job was to check if students were dressed properly; if they had their school bags on the correct side of their shoulders (different side in the morning and afternoon); if they put their collars out when they wore coats; if they stood too close to the rail when the train arrived, and so on. If students did not act according to the school regulations, I had to write down the numbers embroidered on their uniform shirts and the class they belonged to. Points would then be deducted. (Chen 2002: 9-10) This is not a violent activity, but I would maintain that it is part of 'systemic violence' or symbolic violence. Using students as 'inspectors' further deepens and legitimises external control and the acceptance of others' rules. This is the obverse of the critical challenge that is needed for a democratic and peaceful society to emerge.

1 1 8 The education/war interface Curriculum and textbooks

Analysts of political socialisation through education will look at the important role of textbooks and history or social science teaching in orientations towards the state, nation and other states and nations. This can be through content or through omission. Textbooks can be overtly nationalistic and depict the evil enemy; yet they can equally simply fail to represent reality. An interesting analysis by Bokovoy et al. (1997) of the former Yugoslavia's Marxist curriculum situated this in the party's gradually losing its authoritarian hold on individual republics and failing to develop a way to deal with ethnic distinctiveness. The party's compromise of 'guided ethnic management' was not sufficient to teach students how to deal with 'others' who were not members of their immediate ethnic group. Students learned about Yugoslav and other countries' socialism, about wars, conflict and revolutions, but the infamous 'national question' was dealt with in only one unit, stressing `brotherhood and unity'. Bokovoy et al. comment that the problem with social science textbooks in Titoist Yugoslavia was not that they promoted nationalism, but they 'did so little to contribute to a political culture prepared for the dangers of ethnocentrism' (Bokovoy et al. 1997: 94). Arguably, in the light of violent events that occurred in former Yugoslavia, an education system which was vaguely geared towards collective identity, alongside a selective 'historical memory', helped create a vacuum that by the end of the 1980s was to be filled by nationalist historical myths, prejudices and antagonis m (Mustagrudic 2000). More recently, and in the UK, Dillabough and Arnot, writing about citizenship, examine how contemporary notions of the 'competent teacher' and national curriculum in UK also deny any examination of 'difference'. Tor example, questions of gender, race, class, and/or sexuality and disability and the kinds of national identities he/she is expected to shape are not addressed in the context of the "standards/competent" teacher' (2000: 31). Lees (2000), in the same volume, argues for the introduction of an analysis of gendered heterosexual power into the curriculum, to deal with the gender regimes in the school. Suppression of discussion about homosexuality and violent masculinity (as indicated in Chapter 4) will only condone an acceptance of sexual violence. This is an example of lack of connectivity, or lack of information, which under my complexity shutdown theory leads to continued negative conflict. Interestingly, discussion of peace can also be 'suppressed' in the sense of played down in favour of a legitimation of military activity. Najcevska (2000), writing from Macedonia, shows very clearly how the teaching in schools through the history curriculum about peace and non-violence is mainly rhetorical, theoretical and sporadic. In contrast, the teaching about struggle, war and violence is historically grounded, well illustrated and well fitted into the context of the development of civilisation.

War education 119 Military history and acceptance of violent means may be pervasive, but then further acceptance is achieved through playing down the actual horrors and emotions. David Shipler in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Arab and Jew claims that very few Arabs seem to know much about the Holocaust. Its full horrors rarely seem to penetrate. It goes unmentioned in the Jordanian curriculum that governs teaching in West Bank schools, for example, and is skimmed over quickly in the Israeli schools for Arabs. Even the best informed and most sophisticated and moderate of the Palestinian Arabs cannot bring themselves to gather their experience of the Holocaust into their understanding of the Jews. That essential feel for the trauma, the tragedy, the aloneness of the Jews in that dark period is simply missing from the Arabs' sense of history and from their grasp of the present. And therefore they cannot understand Israel. They cannot understand the fierce sensations of vulnerability, the lusty devotion to military strength, the stubborn resistance to international criticism, the waves of guilt that soften the core of the hardness. They cannot comprehend the gnawing fear of powerlessness that grinds beneath the arsenal of tanks and planes, the lurking conviction that it could happen again, and that again the world would look the other way. (Shipler 1986: 339) I quote this at length (as does Feuerverger), not to show partiality with the Israeli position (one needs equally a curriculum which tackles the antecedents to Arab feeling) but because it captures so graphically the need for understanding of vulnerability in an 'enemy', for empathy. This is not just including particular facts in a history curriculum, but raw emotion. But while conflict and extremism can be perpetuated by a 'vacuum' in the textbooks and curricula, it can be fuelled also by what is there. It is thought that the content of textbooks in Sri Lanka has clearly contributed to civil conflict (Heynemann and Todoric-Bebic 2000). The Centre for Monitoring the Impact of Peace is looking at both Palestinian and orthodox Jewish textbooks and finding both containing derogatory stereotypes of the other (Jordan Times, 25 Jan. 2002: 4). Hence there has been an increasing emphasis in educational research on the ways in which textbooks portray in-group and out-group identity and on the other ways in which they may contribute indirectly to conflict and communal strife (Tawil 2001). If we dwell on the Bosnian example, soon after the beginning of the 1992-5 war and the separation of curricula, the history books started to reflect ethnic groups' explanations and interpretations of the causes and the definition of the war. In some it was labelled as a 'civil war', for others it was an 'act of aggression'. This is seen by some commentators as constituting one of the main stumbling blocks to harmonisation and improvement of the education system. The war practice continues with educational authorities primarily

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concerned with the preservation and strengthening of (individual) national identities, languages and cultures. The main intention is to supply the political elites with legitimacy, not educate people in a spirit of rapprochement. The problem was that the Dayton peace agreement's prime purpose was to end the war, and it may become one of the main divisive points of the whole transition process. The people in BiH are faced with a 'silent, cunning try to win the war by other means' and more importantly 'the way it is treated in education is simply trying to achieve the thing [dividing the country into three nation-states"] that could not be achieved during the war' (Lovrenovic 1999, quoted in Mustagrudic 2000). Revision of textbooks is proceeding, but often merely by using the 'delete method' — removing the most offensive and nationalistic material. In many places, new textbooks have yet to be printed and thus pupils are still using the old textbooks with the offensive material simply crossed out. One example I saw was a Bosniac history textbook which had bracketed together Hitler and Milosevic — this was seen as offensive to Serbs and was therefore deleted in black feltpen. In 2001, when I was working with teachers from the three `nations' to harmonise curricula, there was agreement to delete offensive passages and find common ground; yet the teacher groups all wanted to retain three types of 'mother tongue' teaching for part of the week; and to retain 'national songs'. The language curricula used literature in the shape of poems and extracts from novels, mostly followed by comprehension exercises; nowhere was there critical examination of language, or skills to analyse media. This was seen as too threatening, or simply as not necessary. My argument that future peace depends on children being able to resist propaganda and extreme nationalism was met with polite refusal. It was of course not my job to impose ideas from a relatively stable western society onto teachers just emerging from years of conflict; they knew better than I about the pace of change. Yet for me the new 'harmonised' curriculum would not break down nationalistic sentiments and essentialism. In many other parts of the world, nationalism is actually growing and being reflected in curricula once more. In India, extreme Hindu groups have introduced textbooks that convey former Hindu glories and propagate the myth of an India under siege from native Islamic militants. The World Hindu Council (VHP) distributed leaflets asking Hindus to pledge a boycott of Muslims — including refusing to be taught by Muslim teachers. Yet the general secretary of the VHP in Gujerat would also want to outlaw madrassahs, as they were seen to train terrorists. Muslims had to integrate (Wazir 2002). The power of education for hate is acknowledged both for one's own side and for the other's. "

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Examinations and fear

I turn now to another sort of threat and fear — that induced by competition and examination. Nigel Barley scenically describes the assessment 'system' in the Cameroon: It was the same at the schools. They arc all weighed down with an incredible bureaucratic apparatus for strictly determining which pupils shall be expelled, which promoted and which obliged to take the year again. The amount of time spent in the abstruse calculation of 'averages' with arcane formulae is at least equal to that spent in the classroom... . It is impossible not to smile at the sight of question papers being guarded by gendarmes with submachine guns when the envelope they are in has been opened by a man who sold the contents to the highest bidder several days before. (1986: 112) While curriculum content (or omission) can perpetuate conflict, its assessment is possibly even more culpable. This arises from the 'culture of fear' prevailing in many school systems where tests and examinations have become an end in themselves. Intense competition, starting sometimes early in the kindergarten, is associated with the dread of failure and engenders cheating on a massive scale and child suicides in cultures where school failure brings humiliation for the child and disgrace to the family — as in Japan and Hong Kong (Greaney and Kellaghan 1996). In Jamaica and Colombia, Salmi reports that failure in school and growing unemployment can lead young males into a vicious cycle of drug abuse and street violence (Salmi 1999). Whether through examinations or in everyday pitting of children against each other, there is the growing realisation that indiscipline and therefore conflict is a direct result of teaching methods that encourage competition ( Kaplan et al. 2002). Teachers who attempt to motivate pupils by encouraging them to outperform their peers, and by instilling a fear of doing worse than others, may inadvertently be making them more disruptive. Those who encourage pupils to concentrate on mastering individual tasks are more likely to sustain order and hold the attention of their students. Highly competitive students may deliberately or subconsciously misbehave because they believe that combining being disruptive with getting good grades gives them added value and indicates that they are clever; those at the other end of the scale, who do all they can to avoid doing worse than others, are equally disruptive because it provides them with a reason for their low grades other than low ability. Yet in spite of the highly publicised research on its ill effects, competition and testing is spiralling in countries such as England. More horrifying still is our acceptance of it. These are the 'runaway norms' or the 'frozen struggles'

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of complexity theory. Children are not allowed to be ordinary, either by schools or by parents. As governments push for ever increasing standards, equally ever increasing efforts to be special within these standards are made as well. This is the attractor state of specialness. If you raise the base line, then the 'specialness' quotient escalates as well. Qualification inflation comes from competition, not cooperation to achieve targets. If one arrives at an èfficient' state system where everyone achieves highly, by definition this then becomes not enough. Parents must buy private tuition — a trend which was common in Japan and South Korea, and now is increasing in the UK too. Spending on tutoring has reached more than £100 million per year — including by the current prime minister (Owen 2002). Analysis of this has been made since Ronald Dore's classic Diploma Disease, yet few governments resist the lure of 'standards'. They are tied into global competition and status, and push this onto their schoolchildren, down the line. Why cannot we be content to be good enough? Sweden does this with its concept of 'the good enough school' (Davies and Kirkpatrick 2000). In the UK, comprehensive schools are not being permitted to be 'bog standard' — indeed that phrase provoked an outcry when used by an education minister in 2002 — and are being encouraged to apply for 'specialist' status. While racially segregated schools have resonances with ethnic cleansing, here we see the shades of 'ability cleansing'. We have the lunacy of competition between schools based on competition within the school and projected onto the individual learner. An OFSTED inspector, Derry Hannan, told me of the subtle shift now occurring: a child had said sadly to him, 'I can't get the grades they want.' How is this then linked to conflict? One is failure leading to violence, as above. The second is the corruption that comes from excessive competition, as in the Barley quotation on p. 121. The third is the deskilling of cooperation and group efforts. There are opposing forces here. One is the desire to be part of a group, that is, not to be special, to have the same shoes, the same God, the same tastes in music; the other is the desire to be seen as special within that group. Suicide bombers and martyrs take this to the extreme of course, but the metaphoric suicide bomber is seen every day in our schools and universities — the same as everyone else but more so. This is what gets praised and rewarded. Peace education will have to do something about that specialness, not ignore it, but not make that specialness a competitive one. A mission that I have always admired is Philip Toogood's when he was a headteacher: 'I try to give every child a job to do. Then no-one is absent without being missed.' I argued in Chapter 5 for a specialness that comes from the unique hybridity of each one of us; but this should not be in order to be 'better' than others. One problem is that schools are part of a culture of wider competition and of particular ways of doing politics. Adversarial politics (from the microcosm

the family to the community, national and international levels) are proving more dysfunctional than functional.

of

Adversarial politics generate more heat than light and stimulate competitive processes that are inimical to rational problem-solving. They also tend to generate violent discourse, and when taken to extremes (as they are in an increasing number of societies) dispose parties towards extremely violent behaviour. (Clements 2001: 11) Clements argues that the alternatives to power politics and the development of more stable peaceful relationships between peoples lie in generating trusting, inclusive communities within which individuals do not feel ignored, slighted, humiliated and marginalised — as do many Muslims, Buddhists and others in a world heavily dominated by Judaeo-Christian values. I will look in the next chapter at how some schools are trying to create such communities; but they will be doing this against a backdrop of severe local, national and international competition — and fear of failure at each nested and interdependent level. Conclusion

The second section of this book looked at the way that education indirectly contributes to conflict through its collusion in other dimensions based on class, gender and ethnicity. But education has a contribution which is all its own. And this derives from the fatal combination of greed (for superiority) and fear (of failure). Fear is also reflected in the parallel growth of a gun culture and 'self-defence' in the home, as portrayed so well in the wonderful film Bowling for Columbine. A fearful population is easily mobilised for war. And what better place to start making people fearful than in the school? Politicians play on people's fears and through examinations teachers play on children's fears; both of these dynamics contribute to threat inflation. The conclusion from this chapter is that there is sufficient evidence of violence being perpetuated by educational institutions to cast severe doubt on education being, overall, a 'social good'. Whether formally preparing young people to accept and engage in war, conflict and violence, whether by informal brutality, whether by regimes of fear, testing, competition or by simply remaining silent or ineffectual about violence, educational institutions are directly culpable in the reproduction of conflict. When one considers the large amount of a national budget that goes on education, this is both a folly and a crime.

Chapter 8

Peace education

We need to know more about how peace is done. I mean, really done. Not how politicians posture, demand and concede. Not how people tolerate each other by muffling their disagreements and turning a blind eye to their injustices. But how some ordinary people arrange to fill the space between their national differences with words instead of bullets. What do they say to each other then? (Cockburn 1998: 1)

Cynthia Cockburn's thoughts while she was taking part in a silent vigil against aggression in the former Yugoslavia are the questions for this chapter — not the causes of violence but the causes of peace. In spite of the gloom of the last chapter, there is a glimmer of hope: attitudes may be shifting slightly towards the importance of education 'doing' peace. The World Education Report (2000) quotes Article 4 of the World Declaration on Education for All which states that the focus of basic education must be on actual learning acquisition and outcome rather than exclusively on enrolment and certification — if educational opportunities are to translate into meaningful development. The report goes on: Yet, even as doubts remain concerning its effectiveness, demands for education to contribute towards the solution of problems in diverse fields of global concern have multiplied. Increasingly it is realised that the consolidation of peace is inextricably linked to the prospects of achieving sustainable development and the eradication of poverty and that effective education is a pre-requisite for achieving these goals. ( UNESCO 2000: 75) This chapter does not focus only on peace education packages as such, but on the ways in which modern, 'ordinary' schooling does or could contribute to a peaceful or non-violent world, in a consistent or permanent way. Chapter 7 showed how children (and teachers) will 'make sense' of a violent world by

Peace education 125 Nrcing it as inevitable. Education for peace is a different sort of 'sense-

making', a different sort of agency. For post-conflict particularly, and after events such as September llth, the need to make sense of it all may be crucial. We resist learning that does not fulfil our need for meaning. Kevin O'Donnell, when asked what teachers, social workers, psychologists and peace educators could do in a climate of grief mixed with hatred, responded by stating that 'Peace education is a process of seeking alternatives to despair' (O'Donnell (ed.) 1997: 114). The emphasis then would be on process, not a set of answers to the world's problems. As Clements (2001) points out, the cessation of the Cold War did not result in stable, peaceful relationships within and between all countries. When 'atavistic nationalisms' are coupled with failing state systems and corruption, the challenge to liberal concepts of education aimed at the non-violent resolution of conflict is extremely severe. The challenge facing peace education, therefore, is to think of new ways of doing politics and of building moral conventions that will generate safe action spaces for all peoples to begin solving the big problems that affect the globe. (Clements 2001: 10; my italics) Clements argues for three roles for peace educators. The first is to develop pedagogies which encourage awareness of the ways in which knowledge and understanding are socially constructed and negotiated — and often used to legitimate unjust and unpeaceful realities. Second, education should focus more attention on interactive problem-solving everywhere, but especially i n war zones. Third, there is a need to develop educational processes which enable individuals and groups to jointly identify and analyse complex problems in depth, to jointly generate solutions, to influence the other side in beneficial ways and to create supportive political environments within which problem-solving is seen as a primary focus of education. This would appear a massive task. Yet perhaps we need to start looking for the small signs, similar to the amplifying butterflies of chaos theory. This means reinforcing cultures of peace rather than cultures of violence — more of a 'daring act', paradoxically, as we shall see. Building a culture of resistance

Cairns (1996: 184) states somewhat starkly, 'At present there appears to be virtually no empirical evidence to substantiate the claim that peace education is at all effective'. He cites three reasons: the emphasis on interpersonal conflict as opposed to intergroup conflict, the lack of political acceptability in many societies, and the argument that the school is the wrong place to carry out peace education. He draws attention to the existence of a substantial number of adults in Northern Ireland who feel that the way to reconcile the


two communities is by first beginning with the children. 'Ironically what this means in reality is that there are adults who want the children of Northern Ireland to do what the adults appear unwilling to do themselves (Cairns 1996: 154). Fisher et al. in their book on conflict resolution similarly admit that: A criticism of much current peace education, both formal and informal, is that it relies on making people be nicer to each other. Many practitioners are realising that peace education needs to focus on building a `culture of resistance' — against negative propaganda from the media and governments, against the overt presence of violence in society, and against being manipulated by more powerful groups. (Fisher et al. 2000: 146) They present a four-way matrix of peace education activities that plots longterm and short-term activities against high and low levels of resources. The key issue would be measuring long-term and short-term impact, and how far culture is actually built. The UNESCO Associated Schools Project Network (ASPnet), which I discuss in more detail later, encourages schools to design activities to promote the culture of peace, and awards prizes. In my analysis, many of the activities would fall within the low resource level, short-term activity segment (festivals, posters, poetry writing competitions and so on). There is currently a debate within UNESCO national coordinators about the impact of such activities (some of which might well fall within Fisher et al.'s description of 'being nicer to each other') . One coordinator in our interview data was scathing about using resources to organise peace marches for nine-year-olds, and about charity collections for children of other countries rather than examining the government's record on children's rights in one's own (as a UN member organisation should do). Obviously much depends on how far festivals and concerts are part of an overall school mission to foster non-violence and justice and how far they are the work of one or two inspired teachers over a relatively short period. With high turnovers of teachers and competing demands on curriculum, the difficulty of sustaining peace education has parallels with the sustainability of peace itself. Complexity theory would certainly see the small action to raise awareness as potentially having a multiplier effect; but there is no guarantee. There needs to be sufficient turbulence to tip the situation into phase transition. The degree of turbulence might depend on how peace education is planned within a school curriculum. Just as the last chapter moved from direct to indirect ways in which war education was done, this chapter too moves from direct to indirect, or — in terms of curriculum — separate or permeated. Fisher et al. (2000) spell out the various ways peace 'as a topic' can be taught within subject areas, for example in religious education (looking at the peace messages from each religion), history (studying significant examples of non-

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violence and peacebuilding) or science (raising questions about human need' and scientific responsibility). This implies a 'permeating' approach, although it would have to be set within a whole-school ethos that stresses critical thinking. Simply picking out the 'peace messages' from religion needs to be set against religion's 'war messages' in terms of a critical analysis of the role of religion in conflict, if young people are not to view peace education with a cynical and bored eye. Explicit peace education curricula

But I will start with the specific peace education curricula and accompanying materials. In contradistinction to the war education manuals which teach children how to lay landmines, there are an increasing number of peace education manuals to be used in both stable and turbulent societies. I give a couple of examples here which I have found interesting. UNICEF's manual Children Working for Peace (1995) has five objectives: to mprove relationships in the classroom, to improve relationships in the comi munity, to empower young people by showing them how others like them in various parts of the world are trying to bring about peace, to counter negative i mages of countries experiencing conflict and to provide ways to evaluate action. The pack has case studies from conflict societies, using the experience of different peace education projects there — the Ulster Quaker Peace Education Project, the Liberian Education for Peace Project, the Dehktonee Theatre, the Education for Conflict Resolution Programme in Sri Lanka and the Lebanese Education for Peace Youth programme. There are games, activities, role plays and exercises, using newspaper cuttings and creating murals. These are great ideas, but the problem with all manuals is that we have little idea of long-term impact, individually or collectively. However, unusually here there is a section on evaluation and assessment which describes how a series of conflict resolution workshops were evaluated over a six-month period. Extensive interviews by an independent researcher found that the workshops had an impact on self-esteem, improving the quality of working together and reducing the amount of disruptive behaviour in class. The workshops improved communication skills, enabled cooperative learning, enabled easier acceptance of criticism, enabled more caring expression of criticism and reduced problem behaviour in the children. Interestingly, the UNICEF book suggests that evaluation should actually be part of the process of conflict/peace activities, in that students would develop more of a commitment to the process by finding out if it really works, develop self-esteem by feeling that their opinions are valued, develop greater self-awareness by a reflection on how they have been affected by education for conflict resolution, develop skills in collecting, interpreting and presenting data, act in partnership with the teacher to assess progress, and improve the course for future students.


We can see the power of information here for the real 'emergence' of peace education. Another intriguing teaching resource from Canada, Cultivating Peace in the 2P` Century, emphasises peace as a process as much as a goal, so that students have to practise experiences that promote peaceful behaviours such as cooperation, compromise and negotiation (Classroom Connections 2002: 8). There is a video and a website with an educator area, a database and a student section with a questionnaire, quizzes, online activities and a student idea exchange. These resources come from an organisation called 'Classroom Connections'. Their approach is different from the UNICEF one in some ways, and follows a sequence of: 1 Definitions of peace, conflict and war (e.g. 'War is to a man what maternity is to a woman'; 'I do not believe in perpetual peace'; 'A just war is a contradiction in terms'; 'War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace'). 2 Causes of conflict, violence and war. 3 Security, and whether measures enhance or subvert human rights. 4 Security of minority students in high school. 5 Concepts of global justice, positive peace and human rights through political cartoons. 6 Taking action: the efficacy of different types of action and protest. 7 Where do I stand? (on terrorism and violence). There is much that is controversial here, and the personal case studies of the exclusion of minorities in Canadian schools aim to shock. The critical exposé of the Free Trade Area of the Americas will also not endear the writers to corporate North America. As can be guessed, I like this resource too. Other ways of tackling peace directly are in conflict resolution training, about which I say more in Chapter 11. Different forms of permeated curricula

If however one is moving towards peace across the curriculum, there are many different — and complementary — alternatives. I outline six here, beginning with projects that cut across the school. Projects: schools working towards the culture of peace

The UNESCO backed Sintra Plan of Action says that: The principles and practices of peace and non-violence should be integrated into every aspect of curriculum, pedagogy and activities, including the very organisational and decision-making structure of the

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educational institution. . . . The school should not be an island, but a centre for civic life in the community. (quoted in UNESCO 2002a) UNESCO in their ASPnet schools has amongst other things initiated 'Peace Pillar Initiatives Awards' (PPIA) The report of these (2002a) describes twenty-two examples of 'good practice' from the ASPnet schools of the actions children and adolescents have taken towards a culture of peace in their schools and communities. (2001 was the beginning of the International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World.) The guidelines were that the project should relate to one of four or five main 'pillars': non-violent resolution of conflict, human rights and democracy, intercultural learning, solidarity and local needs. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was considered to be the 'force of reason' rather than the 'reason of force'. As resources were limited in many schools, stress was put on a high degree of human involvement rather than on the accumulation of materials or end products — encouraging critical thinking, problem solving capacities, fairness and open-mindedness. 'Children and adolescents luckily have a refreshingly bold outlook on world events. Their viewpoint is, often, one of both renewal and defiance, twin forces that are necessary in today's environment' (UNESCO 2002a: 5). The report claims that young people can be agents of revival, that violence does not have to be an accepted fact and that schools can be strong vectors of social transformation. They engage in 'daring acts' within their local context. They often run counter to their country's or community's dominant opinions, questioning attitudes towards other population groups and promoting peace as an alternative to routine violence and prejudice. It would be naïve to suggest that the PPIA has changed the world, but equally it would be cynical to say that, in its own way, the PPIA did not make a small difference in many places with its local actions. These can be multiplied and learned from. ( UNESCO 2002a: 6) Again, an amplifying effect. The Spanish entry showed the importance of teacher training: twenty-five teachers teamed up to develop new training plans with the local authorities, translating teachers' handbooks on peace activities into Spanish. The question is raised of how to make sure that teacher training integrates peace education into its very fabric from the beginning. They used the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and teachers joined in a demonstration in favour of peace in the town to show their concern about violence in the Basque country. Pupils were asked to sign Manifesto 2000. 'Teacher education was a mixture of academic and social action: education and vocation


mingling to instil a respect for basic freedoms and dignity' (UNESCO 2002a: 11). I like one of their suggested exercises, not least because of the 'modelling' of teacher response: Split your pupils into several groups, some being asked to take on the role of teachers. Then ask each group to come up with suggestions for how to carry out peace education, comparing the teacher group with the pupil group. Allow each group to sell the merits of their methods through discussion and debate. ( UNESCO 2002a: 11) The Argentinian ASPnet project, the culmination of three years' work, was also significant in its modelling of peace behaviour and activism to the community. The most important aspect was perhaps that the students came to see that their schools were, in fact dynamic forces in the community, microcosms of society promoting peaceful forms of behaviour, positive institutions giving meaning and value to learning. This realisation enabled the pupils to feel proud of their educational establishments and, most vitally, reaffirmed their belief in the relevance of their education. ( UNESCO 2002a: 21) Seeing schools as forces in the community is in my view unusual. Essential learning

A different approach is that of a curriculum initiative called 'Essential Learning' developed by Birmingham Development Education Centre. This would have peace and conflict as one of seven linked 'adjectival educations': development education, human rights education, environmental/sustainable development education, peace education, multicultural education, gender education and anti-racist education. The peace education features are those that deal most directly with conflict, although all the others would have a concern with contestation and struggle for ideas as well as resources. Peace education in UK and Ireland has strong roots within faith groups and the pacifist tradition, but also with peace movements in Eastern Europe and countries of the former Soviet Union. In the other areas of Essential Learning, concerns about conflict would also appear in development education in the role of civil society and popular social movements, and the challenge to the dominance of Eurocentric perspectives and policies; in human rights education, in the question of how rights are abused or denied, and the use of legal frameworks to underpin human rights and resolve conflict; in environmental education in popular action for change and the struggle over resources; in multicultural education

Peace education 131 in the exploration of 'difference' and citizenship, and most explictly in antiracist education which reveals racism as a major source and result of conflict and develops strategies to counter this. Essential Learning is however concerned about the fragmentation of these adjectival educations — they pursue separate agendas and seldom form strategic alliances. They are not a shopping list from which we can choose. A common agenda is crucial. Essential Learning therefore argues against set subjects of the curriculum and offers a spiral starting from dispositions and values we wish to encourage (such as respect for self/others), to ideas and understandings we wish to engage (such as the concepts of democracy, governance and citizenship), to capabilities and skills we wish to emphasise (such as critical reasoning) and then experiences which would provide a context for this learning (such as making connections). This seems to have some parallels with a well established programme, the World Studies programme of the 1980s. Fisher et al. (2000) in fact draw on this to develop their framework of a widely focused peace education programme, based in knowledge, attitudes and skills (including political skills). It is interesting that at the time of the World Studies programme, the UK government was attacking peace education as unpatriotic and attempting to close down such activity. The significant departure perhaps for Essential Learning is the focus on experience, meaning either real or simulated experiences of decision-making and action outside school — with firms, trade unions, consumer campaigns, local government department, courts, national political parties and environmental protection agencies. Would one want to add an experience of tackling/resolving a conflict? This might mean artificially setting one up, which would have ethical as well as practical connotations. The assumption however is that by participating in decision-making one is by definition dealing with contentious issues; and learning to work cooperatively over a sustained period also requires social problem-solving skills. Taking action again by definition means the ability to challenge and attempt to change. The habit of agency is a good one to be addicted to. Teaching about conflict and learning from conflict

The other side of the coin to peace education is of course conflict education in the sense of teaching directly about conflict across the curriculum. But this is contentious. Should we teach about genocide, for example? If one took a case study of Rwanda, how would this be presented, and at what age, and in what circumstances? In programmes such as those now followed to teach about the Holocaust, the danger is always of stereotyping. Children sometimes want moral certainties and while in no war is it possible to identify purely the good guys and the bad guys, it is difficult to be even-handed. With the Holocaust one does not really attempt to find 'balance', but in other cases moral judgements are more complicated. It is difficult to maintain

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positive images of countries like Rwanda if all that is presented is a country ripped apart by violence and everyone involved in the hatred. Perhaps providing some critical experience is important to avoid stereotyping. In a teacher project, teachers were visiting Derry in Northern Ireland as a stimulus to thinking about 'the building of a new citizenship' (Development Education Centre 2000). One teacher wrote that the three most positive aspects were the 'sheer wealth and diversity' of the society, the sense of hope for the future, and the evidence of self-sufficiency and ability to organise. He then found challenges in the need for greater inclusion, more positive identities and for politicians to 'do' politics rather than publicity. It was clear that the whole visit had really made him rethink his ideas about the 'problems' of Northern Ireland. It is not just pupils who need to gain experience in order to rethink. Peace education curricula can be implemented in violent societies as well as in those where widespread violence is as yet only a threat. An example was the Ulster Quaker Peace Project which was asked initially to go to Uganda to meet teachers worried about the impact of twenty years of brutal violence, but then more recently to go to Belarus, which has no overt problem of political violence. The teachers there said: For seventy years we were all educated to conform to a system. To every question there was one right answer and it was in a book somewhere. Now we know that those answers have failed, but we don't know how to teach our children to think for themselves. When we see you [the project] getting eight- and nine-year olds to cooperate and solve problems together, we know this is something we need to teach. (quoted in Fisher et al. 2000: 143) This is another example of modelling, important in terms of not just introducing a new curriculum, but suggesting new teaching methods. Human rights education

The debates in curriculum are often about umbrella terms/areas. Should conflict be studied under an explicit heading of Peace and Conflict Studies, or should it be tackled as part of a human rights or citizenship curriculum? Mary Robinson, then UN Commssioner for Human Rights said: By promoting human rights, we can help prevent conflicts based on poverty, discrimination and exclusion like those that continue to plague humanity and destroy decades of development efforts. By promoting human rights, we are investing in a just and human future in which all persons will be valued and respected. . . [H]uman rights education is not an end in itself but it can constitute a powerful tool to greater ends.

The fundamental role of human rights education is to empower individuals to defend their own rights and those of others. (Development Education Commission 1999: 6) Bernath et al. (1999) argue strongly that human rights education ( HRE) is not only an essential component of just societies, but is a necessary element of reestablishing stable and just post-war societies. Their research claims 'strong empirical evidence' that HRE reduces violence in situations of conflict. However, it would seem this focuses on adults rather than schools, and talks of workshops rather than school classrooms. One difficulty is whether HRE is actually consistent with compulsory (authoritarian) schooling. It would seem obvious that teachers who demand unquestioning obedience or use physical punishment undermine the development of non-violent, democratic behaviours among students (Bush and Saltarelli 2000). However, a useful strategy to combine peace education with academic learning is 'service learning' — finding ways to help others, that is responsibilities that go with rights. (It was significant that the only time my 'deviant girls' came to school was to go out again on community service, Davies 1984.) Peer education is also valuable. Apparently, children who have opportunities to assist others — especially when the value of their efforts to others' welfare is articulated — tend to engage in more helpful behaviour later (Staub 1992). People who help others begin to see themselves as helpful people, and they tend to value the welfare of those they help. Valuing others is not merely a cognitive skill, but is learned through concrete experiences and the exercise of responsibility. Effective peace education includes culturally sensible practices in collaboration, trusting and caring for the welfare of others. Spencer gives an example of activities in South Africa in which young people can learn about law and about conflicts between fundamental rights, while developing practical skills. She reports the University of Western Cape running mock trial competitions for secondary schools. During 1999, the case — in which schools had to choose whether to represent the prosecution or the defence — concerned a 6-year-old child with AIDS, whose deeply religious parents refused medical treatment and who died. The pupils had to argue the cases — a lesson on the law, on criminal procedure, but also on conflicting rights. The Young People's Parliament in Birmingham (as in many parts of the world) is now a fertile debating ground for such rights-based issues, tackling real as well as hypothetical ones. Democratic organisation

A seemingly indirect but very powerful means of peace education is through the actual organisation of the school. Schools that are more likely to act for peace are not just characterised by curriculum inputs, but are the ones that


take the ideas of dialogue, encounter and democracy in their everyday lives. Our research project in Europe (Davies and Kirkpatrick 2000) investigated how the strong (and legalised) emphasis on pupil representation and pupil voice had significant impacts related not just to 'school effectiveness' but to aspects around peace. One particular element was an atmosphere of greater calm than is seen in some schools in the UK, characterised in all four countries by relationships between teachers and pupils that were warm and friendly — as they were predicated on equity and mutual respect. We wrote: 'A listening culture which starts at primary level means greater confidence and selfesteem by pupils, in turn meaning fewer identity and behavioural problems, and therefore greater ease by teachers. It is a cycle of trust and value.' A second feature was that pupils had learned the skills and confidence to challenge injustice. One multicultural school in the Netherlands had planned to ban the wearing of headscarves, but students and the pupil council had protested. All students started putting scarves around their heads, to show that learning could still take place, and they won their case. The school was worried about its image outside, and whether white parents would send their children there; but pupils 'had to explain to the head' the importance of accepting different dress codes. This was a good and important example of pupil power, of young people working for the rights of others in the face of a neo-liberal agenda of markets and publicity image. I shall return to the importance of democratic organisation and positive conflict in the final chapter. Dialogue and encounters

Finally, I discuss two case studies which focus on 'the encounter' as a source of peace learning. Neve Shalom/ Wahat Al-Salam This is Hebrew and Arabic for 'Oasis of Peace' and the village is described inspirationally in Grace Feuerverger's (2001) book Oasis of Dreams. The village school is unique in its commitment to educating its students in a full Arabic—Hebrew bilingual, bicultural, binational setting. As the study points out, 'there has been very little work on the specific consequences of bilingual/ bicultural programs in which children from majority and minority groups learn together against a larger backdrop of intergroup conflict' (Feuerverger 2001: 18). There are of course very few such schools where there is open conflict between two linguistic/national groups. The villagers do not share the same religious and cultural values and norms, but do subscribe to similar underlying beliefs in equality, justice, respect and peaceful coexistence. This does not mean the village is without moral conflict, and the Gulf War of 1991 'opened up some deep splits'.

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Yet the bifurcation was able to be repaired, through much talk and recognition that not all Arabs and Jews thought exactly the same way — that is, recognition of complexity. In the school, it was tackled as an explicit part of the class curriculum in all grades. Mohammed, from a nearby Arab village, who was bussed in to the school every day, explained: Ì sang [the pro-Saddam] songs because the other kids in my village were singing them. They made me feel proud about being Palestinian and Arab. I didn't mean to hurt my friends at the school who were Jewish. I don't think they understood how much better it made me feel about being Arab. I tried to explain it to them during our discussions with teachers.' (Feuervcrger 2001: 29) This is a profound insight, particularly for a minority group — 'how much better it made me feel about being Arab'. It explains the easy acceptance now of fundamentalism. But the school played a key role, as Zahra explained: the teachers were telling us to see both sides of the problem. We have a class called actualia (current events) and both my Arab and Jewish teachers in the class talked with us for many days about trying to find peace and not war. (Feuerverger 2001: 30) Teachers are 'border crossers' — by being able to listen critically to the voices of their students. They also listen to each other. The unique feature is that each class has an Arab and a Jewish teacher, and the children are exposed to two points of view. This may sound like a luxury in conditions of stringency, but can be done in different ways. There is a lot of peer tutoring between older and younger students, and a lot of narrative writing, to make meaning of experience. Critical _pedagogy is also stressed — not just using both languages, but reflecting critically on language practices used in the school itself. The languages are not symmetrical — for the Arab Israeli, Hebrew is perceived to be the language of the oppressor, a forced 'step mother tongue'; yet demographically it is only a minor language in the Middle East, without mucli ., international importance. Also, language conditions how the world is seen, as a Palestinian teacher explained: 'Let's face it, learning the history of , Israel in Hebrew is totally different from learning it in Arabic! Learning its history in both languages is the beginning of a whole new future' (Feuerverger 2001: 61). Such interculturality fits with Freire, and the discursive power of language — 'naming the world becomes a model for changing the world'. 'They are practicing an emancipatory theory of bilingual literacy by developing an r

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136 The

education/war interface

alternative educational discourse and reclaiming authorship of their own national identities' (Feuerverger 2001: 68). You do not just gain a language and empathy, but freedom fromthe_c.onstraints oLseeing_ the world only through one's own discursive prac-tiees. I recall reading somewhere that marriage guidance counsellors were having success in reconciliation by getting wives and husbands to learn and then talk to each other in a different language (say, German): in spite of (or perhaps because of) lack of nuance, they were able to say things openly which were impossible before. It makes sense. Language has huge emotional load which can prevent us actually communicating. In this school, Arab children were moving from seeing Hebrew in purely instrumental terms to seeing it as integrative. Feuerverger draws a lot on Giroux for her analysis that the daily events and interactions at the school presented a practical embodiment of the thesis that èducating for difference, democracy, and ethical responsibility is not about enshrining reverence in the service of creating passive citizens. It is about providing students with knowledge, capacities, and opportunities to be noisy, irreverent, and vibrant' (Giroux 1991: 509). Again, I want to return to the notion of noisy, irreverent democracy in Chapter 12. Also in the spirit of complexity is the creativity, the imagination. What immediately caught my attention when I began my visits to the school was that what these individuals were in fact doing was imagining a new way of life, inventing a new educational story by creating a curriculum with both narratives (both Jewish and Palestinian) of home and displacement, of borders and crossings. (Feuerverger 2001: 51) This modelling is what a Complex Adaptive System does — a similar 'as if' to the one we saw when looking at resilient schools in the parallel system in Kosovo. The 'School for Peace' is another feature of Neve Shalom/Wahat Al-Salam. This consists of three-day workshops which have been running since the beginning of the programme, targeted at adolescents, adult professionals and activists, and aimed at awareness that each individual has the power to produce change. The workshops can be seen as 'borderlands — where the interrelationships of different cultures and identities ... [are] sites of crossing, negotiation, translation, and dialogue' (Giroux 1994: 340). The Jewish-Arab Centre for Peace, another 'borderland' organisation, related a similar point, and highlighted the significance of music and art, and again the 'personal enounter': 'Not everyone will change their minds, but we can open a small window to a different world' (Feuerverger 2001: 22). But is three days enough, however intensive, to come to terms with the enormity of the issues? As Feuerverger admits, one difficulty is that the participants might treat what happens in this special place as unreal or as 'just a

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dream' — and that this is a good argument to place more emphasis on the follow-up aspects of the programme. While the workshops obviously have a profound impact, the book does not say much about any long-term effects: with the numbers going through the workshops, one would expect a significant permeation into Israeli society. Let's Talk A second excellent example of the value of dialogue and encounter for young people is the Let's Talk project. Since 1997, this has brought together young people in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Birmingham and Australia to talk about conflict and how we best live together. The backdrop was the peace process in Northern Ireland, and one objective was to enable young people, particularly in England, to engage with this issue by talking to their peers in Ireland and Northern Ireland and also by meeting and questioning representatives from the political parties involved. Let's Talk is based on three core assumptions: •

• •

Conflict, peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland are not just issues for people living there. They also directly involve people throughout the islands of Ireland and Britain and further afield. These communities have a right and a responsibility to contribute to the peace process in its broadest sense. Young people have not been given enough opportunity to learn about, debate and discuss local, national and international issues of conflict, peace and justice and to contribute to resolving problems and challenges. We can all learn something from each other. Sharing ideas and experience in an international arena helps everyone.

Young people meet at conferences and workshops around highly contentious issues (where politicians are also invited), and undertake activities in their schools. Let's Talk organised a referendum among 1,944 young people on whether they were in favour of the Belfast Agreement. One workshop focused on issues of peace and reconciliation in the Middle East, facilitated by an Israeli and an Egyptian (which has similarities to the case study above). A Birmingham group attended the youth programme of the 2nd World Water Forum in the Hague and shared a presentation on the theme 'Water: a potential source of conflict', using as a case study the proposal to build the Ilisu dam in Turkey. One participant said: The whole ethos of getting young people together to discuss issues and conflict resolution seems to me to achieve two things — it gives people an outlet for their view so they don't have to resort to other methods. It also helps people to understand others' points of view and therefbre feel empathy for them which can only help peace. As a Northerner,


I was a little sceptical at the start of this project about young people from Southern Ireland and England being involved — as well as those from the North, as I tend to assume we are the only ones with problems. Thankfully I have realised how wrong this is and feel all three sides are i mportant (Kate Devlin, Ballymena). (Let's Talk/80: 20: 1) The articulacy, energy, bewilderment of the young people at some of the horrors we have learned to take for granted, together with the baldly stated views and the mistrust of politicians, are a learning experience for all. I have also observed teachers at these events: they are committed to the notion of the voice of young people, but they vary in how far they can just listen to that voice. Some try to intervene with their own students, to steer them, to poke away at their ideas, to 'teach'. It is hard to stop being a teacher and to let young people do their own learning from trying to express a view or from listening to a reaction from another young person of a different community. It is hard to remain silent in a session which aims to discover 'the view of young people', and just take notes without being tempted to throw in a 'leading question'. I have learned that genuine listening skills are essential in the peace school. One Australian student participant at Belfast commented: The introductory session was typical of the level of debate involved throughout the conference — a 'getting to know you session' with two ex-paramilitary soldiers. These men belonged to opposing sides of the Northern Ireland conflict, the Ulster Volunteer Force, and the IRA. Both men had killed and the amount of emotion generated in the room was incredible. . . . The very fact that two men with such differing opinions, to the point where they had taken lives to highlight these, agreed to talk together to the group and encourage reconciliation efforts was a very positive beginning to Let's Talk Belfast '99 and a personally inspiring event. (Let's Talk/80: 20: 9) While schools may invite the army in to talk to pupils about careers, it is less likely that they invite the army of two opposing sides. Yet a school with the courage to do so maybe will generate the 'personal inspiration' which is at the bottom of agency. This is not to romanticise or claim too much for such projects. Let's Talk's own evaluation highlighted weaknesses as well as strengths — how to keep depth while extending breadth, the different level of political awareness amongst participants from different locations, the difficulty of keeping activity going between conferences and workshops, and ensuring followthrough at the local level. This is also an issue for UNESCO ASPnet, which

Peace education

139

can have a concentration of large-scale showcase events, celebratory days and festivals. It is reaching local people on a constant basis, and tying in to other local level activities which is the hallmark of success. By definition with school students, continuity is a problem (as with representation in schools and regional forums, as we found in the EURIDEM project). Yet we can see the tie-ins to complexity theory and emergence. One aim of the Let's Talk project is to identify local issues and share ideas for being proactive within their own communities — 'to make a difference' . There is an obvious and admitted influence of Paulo Freire, who estimated that if you can convince 15 per cent of the population, you can change society. Another student, from Sligo, said: The main reason I've stayed involved is for too long people have sat back and not bothered to do anything about the troubles. I know they can't make a drastic change but every little helps. So I decided to get involved and help myself— by helping others. (Let's Talk/80: 20, 2001:7) Let's Talk is growing. An important part (not confined to Let's Talk, but characteristic of many youth parliaments) is meeting 'real' politicians and realising that some, at least, have feet of clay. The disillusionment is offset by the realisation that you could do this job yourself, only better. There have been reservations about 'the encounter' — as Cairns (1996) points out, people encountering isolated 'others' may just see them not as exemplars of the òutgroup' — the 'some of my best friends are blacks/ catholics/Jews' stance. Positive contact may not alter perceptions. He argues that to do this, ironically, people's group affiliations should be made more salient, ensuring that the participants do see each other as representative, not as exceptions. I would prefer perhaps an emphasis on hybridity, on everyone being exceptions, but I take the point. What the two case studies show is the gains from groups coming together, rather than receiving the 'visitor'. Conclusion

From this chapter, emergence comes from another set of 'Hs': exposure, encounter and experience. Paradoxically, peace education is achieved through exposure to conflict, either through manuals and narratives or through deep reflection on one's own positioning in a conflict situation. Most directly, it comes from the encounter — with others with apparently opposing views or from observing the encounter between teachers with differing stances. And finally, peace education has to include experience and action together with others, and together with others that you may disagree with. Stacey argues with regard to complexity and amplification: 'People who begin to think differently will almost certainly begin to act differently, and


they will then almost certainly affect someone else who will begin to behave differently' (1996b: 278). And as Fullan (1999) points out, it is not diversity that counts, but collaborative diversity. And collaborative diversity means conflict. You learn more from people who disagree with you than you do from people who agree, but you underlisten to the former and overlisten to the latter. . . . This is the main reason why the strategy of going with like-minded reformers is shortsighted. (Fullan 1999: 23) Long-term peace education to create different actions, then, would seem to be the process of constantly engaging with unlike-minded reformers.

Part IV


Chapter 9

Education in immediate ti mes of conflict

Felman and Laub ask: Is there a relationship between crisis and the very enterprise of education? To put the question even more audaciously and sharply: Is there a relation between trauma and pedagogy? In a post-traumatic century, a century that has survived unthinkable historical catastrophes, is there anything that we have learned or that we should learn about education, that we did not know before? Can trauma instruct pedagogy, and can pedagogy shed light on the mystery of trauma? (quoted in Feuerverger 2001: 85) To see what can be learned for education and pedagogy in stable conditions, the next two chapters examine education in conflict and 'post-conflict' settings. There are difficulties in making these distinctions, as they are certainly not dual, nor are they linear. There are phases, and transitions. It was estimated in the 1991 Gulf War that more death occurred after the hostilities ceased, through lack of food, clean water, medical care and adequate help for refugees (Richman 1993). As Miller and Affolter reiterate, the umbrella term 'post-conflict' is itself a profound simplification. Conflict has raged for years in some regions, with no 'post' period in sight. Even after fighting stops, how long does a society remain in reconstruction? And for whom? For development agencies and donors, the duration of any given phase may be linked to government stability and capacity. For individuals and communities, however, there may be no clear point when 'reconstruction' stops, since the consequences of conflict, like shrapnel, penetrate deep into minds and hearts, to be worked out over a lifetime and beyond, and affecting relationships and identities for generations. ( Miller and Affolter 2002: 5)

Education in times of conflict 145

1 44 Strategic responses to conflict

Also, each post-conflict situation is unique, with effective responses attuned to local histories and conditions, including the duration of the conflict, the actors involved, the intensity of the violence and the fragility of the peace. Nonetheless, most writing on complex emergencies distinguishes common sequential phases of certain sorts, albeit categorised in a number of ways. UNICEF uses the phases 'loud', 'transition' and 'rehabilitation/reconstruction' (Pigozzi 1994). USAID uses the four phases 'emergency', 'recovery', `rehabilitation', 'reconstruction'. Miller and Affolter provide a useful breakdown of the indicators or 'education markers' for each of these phases and for the transition phases in between, dealing with such issues as the degree of coordination of agencies, teacher provision, curriculum, language of instruction, educational supplies and information systems, and whether all are surrounded by the establishment of a viable governance of education and a ministry of education. It charts the move from a simple but turbulent system to a complex adaptive one. While acknowledging that phases are rarely linear or uniform, and that any clearly demarcated phase may be a brief interlude before a long, complex transition, this book is in a linear format, so the USAID categorisation will be followed for the next two chapters. This chapter deals primarily with (complex) emergency and recovery, the next with rehabilitation and reconstruction.

Aedo-Richmond 1998). But no clear reference was made in the UN resolution to the actual role education should play in complex emergencies. Rapid responses to complex emergencies can still tend to follow a medical-relief model, with educational intervention (either as a mobilising instrument for peace and reconciliation or as central to the reconstruction of human resources) hardly addressed by this dominant model. Lowicki (1999) reports that donors may be reluctant to prioritise education in the initial emergency phase, for fear of long-term commitments. For host governments of refugees, there may be political and resource-based barriers such as fear of creating a refugee pull factor, lack of consensus over curricula and the priorities of food and shelter. Yet with regard to emergency assistance UNESCO has become a strong advocate in the international community of the idea that emergency operations must include from the beginning a local training component. There is growing recognition of the principle that victims of conflicts have an equally inalienable right to education as all other human beings (Aguilar and Retamol 1998); but also that waiting to begin educational interventions until conditions have stabilised may itself exacerbate instability (Education for All Forum 1999). Roche (1996) talks of the assistance after emergency by ACORD (the Agency for Cooperation and Research in Development) as falling into three types: material input, technical assistance or training; and organisational and moral support.

Educational intervention and rapid responses in complex emergencies

While all emergencies are complex, the term 'complex emergency' was coined in the United Nations to describe the major crises that have proliferated since 1989 that require a 'system-wide response' — a combination of military intervention, peacekeeping efforts, relief programmes and high-level diplomacy. Education would be part of this complex response, as 'humanitarian action cannot be fully effective unless it is related to a comprehensive strategy for peace and security, human rights and economic development' (UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs, quoted in Eade 1996). To be effective interventions must always be based on the recognition that societies in crisis retain and are shaped by their own past — and that past would include education in its broadest sense. 'For a society that has been ripped apart by civil war, developing a shared and sustainable sense of justice and peace may prove yet more complex than the emergency itself' (Eade 1996: 6). The new ideology of 'humanitarian' intervention also emerged from the experiences of NGOs and international organisations. UN Resolution 46/182 (1994) created guidelines on a continuum of action from early warning prevention through to rehabilitation, and defined for the first time the role and i mportance of inter-agency coordination in crisis situations (Retamol and

What is striking about ACORD's experience is how far it has been possible to provide all of these in nearly all circumstances, except where life is physically threatened. Capacity-building can and should be as much a need in the face of severe crisis as in a more settled situation. ( Roche 1996: 17) Joyner (1996) argues this clearly from the experience of southern Sudan, where it can be difficult, for example, to find people with a sufficient level of school education to be trained as health workers. The 'boundary conditions' between education and other recovery needs are very permeable. Molteno et al. (eds) (1999: 91) have a very useful classification suggesting three broad groupings of conflict contexts in which it may be appropriate for international agencies to attempt to support education, giving examples of where they have done so. In situations where conflict and its effects are long-term

• •

with refugees trapped for decades by unresolved political issues (Tibetans in India, Palestinians in Lebanon) with minorities in supposedly 'safe' zones, but with continuing insecurity (northern Iraq)


•

in societies not officially at war but with high levels of ongoing violence (South Africa, Colombia, Peru, Northern Ireland)

In current or recurrent conflicts

• • • • •

during civil war (Afghanistan, southern Sudan, Sri Lanka) in cross-border conflicts (Eritrea) with children internally displaced (northern Sudan, West Bank/Gaza) with children in short-term camps outside the country of origin ( Rwandans in Tanzania) with children at the front edge of conflict (ex child soldiers in Liberia)

In the immediate post-conflict years

• • • • •

where there is no government (Somalia) with an interim UN presence (Kosovo) with a new authority, not internationally recognised (Somaliland) with government reasserting control over 'rebel' areas, but unlikely to tackle the needs of conflict-affected children (Tajikistan) with a recognised but fragile government structure, unlikely to have the capacity to reconstruct education systems unaided (Ethiopia, Mozambique)

Various agencies and writers give convincing reasons for supporting schools in times of conflict and/or providing a systematic response until children can attend basic education (for example Joyner 1996; Molten() et al. (eds) 1999, Aguilar and Retamol 1998, Cairns 1996; Williams 1999). I put these together as sevenfold: 1 Preparedness: In the pre-emergency stage, education can be monitoring

early warning signs, developing new materials and safeguarding them at an interagency level, as well as generating planning strategies to address the needs of emergency affected groups. 2 Normalisation: In times of social disruption, simply going to school has a normalising effect, by establishing routines, thereby decreasing psychosocial stress. 3 Space for childhood: Schools can provide a space where children can be children, and fulfil needs for play and personal development, improving the psychological well-being of children and their coping ability. 4 Future conflict prevention: The fostering of a peaceful society by encouraging conflict resolution, environmental awareness and tolerance of diversity in schools.


5 Hope: The fact that schools exist offers some hope to communities insecure about their future, unifying communities in the task of providing education. 6 Skills: Educational provision can prevent whole generations from missing out on schooling and developing skills on which future recovery and development depend; an investment in people which can survive physical destruction. 7 Site for development: Education offers a window of opportunity for educational development, innovation and improvement in the transition from emergencies. In complexity terms, education here acts as an important regulatory or 'negative feedback' mechanism, restoring the equilibrium needed before any more change is attempted. While the benefits seem universal, obviously the precise educational response is highly context-specific. Aguilar acid Richmond (1998) explained in the context of Rwanda that there can be standardised logistic responses (i.e. school supplies), but education as a tool for changing behaviours and attitudes of an illiterate or semi-literate population affected by cholera or the landmine threat, and in general by the trauma of war, needs to be further assessed. For Save the Children, strategic decisions about what sort of school to provide often depends on the local government structures, as in their list above. Whatever the structure, partnerships seem important, with communities and with other providers. It was interesting that in Mozambique, Save the Children switched from essentially institution building of existing schools to look for ways to involve communities more closely and bring a stronger child focus. The realisation came later, through frustration at how little benefit children were receiving from the schools which the programme had helped to rebuild. Ironically, the greatest strides on relevance and methodology were possible in what are by most standards the worst situations, but where there was least possibility or need to engage with an established school system. The result was that adults managing these programmes responded directly to their evolving understanding of children's needs. ( Molteno et al. (eds) 1999: 96) This comment supports the critique of formal schooling in the earlier chapters of this book. Miller and Affolter would confirm that Schooling alone is not adequate for the larger challenge of reducing the toxicity that violence creates within children's social environments. The complex challenge of educational reconstruction merits an ecological

148 Strategic responses to conflict

approach that acknowledges the connections between psychological well-being and learning. ( Miller and Affolter 2002: 4) Schooling is 'nested' in wider arenas. Miller and Affolter later summarise five specific challenges or paradoxes: • • • • •

nurturing opportunities for experimentation and change while satisfying the needs for stability, security and the familiar supplying learning resources without neglecting learners' own capacities for reflection and creation giving away ownership of project development to children and communities creating spaces for people divided by conflict to talk, play and learn together safeguarding patience with processes of personal healing and community reconstruction that do not operate according to institutional timelines. ( Miller and Affolter 2002: 118)

I list these as I think these challenges might well apply to 'normal' schooling as well. I look next at some of the specific responses where there appears to be particular learning for mainstream education. Teacher education package/box

One non-formal educational response is characterised through the 'kit', variously called the teacher emergency package, the teacher education box or the school in a suitcase. The general objectives are to provide children with basic literacy, numeracy and life skills education pending restoration of normal schooling. The package is designed to provide essential materials for a self-sufficient 'classroom' and thus enable teachers to resume instructional activities wherever they find themselves after normal systems have been disrupted. This is an example of 'normalisation'. The teacher emergency package contains slates, chalk, dusters, exercise books and pencils for eighty students in two shifts. The teacher's bag contains blackboard paint, brush and tape measure to create a blackboard on a wall; white and coloured chalk; pens, pencil sharpeners and felt markers; ten `Scrabble sets' so that teachers can create language and number games for the children; three cloth charts (alphabet, number and multiplication); an attendance book; a notebook and the teacher guide on methods for literacy and numeracy. The kit covers Grades 1-4 and is designed for a six-month span of learning. The UNESCO Programme for Education for Emergencies and Reconstruction (PEER) also produced a kit called RECREATE with equipment for sport and play activities that facilitate children's creative


expression and coping with conflict-related stress. It also had a series of lessons on mine-awareness. The 'school in a suitcase' concept first emerged out of UNESCO's experience in Somalia and Tanzania. In Rwanda, UNESCO provided 9,000 suitcases for an estimated figure of 700,000 children. It was accompanied by a two-day training package for underqualified or semi-qualified teachers, and then a cascade of training of trainers. As part of the emergency situation in Chechnya, the Islamic Relief Community Aid programme bought 10,000 school kits which were distributed among school children to encourage their parents to teach them at home. The objectives and the kits themselves say little about conflict resolution, unless that is part of the hidden curriculum of teaching and learning. However, the teacher's pack does normally include guidelines for teaching limited topics such as 'soccer, songs, landmine or cholera or water-borne disease awareness, or environmental issues etc.' (Aguilar and Retamol 1998: 25). This seems a strange (and gendered?) order of listing, but presumably reflects the shift from recreational to more pedagogical concerns. Such kits have an important, although contested, role in post-conflict learning. They are not immune to criticism. The headmistress of Kigali's largest primary school was quoted as saying, 'They're no use at all. They're totally unsuited to towns. The parents brought schoolbooks and materials.' Arnhold et al. (1998) confirm that this was not an isolated response. Miller and Affolter talk about the benefits and drawbacks, which I summarise as follows. The advantages are: Kits provide immediate materials for restarting familiar educational processes when schools are destroyed. • They can be distributed quickly. • They provide a critical bridge between an emergency phase and a recovery phase. • They facilitate teachers' sense of effectiveness and security. • Children can resume progress in development of competencies. • The existence of an operational school signifies that the world is still working, that the community and the future of its children have not been irrevocably damaged. • Logistically, kits can be prepared in advance and be ready-at-hand for emergency response so that education does not lag behind responses in other sectors. • They can attract donor support.

•

The drawbacks are: •

Kits can create dependency because of their convenience, and are addictive to users, donors and procurement managers.

I50 Strategic responses to conflict

• • •

Because they are packaged in a standard form, they can often fail to meet variable needs on the ground. They can preclude dialogue among families, children and educational officials about the meaning of education. There has been a 'remarkable' absence of women teachers in 90 per cent of training for kits.

The Inter-Agency Consultation on Education in Situations of Emergency and Crisis (2000) recommended that kits be pared down to a basic level, and phased out as quickly as possible. Lessons for mainstream education would centre around these disadvantages — the 'one-size-fits-all' approach to education (such as a national curriculum . . .), the dependency of both teachers and learners on external materials, the denial of discussion about what education is for. In complexity terms there are no feedback loops to ensure relevant learning and development. Such activities operate within a bounded system, and are li mit-bounded, not limit-testing. While the packages fulfil the needs for normalisation and near-equilibrium, they are unlikely to lead to creativity or problem-solving about the conflict itself or children's response to it. Trauma therapy or recovery

In contrast to teacher education packages are the various therapeutic approaches to children with trauma. Chapter 6 outlined some of the debates on 'trauma': but here I should describe some of the programmes used. Such `recovery programmes' have been implemented in a number of regions including Rwanda, Chechnya, Angola, Iraq, Lebanon, Liberia, Mozambique, the former Yugoslavia and the Caucasus, and are characterised by play, recreation, art, writing and drama. Traumatised children often do not want to talk about their experiences; therefore different kinds of outward expression (telling stories, discussion, play, making dramas, drawing pictures, etc.) connected perhaps to the safety of a school, enable them to open up. Children live more fully in the world of imagination and fantasy than adults, and disruptions of the interior, unseen world are especially troubling. Poetry and storytelling enable expanded meaning. Musical groups, dance ensembles, art festivals, sports competitions and group outings all in different ways may compensate for the hardships of an uprooted life and facilitate the healing process. The ideology is that 'play is the work of children'. It seems indisputable that play alleviates stress and raises self-esteem, as well as building resilience. It has been pointed out, however, that while play can give children some relief from feelings, especially anxiety, they are unable to get any relief from anxiety when the play is 'repeated anxiety'. Much play during conflict is about war games (Cairns 1996). Adults may need to help the child to alter


the pattern of play in a way that will help the child to gain some mastery of the situation. This can be done by joining in the child's play and altering the sequence of events, for example, enabling the child to give a different ending to the event (Dodge and Raudalen 1991). Non-verbal media such as drawing are particularly powerful. Buwalda describes working with children suffering from war-related traumatisation in the Philippines. He had very few resources, and drawing was the children's only experience of working with visual arts, so it became central to their work. The children began with dozens of depictions of bombardments, killings, military encounters, and the like. They drew those things that had hurt them or that they feared most of all. They did this day by day, hour by hour, for around four and half weeks. Only then, when this fear and aggression had been reduced sufficiently, did the children have room to express other feelings. (Buwalda 1996: 65-6) In Bosnia, a unique radio programme, Radio Zid, was created to provide some education. It was a daily ninety-minute broadcast of music, discussion and education, including such topics as mental health, conflict resolution and mine awareness. Children were encouraged to act out dramatised roles to help them cope with war-related problems (Arnhold el al. 1998). The Circus of Peace in Mozambique in a similar vein was a travelling show that wove drama and the arts into explorations of the nature and the challenges of war and conflict as well as the possibilities of reconstruction (Lederach 2001). The RapidEd programme for war-affected children in camps in Sierra Leone was set up by teachers, with a 'grim advantage' of being displaced themselves, seeing their property looted and houses burned down. They confirm that in three months the sports, play and drama made a large positive i mpact on the children's behaviour, who opened up more easily and became less aggressive. Conventional school activities are not enough: 'The traumas and bad memories piling up inside must be helped to come out, before the burden becomes too heavy to carry' (Pesonon 2002: 17). From Sri Lanka we can learn from a different project called the Butterfly Garden, which for five years has provided after-school and weekend creative play for over 600 school children from 20 communities representing local ethnic groups (ethnic Tamil and Muslim). Children 'with psychological difficulties' attend weekly for a nine-month programme, with a choice of play, art and music activities. This opens new experiences, not just through the activities, but through formative relationships with animators and befriending children from other villages. Each programme cycle ends with a grand environmental opera inspired by the children's invention, to foster community reconciliation (Chase 2002). Yet contestations have arisen such as the

152 St rategic responses to conflict

Education in times of conflict

degree to which school officials, parents and community leaders came to see the Butterfly Garden as worthwhile, and the need for tangible evidence. Short-term funding cycles can pit local organisations against each other and increase pressure for quantified results. People are used to broken promises and hollow gestures. As Chase points out, linear expectations for results do not support the subtle, often slow processes of healing and change underway in the Butterfly Garden. There is an interesting paradox here about adults. Some post-conflict programmes stress the importance of working with adult role models; this programme stresses how the structure and process of the Butterfly Garden are shaped by the children themselves, not what adults think they need: It is within this physical and psychic space that the opportunity for healing arises, allowing the child to leave the narrow — and often constricting and violent — world of adults and enter into the 'sacred space' of play. It is through play that children are able to touch their own originality and to see the originality of those around them. From this a substantial critique emerges of the donor driven efforts '0.1 getting' war-affected children that have led to a `commodification' of traumatized children and short term programs of limited usefulness. Community programs for children should see them as children first who are to be given opportunities to be just that before being categorized. (Chase 2002: 45) -

In the Butterfly Garden, the child is treated not as a patient or client of a service for 'mentally ill' youth, but as a creative agent in authentic, sustained relationships with peers and mentors. There is an assumption of a capacity for healing within the child. The message here is that what is 'good' education for traumatised children is also good education for 'normal' children: play, imagination, art, music, taking of time, expressing feelings in a way appropriate to the child. Instead we have in most education systems play as something happening outside the classroom, a reduction in music and art and a pressure of time because of the overloaded prescriptive syllabus, together with the expressing of feelings appropriate to the teacher only. While not without their problems and critics, trauma recovery programmes in contrast are focused on the 'adaptation' central to Complex Adaptive Systems, and they use new connectivities which enable some sort of creative emergence for the child — in this instance, emergence from fear and impact of violence. Trauma recovery programmes recognise that play is not just about recreation in the 'relaxation' mode, but is a highly creative way of working through and reforming connections to the social world, finding, with others, a 'better fit'. Formal education has a lot to learn.

153

Child soldiers

As we saw in Chapter 6, a particular extension of trauma is that experienced by child soldiers. Three steps to recovery are usually defined: disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration. For demobilisation, the Liberian experience found that most children wanted to be reunited with their families, who were likewise very happy to be reunited with their children. 'Tracers' would visit families and communities to prepare them to receive the children and to talk to families who had rejected their children because of the atrocities they had committed (Miller and Affolter 2002). UNICEF in Sudan provided children with a 'going home' kit that included basic materials such as a mosquito net, blankets, fishing lines and hooks, and cooking utensils. Children were also given clothing and supplies to help them get started back at school. These materials enable ex-combatants to help support themselves and contribute to their families' welfare. It is i mportant to note that the experience of soldiering is not always limited to boys. McKay and Mazaruna (2000) found that girls were active in the government forces or armed opposition movements in thirty-nine countries. Yct the status of girls in armed conflict is rarely discussed, making them invisible to intervention planners. Young female combatants are frequently sexually exploited and may suffer from sexually transmitted diseases, causing even more stigma and reluctance to talk. Girl soldiers will need special support for finding acceptance and means of income generation, although such support should not simply assume a preference for traditional gender roles and undervalued economic activities. Reintegration programmes have multiple aims. Among the former child soldiers in Mozambique, education was the vehicle to inculcating a belief in a viable alternative to organised violence, creating an environment in which they were able to re-establish trusting relationships, develop self-confidence and the capacity to learn. Encouraging community children and former child soldiers to learn together significantly improved relations between the centres and wider community as well as between individuals, providing a starting point for reconciliation (Molteno et al. 1999). The War Affected Youth Support Scheme in Liberia (a UNICEF programme), in contrast, is a day programme in vocational and literacy training, with counselling. There are also small loans of seed money for business ventures. This is analysed as quite successful: 6,000 children had benefited up to 2002, some have established small businesses and others have been mainstreaming into the education system after gaining literacy skills. As with the Butterfly Garden above, the programme values the principle of respecting the views of the children in decisions and activities that affect their lives. However, it is not difficult to imagine the challenges in the education of child soldiers. Child soldiers prefer to be integrated into normal schools, rather than separate facilities, but integration needs to be undertaken



sensitively. In Mozambique, former child soldiers who had spent several years in the field were expected to register for first grade, which proved an embarrassment that prevented them re-entering the educational system (Miller and Affolter 2002). Consideration should be given to accelerated learning approaches that allow children who have missed several years of schooling to catch up with their age cohort (McConnan and Uppard 2001). Teachers are likely to need training to understand the impact of trauma on children and how they can help — particularly in a 'playful', mutually helpful connection with peers. As we saw in Chapter 7, child soldiers will have been indoctrinated with explicit hatred of a rival group and in the legitimation or even glorification of violence. Having broken moral barriers (in complexity terms, limit testing) and learned to devalue other groups, child soldiers have advanced far along a progression of destructive behaviour, a progression that makes further violence much easier to undertake (Staub 1989). In some cultures, indigenous healing and purification rituals are important for those who have perpetrated crimes, to rid them of contamination. Ritual is very important in phase transitions and reintegration. In Angola, the healer might bury a frequently used weapon and annouce that on this day a boy's life as a soldier has ended and his life as a civilian has begun (Wessells 1997). In the long term, there is the larger social goal of breaking cycles of violence, and preventing children being continually exploited in armed conflict. Political advocacy can help reduce acceptance of this and begin to build structural protection for children's rights. Improved access to formal schooling can reduce risk of abduction, as can efforts to 'de-romanticise' war in the media and protect unaccompanied children. Yet Pigozzi is quite stark on the remaining challenge: We do not know how to wage public education programmes that make it unthinkable for adults to allow children to be employed as soldiers, we do not know what children need in order to understand that this is not a desirable life choice, and we do not know how to utilize education effectively in demobilisation operations. (1998: 358) Refugee education

Do we know more about refugee education? There is now a large literature and set of programmes devoted to this, and this section reviews very briefly its main aims, ideologies and issues. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees is the major international agency dealing with refugees, but it has limited powers because it depends on funds from member states. The original UNHCR definition of a 'refugee' was an individual with a wellfounded fear of persecution in his or her own country (Graham-Brown 1991). A specific definition in international law is 'A person unable or unwill-

ing to return to his/her homeland based on reasons of race, religion, ethnicity, membership of a particular group, or political opinions' (O'Sullivan 1999: 172). In 2001, there were an estimated 15 million refugees in the world; and the world total of persons internally displaced as a result of conflict and human rights violations has been estimated as at least 25 million (UNESCO 2002b). However, the notion of an 'economic migrant' has now also been added, as being forced out of one's country by the severe economic problems caused by war could be seen as a case in its own right — although economic migrants are often not recognised. The UNHCR guidelines (1995) for the educational assistance to refugees describe three phases of educational response: first, recreational/preparatory; second, non-formal schooling; and third, reintroduction of the curriculum. This can be applied to any emergency situation, although from the point of view of field management, Aguilar and Retamol (1998) argue that the first and second phases are best combined — especially on aspects concerning procurement of materials and technical support. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees is probably the biggest UN funded educational programme worldwide. The agency runs more than 600 elementary and junior secondary schools for more than 365,000 Palestinian refugee children in five regions: Gaza, West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Nearly 11,000 teachers are employed. There is a large programme of in-service training and management training, which I have participated in, and can attest to the desire for progress. UNRWA schools are sometimes better resourced than other local schools, and have a permanence which is sad in a way, although this means they can be a force for change in another. Save the Children, however, report some problems in working with UNRWA. Their schools can be authoritarian: Ìn UNRWA schools they are hit by teachers, shouted at and told to stop talking all the time' (Molteno et al. 1999: 109). Also, UNRWA is not a national government and, while mandated to provide certain services, is not representative of the Palestinian community. Graham-Brown has a useful list of 'key dimensions' in developing a policy on refugee education: • • • • • •

short-stay versus long-stay populations intention to integrate into the host country versus intention to return or resettle politically organised versus unorganised populations camp-settled versus spontaneously settled populations host governments hospitable versus hostile to refugees cultural and linguistic homogeneity versus hetereogeneity of host society and refugees. ( Graham-Brown 1991: 224)


This generates the obvious questions of whether to make adaptation to the new environment a priority, or preparation to return home; how far to sustain refugees' own language and culture; or whether children's or adults' education is the higher priority. In her treatment of refugee contexts in many countries, Graham-Brown demonstrates how impossible it is to generalise. Refugee education therefore has some very specific challenges as well as those outlined earlier with regard to trauma and to child soldiers, often relating to politics. A revealing case is in Djibouti, where UNESCO-PEER established schools in the camps for Somali refugees, providing 'bridge and skills' courses to prepare children for secondary schools and/or become independent and find a job. But both are difficult, and the 'bridge' graduates remain idle, get married or seek a job as domestic help in Djibouti city. The local authorities have refused the integration of these young people into the Djibouti's high schools, fearing that if they learned to speak or write French, they would 'disappear' into the local francophone population. The Djibouti government is also opposed to the establishment within its borders of a secondary school for refugees only. But northwest Somalis say there is no room for returnees there, and are reluctant to mix 'foreign' pupils with their own. A proposal to start a secondary school on the border met with 'logistical issues' — not enough local pupils, no trained secondary teachers available, the UNHCR, while ready to build the school, wanting others to furnish, maintain and administer it, but the EU which is financing a major secondary education project in Somaliland being hesitant (UNESCO 1999). It doesn't get more complex than this. Whether refugees are seen as temporary or long stay also means different concepts of time — refugees may be seen as a linear problem. Perhaps this is a classic example of complexity, whereby components of refugees, NGOs, host governments, the state of the economy of the host country and the political and economic state of the country of origin all interact to provide an inherently unpredictable state. The time question also impacts at the personal level, relating to the age of the refugee: Lowicki (1999) outlines barriers contributing to low school attendance for refugees, ranging from legal prohibitions, to embarassment at attending school with 8-year-olds, to lack of privacy for teenage girls. Gender issues appear in refugee education, as elsewhere, for example in the need to encourage girls to attend school (Sinclair 1998). The curriculum can also be contested, and obviously varies according to context and language. The general curriculum usually comprises the traditional 3Rs but also includes choices from recreational activities and survival skills such as health and hygiene information (including HIV/AIDS and cholera prevention), landmine awareness, and environmental, peace and reconciliation programmes. For adolescents it is life skills to help them earn a living — building, tailoring, small animal keeping and business management. Refugees can spend several years in camps, and when they do leave they have few possessions and little money to start a new life.


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Payne (1998) reports on how it was decided to incorporate environmental education in the school curriculum in the settlement camp in Uganda, with training workshops for teachers and adults, and competitions involving drama, music and debates. But sensitive skills development is also crucial: she reported how initially the development of business and other non farming activities were perhaps the least successful of their activities. Workshops were initially held which reinforced traditional roles, like handcrafts for women, and promoted activities without reference to local markets or materials. The book is refreshingly honest overall about the obstacles to social reconstruction and self-reliance. Particular educational issues are those around improving communication, capacity building and gender awareness skills for field staff, and the need for advocacy skills with a range of agencies and host governments. A key debate is whether refugee education should include peace education — and who does it. For UNHCR, the involvement of humanitarian agencies is important, since it discourages the dissemination of political messages to children and young adults through education. The international humanitarian community instead 'should insist on progressively training teachers to convey skills of co-operation, conflict resolution and reconciliation, as well as messages relating to health and to environmental awareness' (UNHCR 1995: 28). Peace education initiatives are in fact often designed in the context of refugee camps, in response to the perceived needs of the refugee communities and the violence inherent in the refugee camps. In a big programme in Kenyan camps reported by Margaret Sinclair (2002) the community groups had all stressed that a school programme alone was not enough, and they wanted a peace programme for adults as well, which would of course reinforce the school programme. But a significant comment was that, 'Orienting education towards peace requires critical reflection on the ways in which education has contributed to exclusion and aggression in a particular context' (Sinclair 2002: 72). Children would presumably have to unlearn some of the previous formal education messages. Sommers (2001) found that the peace programme in Kenya was highly popular among refugees, but that a limitation on the project's capacity to build peace was that the participants tended to be people who already behave in peaceful ways. Marginalised youth, the most violence-prone segment of the camp population, usually did not participate, and among adult participants the project tended to serve the educated elite, excluding women. These evaluations are very valuable in thinking about not just refugee education but the overall histories and future targets of education for peace or conflict. A major question is that of preparation for reintegration. The right of refugee children to a public education was spelled out in Article 22 of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. It established that 'the Contracting States shall accord refugees the same treatment as is accorded to nationals with respect to elementary education'. This naturally has met -


with different interpretations by member states, but Aguilar and Retamol (1998) describe how intergovernmental consensus among ministries of education from the Southern African region was reached in 1990 on the acceptance of using the Mozambican curriculum for refugee school children from Mozambique. The principle of 'education for repatriation' applied to the Mozambican refugee population of Zimbabwe and Malawi had a significant i mpact on the traditional interpretation of the 1951 Convention. Yet it is doubtful that refugee children in the UK would be able to get their own curriculum, given the range of countries of origin. Looking at refugee education in the UK and other developed countries therefore evinces some similar issues but also different ones. Vincent and Warren did a study of refugee children in inner-city schools in England, where one school had a dedicated refugee support team: Refugee families live under great pressure, forced to co-exist with great uncertainty. The parent respondents in this study wished schools to recognize this and to be flexible and imaginative in their responses. They appreciated instances when teachers went out of their way to explain things, when the school offered community language classes and/or classes of English, when an interpreter was available. Other concerns were similar to those of many other parents — how is my child progressing? How do I help him or her? What do they actually do in schools? (Vincent and Warren 1998: 72) Vincent and Warren make a number of recommendations for the UK: • • • • • • • •

a review of home-school policy and practice recognising the diversity of urban populations, and of links with local community the introduction of a structured induction process for children and families school meetings using interpreters written information on the way the education system is organised (or welcome videos from LEAs) increasing ethnic minority representation amongst teaching and ancillary staff a review of how issues connected to the refugee experience can be introduced into the classroom — including major themes with relevance to all or many children — loss, war, moving home, belonging to two countries careful monitoring by the school of the social experiences of newly arrived children INSET sessions for teaching and ancillary staff concerning basic information on the countries of origin of refugee families in the school, and the law regarding settlement; INSET on dislocation and distress

Education in times of

• •

conflict

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annual bulletins to schools from LEAs containing information on refugee issues, contact addresses of community and other support organisations, legislative changes, information about countries of origin LEAs to review their policies and data on refugee children (location, achievement, etc.), providing a dedicated post if there are large numbers of refugee children.

Rutter and Jones at the beginning of their book on the education of refugee children make the revealing point that the presence of refugee students in the education system 'reveals problems that have always been there within the education system itself' (1998: 2). This refers to the school's orientation to black and ethnic minority children in general, and the need to review homeschool practices. In the same spirit, many of Vincent and Warren's guidelines could be equally applied to any 'good' schooling. In complexity terms, there is much here about the power of information. Role of teachers and pedagogy after conflict

While teachers may have been displaced after conflict, Joyner (1996) argues that we should not underestimate their value: they are respected members of the community, and raising their awareness of the importance of such issues as health, girls' education and psycho-social needs is a crucial first step to long-term and culturally appropriate development in these fields. This i mplies some sort of retraining or reorientation. The Novalis Institute, for example, trains South African teachers in the methods of Waldorf schooling, incorporating the teacher's vital role in contributing to the healing and reconstruction of the racist past in schools and wider communities (Arnhold et al. 1998). Miller and Affolter claim that, surprisingly, there is a paucity of published material related to the experience of teachers in post-conflict settings, with most attention being given to macro-level reconstruction of educational systems and strategies for effective projects. There is little qualitative enquiry into teachers' perceptions of the training in the various reconstruction projects and of their work in schools in the wake of crises. Yet as Green points out for Bosnia, 'Educators represent a critical sector in Bosnian society. We know that their acceptance of each other as Serbs and Bosniaks is crucial to a sane future for this region' (Green 2002: 81). This was also my experience working with curriculum harmonisation groups in Bra°. The teachers appeared relieved to be almost 'given permission' to accept each other again, and to return to pre-conflict relations. One member said this would have been unimaginable a year ago. Previous working groups had collapsed, having found it impossible to work together even on such apparently neutral subjects as information technology. It appears to be about finding the right moment for emergence and new connectivity.



As argued in Chapter 8, the 'encounter' therefore seems vital in teacher education post-conflict. Another revealing example is the Palestinian—Israeli Educator Forum, which brought together teachers to work on a proposed curriculum to be applicable to both sides. Educational activities were to centre around 'understanding and accepting the legitimization of the other side's perspective', but participants first had to collaborate on a series of encounters for familiarity with themselves, often hindered by bombing or suicide attacks and the subsequent refusal of entry permits or other restrictions on movement. Analysing their own and others' identity entailed some surprises (for example, what constitutes a 'refugee', and the notion of a 'secular Jew' (Peace Education Forum 1998)). In an 'encounter', the process is as i mportant as the outcome. It seems also to open a possibility space at highereducation level: Ozacky-Lazar reports on doing joint papers with a Palestinian scholar, so that their joint work becomes a 'statement' (Ozacky-Lazar 2001: 24). It is not only teachers and lecturers that can benefit from reorientation and new encounters. In Indonesia, Dahrendorf (2000) reports positively on the new training academy for the East Timorese Police Force set up by the UN Civilian Police, to establish basic security after the violence. School educators can in fact learn a lot from police training. A fascinating paper by Willoughby-Mellors (2002) describes her work and research in a police training programme in Rwanda. This had huge issues of cultural sensitivity, starting with the fact that many of the communal police officers had actually assisted in the genocide (as well as the issue of previous inactivity or even complicity of westerners in the genocide). Building on Schein (1985), Willoughby-Mellors and colleagues found they had to focus far more on `process' and 'structure' rather than 'easily learned', conscious content, in order to rebuild culture and trust. Two issues emerge for my analysis. One is the warning is that if action researchers concentrate only on task content, `they can amplify the catastrophe, rather than actively contributing to the processes of democratic social change' (Willoughby-Mellors 2002: 16). The trainers gradually had to shift responsibility for training and learning onto the Rwandans themselves. The second is what constitutes 'complex' and `si mple'. I was enthralled by the account of the time when the UK trainers asked the officers to design a 'simple' role play and video (giving a fourminute example around the theft of a goat). To their surprise, the trainees' videos involved mass-murders, thefts from severely disabled people, burglaries, very dramatic police chases, the searching of vehicles containing criminals suspected of having firearms, and dramatic productions of catching and arresting a woman in a scene of adultery (which is a criminal offence in Rwanda). A key insight from this is the interpretation of 'simple' in a complicated 'post-conflict' society:

161

In a country that had recently experienced a horrific genocide, where an estimated 800,000 to a million people were killed in just three months, the scenarios they had created were, to them, simple. Whereas my colleagues and I had expected a variety of simple (by our values and standards) scenarios, involving minor crimes. ( Willoughby-Mellors 2002: 3) It is clear that sensitive reorientation is necessary, particularly in workshops for teachers or other professionals designed to bring together people who were previously hostile (or where hostility between groups persists). They have to provide a 'safe container' for the wide spectrum of feelings in the group. Green is full of insights here with regard to the Project DiaCom experience in Bosnia: We pay close attention to the rhythms of the group, shifting our agendas to match their emerging needs. Often a crisis erupts, challenging us to design an intervention on the spot. The group crisis may be a sharp expression of ethnic prejudice or blame, an issue of member dominance or withdrawal, an inappropriate verbal attack, or a dispute about history and memory. Each crisis becomes an opportunity to examine issues of individual and collective authority and responsibility in Bosnia, critical concerns in this postwar period of establishing civil society. . . . We alternate the focus between their responsibilities as educators for modelling tolerance and their roles as human beings caught in their own process of grief, rage, prejudice and fear. ( Green 2002: 80-1) Here we have an example of a group being brought to a crisis, to the edge of chaos, but this being a learning experience. Also we see the conjuncture between micro and macro, with the participants and the learners each doing their bit towards rebuilding civil society. 'Modelling' is significant: the teachers were not used to participatory methods, rather to traditionally structured classrooms, but soon started to reproduce the former in their own classrooms. They also had to learn to model tolerance. Even these committed groups had to get used to working together; is it even more difficult for children of war and violence? Lessons from Project DiaCom in Bosnia were: • •

Dialogue cannot be forced — participants must come to it voluntarily, when they are ready to begin listening; it develops slowly, starting with common themes such as hopes for children. Reconciliation must be a local agenda; outsiders cannot demand it. Reconciliation efforts that are undertaken too quickly by international agencies may actually increase tensions.


• • •

Sustained interethnic dialogue requires support from local authorities and professional legitimacy. Conceptual understanding of the origins and dynamics of violence help people to feel reconnected with humanity and may also humanise perpetrators of violence. The participatory pedagogy of the dialogue activity serves as a form of teacher in-service training, enabling teachers to experience new approaches to teaching, and ability to work in ethnically mixed schools. ( Green 2002)

It can be seen that all these are process variables for teacher education, not competences or curriculum content. Dialogue is central, not just a convenient `teaching method', and it needs official legitimisation. I mpact evaluation

Given the complex and shifting nature of education in and for times of conflict, evaluation of impact presents a particular problem. Participatory research has the best logic for short-term impact, with interesting dimensions. In the Ugandan refugee camp, Payne (1998) has revealing comments on the participatory research approach which they tried to develop. Qualitative indicators included the degree to which labour was being sold to local Ugandans in return for food (as a measure of food security); the number of children staying on in school classes for a whole day rather than leaving early because they were hungry or had other domestic responsibilities; changes in diets; and (my favourite) having the time to sit around a fire at night and tell stories (to measure how far households had regained control over their lives and felt that a degree of security had returned). Save the Children in Sri Lanka also used a participatory research approach in establishing children's views of conflict and its impact, in order to feed the programming process (Miller and Affolter 2002). This generated the questions that always arise in participatory research, such as what is exactly meant by 'listening to children'. Children were not used to having their opinions asked. The lack of privacy can impede in-depth dialogue. It is timeconsuming. Ethical considerations of to what extent sensitive issues should be pursued were raised. Nonetheless there seems to be a consensus that in the process of reconstruction, children should have an input into decisionmaking, and the opportunities for children to participate in programme planning can support their personal development while improving the programmes themselves. Such processes may be especially powerful when children have taken on new roles, as in the case of post-genocide Rwanda where child-headed households became all too common following the deaths of parents. An agenda of participation positions children as creative and capable social actors, rather than as passive victims of social violence.


Children's participation can also take account of the gendered impact of conflict. Social upheaval affects boys and girls differently. Girls may take on new roles in post-conflict periods (Interagency Consultation on Education in Situations of Emergency and Crisis 2000). Whilst such changes may increase domestic responsibilities, girls and women may also have greater opportunities to participate in public life. Rather than assuming that females want to return to traditional roles post-conflict, agencies can use participatory activities to affirm female capacities for decision-making and leadership, to act as role models. Children need to see a meaningful outcome from their participation. Like everything else, 'participation' can be manipulated to serve predetermined agendas. Children are attractive for public relations efforts, and there may be frustration and disillusionment if it remains symbolic. The long-term i mpact of the education provided in post-conflict or transitional societies is notoriously difficult to measure, however. The countries themselves are not stable, and may return to conflict in spite of national and international efforts. One can count how many children are and remain in school, and how many examinations they pass, but the more affective — and it might be argued more important — qualitative areas are hard to quantify. Evaluation is particularly difficult for contested areas such as peace education. 'No systematic evaluation has been carried out to assess the relevance of these experiences and the impact of their methodological approaches. This area remains an evolving one that requires further research and reflection' (Aguilar and Retamol 1998: 41). This reminds us of the critiques of peace education in the previous chapter. Miller and Affolter stress the uniqueness of responses in post-conflict situations, but found common elements in all the educational projects they described — practical skills, experiential learning in democratic, collaborative behaviours, acknowledging violence and loss, creative expression and relationship building across generations and across identity groups. Again, there are lessons for normal schools here. As with teacher education, these are process issues. Significantly, Miller and Affolter comment: The commonalities of these projects also speak to some degree of the li mitations of traditional schooling as a vehicle for social reconstruction. Schooling is not typically oriented toward creative play or reflective dialogue, and children are rarely treated as partners in decisionmaking. School is a space owned and operated by adults. Schooling often replicates structures of authority and messages about the value of particular social groups that underlie more obvious forms of violence. Schooling per se does not lead to greater compassion and tolerance — after all, how many war leaders and dictators have been well-schooled, even in elite institutions? . . Schools in post-conflict settings cannot si mply be places for children to learn basic skills. Rather, schools

I 64


must be partners in a community-wide effort to help children to outgrow war. ( Miller and Affolter 2002: 119) I would add, schools need to outgrow war too. Education and learning, finally, can be turned on the peacekeeping process itself. Kapungu (2001) describes the Lessons Learned Unit set up to evaluate UN actions in times of conflict — especially after the events that went 'terribly wrong' after UN forces withdrew both in Rwanda and Somalia, and the ethnic cleansing that went on in the former Yugoslavia when UNPROFOR were still there. The unit had two functions: first, to examine past and current peacekeeping operations, drawing lessons to be learned and recommending improvements; and second to establish and manage a resource centre, which would serve as an institutional memory of peacekeeping, so that materials would be available to planners and managers.

Conclusion I would like to see a Lessons Learned Unit in each school, not to review the student 'lessons' in terms of curriculum, but to evaluate the mistakes (and successes) made in management, teaching methods, discipline, exclusions. Schools can, as in international organisations, be sidelined and starved of resources — but with systematic, 'mid-mission' evaluations it is possible to change the plan, and not repeat what we did yesterday because it is easier to tackle. Rebuilding does not mean restoring the past, but defining new roles, relationships, codes and ways of doing things. The complexity angles on all the 'lessons learned' from this chapter would be: (a)

the recognition that a complex emergency needs a complex educational response, in the intertwining of recreation, trauma therapy, practical skills, peace education and integrated curriculum (b) the recognition that the survival of the organism/institution depends on the capacity for adaptation, deriving from (c) the use of play and creativity and imagination in emergence to new learning and behaviours, and (d) the use of feedback and new connectivity in the shape of dialogue and listening to the voices and histories of children (and teachers). The obvious conclusion, made repeatedly in this chapter, is that what would be educationally good for children experiencing conflict would be good for all children: the problem is that most countries have the national equivalents of the teacher education package — standardised packages and ways of relating which may be great for short-term equilibrium but hopeless for new learning and for new ways of doing peace.

Chapter 10

The aftermath of conflict: Rebuilding society

Peacekeeping moves on from peacemaking, where the search for a negotiated peaceful coexistence is supported by the beginnings of social and economic reconstruction, or the restoration of civilian, judicial and political processes (Stewart 1998). The notions of rehabilitation and reconstruction imply an attempt to find a previous state. Yet there is a debate about whether education post-conflict is about a return to normality, or a radical departure. Roche argues: A developmental approach to recovery is about using this period to bring about change, or consolidate gains made during the crisis. It is not about returning to the "normality" or status quo which led to the crisis in the first place. ( Roche 1996: 20) This would be particularly true ofschooling and ofmilitarisation, as argued in Chapter 6. For Stewart, 'A culture of violence has to be transformed into a stable, non-violent normality in which the hearts and minds of the former combatants are convinced of the benefits of permanent peace' (Stewart 1998: 21). This is then not so much a return to normality but a new normality, a new attractor state. There is a need to go beyond the 'default imperative' of restarting schooling as it used to be, and instead open the possibility that post-conflict reconstruction can be an opportunity for deep innovation ( Miller and Affolter 2002: 9). As Bush and Saltarelli (2000) point out, the usual 'add good education and stir' approach is unlikely to produce lasting change in conflict-ridden societies. Crisis provides an opportunity to examine the shortcomings of old systems and attempt to search for new solutions. This chapter works through four basic questions: What is a society moving from and towards, that is, what is the trajectory of change? Who plans and decides? What is to be (re)constructed, and how does education contribute? How is 'progress' evaluated?


What is the trajectory of change?

Obviously the role and priorities of education depend on the nature of the conflict, the cause of it and the future envisioned. If it has been violent struggle, then humanitarian education_ or physical rebuilding is a first priority; if (as in South Africa) it was more about social change than violence and destruction, then the priority is the redistribution of educational opportunities. Much depends on whether the conflict was internal or external, and what the solution to the conflict was. Bosnia post Dayton was to become a sort of plural society; Kosovo was to become for the Kosovars, with as yet no real attempt at integration. The length of the conflict is also a critical factor, particularly if children and teachers have only known a conflict situation, and have no benchmarks to return to — or even to discard. Often there is a dual new function: Ikramov (2001) argues that in Afghanistan, peace education should be taught together with education for sustainable development, that is, the skills of surviving and developing in an integrated, co-dependent society, as the humanitarian and economic situation in the country is crucial. Darby's (1997) analysis of the problem in Northern Ireland is as 'multilayered' with four key issues: a constitutional arid political problem; a problem of inequality; a problem of violence and injustice; and a problem of community relations and cultural intimidation. So the question is what is being reconciled, and by whom: does the conflict involve everyone — in the Republic, in Britain, internationally? This question of the 'boundary' of a conflict is a recurring one. Larger political ideologies will influence directions — in previously communist states this may be towards neo-liberal free market ideologies. In a post-communist period, Offe (1996) distinguishes the contradictory trends between modernisers and conservatives, where the modernisers symbolise urban life, civil society, market economy, human rights, secularism, moral tolerance and a 'return to Europe'. The conservatives symbolise the rural forces with emphasis on religion, populism, national pride and a 'return to ourselves'. Against the dark past of communism, the modernisers set a bright future of liberal capitalism, while the conservatives set it against a pre-communist golden age. Offe is able to explain why people still find it rational to pursue the politics of 'ethnification': for the political elite, the engagement in ethnic and nationalist political initiatives symbolises one's distance from the old regime, and has greater certainty. It seems to be a game of (backward-looking cultural) "pride" versus (forward-looking economic) 'hope'. In the absence of some overarching constitution of a political space mediating between the two and of compelling reasons for economic hope, the longing for 'pride' is bound to hold sway. ( Offe 1996: 63)

The aftermath of conflict: rebuilding society 167

For stakeholders on the ground, on the other hand, the imperative may si mply be that of 'modernisation' of education. In interviews I had with education officials in Kosovo in 2001, a key desire was for a fresh organisational reality which was economically sound and rationally structured. One father (the teacher) and his son had been sharing the same shoes in shifts, and economics was everything. During the parallel system, there had been no chance to encounter modern methods. It was more difficult for older teachers to change. A tax system was yet to be in place, let alone a pension scheme and a career structure. There was interest in incentives through testing, and in evaluation and 'standards'. Integration and peace were not high on the agenda. There was therefore an issue around the understanding of 'education reform'. Pupils had heard of it, but without much clarification. 'They think they have the right to do anything.' The principal gave the example of a group of pupils producing a 'revolutionary pamphlet' with requests about the relationships between teacher and pupil. But it was not clear what they wanted; and they had left the pamphlets by the toilets, not bringing them to the principal or the teachers. The implication seemed to be that there was both a cognitive need to understand what 'rights' were, and a strategic need to develop skills for change in a new system. The principal himself was grappling with the new curriculum: 'I'm reading it, trying to find more time .. . I have a positive impression of it. I have to think not just theoretically, but how to behave towards it.' This is an interesting phrase, 'how to behave towards it'. All sorts of new learning is implied, again not returning to a previous state. In South Africa, one of the legacies of apartheid is poverty and unemployment, creating a context of violence — often black on black rather than the original source of tension. There have been instances of desegregated schools with violence between black and white pupils, but the key problem is not overt resistance Ito desegregation but a failure to address change and to promote integration ( Harber 2000). Schools were ill equipped to deal with the new diversity and to deal with racism, as they had not been trained to tackle it, or had been actually trained in racism under apartheid (Naidoo 1996). Yet it could be possible for education to interrupt the conversion or amplification from political violence to economically based violence: Straker (1992) in a longitudinal study of South African township youth found that those who had experienced supportive carers, and were involved in violence for ideological reasons, were less likely to be involved some years later with drugs or criminal activity. Policy needs to focus very much on what constitutes a continuing context of conflict. Who plans and decides on reconstruction?

Whereas we saw in the previous chapter a heavy involvement of NGOs in education in times of conflict, transitional periods between phases involve


choices that may be made by government officials or set in place by a broader peace process — rather than choices made by educators. These choices are likely to become solidified in later phases. For example, the choice of language of instruction for formal education may be made by groups organised to form a transitional government. Subsequently, it is rare for a central ministry to modify such a decision. Much therefore depends on who is in charge after a conflict. To discuss education planning, Arnhold et al. (1998) use the interesting illustration of the role of the Allies in Germany during and after the Second World War. Personnel were trained, as far as wartime conditions would allow, in an embyronic education branch of the Control Commission as the Allies advanced. It was possible to draw up lists (black, grey, white) of people whose degree of involvement with the Nazi party would make their continuation in educational office more or less problematic. Preparation began in London on textbook revision and handbooks for newly arrived education officers. As Arnhold et al. point out, many of the problems the Allies had to contend with are mirrored in post-conflict situations throughout the world today, including: • • • • •

the need to plan adequately for the human and physical resources that will be required the need to purge the teaching force of people whose political involvement makes them unsuitable for any role in the reconstruction process the need to encourage democratic processes while not appearing to impose such processes the need to develop new teaching styles and materials the need to create a climate in which longer-term reform might be possible.

As they recognise, none of these is easy, particularly removing 'unsuitable' teachers. While the Allies handed over 'denazification' to the Germans, and thereby avoided charges of prejudice themselves, this is not always possible. I would hazard that in the case of Bosnia or Kosovo, it might well be very difficult to identify teachers who did not have some political involvement and carry the burden of hostility to the enemy. Teacher 're-education' may hold a key here, rather than purging (although not along the lines followed in Zimbabwe, as outlined in Chapter 7). UNESCO's Unit for Educational Rehabilitation and Reconstruction talks in an undated paper of a 'reconstruction Master Plan for the education system' based on a needs analysis of eight dimensions: environmental, organisational, infrastructural, material/financial, human, institutional, pedagogical and curricular. Needless to say, in complexity terms, these are not separate but interactive. Much will depend on whether governments have collapsed, whether they are still there but undependable; whether new


boundaries post-war mean different educational authorities, or conversely whether new coalitions mean convergence of existing authorities. It remains to be seen what will happen to the anomalies in Palestine, whereby schools in the Gaza strip follow an Egyptian curriculum and those in the West Bank a Jordanian curriculum. The Palestinian National Authority is creating its own Palestinian curriculum. What is to be reconstructed?

This leads into the question of what exactly is to be reconstructed postconflict. This section distinguishes five areas of education for reconstruction: relationships; the culture of learning; language usages; curriculum and textbooks; and governance. Reconstructing relationships: reconciliation

It is obviously difficult to ascertain at what point one attempts to assert reconciliation. In McLaughlin and Regan's resource book A Place Apart? Exploring Conflict, Peace and Reconciliation: The Case of Northern Ireland (2000), the authors emphasise that reconciliation is a process, and divide it into four key areas: healing and moving on; relationship building across the divides; infrastructural reconstruction; and interdependence or recognition of the benefits of cooperation. It can be seen that this is very purposeful and based on needs and interests, rather than just being nicer to each other (see Chapter 8). It also requires people to take action and behave in particular ways. Reconciliation is by no means a neutral sort of activity — a simple matter of agreeing to bury the hatchet. Nor is reconciliation about silencing pain. Kelly (2000) shows how in militarised states attempts are sometimes made to conscript women into a 'rebuilding of the nation' agenda in which their needs are subordinated to those of repairing the damage to men and 'the society'. 'One central, but universally neglected, element of this is that violations women experienced during the conflict are silenced, since the male combatants need to be constructed as heroes rather than rapists' (Kelly 2000: 62). McMaster (2002), also writing on Northern Ireland, stresses the key transformational role of education in leading people out of conflict and a culture of violence. His view of the reconciliation process is perhaps however more like 'picking at a scab' than is McLaughlin and Regan's. He sees the roots of conflict as deep, but historical and collective memory as highly selective, requiring constant evaluation and critical probing — however painful. 'There are myths to be exploded and simplistic and reductionist readings of historical events to be shattered. Such a process in a conflict situation is best achieved by the antagonists walking through history together' (McMaster 2002: 23). This then is again the emphasis on the encounter, on the 'hard questions'.


He also has four components of an education for reconciliation programme, which I summarise as: • • • •

the pursuit of justice (not punitive justice, which some still want, but restorative and redistributive justice) the pain of truth-telling (victims and victimisers telling their stories and believing that their stories are heard) the art of forgiveness (not in a cheap or pietistic way, but where the past is not allowed to dominate present relationships) the practice of compassion (the ability to suffer alongside each other, enter each other's pain, community solidarity). ( McMastcr 2002: 32)

It would seem that the pain of truth telling and the practice of compassion have some parallels with McLaughlin and Regan's `healing'; and the pursuit of justice reflects their emphasis on reconstruction for democracy. McMaster's argument that human rights are the central framework for community reconstruction could also be a common ground. Yet getting beyond domination systems and mindsets will not be easy, and more than a bill of rights is needed. There seems agreement that an educational strategy is needed that is intergenerational, to enable people to explore and practise equality and their rights and responsibilities. Reconstructing relationships is also about reconstructing relationships to arms. Peace education extends into the value system at a larger social level, contributing to the 'demilitarization of the mind' (Bush and Saltarelli 2000: 28). In Somalia, a peace education programme challenged the cultural valorisation of the gun as a symbol of courage and machismo, including a travelling play called Drop the Gun, Rebuild the Nation ( Retamol and Devadoss 1998). This helps to change reference points for the construction of identity — particularly male identity — in a society (as discussed in Chapter 4). The question is how to make males feel good about themselves through collaboration or reconciliation processes. _ A further complication to identity and relationships post-conflict is the positioning of 'returnees'. In Bosnia, 25,707 people returned from 27 countries. The benefit may be familiarity in a second language; the drawbacks of course are yet more adjustments. One teacher spoke of his children having changed schools 12 times during the war and post-war period, and having to constantly adjust to new teaching and curriculum, new teachers, new peers and new languages. As with refugees, there are obvious difficulties of predicting and planning student numbers, as well as reintegrating children into schools and enabling 'catching up' on curriculum. In Rwanda, there was a large increase in the number of street children as some of the 100,000 children orphaned during the war returned. Estimates of children sleeping rough ranged from 600 to 4,000, depending on whether the children were documented or not.


Adults accompanying returning children may not have been able to feed them, and would thus abandon them. Agencies such as UNICEF, UNHCR, Save the Children and Caritas established job-skills training centres for street children, putting together recreational activities as well as vocational skills ( Arnhold et al. 1998). Yet the bigger long-term question may be relationships between 'returnees' and their society, especially if this is in itself still divided. An instructive public meeting I attended in Br'6ko found young people ranged up against each other. Some Serb school students were resisting integration: 'We had a war . . . we are all supposed to go to school together, sit behind the same desk. It is too early. Lots of people died, that hurts us. You cannot just integrate us at once.' A Croat returnee retorted, 'I would like to ask one thing, am I different from you? It is not my fault you lost someone you love, it is not your fault I lost someone I love.' This seemed a fair point, but her very absence during the war seemed to invalidate her experience in the eyes of the others. She was indeed seen as 'different' — and not just through her ethnicity. Restoring a culture of learning Infrastructural planning and reconstruction for learning in the formal sense obviously begins with physical repair of buildings and equipment. Yet a deeper question is that of orientations to education. A study of the culture of learning and teaching in Gauteng schools in South Africa (Chisholm and Vally 1996) found high absenteeism in teachers and students, and lack of motivation. One principal commented that teachers did not have a knowledge of what a culture of learning and teaching might mean, having spent their entire lives in disrupted schools. Students raised problems concerning teacher professionalism, including lack of respect by teachers for one another and for students, lack of cooperation and divisions among teachers, sexual abuse and harassment of students, use of corporal punishment and drunkenness. Christie (1998) uses the term (dis)organisations' for such schools, and draws on social psychology and the idea of 'social defence' to analyse and explain the way that dysfunctional schools operate. School organisations need to contain the anxieties associated with learning and teaching, and they use rituals, rules, formalised social relations and adherence to the boundaries of time and space to do this. However, when the organisation itself is collapsing, basic group tasks of learning and teaching are subordinated to unconscious group activity whereby social relations and office politics get more attention than substantive work. This might be the 'shadow system' analysed in complexity writers such as Stacey. Schools become caught up in forms of conflict, aggression and uncertainty that cannot be contained in weak organisational structures. This helps explain 'the apathy, depression, i mpotence, anxiety about physical safety, lack of agency, disempowerment


and projection of blame onto others' that she and other researchers found in the dysfunctional schools they visited. I would say however that such phenomena are not confined to post-conflict schools, as we discuss in our writing on school ineffectiveness (Harber and Davies 1997). Restoring a culture of learning is not just about schools, but also about libraries, museums and cultural resources such as theatre, exhibitions and concerts. In Kosovo, there had been some art and music in schools, but art was of the 'draw-an-apple' variety and music was writing the stave and clefs. There was not a pool of music and arts teachers on which to draw, and — as in many walks of life — people were simply appointing themselves 'directors' of theatres and TV stations (Davies 1999a). Interestingly, the cultural editor of Koha Ditore, the leading daily, was unsure that getting young people together to do culture in educational institutions was actually advisable ( Davies 1999a). Restoration of culture is too risky to be left to schools.

Reconstructing relationships to language Language and language rights often form part of a conflict. In educational policy terms, this may be a nightmare, not least as populations may be transient and fluctuating. The South African Constitution in 1996 did not establish a national language but instead recognised eleven official languages. Theirs is a policy of 'additive multilingualism' or 'additive bilingualism'. This contrasts with Namibia where, with a similar history of African languages, German and Afrikaans, English was adopted as the national language because of its international status and widespread use. In complexity terms, the trade-off would be between the benefits of diversity and the need for high levels of communication. It's a close call. I looked in the previous chapter at the enormous power of bilingualism in an integrated Jewish/Arab school. This would seem an ideal to aspire to, as 'to be able to think in the language and metaphors of one's 'enemy' is the final step in empathy, compassion and reconciliation. Yet the practicalities of finding teachers and competences are not to be underestimated. One aspect which all teachers can do, however, is a critical approach to language itself. Restoring a culture of learning is clearly not about restoring a passive absorption. It has to include critical pedagogy and the challenge to continued social injustice. One key part of this is the relationship to language, and skills in analysing how language can be used in the promotion of conflict or peace. This is particularly salient in analysis of media. Mleahat in her article 'Language of Occupation' draws attention to `hygienic metaphors'. The crisis in Palestine has produced its own crop: illegal settlements have become 'neighborhoods', illegally occupied land has become 'disputed territory', illegal and immoral state assassinations have become 'targeted killing', and so on. No doubt an Israeli analysis would produce equal antiseptic phrases used by Palestinians, but the point is made that

The aftermath of conflict: rebuilding society

173

this is a false symmetry, between occupier and occupied, between oppressor and oppressed. The fact is that a population has been living under occupation for 34 years; over 3,000 homes demolished, 150,000 olive trees uprooted and half the Occupied Territories confiscated for settlement or military purposes ( Mleahat 2001). Another important task within language education is to expose and realise the consequences of `fuzzy' language — qualifiers like 'more or less', 'somewhat', 'slightly', 'normally', etc. This links to amplification theory: Slight changes in the ideological platform of a political party or a politician, expressed by means of seemingly insignificant fuzzy hedges . . . can bring forth enormous changes in their interpretation as a basis for action. For example, during an election campaign, politicians can promise 'to keep the defence potential of the state at a more or less stable level', but once in power, they can use this statement as justification of a large program for testing new nuclear weapons with enormous negative consequences for people and environment. ( Dimitrov 1997: 8) As described in Chapter 7, teachers in Brelo were resistant at that stage (2001) to including critical analysis of media and political language in their language lessons. Yet my view is still that the omission of such analytical skills is disadvantageous to the cause of peace, and that 'radical' education post-conflict should automatically include this — rather than return to conventional language lessons in the cause of 'normalisation'.

Reconstructing curriculum and textbooks Interestingly, in BiH there was a call to restore religious education. Under communism, education had been secular; instead of keeping it that way to avoid particularism, the proposal was for a new subject called 'culture of religions', so that each group could learn about each other's religion. (It was interesting that Breko then made this an optional subject, not really taking it seriously.) In Rwanda in contrast, one of the first decisions taken by the new ministry of primary and secondary education was the suspension of subjects such as history and political education or civics, because of the biased perspective of the teaching in those areas. National identity was to be foremost, as Rwandans rather than as an ethnic group, and redefinition of identity was paramount in the new curriculum (Arnhold et al. 1998). There are then multiple dimensions and interpretations of how a new curriculum should be constructed for a post-conflict society: the choice of compulsory subjects, whether to have specific subjects of citizenship education and peace education or mingle these (as discussed in Chapter 8); and what to include in curriculum content of 'subjects'.

174 St rategic responses to conflict

Yet dealing with the 'aggression' of others is not easily achieved in a postconflict situation. The 'new' curriculum for BiH has as some of its aims of the basic civil defence course: • •

•

Give students skills in unarmed and armed defence against an aggressor. War is our reality, thus clarify to the students war as a terminology and its characteristics, as well as its consequences for the individual and for the people as a whole. Create a certainty among students that they can successfully defend themselves independently of the aggressor's technological or numerical advantage.

This is side by side with the aims of the history course: to develop the spirit of tolerance and the democratic right to diverse opinion. It is not clear which philosophy will hold sway, 'defence' or 'tolerance'. This might depend on whether there is an underpinning emphasis on human rights which permeates all curricula. Bernath et al. (1999) recount how human rights educators in both conflict and post-conflict contexts sometimes link their programmes to broader programmes of civic education, conflict resolution programmes and democracy education. They were reluctant to classify their programmes solely as 'human rights education', as this can be seen as threatening. Human rights education (HRE) has to address several relevant factors: violence, social trauma, danger, a sense of powerlessness, patterns of discrimination and marginalisation. Three fields are needed to do this: • • •

cognitive (the knowledge needed to promote human rights) attitudinal (self-help, trust, commitment to fairness and equal treatment) behavioural (mobilising, organising, documenting violations).

Bernath et al. say, 'In practice, the content we saw varied from lectures to illiterate peasants on the French Revolution to harangues to overthrow the government' (Bernath et al. 1999: 4). They state that the challenges start with the planning of HRE for incorporation into the activities of local institutions such as schools, community groups and even religious and professional organisations, 'however embryonic or war-torn they might be'. Obvious needs of finance, materials and competent personnel also hold. A particularly interesting approach therefore might be the Education for Humanitarian Law (EHL) project described by Tawil (2001). This explores ethical issues related to human behaviour in times of armed conflict and war. The EHL project has designed learning modules for 13-18-year-olds, stemming from thirty-five exploratory focus-group discussions with that age group in ten countries. The modules focus on the role of citizenship and the


need to demilitarise youth and reverse a culture of violence. They bring together international humanitarian law and the 'hard core' of human rights law, aiming at the disposition to become involved in protecting and promoting humanitarian attitudes. Tawil recounts examples from countries participating in the EHL project — Djibouti, Northern Ireland, Lebanon, South Africa and Morocco — showing positive results. It will be interesting to see the spread of this project. Tawil discusses and refutes the argument that it is irrelevant to students in non-conflict settings. He found that adolescents are eager to explore the ethical issues related to humanitarian law and conflict. They pointed out that war involves young people and that they need to become aware of the issues and about rights and responsibilities. One respondent answered that EHL 'could help us teenagers in our own small wars of life' (Tawil 2001: 300). A survey in France found that French young people viewed war as a major preoccupation more frequently than did their parents — partly because of the media. And every community is likely to be affected by violence of one sort or another. The need for active participation, definitions of violence, sharing of experiences and a global focus would be common to many other projects. However, EHL appears distinctive in at least two ways. Firstly there is an open approach to violence — which normally has a negative, condemnatory connotation and an emotive aura. But international humanitarian law takes no position on the legitimacy of the recourse to violence in situations of armed conflict. Rather, it aims to regulate the conduct of hostilities once armed conflict has broken out. 'Such a perspective allows for a more neutral and less judgmental examination of human behaviour in armed conflict and makes it possible to transpose these considerations to one's own immediate reality of violence' (Tawil 2001: 303). Linked to this is a second distinctive focus, on consequences rather than causes. While necessary up to a point, discussing the causes of conflict may easily cloud humanitarian concerns by diverting into disputes over political and ideological interpretations of specific historical struggles. Again, this would be different from some of the earlier projects discussed in this book which do try to surface histories of identity or perceptions of 'blame'. Focusing on suffering and destruction is much less contentious and helps learners come to terms with common experiences. (Although even there, I have found young people both in Kosovo and in Bosnia arguing about who suffered most — a sort of hierarchy of suffering.) A more common problem across all peace education, non-violent resolution of conflict and respect for rights, however, is that it may be in contradiction to existing role models in wider society, and existing behaviour patterns in adults. (The UK still defends the right of parents to 'smack' their children, against European law.) As the EHL project stresses, this means the need for mobilisation — the values and attitudes transmitted must translate into action, community service and some form of participation in the


protection of life, health and human dignity. A sense of shared destiny helps in rebuilding social cohesion. Peace education may also be in contradiction to existing textbooks. Chapter 6 drew attention to how textbooks can contribute to acceptance of conflict, through content or omission. That textbooks virtually disappear during a war may therefore not be an unmixed evil. Those recovered from Mogadishu's market had to be re-edited and in some cases rewritten. 'The editing consisted of correcting obvious errors, removing political references in deference to the changed and sensitive political context and, where needed, writing complete pages' (Aguilar and Retamol 1998: 29). In refugee situations, it may also include leaving out politically sensitive content or possibly illustrations that may not be acceptable to the educational authorities in the country of asylum (e.g. maps) or to the refugees themselves. We saw that the 'normalisation' approach to the restoration of formal education advocated the use of textbooks in the children's mother tongue or from their home country, if a refugee. This presents problems if the textbooks reflect the political ideology and ethnic/nationalist slant which precipitated the conflict in the first place. Conversely, the way the future is presented (or not presented) has implications: Daun (2003 forthcoming) describes the values predominating in Bosnian textbooks, of peaceful coexistence and respect for religions, democracy, rights, etc., but draws attention to the fact that they are presented mainly in a 'negative' form, that is through examples of their violation rather than any positive examples and alternatives. This is an important point. Curriculum and textbooks must model possibilities for change if they are to counter the apathy and sense of powerlessness which can be used as leverage for more conflict in the future. UNESCO's History and Culture of Peace Unit is advocating the 'disarming' of history, not erasing war from textbooks, but explaining roots. It proposes 'to conceive history no longer as a succession of conflicts between states but as a mesh of relationships with the potetential for cooperation, solidarity and integration' (L'Homme 2000: 5). They are publishing subregional guides to help with textbook revision and teacher training. The replacement of sequential conflicts by a 'mesh' does fit complexity's non-linearity. The decision in textbooks may therefore be whether to 'sanitise or sensitise' — whether simply to erase biased material (making books bland or neutral) or to use it to enable young people to analyse discourse and to see the point of view of the other — and how it is portrayed. The Peace Education Forum (1998) suggested the latter, giving two contrasting interpretations of the 1947 UN Resolution found in textbooks: Despite the historical injustice on the Palestinian Arab people resulting in their dispersion and depriving them of their right to self-determination, following up UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947), which par-


titioned Palestine into two states, one Jewish, yet it is this Resolution that still provides those conditions of international legitimacy that ensure the right of the Palestinian Arab people to sovereignty. On the 29' h November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of Jewish state of EretzIsrael; the General Assembly required the inhabitants of Eretz-Israel to take such steps as were necessary on their part for the implementation of that resolution. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable. Suggested questions, in also looking at the actual UN Resolution 181, are around the similarities and differences in the two texts, and what is specifically missing (and why) in the Israeli reference (Peace Education Forum 1998). This seems to me to be true critical pedagogy. Reconstructing good governance Mijatovic (1999) has an interesting depiction of the processes of change in countries in transition from communism to democratic capitalism, which have resonances with complexity theory. After stages of euphoria, improvisation and controversy come crises which lead to `retroreactions'. The 'retroreaction' in terms of the electoral situation can be influenced by war, and can move in three directions: a government of national unity; an endless and futile struggle between governing party and opposition; or a movement by the government to adopt totalitarian solutions, ushering in a dictatorship. The first is the most desirable, but would require the various parties to work on eleven things, such as the definition of democratic development and rules of conduct, defining and implementing privatisation, decentralisation and regional development, defining the administrative structure and nonpolitical functions of the state. In educational terms, it would require the training of teachers in democratic principles and pedagogy, and a radical change in what is taught in schools based on democracy, interculturalism, tolerance and education for peace. What has actually happened is what Mijatovic calls a 'Frankenstein syndrome', whereby the parties that have gained power have simply and fairly uncritically copied systems from abroad (the tax system of one country, the health system of another). 'A main characteristic of pluralistic democracy is missed in this process, namely that for a democracy to function successfully a synthesis of authentic experiences, creative energies and critical selfassessment is necessary' (Mijatovic 1999: 33). This fits with dynamical systems theory's argument that real emergence should come from within. Post conflict, in countries seen as deserving of international aid, a large body of agencies move in both as peacekeepers and as part of reconstruction.


(Ironically, this causes a shortage of language teachers in schools, as they can earn substantially more acting as interpreters with the various agencies.) There may be educational interventions to spread democracy, based mainly on the assumption that democracies do not go to war with each other (Carothers 1999). (At one stage there was the 'Golden Arch' theory that countries with branches of McDonald's do not go to war against each other.) Many organisations are involved in this: UNESCO, Council of Europe, OSCE, Open Society Fund as well as USAID and Civitas. It is perhaps not so much what they do as what they appear to offer. Places like BiH and Kosovo are eager to become part of the European community, and if that means conditionalities, so be it. Here collective identity is being subsumed under a desire for a larger, European identity, with all the benefits and recognition that that brings. Otherwise, as Coulby and Jones observe, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are seen as increasingly marginalised. 'They are beyond the pale of the mighty European civilisation' (Coulby and Jones 1995: 98). There is certainly a debate about the impact of formal civic or democracy education programmes on future governance. Carothers observed that short-term formal instruction on democracy that presents the subject as a set of general principles and processes generally has little effect on participants. `Such information is too abstract and usually too removed from the daily lives of most people. . .. [C]ivic education in many transitional countries is usually negated by the actual practice of politics' (Carothers 1999: 232). Civitas has a well-known programme which it uses in many countries called ` We the People', based on the words of the American Constitution. It could be criticised as exporting western or even Americanised versions of citizenship to recipient countries (perhaps the citizenship equivalent of the teacher emergency package). Yet at least in BiH it meant teachers finding common ground, and a network of educators was developing. Mustagrudic comments that 'bearing in mind the segregated education system in BiH, perhaps we could argue that the sheer fact that after the war, students from the whole BiH use the same textbooks is an achievement in itself' (Mustagrudic 2000: 44). Civitas is also working in Northern Ireland, and launched the We the People . . . Project Citizen in 1999, building on the Good Friday agreement `by fostering cross-community exchanges between youth in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland' (Center for Civic Education 2000). Yet in spite of astonishing levels of civic ignorance among Americans (40 per cent could not name the vice president), this 'does not shake the confidence of US civic educators abroad' (Carothers 1999: 232). Ideological reconstruction is therefore particularly fraught with concern if imposed or seen to be imposed by outside. USAID is pursuing a particular version of democracy which is a neo-liberal, competitive marketbased strategy. In such an economy, the majority of economic resources are privately owned or managed (Arnhold et al. 1998). The Soros Foundation is


very influential in the Balkans and transitional societies, with the establishment of the Central European University. Their Privatisation Research Project trains local personnel in public administration and the institutional infrastructure of the market economy. Doubts about universal acceptance of market ideologies (through education and elsewhere) were raised in Chapter 3. And as also discussed there, participatory democracy may be a better model post conflict than the somewhat passive representative democracy which is actually characteristic of the USA and the UK. Nonetheless, in situations where individuals have been obstructed in exercising their rights as citizens, projects focusing on an understanding of democratic processes such as voting procedures can be influential. The Palestinian Centre for Peace and Democracy ran democracy workshops in the run-up to the first Palestinian general elections in 1995. More than 8,000 13-18-year-old students and 450 teachers were involved. The project was funded by USAID, via the US-based International Foundation for Electoral Systems. But there can be interesting double standards. Arnhold et al. quote Michael Balfour: 'The British were very conscious of the fact that the faith which they wished to propagate involved a disbelief in the value of imposing faiths by order' (Arnhold et al. 1998: 12). They argue that this must be one of the first lessons for any forces or other agencies involved with the reconstruction of an education system in another country, to show deference to local conditions and traditions. Without such sensitivity and local knowledge, huge mistakes can be made. There can be the assumption that cultural integration is new, that hatreds go back thousands of years (as we saw in Chapter 5). Yet as Piggott (1995) pointed out with regard to UNICEF projects on peace education in the former Yugoslavia, policymakers seemed unaware of the fact that Yugoslavia had nearly fifty years' experience of education which celebrated cultural diversity. A different approach to aid or intervention for reconstruction was in the grant to the University of Pristina by the UK DfEE. This was a relatively s mall amount of money for targeted departments to develop courses. As consultant to the project, I was very happy to endorse the decision to spend this on the departments of political science and public administration, sociology, journalism, architecture and film. All were able to show how with new or rejuvenated courses they would be able to make some contribution to the rebuilding of political and public culture in Kosovo (Davies 2001). Various exchanges of staff and students with relevant university departments in the UK meant the usual 'encounters' as well as curriculum, materials and teaching development. An evaluation (Davies 2002) was admittedly short-term, but evinced some interesting comments from staff and students: the Kosovans learned about critical or participative pedagogy, and the Brits learned about responsibility to 'others':



My everyday life has changed in an awkward sense: since Kosovo I somehow refuse to listen to the moaning and worries of some people around me . . . none of us here seems to know how privileged and lucky we are. Few of us realised that our privileged status might actually imply some sort of 'responsibilities' towards others, possibly even towards strangers. ( UK architecture student) Both students and staff were thinking about 'taking ownership' of their learning; and UK students were tackling their stereotypes. I evaluated it as highly cost-effective. One reason why public administration courses are important is the rebuilding of accountable government. A question regarding the efficacy of administration or civic education courses is whether they are able to tackle corruption in government or elsewhere. It should be obvious that corruption is a drain on an economy and not conducive to peace. It is, however, part of a complex society, another way of interacting and achieving 'fitness of purpose' for certain groups of participants. The World Bank (1997) stressed that the powers that rulers have to intervene arbitrarily, coupled with access to information denied to others, creates fertile opportunities for corruption, and is negatively correlated with investment and growth. Processes of audit, accountability and scrutiny have to be set up or reformed in transitional societies, especially those in transition from conflict to stability. Corruption within the education system (exam fraud, ghost schools, ghost teachers) has to be tackled through both greater transparency and training, as well as an exploration of the systems that generate corruption (unmeetable targets, performance management, payment by results and cheatable forms of assessment). While obviously consulting and liaising with national ministries, external agencies sometimes prefer to channel aid through non-governmental organisations because of the problems of corruption at national level. This is not to say that such problems only exist there. For education to impact on national governance and national corruption, it would have to model itself first as an open system with feedback loops and transparent connectivities. It is possible that dumping a democracy or civic curriculum on an otherwise authoritarian or corrupt school would help learners begin the process of actively challenging injustice or unfairness; it is equally possible that they would cheat their way through the civic education examinations.

I m pact This leads on to the question, as in the last chapter, of the impact of education in reconstruction. Much writing on peace curriculum or civic education is highly prescriptive — or descriptive of projects — rather than tackling evidence of success or failure for a country in the long term. Unusually, Bernath et al.

(1999) tackle the thorny issue of evaluation of human rights education ( HRE). Feedback questionnaires are often used at the end of a programme, but these do not tell us whether the training helped participants protect human rights in their communities. They show evidence of: • • • • • • •

the creation of 'somewhat' self-sustaining HRE or related activities in public and private schools, NGOs, universities and teacher training institutions the growth of activities promoting HR in a community increased popular interest/participation in the political process changes in law enforcement procedures i mproved responsiveness on the part of other government services to the economic needs and political or civil rights of citizens improved media coverage of HR reports from local groups of other changes, e.g. patterns of domestic violence.

An important component is the perception (pre-existing or engendered) on the part of participants that the proposed HRE can benefit them. A good example of the attempt at evaluation is the compilation War Prevention Works ( Mathews 2001). This comprises fifty stories of groups or communities which have managed to transform conflicts that have been destroying their society. These represent a huge range of countries and conflicts in the Balkans, the Middle East, Africa, South America and Europe, as well as a range of organisations. It is difficult to find common patterns, but one message is that locals and national governments need each other; and that continual relationship-building in and between communities is key to an end to violence. Going through the contributions, it is significant however that only one places the formal state-school sector as an agent. There are accounts of the work of religious organisations, NGO peace organisations, government task forces, women's groups, western organisations or charities, business leaders and university-sector student groups. The only example of state education was the interesting account of the City Montessori School (CMS) in Lucknow, India, which in 1992 worked to intervene in the escalating Hindu— Muslim tension. The school, of 23,000 students, was founded in 1959 on the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. It takes as its belief that 'every child is potentially the light of the world as well as the cause of its darkness' — which is a highly realistic view, in line with most of the philosophy of this book. The school convened a series of meetings to bring together religious leaders, and students and parents took to the streets in loudspeaker vans to appeal to people to refrain from violence — a dangerous course. The city did escape violence, and while CMS cannot claim exclusive credit, few people denied that it played a pivotal role. One key factor was that CMS was seen as an


i mpartial third party — had one religious group tried to organise meetings, it is debatable whether they would have been successful. A second key factor was the previous constant encouragement of the family to participate in their children's development, so that they all could then be mobilised for the peace initiative. The lessons that Mathews derives from the fifty accounts include that to meet and talk can be an act of extreme bravery, rather than a `wimpish' alternative to violence. The interventions described were 'extraordinarily costeffective'. Cynics might demand a corresponding book of fifty accounts of failure, but there is enough critical comment in Mathews's work to substantiate the lessons he draws. What we never know is whether a project, while failing to improve something, at least prevented it getting worse. Tanada writes on Mindanao that many felt that the carefully built trust between Christians, Muslims and Lumads had been eroded by just a few weeks of allout war, reopening old wounds: Tut it could also be that the conflict was not as costly in terms of human lives, nor that widespread, partly because of the seeds of understanding sown in the dialogues' (Tanada 2001: 29). Conclusion: complex reconstruction

Paradoxically, education for reconstruction should not be a restoration of equilibrium.4his is a phase transition, not just a return to some functioning, but a new way of learning and living which is to not reproduce the same causes of conflict. ;Chapter 9 concluded that for adaptation of individuals and schools immediately after crisis, educational efforts needed to start from creativity and 'play', that is from agents themselves, and from providing new feedback loops and new connectivities to enable relearning. It is more or less the same at the system level. For emergence of a society, education has to help to forge new ways of relating to each other, again new connectivities, with reconciliation a creative, trust-forming, learning activity, not just agreeing not to argue any more. The information so important to adaptation that comes through curriculum and textbooks again is not just sanitised, but provides the basis for critical pedagogy which enables learners to understand and perhaps combat war and violence. The CAS of education cannot work alone, but is effective when interacting with other CASs of community or business, particularly at local level. Outside agencies and countries can act as amplification mechanisms in societal reconstruction, although, as always, for authentic emergence a two-way interaction is essential rather than imposition of another status quo. And underneath everything is the importance of the 'bounded encounter' — challenging, prickly, limit-testing, but within a context of caring.

Chapter I I

Conflict resolution within the school

This chapter draws on the techniques used at international level and at institutional level to analyse possibilities for conflict resolution within the school. Clearly, with complexity theory, one cannot see the school as a vacuum,. unrelated to the home and community; it is a nested system with permeable boundaries. Resolving conflict within the school will mean analysis of the mass of origins of a conflict, including the context and history of a pupil or teacher. Similarly, skills of conflict resolution can have a wider impact, as a pupil or teacher can use these in wider arenas than the school. There are an increasing number of books and guides on conflict resolution, and this chapter cannot hope to survey all the techniques recommended. Instead it selects those that have current or potential application to the school setting. From the previous chapters and from the work on conflict resolution at international level, there seem to be three principles involved: equity (as between the partners); ownership (of' the conflict); and transparency (about the causes and stakeholders). In conventional ways of 'discipline' in schools, these principles are violated on a daily basis. Pupils are not seen as equal in the dispute; teachers 'own' the means of resolution through punishment; and analysis of the problem is bypassed in favour of swift retribution. I would argue that borrowing from international work would however provide a much more socially just and effective way of resolving conflict, which would provide future skills as well as contributing to the positive conflict which will be expanded on in the final chapter.


Youth (2000) starts, 'Many schools in the United States today are like minefields in a war zone. No one is quite sure when the next explosion or episode of violent behaviour is going to occur, yet when it does, the effects can be traumatic and devastating' (Bemak and Keys 2000: 1). They continue, 'It has been suggested that there are two types of schools: those that have had a significant violent. incident, and those that will' (Bemak and Keys 2000: 2). Given this gloomy scenario, it is to their credit that in a slim volume they do try to give practical and meaningful advice to counsellors and others. As they point out, 'confrontation with a violent student is not anywhere in the textbooks and usually is not in the repertoire of our teachers and trainers' (Bemak and Keys 2000: 44). I will return to their specific ideas later on; first it is necessary to introduce some of the debate around conflict resolution, and then consider how conflict can be analysed, before examining some of the actual techniques and their implications for training or for policy. Debates around conflict resolution Mitchell and Banks (1996) in their practical work on conflict resolution cite three criticisms of (early) conflict resolution. First, that peace and justice contradict each other. A conflict usually involves a struggle for justice. 'Stop it before it has run its course, and that act of intervention merely extends the domination of those who are winning at the time' (Mitchell and Banks 1996: x). Mediation and problem solving run the danger of being conservative activities, supporting whichever party is the more powerful at the outset. The second criticism is that 'problem solving' denies the reality of conflict, by laying too much stress on misperception and subjectivity. It cannot allow for the genuine, objective and inevitable clashes of interest that are a natural part of the human condition. A third criticism is that any problem-solving approach amounts to little more than appeasement wrapped up in fancy academic language. Its message is to give in to aggression and violence, even on the part of unrepresentative minorities. Mitchell and Banks counter these arguments, pointing out that most are not against the possibility and desirability of mediation or problem solving as such, but adding cautions about the absolute necessity of 'doing it properly'. This requires due concern for clearly understood values, exceptional care about the non-directive role of third parties, and the greatest possible sensitivity to what is at stake for those involved in the struggle. Their guidebook claims that the skills they promote have been found invaluable in dealing with protracted, deep-rooted and violent conflicts such as the Greek Cypriot/Turkish Cypriot conflict, or intercommunity conflicts in Northern Ireland or Sri Lanka. These require a different approach to that appropriate for disputes between neighbours, landlords/tenants or unions/management. The skills include timing, selecting the parties or representatives, listing key questions about the conflict, gaining access, ensuring credibility, organising


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workshops, reviewing data, increasing empathy for all parties, asking questions, listening, producing an agree-able text, maintaining confidentiality, re-entry and follow-up, impact assessment and preparing for a future of collaborative problem solving. Many of these themes will be highlighted in this chapter. Warfield (1993) in an article titled 'Complexity and Cognitive Equilibrium' claims that the modern industry of conflict resolution is characterised by an almost total lack of documented and peer-scrutinised empirical research. He critiques Burton's (1987) insistence that it is 'deeply-held, non-negotiable values' that prevent the resolution of conflicts, arguing instead that while there are deeply held values, it is also true that there are a variety of stimuli involved in creating and sustaining the behaviour that constitutes conflict ( Warfield 1993: 67). If additional stimuli can be brought into the situation (e.g. cognitive considerations that are appealing), the values can mediate both the older, conflict-producing stimuli and the newer, conflict-resolving stimuli. Warfield argues that in a group working towards consensus or 'serenity', both cognitive equilibrium (shared knowledge) and emotional equilibrium (solutions compatible with value systems) must be reached. It is significant that these arguments, and the successful techniques, fit well with the ideas of complexity theory. They are non-linear, in that they do not rely on simple cause and effect or stimulus—response. Simply telling children to stop fighting, or admonishing a pupil for confrontational behaviour, is not a long-term solution to conflict or violence. Conflict resolution acknowledges the complex web of interactions and interpretations which have led to a conflict, and how this conflict may be nested in concentric rings of other conflicts. New behaviours are needed, but they must 'emerge' from the participants themselves, not be imposed. Throughout this chapter we shall see the importance of 'shared knowledge' and information (and their link to emotions) in emergence. One obvious issue for debate however is whether it is possible to have any universal suggestions for conflict resolution, or whether all processes are culturally specific. Lederach (1995) warns that propositions about alternative dispute resolution (ADR) made in North American contexts may not be culturally transferable. The processes of expressing conflict and of handling conflict are embedded in cultural or social-class assumptions which must be identified and acknowledged for peacemaking to be successful. The use of verbal and body language is an important example, as is how we express needs or feelings. Avruch and Black (1993) have an interesting discussion on conflict resolution in intercultural settings. Does one try to 'relegate culture to the background' as an obstacle to be set aside by theory-builders or process-builders? The reason for this is the notion that since culture highlights differences between groups, if it were to be foregrounded there could be no possibility of developing conflict resolution practices with universal applicability. They



argue however that it depends how culture is defined. It can be seen as traditional, stereotypical modes of behaviour or 'etiquette', evenly distributed across members of the group of which it is an attribute. Yet culture is not reducible to behaviour: to 'know' a culture is not to be able to predict each and every act of each and every member. Avruch and Black define culture, metaphorically, as a 'perception-shaping lens' or a 'grammar' for the production and structuring of meaningful action. To understand behaviour in a conflict depends on understanding the grammar that people use to render behaviour meaningful. Avruch and Black call such cultural knowledge èthnoconflict theories' (Avruch and Black 1993: 132). The process of conflict resolution is then 'ethno-praxis' — the local acceptable techniques for resolving conflicts. Analysis of this must be preliminary to any third-party intervention, and should continue throughout an intervention. Using the grammar metaphor, there will be a need for translation, for interpretation. If culture is the 'logic' by which we reason our way through the world, then we need 'ethno-logic' to understand different ways of reasoning, different ways in which problems are solved or seen as soluble. Ross argues even more specifically that there is a 'culture of conflict', which he defines as à society's configuration of norms, practices and institutions that affect what people enter into disputes about, with whom they fight, how disputes evolve and how they are likely to end' (Ross 1993: 21). Such a culture of conflict would presumably also include the processes of resolution — if they exist. Analysing the 'culture of conflict' could be a useful exercise for a school, when it discovers repeated or recurring patterns of dispute over similar issues. What are teachers' and students"ethno-logics'? The whole solution to cultural specificity in conflict resolution is of course to recognise local ownership. The approach of Mitchell and Banks is to focus on the violent conflict itself, not the apparent target of it. It is ambitions and actions that create the problem, not fate, not history, not some invisible and immutable characteristic of society, economy or policy. The parties do it. They do it at all social levels; individual, small group, large group or organisation, nation state. In principle, if the parties make the problem, then they can unmake it. This may not be easy for a thousand reasons, including the fact that every action has consequences and conflict situations tend to become so dynamic and complicated that hardly anyone can understand what is happening. But the significant point is that parties alone, and no one else, can finally unmake the problem. ( Mitchell and Banks 1996: 3) This argument could well be deployed as a criticism of some behaviour management policies in schools, with standardised sanctions and sometimes equally standardised procedures.

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Finally comes the question of whether there is really resolution. Labour management disputes, for example, may in fact never be resolved, only settled. Is conflict resolution new behaviour on both sides? Or is it just a return to 'normality' (which was disputed as less desirable in the last chapter)? The Navajo Indians believe that if one ends a dispute by having a winner and a loser, one dispute may have ended but another dispute surely will have started, because harmony will not have been restored (Isenhart and Spangle 2000). Mitchell and Banks point out that in practice, intervention favours the goal of one or other of the original parties. What is called a settlement when violent conflict has ceased is, in fact, a disguised victory for one party (although, sometimes, only a partial victory). This does not have a good long-term prognosis. Such a situation is true of schools, where violence by a student towards a teacher may be solved by a third party (the principal?), and the dispute is settled (in favour of the teacher) but not resolved. In a settlement, the goals of both parties are still there, underlying interests still unmet. Take away the power of the intervening party, and the goals and interests reassert themselves (as in former Yugoslavia, Armenia or Azerbaijan, and now in Afghanistan). Problem-solving approaches look for a win—win or variable sum solution. In examining the various techniques proposed later, this critique should be borne in mind.

Analysis and understanding Where there seems to be no debate, however, is about the need to analyse conflict thoroughly before beginning any sort of resolution. Conflict analysis has two aspects for an educational context: pupils and teachers having skills to understand the causes of conflict in the wider social or global context; and parties understanding the causes of a particular conflict within the school. These are not unrelated, analytically or practically. There are many tools for conflict analysis, and Fisher et al. (2000) provide a useful range of nine (stages, timelines, conflict mapping, the ABC triangle, the onion, the conflict tree, force-field analysis, pillars and the pyramid). They stress that conflict analysis is not a one-time exercise, but an ongoing process as the situation is developing. Some of the techniques are used by a third party who is working with parties on conflict (for example an NGO or negotiator) but this is a luxury which is not always available for schools. I would summarise the overall principle as a way of enabling the two parties to come together to discuss how the conflict happened. This is not blaming, but simply mapping it in sequentially, spatially, politically and emotionally, in identifying who is involved directly and indirectly, and what their relevant relationships are to the participants and to the problem. It is not to establish some correct 'truth', but to surface different interpretations of significant and critical 'events' — as well as surfacing the complexity of all the people who might have a bearing. 'Onion' type analysis tries to peel away the outer


layer of our public positions, what we say we want, and within these, what our real interests and needs are. A level of trust is necessary even before we can start this depth analysis. The main thing is perhaps the activity of trying to work out what is happening and acknowledging complexity and its deepest sources (whether gender, or power); trying to clarify the actors involved; and, linked to this, bringing together different parties to try to arrive at a common understanding or at least depiction. A more complicated analysis then tries to work out not just the amount of power but the sources and types of power (Davies 1984), (coercive, persuasive, and — within persuasive — exchange power, and integrative power of problem solving). Teachers may be able to use coercive power; pupils may be able to use bargaining power (good behaviour in exchange for grades or time off), but a school council can use problem-solving power which may be more transformative in the long term. A way to analyse the trajectory of conflict particularly relevant for this book is to see it as a number of choices. Here is the concept of bifurcation: at critical points, two directions are possible. In conflict prevention and resolution, of course, there may be more than one direction possible, but they can analytically be seen as a series of choices (to retort or not, if retorting, whether hostile or not, if hostile whether violent or not, and so on). Fountain (1995) argues that schools can help young people learn that they have choices in the ways they respond to conflict. They can develop negotiation and problemsolving skills that will allow them to approach conflict not as a crisis, but as an opportunity for creative change. They can first learn to apply these to the conflicts that are part of their daily lives, and then can reflect on how those approaches to problem solving might be applied to wider ethnic, religious and political conflicts nationally or internationally. In conflict analysis in schools, one can therefore start with the personal, as Fountain suggests, or conversely start with the distant and then see how or if it relates to the personal. The UNICEF pack (1995) uses case studies of Ireland, Lebanon, Sri Lanka and Liberia. These are countries where programmes of education for conflict resolution are taking place, and the pack draws on the materials which are actually used in the respective countries. Clearly, the starting point would depend on the curriculum setting in a school and whether conflict analysis is being brought in as a byproduct of a geography or history lesson, or whether it is an up-front part of a personal and life skills class. There is no one right ordering of events. One should not ignore higher education's role in analysis either. Interestingly, Mitchell and Banks argue that academics working in universities might well satisfy the condition of being non-judgemental and non-partisan. À university's everyday processes of research and commentary on society and politics can, and sometimes do, sound early warning bells about impending conflict. Academics are supposed to suppress their private wishes in


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favour of dispassionate theories and formal techniques of analysing the "facts".' I await responses on this one. Conflict styles

Leading on from analysis of conflict is working out what styles people use when in dispute. Isenhart and Spangle distinguish five choices in style or response to differences of opinion or perceived interference from others. They then use a 'Dual Concern' model to analyse how far the styles meet the needs of self and/or the needs of others. The styles are: Avoiding: One party denies there is a conflict, changes topics, avoids discussion or is non-committal. Accommodation: One party sacrifices their interests and enables others to achieve theirs. Compromising: Through concessions by all parties, each party settles for partial satisfaction of interests. Competitive: This style is characterised by aggressive, self-focused, verbally assertive and uncooperative behaviours to foster one party's interest at the expense of others. Collaborative: This style is characterised by active listening and issue-focused, empathic communication that seeks to satisfy the interests and concerns of all parties. All can be effective in different situations. Negotiation, mediation and facilitation rely very much on collaboration or compromise to reach settlements. Arbitration and judicial processes expect parties to begin competitively, with a neutral or third person attempting to create conditions to promote compromise or collaboration. These categorisations are important in that they show that a collaborative style is not always the only or best solution, and indicate clearly when others might work — hence fitting with complexity. The timing within a conflict and the degree of investment in the relationship may be factors. We should not over-romanticise collaboration; it can be used manipulatively by high power-holders. Nonetheless, research apparently finds that collaborative problem-solving styles generally produce better decisions and greater satisfaction with the decisions produced; less competent communicators will use competitive or forcing styles, with a 50 per cent failure rate. Avoidance, interestingly, has an 80 per cent failure rate. While the term `conflict avoidance' is sometimes used interchangeably with conflict prevention, it more usually refers to reluctance to address the causes of a dispute, or denial that there is a problem. However, it may be a legitimate strategy for averting confrontation or postponing a conflict until a situation changes.


Stewart (1998) gives the example of the decision of the international peacemaker in February 1997 not to decide to whom to award administrative control of the town of BrUo in Bosnia, so that there were no winners and no losers and a renewed outbreak of war was avoided. In my experience there were and are many tensions still in Brat), but the nature of the region as a `pilot' for harmonisation and the partial success of reintegrating the schools seems to justify this decision not to decide. In a school setting, I would argue nonetheless that conflict avoidance is often the norm, but that it is not often positive. Student emotions can be denied and feelings suppressed, which actually leads to pressure building up. Student riots that are reported in many parts of the world may be the result of conflicts not being addressed at the right time or in an appropriate way — so that full-scale riots can occur over issues as apparently small as school food ( Harber 2002). Techniques of conflict resolution

I want now to look at some of the techniques which would come under the heading of 'Alternative Dispute Resolution' to see how they apply to schools. ADRs are advocated as an alternative both to violence and to adversarial litigation. Adjudication in courts is unlikely to leave all parties satisfied with the outcome, and insofar as parties are dissatisfied, conflict remains unresolved. Most techniques rely on bringing the parties together, rather than punishment or retribution. Prevention

Before resolution becomes necessary, peacekeepers watch for trouble-spots. In schools, preventing conflict is helped by vigilance, not by weapons inspectors but by learners themselves. My research on school councils (Davies 1998c) found that they could act as a safety fuse for some pupil conflict; also important were the (pupil-inspired) initiatives in primary schools such as `Guardian Angels', where individual pupils agree to 'watch over' other pupils who are at risk or unhappy. One primary school council had the inspired but simple idea of the 'Listening Bench': given that much conflict or potential tension can occur in the playground, pairs of older pupils would take it in turns to sit on the bench at breaktime. Any pupil who was on their own or felt isolated could go to the bench and just sit with them. They could also discuss problems. These children were not trained mediators, and the agreement was that if a child came more than three times, or problems were insoluble for them, they would tell a teacher; yet the bench proved invaluable for identifying potential tension and bullying, and had a function all its own. Clearly, pupil-inspired preventative measures (ethno-praxis) work


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better than teachers patrolling corridors, and they also encourage caring and responsibility. Negotiation and bargaining

This is the conflict-resolution strategy in which direct bargaining takes place between parties in a dispute, without the intervention of third parties. In industrial disputes, expert negotiators from each side try to reach a bargain position, through compromises and concessions. Each party is likely to have to give up something in order to gain something more important. A massive amount of negotiation goes on in schools and classrooms on a daily basis, in systems where students have some voice. Students become skilled negotiators as they argue for more time, less homework, different ways of working. They trade in overall compliance for a degree of power over their daily routines and lives. Student councils can also act as negotiators on behalf of a student body, to ask for facilities, resources, rule-change or status. Isenhart and Spangle (2000) in fact distinguish negotiation from bargaining, which has a different mindset. They quote a conflict in an American school, where one of the teachers began the first meeting with a statement of her interests: 'There is only one satisfactory solution to these problems and that is to replace the administrators.' They comment on how bargainers escalate conflict through personal attacks meant to weaken or neutralise competing interests. This is the 'mythical fixed pie', where the bargainer sees a finite set of resources for which everyone must compete. 'Integrative negotiation' on the other hand approaches conflict as a joint venture, an opportunity for mutual gain. It was pointed out to the teacher that if the administration were changed, they might just get new administrators who did the same things — it was better to go to the underlying issues and everyone's needs. Skilled negotiators apparently ask twice as many questions as average negotiators, and devote 21 per cent of their total negotiation behaviour to asking questions (Isenhart and Spangle 2000). This is fascinating: I find it hard to imagine a child asking questions when negotiating conflict — the opposite is normally true, with a teacher firing non-information-rich questions such as 'What made you do that?' or 'What have you got to say for yourself?' But one particular aspect of planning is the ability to generate many options before problem-solving discussions even begin. Negotiators must be patient as they move towards a conflict's breakpoint — that moment when parties who feel hopelessly stuck finally see possibilities for resolution. Following the sharing of information about interests and goals, tension increases to a point where the parties feel like capitulating to bring the tension down or entrenching in positional statements.



It is at this point, when all feels lost, that some of the most innovative, constructive solutions will occur. In negotiation training, we ask students to be patient, remain hopeful and collaborative, in spite of unbearable tension, and look for the breakpoint at which new possibilities will emerge spontaneously. (Isenhart and Spangle 2000: 50) Here the negotiators are of course being brought to the edge of chaos. Mediation

Here a third party, a neutral outsider to the dispute, tries to draw the disputants to an agreed settlement of their conflict. Mediation cannot be compulsory, in that it can take place only if both parties are willing contributors. Terms such as 'conciliation' and 'reconciliation' are sometimes used interchangeably with mediation. As with negotiation, they imply a coming together of parties, and in reconciliation the bringing together of people who were once friends or partners but who have fallen out. In international diplomacy terms, mediators may initially shuttle between two or more disputants or countries, trying to find common ground and keeping lines of communication open. The aim is to 'sit round a table' which is symbolic of equality and of sitting (you cannot display physical violence if sitting). Mediators have to be impartial, non-judgemental, respectful and empathetic; they are simultaneously a sounding board and a mouthpiece, giving no advice and creating an atmosphere whereby the parties are enabled to find their own solutions. Mediators can suggest options but should not advise or attempt to influence. This 'giving no advice' is very difficult for teachers. Students sometimes make better mediators for this reason. The UNICEF (1995) pack usefully goes through the four classic stages of mediation (introduction and ground rules; story telling, summary and clarification; problem-solving options; agreement and congratulations). Significantly, the last, agreement stage includes telling friends about the outcome, to stop rumours from spreading. 'Other groups of friends keep a conflict going and growing and will not let go. Informing them that it is over lets them forget about it' (UNICEF 1995: 87). Once more, information and networking is key. Stewart (1998) describes the work of mediation in schools in the UK, which has quite a long history. Much springs from the Quaker movement, and the Quaker Peace Education Project has been influential in Northern Ireland — being a significant part of the Education for Mutual Understanding project. The advantages of one mediation scheme were: • •

Children had a better understanding than adults of children's disputes. Children had more time for each other.

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Other adults could be too distracted or were themselves having a bad day, shouting at the children. Disputes could be dealt with quickly, preventing escalation. Mediation was seen to be fair. Mediation lets people be friends again, which is what children wanted. The training workshops had made all of them feel good about themselves. Skills could be used outside the school, with street quarrels or families. There was public recognition — they had travelled to Dublin to demonstrate peer mediation to Mary Robinson, the Irish president.

• • • • • • •

Nonetheless there was realistic acknowledgement that: • • •

Some serious disputes had to be taken to a teacher. Fair mediation was difficult if one party was a best friend. Some children made up disputes just for the fun of being mediated. (Stewart 1998: 84-5)

I think the last is particularly poignant — implying perhaps that mediation is more stimulating than lessons. The issues that emerge from looking at mediation in schools are firstly that it needs to be embedded in a whole-school ethos, with consistent relationships across the school, and secondly that it challenges adult relationships as well: should adults be trained in peer mediation at the same time as the children, experiencing the training together? A third issue is of continuity: training primary-age children then presents them with difficulties if they go into a secondary school with no similar ethos or system. This I found too in the school councils research: that primary children experienced in democracy were frustrated at the lack of mechanisms for voice on moving up to the secondary level. Arbitration

Unlike mediation, where the parties come to their own decision, arbitration means both parties agreeing to go to a third party for a decision, with the decision being binding on both. It involves the disputants laying down their case before an independent, impartial but expert arbitrator who, from knowledge of the law and an examination of the facts of the case, makes a decision. The advantages are fairness, speed and finality; the disadvantages are that there is no dialogue between the parties during the process, and, once someone else's case is made, all decision-making power lies with the arbitrator. In school terms, arbitration may be used in such areas as pay disputes for teachers; it is not often used for student conflict or student—teacher conflict. The nearest I can think of is the system used in one of the schools in my school council research, whereby each pupil had a teacher who was their


personal tutor but also their go-between, taking their side or presenting their case in the event of a dispute, rather than automatically representing the view of the teaching staff. The school deliberately chose not to go down the road of having a student council, seeing this as unnecessarily adversarial, an us-and-them situation between students and teachers. It preferred a more equal philosophy of support and rights, so that students could trust teachers to make judgements based on evidence rather than power (Davies 1998c). The notion therefore of mentor teachers or liaison teachers is a useful one — although how far they would be seen as independent, impartial and expert (as true arbitrators must be) is doubtful. The children's ombudsman which some European countries have is nonetheless a good model. Anger management

Bemak and Keys raise some doubts about peer mediation and conflict resolution in that they may promote short-term change and assist in the acquisition of new skills and techniques to manage anger, but the long-term effects remain questionable. Their approach is not to see anger-management groups as a swift way to control children. but to ask the question 'How can we help them heal so that they don't need to continue and escalate their violence?' In the emphasis on healing, we can see the parallels to humanitarian intervention discussed in Chapter 9. In one group of violent youth, they began simply by focusing on themes in their lives that made them angry. The students spoke about inattentive parents, bossy teachers, intrigue and fear about their exploration of sexuality, rejection by peers, lack of friends and poor grades. The first three sessions did not even mention anger or management strategies, but focused on the inner worlds of the students. This was also the first time they had experienced what it was like to give and receive support for peers. Thus we would suggest that one of the paradoxes of group work with aggressive youth is not to focus on their violent behaviour. Rather, addressing their deeply housed unmet needs, unshared feelings and isolation, within a group forum that is conducive to facilitating a sense of connectedness to others reduces violence and promotes a more comprehensive mental health. (Bemak and Keys 2000: 58) One key word here is 'connectedness', as always a fundamental principle within complexity. Individualised ways to control anger may not, on their own, model the connections and pathways into the system which enable new creative ways of relating to others. Bemak and Keys of course discuss working with the family, but again in a non-judgemental way, to forge yet more connections and acknowledge the way that change in one part of the school

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or community affects all the other parts. A study by the first author found that youth who observed traumatic experiences had more mental health problems than did those who actually experienced the trauma. Do we tend to forget this when focusing only on the victim and perpetrator, and not the rest of the class? They use a version of complexity theory to examine tendencies to equilibrium (the child unable to change his tough image as a troublemaker, although s/he wants to); as well as ripple effects whereby individual acts (say violence) generate systemic changes (school security measures, violence prevention programmes, neighbourhood-based peer mediation programmes). Their maxim is to start small. It is unrealistic to think that a prinicipal would welcome unsolicited recommendations for how to change his or her leadership style, or how the school might restructure its case management process. . . [W]hen working from a system-focused perspective, you need to do important groundwork before moving to action. (Bemak and Keys 2000: 91) Such groundwork includes establishing a trusting relationship with members of the school and community and helping them recognise that a problem exists, but together with helping a school realise its strengths. Anger management sessions are gaining ground in the UK, with training for therapists. They obviously need a great deal of care in planning and ti ming. A teacher trained in drama and behavioural therapy related to me how after the success of an anger management programme she had run in her secondary school, she was invited into the local primary school to run six sessions with pupils who were experiencing behavioural difficulties. She realised too late that there were exit problems: her techniques of exploring and venting anger, of trying to gain trust, meant that fragile pupils had become exposed and vulnerable; she then had to announce the end of the programme just when pupils were starting to relate to her and see some vague purpose. They felt let down and betrayed, and she experienced guilt. Therapeutic conflict resolution is not a short-term, quick-fix solution. Her research also showed up how teachers need anger management too, and how many of the excluded pupils in her research saw their own behaviour as a direct result of uncontrolled teacher anger. Consensus seeking

There are various ways to do consensus building. Some need a long time and much research; Murray (1993) for example describes a nine-month-long group process of resolving a conflict within a board and between the board and the superintendent of a school in the USA over the implementation of a site-based management system — a dispute which also involved parents,


teachers and citizen activists. Various techniques of interviewing (125 people, albeit not including students apparently), conflict mapping and skilled facilitation were used. Within consensus-seeking activities, however, there may be quicker or more manageable processes such as nominal group techniques, where members work from a 'context statement' to generate and clarify a range of ideas about the issue, first silently, then together, using voting at the end. This does not of course resolve the conflict on its own, but it at least allows cognitive equilibrium to be reached, and shared understanding — which may be half the battle. Simpler ranking or card-sorting exercises of sets of statements are similarly often good entry points to enable individuals and groups to clarify their own priorities. It is not so much the final result but the discussion and argument about the ranking, or what statement goes with what, which is the enlightening activity. The central issue in group work, particularly in conflict resolution, is the ground rules. Isenhart and Spangle (2000) suggest that a facilitator establishes rules such as listening to understand, not to rebuke, not interrupting, not abusing, and dealing with it here and now, not afterwards. However, in our work on democratic classrooms, we have found it far more effective for participants to draw up their own rules, to form a 'learning contract' to which all agree (Davies, Harber and Schweisfurth 2002). As always, this is the ethno-praxis, the ownership of the occasion. Restorative justice

Finally, the development of restorative justice programmes is an attempt to refocus crime as a conflict among people, to bring together those directly involved and to address the impact of an offence on the victim, the offender and the community. It is the opposite to retributive justice, which demands revenge. In retribution, the severity of the penalty is to match the seriousness of the crime; as well as satisfying the desire for revenge, retribution is justified by its advocates as a deterrent. The theory of restorative justice has developed from utilitarianism, which seeks the greatest good or greatest happiness for the greatest number. More suffering should not be inflicted; instead emphasis is on reforming the offender so that she or he will not reoffend. It seeks to move forward in a collaborative way to repair damage, giving the offender an opportunity to express remorse and make amends. In the last chapter, it was put forward as a key part of a reconciliation programme in Northern Ireland. The philosophy has generated programmes such as Victim Offender Reparation, or Victim Support. Clearly, these hang on the identification of who is the victim and who is the offender. Instances of people being imprisoned for attacking an intruder demonstrate the woolliness of these

Conflict resolution within the school 197

distinctions. (Detractors say this approach is a way to lighten sentences, and that it can be used only for a narrow range of relatively minor offences.) Stewart (1998) outlines different models of restorative justice, such as diversion projects, family group projects and creintegrative shaming' (a way of healing relationships derived from Japanese culture). Whatever the model, the aims are to address needs of both victim and offender, to enable both to take a positive part in the process of justice and to use mediation to give an opportunity for the expression of feelings and healing of hurt. If we attempt to apply this to education, there may be some difficulties. In schools, it can be particularly difficult to identify victims and offenders: if a pupil attacks a teacher with a knife, then this seems a clear case of an offence; yet in this, and certainly in more minor confrontations, the pupil may claim a series of 'offences' by the teacher which have led to this reaction. Chapter 7 outlined a number of ways in which real and symbolic violence is inflicted on pupils. My research found much of this gendered (Davies 1984), as in insults about girls' sexuality, the naming of them as 'bitches' or 'slags'. Much deviance then becomes pupils trying for either retributive or reparative justice, that is, tit for tat insults, or trying to restore self-confidence in their own eyes or those of their peers through (re)gaining power. Nonetheless, the ideal of restorative justice has to be better than retaliatory or arbitrary justice. Using a model suggested by prison abolitionists, Lees (2000) suggests a participatory approach of dispute resolution within citizenship education. This conference model allows the victim to have representatives to urge his or her view of events, in which a feminist or racial ethnic standpoint can be accommodated. So, for example, if a pupil has been bullied, the victim's definition of harm or threat would be at the centre of proceedings. She/he is transformed from the humiliated victim to an active claimant, identifying his/her own requirements and drawing her/his own lines in future contacts with the perpetrator. Conflict resolution training

In order to understand or implement the above techniques, specific training may be necessary. Yet the question is whom to focus on in the training. Isenhart and Spangle (2000) describe the work of the Conflict Center in Denver, which provides conflict management training in schools, in order to reduce levels of physical, verbal and emotional violence. Importantly, the centre first trains the staff, believing that adults must model effective behaviour if they expect the students to follow. They focus their training on basic problem-solving skills and the win—win negotiation model. Then the centre staff work directly with the 'choice kids', those whom teachers identify as having made poor choices relative to conflict and anger management. Spencer (2000) somewhat differently provides a South African primary schools example where, unlike the 'choice kids' above, all children are taught


conflict resolution as a standard part of the curriculum, to enable them to deal with the tensions they bring to school. This is ahead of the 'life orientation' and education for democracy curriculum to be standard in 2005. In other projects, teachers only are the focus — particularly those in potential conflict. Diamond and Fisher (1995) describe training workshops in Cyprus between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, teachers in their respective communities. The workshops had four phases: discussing underlying fear and needs; discussing the dual ability of education to maintain or de-escalate the current state of conflict; proposing peacebuilding activities; and using force-field analysis to identify strengths and resistances to the proposals. The positive evaluation of these workshops confirms the importance of 'the encounter' as argued in Chapter 8; it signals how important it is for conflict resolution training to be done across all parties and potential 'combatants'. Other conflict resolution training goes wider still, as in the Community Alliance for Safe Schools in South Africa mentioned in Chapter 8, where an alliance of public, private, NGO and police were involved. A key insight was that schools were marked by an individualist work culture, and teachers were not familiar with cooperative and group problem solving (Harber 2000). Those working on crisis management systems in schools (Decker 1997) have also indicated the need for teamwork and team-building in order to be 'ready' for any unexpected crisis, whether earthquake or a gun-wielding intruder. Conflict resolution or management sits uneasily with individualised teaching and learning. Conclusion: what of policy?

In our research on pupil democracy in Europe, we raised the question: why is the UK so reluctant to legislate for pupil voice (Davies and Kirkpatrick 2000)? A similar question is why, given the success of peer mediation and conflict resolution projects in schools, almost all depend on voluntary agencies rather than forming part of a national education policy? Stewart suggests an answer: Schools are essentially hierarchical institutions where disciplinary procedures are rigidly established and documented. The idea of empowering the pupils to participate in resolving conflict involves altering the focus of control. . . . [I]n teacher-training establishments, students are taught how to maintain discipline rather than how to resolve conflict. Peer mediation has perhaps been perceived as a system of weak discipline. (Stewart 1998: 88) From our experience in the reaction to the EURIDEM project, it also links to the neo-liberal agenda of individual school autonomy. While the UK has a


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national curriculum and a national inspection agency, curiously, it does not have a national system for ensuring children's rights nor for children's empowerment towards generating a peaceful society. We found our four European countries doing the converse: curriculum and assessment were seen as a school matter, subject only to very broad guidelines, but rights and equity were nationally promoted and monitored. In conflict prevention terms, educational legislation on student participation in decision-making can be seen as having the benefit of providing avenues for student voice and grievance, and increasing ownership of the school. Our research found that if students have a say in as many aspects of school life as possible (as with Article 12) — including curriculum, teacher appointments and promotions as well as rules and social events — then conflict has a chance of being more positive. We found that transparent and official procedures for pupil grievance prevented more 'mindless' reactions or deviancy amplifications. The point about legislating for all this is that there is a clear message from central government that students are important. In this case, student democracy is too vital to self-organised criticality to be left to chance. `Legislation' is of course also to be formulated within the school. My interest would be in who draws up the rules, and who is responsible for their review and implementation. It will be clear from the philosophy of this book that student ownership is a crucial underpinning of lawmaking within the school. There is admittedly a dilemma here: when students are asked to think about sanctions for misbehaviour, they will initially be very punitive, and identify retributive and unrelated 'punishments' — picking up litter, detentions, internal and external exclusions. Part of conflict prevention may be to move students towards the idea of restorative justice, where appropriate. It is the same problem of the majority of a population wanting capital punishment. In a democracy, does the majority view always hold? Or do other principles of human rights and dignity prevail? In complexity terms, one has to see legislation as constantly reviewable, and whether it serves 'fitness of purpose' — that is, does it work? Democracy in schools would mean students being involved not just in generating rules, but also in monitoring and evaluation of the impact of such rules and any sanctions. In whose interests do conflict resolution and rule enforcement operate? As always, the question is of balance: between a formal set of legislative and policy procedures and the creativity to deal with problems as they arise. My view and experience is that formal 'rules' based on human rights as a permanent — and international — underpinning to our lives are essential and timesaving. This then releases the energy to deal with the daily processes through which the spirit of these procedures is implemented. Most of the conflict resolution techniques outlined in this chapter do seem to fit the principles of equity, ownership, transparency and win—win outcomes; but it needs reiterating that they should be aimed not at returning to the status quo, but at new ways of connecting.

Chapter 12

Education for positive conflict and interruptive democracy

In this final chapter I try to summarise the 'lessons learned' and set out my proposals for a type of education which can begin to address them. A bald summary of the argument that has been developed through the book is that education indirectly does more to contribute to the underlying causes of conflict than it does to contribute to peace. This is through reproduction of economic inequality and the birfurcation of wealth/poverty; through the promotion of a particular version of hegemonic masculinity and gender segregation; and through magnifying ethnic and religious segregation or intolerance. Schools are adaptive, but they tend towards equilibrium rather than radical emergence; hence at best they do not challenge existing social patterns which are generative of conflict. At worst, they act as amplifying mechanisms. At the direct interface between conflict and education, some contradictions were found however. Schools are obviously gravely affected by national or international conflict, but some are resilient; and while most schools are at root engaged in war education through militarisation and competitiveness, some are also engaged in peace education through particular emphases in their curricula or the way they are organised. There is evidence of human agency and resistance to prevailing trends. Lessons can also be learned from specific educational endeavours during times of conflict or post-conflict; one clear one is that these have to be aimed at emergence, not at returning to the situation which contributed to the conflict in the first place. At the individual level, people can be helped to find personal emergence from trauma or from the experience of war; and at the societal level, groups can be enabled to reconstruct new relationships and new forms of governance. The equally plain message is that such emergence in the end has to come from within. While outside intervention can facilitate the process of change, the creativity, the self-organised criticality, comes from enhanced connectivities within an organisation or group. Top-down, imposed packages, even of peace education, will generate adaptivity, but this is not guaranteed to shift a complex system to new forms of working and thinking unless most or all are somehow involved in finding a 'fitness of purpose'.

204 The complex adaptive school In Chapter 1 I proposed 'complexity shutdown theory' — that conflict is caused by a breakdown in connectivity and complex information processing. This would indeed explain the paradox that has emerged from this book: that formal education in peacetime is more likely to add to conflict than is nonformal education in time of conflict. This is because much formal education is about damaging connectivity — between the wealthy and the poor, between males and females, between different ethnic or religious groups, between the àble' and the 'less able'. Educational initiatives post-conflict on the other hand can be genuinely about inclusion: trying to heal and reintegrate the traumatised, the child soldiers, the refugees, and trying to build cohesive political and public cultures. We saw that post-conflict education is less about selection and 'standards' and more about cooperation and encounters. I am not optimistic therefore that formal schooling as currently constructed can ever 'solve' problems of world conflict. Without a massive dismantling of the whole examination system and a radical rethinking of the goals of education, the most it could achieve — probably — would be to do no further harm (as we have argued for school leadership, Harber and Davies 2003). But complexity theory does talk about amplification and the butterfly effect. Small steps might achieve an evolutionary breakthrough, or at least curb the current seemingly inexorable trends towards warfare through schooling. We do not want to see schools increasing their military spending (on steel barriers, detention units and weapons of mass boredom). Greater expenditure on peace is unlikely — and how this would be done is not always clear (National Lottery funds for peace groups?). But in a formal education system one has already a massive potential resource. Mostly we have blown it in favour of the deep fries of academic competition, the safety play, the comfort food, the portion control. If one accepts the underlying premiss of this book, that there is an urgency in finding a 'fitness of purpose' for education that will help to challenge destructive conflict — globally, nationally and organisationally — then this final chapter should try to identify some means towards this. How can we get schools out of the attractor state of fostering negative conflict? How can schools reach the edge of chaos to become something new? How can young (and older) people emerge from educational institutions more inclined to challenge injustice and violence? The answer to this is that in order to restore complexity and connectivity, schools should foster positive conflict. My argument will be that a particular form of democracy, which I shall term 'interruptive democracy', is the best way of doing this. First, I outline the case for positive conflict as, paradoxically, the best way to counter negative conflict. Positive/constructive conflict

Positive conflict has a number of backers, although not so many within educational circles. There is a long tradition of the use of conflict within organisa-

Positive conflict and interruptive democracy 205

tions generally (De Dreu 1997), but perhaps educational organisations have been less swift to espouse this, given that actual and potential relationships with pupils make conflict a daily feature more akin to prison management than to civil service management. Conflict is seen as dysfunctional, with harmony as the official goal, and uneasy truce as the unofficial one. There is a dilemma for schools in that the control function is so visible. Increasingly nowadays, as for other organisations, there is a focus not just on harmony but on harmonisation, standardisation, compliance. Inspection and quality control will look for congruent procedures. There is little room for creative individuality or agreement to differ. Yet of course conflict resolution is not just an end in itself, but a creative force for overall positive change (as argued in Chapter 11). In theory, resolving a conflict, say between teachers and pupils, should be not just about minimising that disruption but about leading to better ways of interacting, so that negative conflicts occur less often. Yet many writers on conflict have pointed out the difficulty that people have in seeing it as a positive force. This can be because of because of media concentration on violent events (Fountain 1995); people being unaccustomed to confronting conflict, and a cultural tendency to avoid uncomfortable situations (Folger et al. 1993); and in schools, its association with psychopathology, social disorder and war (Deutsch 1991). Etienne Grosjean, writing about cultural specificity, is quite dogmatic about this: Conflict cannot be seen as a mere accident that can be removed or reduced, if it arises, by wisdom or prudence. It must now be recognized as an ordinary 'force field'. In other words, conflict is part of the nature of things and is inextricably linked with all forms of development and the working out of human destiny. Peace can never again be equated with the absence of conflict. It will either take the form of creative, positive and constructive conflict management or not exist at all. ( Grosjean 1995: 22) Similarly, for Rupesinghe, peacebuilding can be seen as 'transforming violence into creative, militant, positive non-violence' (Rupesinghe (ed.) 1995: 90) in contrast to pacifism or just a ceasefire. In looking at conflict theory and Marxist theory, Adams (1991) celebrates their bringing of conflict to a position of prominence. But 'it may still be difficult to avoid viewing protest as abnormal, an aberration or disturbance' (Adams 1991: 15). For complexity theory, disturbance is indeed important — but it is disturbance as a normal event in the process of change. Murphy contends that confronting change, stress and conflict is central to human experience:

206 The complex adaptive school

Children thrive on change and novel experience, and are traumatized critically by the crude, aggressive, violent and violating repression of their attempts at freedom of experience, perception and expression, and the heavy-handed imposition of pre-set norms, perceptions and practices. If, as children, our learning experiences promoted continuous cultural transformation as a value, and nurtured our natural inclination to participate in and thrive on change, there would be little trauma attached to living in a society in which change was accepted as a cultural norm. (1999: 82) What would this mean for educational policy? Fisher et al. (2000) make a significant distinction between intensifying conflict and escalating conflict. Intensifying conflict means making a hidden conflict more visible and open, for purposeful, non-violent ends (e.g. when people are doing well and have enough power and resources and do not notice — or refuse to acknowledge — that others are disadvantaged or marginal); escalating conflict refers to a situation in which levels of tension and violence are increasing (because of inadequate channels for dialogue, instability, injustice and fear in the wider community). It would seem that 'intensifying conflict' has a purposive aim to shake people from complacency or apathy, passivity or fatalism. Linked to Murphy's argument, it is about the promotion of cultural transformation as a norm, not a problem. I quite like another sort of relevant distinction made, that between negative duties and positive duties. Writers on educational leadership such as Hwang (2001) go back to Kantian philosophy for this demarcation. Negative duties are those that simply require abstention from action (do not kill, do not harm, do not steal). These are legitimate reasons to restrain free will. Because they are compulsory, negative duties are also known as 'perfect duties' in Kant's analysis of morality. Positive duties on the other hand are 'imperfect duties', as they are basically duties of 'commission' rather than omission. They are difficult to define and predict; and not everyone can perform positive duties because of lack of opportunity and skill. In western individualism, an individual has a right to choose whether to perform certain positive duties ( Miller 1994). Yet we may want to look at shifting school rules more from negative prohibitions (`Do not run in the corridors') to positive duties (` Think of ways that increase safety for others') . Civic education and peace education need to act as reminders that all of us are 'co-creators of history' and could have a part to play in the resolution of problems that afflict us. There will be no peace in Afghanistan, for example, unless transitional authorities work out ways in which they can consult with and incor-

Positive conflict and interruptive democracy

207

porate the views of a broad cross-section of Afghani ethnic, age and gender diversity into the discussions. (Clements 2001: 15) Peace and security have to become everyone's business — for ownership and for the practice of positive duties. In political theory, conflict is seen not as either a problem or a sign that something is amiss, merely as an indication that resources (of power and prestige) are in short supply and competition will result. Conflict plays the role of a catalyst in the development of groups. It seems that it is the way that conflict is handled that can make it positive, as we saw in Chapter 11, using cooperative problem-solving techniques to promote insight and growth, rather than competitive ones which move the disputants further apart (DiPaola and Hoy 2001). Banks (1987) distinguishes between those trained in adversarial techniques (lawyers, diplomats, the military) who tend to advocate policies which build walls between parties, and people trained in problem-solving techniques (business people, psychologists, technical experts) who are more likely to advocate policies which build bridges between parties. `Reliance upon a single channel of communication foments misperception; multiple channels give more opportunity to perceive the opponent realistically' (Banks 1987: 27). This cements one lesson from complexity theory, that a complex adaptive system has multiple networks and channels of information. It is also possible that complexity theory helps us to understand the problems of peace processes through its acceptance of paradox and the concept of 'fuzzy logic'. Social complexity is both the source and the product of contradictory and opposing forces acting together. Dimitrov (1997) talks of the 'paralysis' that comes from trying to unravel such contradictions — that is, trying not to experience them as contradictory. To avoid such paralysis is the task of managing social complexity. Fuzzy logic works by tolerating opposites, by balancing them to such degrees that they cease to cancel each other out and become complementary. The 'either/or' approach to contradictory concepts is replaced by a 'both/and' relationship, of their parallel acceptance. (The both/and logic has been used in the concept of multiple identity or loyalty, being both British and Asian, Israeli and Palestinian rather than having to choose a loyalty.) 'For example, a fuzzy framework created in the management practice can meaningfully transform expressions like "collaboration OR competitiveness" into "collaboration AND competitiveness", "reorganisation OR stability" into "re-organisation AND stability"' (Dimitrov 1997: 2). Battram (1998), similarly, uses the example of a friend turning up just as one is going out. Does one say 'I'm pleased to see you and I' m going out' (both of which are true) or 'but'? Principles of non-exclusion and non-isolation are fundamental for the use of fuzzy logic in any turbulent social environment. Non-exclusion means that


no options or alternatives (however improbable) should be excluded from consideration. Non-isolation means that no one single option is privileged as òptimal' or the 'most efficient'. Uncertainty must continue. This has important implications for consensus. Fuzzy logic implies that consensus ceases to be a peaceful long-term goal. 'Paradoxically, instead of consensus being the power house of common social action, it is "dissensus" which operates in consensus seeking enterprise, permanently implanting chaotic vibrations in the process of communication' (Dimitrov 1997: 3). Yet this dissensus or chaos does not cause the communication network to dissipate. Rather it eventually gives birth to an emerging order in the form of a new type of 'dynamic' or 'second-order' consensus. This is people agreeing to disagree, or disagreeing to agree. Consensus-seeking therefore differs from consensus-budding, in that stakeholders are not necessarily looking for `common ground', but actually study the differences with no constraint on views and opinions. The important thing is that no changes of their values and beliefs are required as preliminary conditions for seeking a consensus. This is a vital insight, as much conflict resolution or 'behaviour management' has foundered in the attempt to change people and to change their values. Instead there is shared acknowledgement of diversity and that there are zones of uncertainty (`value-dark zones') in which neither the causes nor the effects of what occurs are clear or even can be known. The process of exploring the complexity and moving around in the zone of uncertainty may trigger a reconstruction of views — but this is not to be imposed. It arises as people respond to each other's constructions of the reality of the situation. There are parallels here to the philosophy of peer mediation examined in the last chapter, and to the effect of 'encounters'. Yet while there will always be some value-dark zones, this does not negate the need for some sort of value position underlying practices of positive conflict. One should not simply stir the pot of conflict without simultaneously engaging with questions of rights and responsibilities, and who decides what these are. This is where a particular principled organisational ideology is crucial to positive conflict and positive duties. It cannot be neutral. Fuzzy logic is not a game just to give people debating skills. I — and many others — argue that the best form of organisation (or 'least worst', as Churchill said) is democracy. Both war and authoritarianism are linear; but peace and democracy are complex. Democracy and complexity

Before looking at education and democracy, I want to link the theoretical framework of complexity with democracy generally, as complexity theory enables us to see what versions of democracy would be valuable in promoting peace. There is no guarantee that democracy will prevent armed conflict. The UK, France, Sweden are all supposedly democratic countries and yet


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still contribute to the arms race and to making conflict in other countries more likely. They have elected governments that need to stay in power and will do so by various means. Complexity theory shows us how non-linear political systems such as democracy can have unpredictable outcomes. The problem with the types of democracy that do not challenge war is that they do not have sufficiently active civil societies nor mechanisms for constant challenge and public accountability. It is not as if there is a silenced intellectual class — for the universities also make a living from defence research. While there is then with representative democracy the possibility of electing or removing leaders, the major question for global survival is how we can elect leaders who are not bent on destruction. The majority of people may see war as 'winnable'. At the height of the India—Pakistan tension in 2002, Burke and Beaumont quoted a former Indian chief of staff as saying that `War is one game that you cannot lose or draw, especially if you are the bigger country'. Crushing victories are not just possible but essential. At that stage, both sides were psychologically committed to conflict, and had entered a 'war mindset', neither seeing any sense (Burke and Beamont 2002). Even when the electorate do not support a war, four-year cycles of voting are too slow to remove belligerent leaders, as has been found with leadership on the 2003 Iraq war in the UK. In his discussion of complexity theory with regard to development, Rihani interestingly dismisses democracy as 'too vague for the present purpose' ( Rihani 2002: 165). His critique seems to stem from the fact that democracy as a concept has been abused throughout history; that so-called democratic states act undemocratically outside their own territory; that there is a danger of oppression by the majority; that democracy is perceived as a western concept that cannot be transplanted to other cultures. All this may be true, but this is the equivalent of saying we should not accede to notions of 'freedom' or `rights' because people use such notions falsely and for their own ends. The problem is not with democracy (and rights) itself, nor with its underpinning principles; it is a problem of how it is used, taught, learned, interpreted ( Davies 1999b). Rihani obviously accedes to the centrality of rights, but for the development of a country pays more attention to the freedom and capability to interact for members of populations, to be able to exercise flexibility and pragmatism. He acknowledges that change in complex adaptive systems can lead to inequality and the emergence of elites, as those with the 'greatest complexity' stand to make the greatest gain (as we saw in Chapter 3). But monitoring is important, as the management of a CAS is essentially a 'reiterative' process leading to frequent but minor adjustments to encourage local interactions to proceed optimally. Rigid long-term plans and command and control economies are counter-indicated. For me, the democratic process is actually the one most likely to lead to the necessary 'frequent but minor adjustments'.



This responsiveness and 'reiteration' links with a number of characteristics of a complex democracy. Alex de Waal (1996) claims that India (unlike parts of Africa) has not suffered famine for more than forty years because it has a free press and democratic or adversarial political institutions which mean pressure on government to do something about it. Collier posits that `democratisation is worth around half a century of income growth in terms of its contribution to peace' (1998: 18). This would be not just because of adversarial politics (far from it), but because of various sorts of transparencies and procedural claims. In our work on democratisation of teacher education (Davies, Harber and Schweisfurth 2002) we outlined four principles: equity, rights, informed choice and active participation in decision-making. All of these overlap, but all are essential. Participation without respect for rights can be non-challenging (there was massive popular participation in Hitler's Germany); and the opportunity to vote without access to information is no real choice. Demanding rights without a concern for equity and reciprocity in those rights is also inimical to democracy. Complexity theory can therefore actually explain the success of particular modes of democracy. One is the localisation of decision-making. For Rihani, the logic of complexity is that 'healthy' change in social, political and economic life takes place at the local level and is driven by local actors. This matches the accounts of conflict resolution described in the last chapter, in the chapter on peace education (Chapter 8) and in the chapters on strategic education post-conflict (Chapters 9 and 10). I enjoy the banners saying Join the worldwide movement against globalisation': there is a tension between wanting local interactions yet needing wider networks. But certainly the notion of only one 'fitness landscape' which matches some versions of globalisation (McDonaldisation) does not meet the demands for creativity and emergence. It seems a cry for decentralisation, but also for transparency and democracy in those local interactions, if national self-serving or corrupt elites are not to be replaced by local self-serving or corrupt elites. A CAS requires not just a massive amount of internal interaction, but freedom to interact within rules that command support. How can it arrive at such rules without some sort of democratic process? Without them, interaction and innovation on their own can simply feed inequality and power differentials — leading to negative conflict. The Brazilian model I looked at in Chapter 3, while grassroots and localised, has a strong value base as well as linkages to the centre. Those organisations or countries that have created ombudsmen to represent the interests of citizens or children (as citizens) provide the central arrangements for local redress (for example the Instituto Libertad y Democracia in Peru, or the children's ombudsman in Norway). Chapter 11 therefore argued for national legislation around student voice and pupil democracy, to ensure the universal rules under which local voices can be heard.

1

Another link between complexity and democracy is the exploitation of diversity. Complex adaptive systems, for evolution and emergence, need diversity in order to be able to test ideas, experiment, have new combinations. The notion of diversity therefore has to be protected, although — and this is a significant point — not necessarily all the actual components within each diverse body. If aspects of that diversity are redundant, then new creative forms emerge. In social terms, this means that cultural diversity is not to be retained unthinkingly and at all costs. All aspects of a culture need constant examining and possible revision to establish fitness. So there is no such thing as a cultural imperative. Everything is conditional. This is highly uncomfortable for many people, although a great relief to others caught in the `frozen accidents' of gender, religion or caste. Where complexity theory and democracy also come together is in the notion of 'what works'. Complexity theory would acknowledge egoism, and see altruism and cooperation only as a branch of that, in terms of survival. In that sense democracy and rights have to be pursued and sold as effective ways of working rather than as spiritual ends. An 'instinctive' sense of justice and fair play may be nothing more than a realisation of the consequences of injustice and foul play for self and family. However, I would not want to get too cynical about this. Love and compassion may be ultimately only survival mechanisms, but they are real in their effects and behaviours. They are not frozen accidents, but have a serious benefit for the democratic process and for adaptation — that is, for the practice of positive conflict. We saw this in the work of conflict groups trying to put themselves in others' shoes, to feel their pain. Cooperation is easily traced to social and economic survival, but there are also instances of 'spontaneous cooperation', where, as game theory proposes, rewards do not have to be symmetric, or where the rewards of cooperation are in aggregate larger, but smaller for the individual, than if there had been competition with only one winner. Democracy is not a team game but cooperative and emotional play to find the current best solution. The arguments for democracy in terms of a complex adaptive system that can both survive and move forward are, in summary, fourfold: • • •

1.

21 1

•

localisation of decision-making very high participation and connectivity, with rich information channels a system of agreed rules that apply to all (and therefore a respect for rights) the ever-present possibility of making changes to rules, procedures, cultures and leaders to provide a better fitness landscape.

I nterruptive democracy in education

It is particularly this last point which leads to me to propose 'interruptive democracy' as the basis for the complex adaptive school. I define interruptive


democracy as 'the process by which people are enabled to intervene in practices which continue injustice'. It is an 'in-your-face' democracy — not just taking part, but the disposition to challenge. It is the democracy of the hand shooting up, the 'excuse-me' reflex. It is the outrage mentioned in Chapter 5. It is by definition non-linear, finding spaces for dissent, resilience and action. A host of challenges have emerged from the conclusions of various parts of this book: challenges to quasi-market ideologies, class injustice, ethnic oppression, warlike masculinity, essentialist identities, the militarisation of the mind, runaway norms, frozen struggles, threat inflation. For education, interruptive democracy combines four elements: the handling of identity and fear; the need for deliberation and dialogue; the need for creativity, play and humour; and the impetus for a defiant agency. I look at each of these in turn. Identity building and the handling of difference

Let me look first of all at the immense question of identity, which has permeated this book in terms of roots and effects of conflict. What emerges always is the paradox that a secure identity is needed in order for people to be less aggressive towards others; and yet that 'essentialising' of identity can equally be a cause of conflict. While it is convenient to be able to say that we should all acknowledge our multiple identities, it is not as simple as that. We do need a base to start. Ozacky-Lazar (2001) argues in her work bringing together Jewish and Arab young people that you need to build internal culture. We realized that when someone is very sure about his/her own culture, it's much easier to meet the other side. We first build Jewish national identity — as Jews from whatever region. For Palestinians this is a serious problem. They've never had their own state, but identify themselves as Muslims, Christians or a minority. ( Ozacky-Lazar 2001: 21) Initially one might feel uneasy about such culture building — could it not so easily spill over into nationalism? Yet it might be true that hostility comes from insecurity about one's culture or nation, from the desire and need to prove and mark an identity. If one is secure, one can take a joke. If not, it is perceived as insult, which I return to later. Identities can be complementary, those that one wants to be engaged with; or a self can invoke a wholly alien other, with a voice that is heard as 'sickness, inferiority or evil' (Connolly 1991: 64). As Cockburn points out, 'if you lack a secure self, are caught up in inner conflict, you are likely to disown the hated or feared parts of yourself and project them onto the unknown "other"' (Cockburn 1998: 214). We saw this clearly in the discussion of masculinity, where young men disowned any tendency towards a female or homosexual inclination within themselves

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and reacted adversely or violently towards others who displayed such identities more obviously. There seems initially a contradiction here: I have argued that schools promote masculinity; yet this does not seem to make boys secure. What in fact happens is that by not interrupting hegemonic, idealised versions, schools reinforce boys' aspirations to what are actually unattainable goals. The obvious message for a school community is to provide that sense of secure self which does not project deficiency onto others. It will not do this while it labels some pupils as low ability, or as exclusion material. Coercive labelling is actually getting worse in the UK under the targeting regime, as we saw in Chapter 7. We all fear failure, isolation, ostracism; but in schools this is played on by teachers and students alike. The result is exclusionary collective identities, rather than overlapping or cooperative ones. Schools are actually probably better at affirming cultural diversity than they are at affirming àcademic' diversity, as the latter is in fact impossible under any rationing or screening function. Yet the negative, fearful identities that emerge from this are prey to the perceived securities of various sorts of fundamentalism. So while 'participation' is a hurrah word, this is not to be any old participation (as was argued under militaristic schools). Schools can provide spaces for pupils to 'belong', but interruptive democracy would enable the analysis of whether or not these groupings are benign. Belonging to the music club does not do much harm, mostly aiming to give pleasure; belonging to the youth wing of a fascist party does. I argued in Chapter 5 for the acknowledgement of 'hybridity' in identity. This may entail multiple 'belongings', pyschologically and practically. The clue is to promote the belongings that do not by definition exclude. Identity can be forged by its relation and its distinction to somebody or something different; but it does not always have to be. Belonging to the top stream by definition is exclusionary, with identity secured by not being in any other stream, by being in contradistinction to others; but belonging to the UNESCO club does not mean an identity against 'non-UNESCO' people — on the contrary, the aim would be to draw in as many as possible. The next part is the handling of difference and diversity. Here I might debate with Cockburn. She argues that for democracy to work, universalism must transcend difference, defining all subjects as equal before the law. But she then says you need to 'reinstate' difference as a higher-order value which encompasses equality through 'a relational and dialogical ethic of care, compassion and responsibility'. This is not diametrically opposed but èmbedded'. Yet I am not sure why difference has to be a 'higher order value' rather than a parallel one. This seems to me to go back to the old rights-and-responsibilities dualism: rights are the universals, responsibilities acknowledge the differences. Democracy does not revert to cultural relativism, or 'anything goes', but — precisely because of the universal principles of rights and equity — is able to provide the mechanism to question culture and difference when these appear to do harm. Democracy is not only a principled politics, but a practical one: built into the process is the means to mount a


challenge when the differences get too big, and when the claims around diversity take over from the common rights. This is the 'interruptive' part. To avoid essentialism, the argument by Yuval-Davis (1997) is that we need `transversal politics' rather than 'identity politics'. This denies that social positioning (for example, being a woman) can automatically be conflated with personal values (for example, being a feminist). Transversal politics, across very complex divides, is based on the recognition that each positioning (say, of an ethnicity, or gender) produces specific situated `knowledges'; but that these knowledges cannot but be unfinished — and therefore dialogue should take place in order to reach a common perspective. Transversal dialogue should be based on the principles of 'rooting and shifting' — that is, being centred (rooted) in one's own experiences while being empathetic (able to shift) to the differential positionings of the partners in the dialogue. I think this notion of 'unfinished knowledge' is a crucial aspect of good democratic education: schools all too often present knowledge as finished (and individuals as lacking if they do not have it), rather than everything as tentative — even identities. There are strong parallels to Freire: 'Problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming — as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality' (Freire 2001: 77). A hybrid identity is also unfinished, with hybridity not a complete form, but recombinant, in the genetic analogy. In dialogue, the key would seem to be to replace 'who one is' with 'what one's experiences are'. This sharing of experience and pain we saw as crucial in dialogue across conflict lines. The issues for education are to recognise subtleties and unfinishedness in complex identity, and not to portray the apparent 'absence' of one strand of a possible identity as an 'empty space'. There are no empty spaces, only different configurations. Atheism is a positive identity as much as religion. By providing avenues for voice, interruptive democracy in schools would constantly call into question who supposedly 'lacks' what in terms of learning and contribution. The implications are for a 'critical pedagogy', or the 'border pedagogy' of Giroux mentioned in Chapter 8. A pedagogy of difference surfaces quite blatantly all aspects of our hybridity, and enables young people to analyse class, 'race', gender, 'ability' or 'special needs' in order to understand the sources of inequality and conflict. Carrim argues that an anti-racist pedagogy of 'difference' would not compromise theoretical and academic rigour even if rationality were 'pluralised' and differences in meanings were allowed. This would, however, entail 'a more skills driven, instead of a content driven, form of assessment' (1995: 33). So interrupting essentialist identities in schools is done through: • •

surfacing and valuing hybrid identities in all of us (including teachers) providing means to belong, but not giving essentialist or exclusionary academic identities, and particularly not 'empty' ones


• • •

a good social science or political education curriculum which enables critical discussion of identity and difference, and of different experience across borders not having a multicultural curriculum that presents cultures as finished and untouchable and impermeable by others a transversal politics of learning which means the constant responsibility of learners towards each other, through mentors, guardians, peer tutors, cooperative groups and so on.

Democracy and dialogue It is clear that complexity requires information, feedback loops and connectivity; and that conflict resolution requires massive amounts of dialogue and talk. This is why 'deliberative democracy' would be the second part of the interruptive democracy that I am arguing for. The ideal of 'deliberative democracy' has received the attention of many writers and philosophers (e.g. Fishkin 1991, Gutmann and Thompson 1996, Elster 1998). Such writers focus on deliberation's potential for increasing political participation and the quality of democratic decision-making — and this has parallels with the promotion of dissensus outlined above. The idea is that by exchanging views with one another, citizens increase their attention to evidence. Conversations within 'discursive communities' are to produce wider access to more relevant knowledge, and reduce 'the role of shrill partisanship, ad hominen arguments and emotional appeals' (Lustick and Miodownik 2000). When people 'talk past each other', they are not listening and trying to understand. But deliberative democracy means a public discourse of disagreement and agreement based on attempts at mutual intelligibility and evidence-based persuasion. This has obvious connotations for the spread of conflict or peace. Lustick and Miodownik have used an interesting computer simulation called 'Agent-Based Argument Repertoire Model' to explore the effect of the interaction of different variables on the arguments held by individuals. It was found that low levels of education, modelled as citizens lacking the ability to understand more than a small fraction of the arguments being made by other citizens, are associated with high levels of pervasive disagreement. 'Even small amounts of education to marginally increase the flexibility of a citizenry's thinking could very significantly decrease the amount of misunderstood "shouting" of arguments' (Lustick and Miodownik 2000: 19). So what is needed is not just any old education, but one that increases flexible thinking and a repertoire of arguments — not an education that is characterised by rote learning, passivity and portrayal of the one right argument. Without being able to communicate coherently about changing aspects of the polity, undereducated citizens cannot build the kind of substantial but not universal consensus that communities need `to make use of the good ideas that a diverse polity generates' (Lustick and Miodownik 2000: 24).


The implication for schooling is to promote a particular type of deliberative democracy which will, through dissensus, lead both to second-order consensus and to the sense of agency which is needed to create change. This has avenues in very practical structures such as school councils, class councils, circle ti mes, student unions or youth parliaments, as well as in formal curriculum areas of citizenship education or political education. It goes without saying that both structural and curriculum areas can be utilised as means of control rather than positive conflict, and routinised school councils and nationalistic civics education do not operate in the spirit of deliberative democracy. But both teachers and pupils who genuinely want to open up criticality and agency will be able to find avenues within them, essentially linked to community activism and regional, national and international networking. An interesting question is whether we should be looking at arguments or individuals. Most students of deliberative democracy focus on what citizens should be, what they do or do not do, and how they respond to discursive opportunities or messages. . . [W]e focus just as much if not more on arguments rather than individuals. Do arguments prevail, disappear, retreat or return? Are they available when conditions suggest their validity? What difference does the presence of more or fewer arguments within repertoires or within a polity make? Under what conditions do better arguments spread more quickly than poor arguments? (Lustick and Miodownik 2000: 28) This has huge implications for the spread of (or brake on) arguments for peace or conflict, or for the spread or decline of religious arguments. While individual citizens are born, develop into maturity and die, the arguments can live on, across space and across generations. Is citizenship education less about being a good citizen and more about keeping an argument alive? Perhaps they are not mutually exclusive: being a good citizen is modelling a behaviour which contributes to the perpetuation of a discourse, in structuration terms. But it may be important not just to help old ladies or to use one's vote, but to be able to argue persuasively for alternatives to war as effective ways of organising the world. Dialogue (the two acts of speaking and listening) is actually about emergence: the bringing out of new and previously hidden meanings and understandings. But this occurs only if conditions are right — the rules and relationships, and the use of feedback. Talking has higher status than listening, which is relegated to acknowledging receipt of my words. But actually to talk effectively, and influence, we have to listen, in order to discover people's models of the world. Children are maligned as bad listeners, but in fact they listen very carefully, or rather monitor and scan — something learned


from watching parents and then teachers. Apparently, we scan others' utterances for relevance — even people not talking to us directly. Therefore Battram (1998) argues for 'dialogue groups' (which would be like circle times in schools) where the rules are fourfold: respecting the person who 'holds the context' at any point in a dialogue, or who is the `problem-holder'; suspending the tendency to judge; listening and trying to understand rather than focusing on what you might want to say in response to what is being said; and treating everyone's views as equally valid (for now??) within the 'possibility space' of the dialogue. Such dialogue is almost certainly non-linear, with tiny comments having disproportionate effects. If our personal view is augmented by a range of others in our community, this means we massively expand our 'possibility space'. All CASs engage in constant searching, be they economies or organisations, ecosystems or individual organisms — they engage in environmental scanning in the possibility space. Linked to this is the notion of 'growing' an idea or solution, rather than 'finding' it. Just as biological diversity is essential for evolution, an unpredictable future demands argumentative diversity. We do not know what arguments we might need. Some may seem chronically wrong today, but they may, under vastly different conditions, be right tomorrow. So after resolving the identity paradox, the second task of interruptive democracy in a school or teacher education institution is to maintain the ideal of diversity of argument, by providing opportunities for genuine deliberation and for increasing the possibility space of thinking. Creativity, play, humour and anti-dogmatism

Out third element, creativity, was one of Dimitrov's 'fuzzy' components of a human CAS, together with willingness to engage in dialogue and willingness to act together. The components of creativity involve fresh ideas and new formulations (including metaphors, imagery, paradoxes, humour, jokes and storytelling). This not only helps the enrichment and the variety of options, but begins the process of moving together in a group and acting together in a world where relativity, complexity and uncertainty are 'inevitable companions'. Porter (1999) argues for the 'reflexive school' and the reflective teacher training college, which can enable young people to cope with globalisation and the threat to self-identity and even survival which comes from competitive economies that prevent democracies establishing a global consensus around human concerns and rights. Such reflexiveness requires acknowledgement of multiple intelligences and in particular, emotional intelligence. It requires a professional teaching force, not one that is deskilled and controlled. For Porter, decentralisation is essential, to provide a flexibility and


creativity released from political agendas and dogmas, as well as for a more `participant' democracy. But I think we need to establish how 'reflexivity' happens. As well as the furthering of emotional intelligence that comes from dialogue and encounter, I would argue that it involves play and humour. Chapter 9 revealed the huge importance of play in the process of healing; and the 'child soldiers' of so-called normal schools in normal societies also need this on a daily basis to counter hurt. It is significant that Adams analyses pupil protest as, in part, a `game' — locating it with expressive rather than purely instrumental concerns. Protest as a game 'challenges the reality of the institutionalised process of schooling in several ways.' It is voluntary and superfluous, and may interrupt the competitiveness of the curriculum or reinforce it. Like play, protest is `played out' with its own course and meanings. Acts of protest, once finished, `become part of pupils' memories, and like other games, are transmissable as traditions' (Adams 1991: 11). The emphasis on humour is particularly important, and has been seriously (!) underplayed in educational and conflict literature. I put humour and fun as an essential right for teachers and learners in a much earlier discussion of equity and efficiency in the school (Davies 1990), and have also related it to one of the preconditions for dynamic stability in a country — the ability to take a joke about one's culture or religion or gender. It is the governments and religions that ban jokes about political or spiritual leaders that are clearly the most fragile. A sign of a healthy social system is a range of mechanisms for dissent and challenge, including satire, political cartoons and parody. A colleague in the Gambia had a theory of why the Gambia is relatively peaceful internally, and neighbouring Nigeria is not, and that was because people are able to make jokes about each other's tribes without taking offence. I think there arc a host of other reasons as well, a lot to do with size, but it is a crucial point: the inability to take a joke, to be teased, is a sign of insecurity. This can happen at a personal and at a large-scale level. Blasphemy laws are a sign of a religion's deep insecurity and reluctance to countenance challenges. As Williams (2001) points out, it is impossible to eradicate a joke once told. This explains why political cartoonists may be imprisoned in authoritarian states. I would even claim a direct correlation — that conflict escalates when the ability to use humour declines. The axis of evil versus the mocking of self. Humour is a classic form of cultural interruption, and is a greatly undervalued and underanalysed device. This is especially true of conflict analysis, as, understandably, this seems a very serious subject and one not to be trivialised by reference to jokes. In Reychler and Paffenholz's massive tome on peacebuilding (2001) there is but one small chapter on humour: 'The Usefulness of Humour' by Sue Williams — 4 pages out of 571. Most books on peace and conflict do not even have that. Yet humour has some indispensable elements in peacekeeping and building. It can defuse tension, it can channel


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emotions, it can draw people together in a common joke, it can 'convey a truth safely', it can forge familiarity across normal powerlines. Admittedly, it can also exclude people, if they are outside the shared joke or narrative; but on the whole, I would argue that it has enormous potential. Cartoons and satire are a key means to criticise governments and give the message that politicians can be defrocked. Ditto teachers. Irreverence is an important skill — a skill that balances between rudeness and acceptance. There is a long tradition of looking at pupil humour in schools (e.g. Woods 1979), with the revelation that teachers' jokes are funny, but pupils' jokes are not funny. Have we lost that sociological tradition in the UK? Humour is so important in identity and in challenges to power, as I found from my study of deviant girls back in 1984. Perhaps humour, rather than class conflict, is the last frontier for analysis. A friend headteacher told how one of the last obstacles to democracy to fall in his school was 'permission' to have a completely uncensored school newspaper. This publication was admittedly scurrilous, but it gave the staff a chance to realise what sorts of things students saw as ridiculous (he has written a book about the democratisation of his school in Trafford 1997). In Venice in 2002 UNESCO ASPnet ran a successful workshop for young people on how to draw cartoons. (At least, it would have been successful if someone had remembered that Venice often floods in November, and the main conference on World Heritage was drowned out.) A cartoon makes it possible to overcome censorship and intimidation by stating a truth or a contradiction humorously — and the interpretation implicates the audience as well as the humorist. How does humour fit into complexity theory? Very well. It is a classic example of non-linearity. One of the tools of humour is the juxtaposition of incongruous elements. Similarly, it is a key way of attacking power relations — the clown or court jester who can make jokes about royalty. We know that teachers who are able to take jokes about themselves are more deviance insulative than teachers who overreact to pupil mockery. My research on pupil deviance showed the effective use of pupil humour to challenge the power of teachers (Davies 1984). Humour demonstrates the possibility of many more lines of communication and uses of power than conventional organograms and line management charts. This is not to say that everything should be joked about; nor that some jokes are not offensive, racist or sexist. There is a fine line between teasing and cruel sarcasm. Conflict analysis should include acknowledgement of when humour is inappropriately used as well as when people overreact to perceived threat, or feel excluded because they cannot share the jokes of others. Education for democracy includes awareness of when a style of communication is appropriate and when not. The dilemma of 'freedom of expression' has to be tackled in human rights curricula, together with skills in the management of insult. (This relates to the need for a secure identity analysed


earlier.) Teachers and parents feel free to critique children in front of others; but when is the trading of insults acceptable? Humour has to be balanced with responsibility to others to 'save face'. As looked at in Chapter 11, conflict resolution may be about giving something to enable others to retain their sense of importance. Humour then is more about irreverence than about putdowns (except of course of deserving politicians). Cockburn relates: Joy Poots and her partner were left wing, anti-nationalist and nonreligious. But their children inevitably shared the Christian culture of the school and the Ìrishness' of the country. How to construct a satisfying culture for such a family? Their answer had been a kind of pragmatic multivocalism. She said 'We sing first, Bandiera Rosso, and next Jesus Loves Me, and then The Fields of Athenry' . It would be funny, they agreed, were it less serious. (Cockburn 1998: 219) I like the idea of 'pragmatic multivocalism'. The almost playful nature of pragmatism is important in avoiding essentialism, seriousness, great import and weight attached to aspects of identity. Women in Belgrade wrote in a letter to their sisters in Sarajevo about their shared resistance to the 'lethal belief in the proper name, proper land and blood . . . And that is a neat reminder: as women making over our worlds our first task is impropriety' (Cockburn 1998: 230). The most serious thing that humour can do is to attack dogma. This apparent need for order and truth blinds us to a more radical conclusion: it is not a particular false 'truth' that is the source of social evil; it is the notion of Truth itself. And it is not this or that invalid social dogma or doctrine that creates social injustice and dehumanisation: it is dogma and doctrine in themselves that are contrary to justice, equality and human possibility, and rob us of our freedom to think and act. ( Murphy 1999: 32) This is within the tradition of 'humanist radicalism' which is also the central axis of feminist theory (Pettman 1996). It requires a profound distrust of absolutes and ideologies — together with action. Not to act is not leaving things to chance, but leaving them to other actors. The doing word: agency

The components of interruptive democracy so far (identity work, deliberation and creativity) are not then enough without this disposition to act. Interrupting dogma within the school is logically linked to the capacity to protest in a


range of arenas. Salmi reports confidently that 'authoritarian governments have been overthrown, for instance in Korea and Thailand, as a result of student protest' (1999: 12). This cannot surely be the only cause of government decline, but does it give grounds for hope and agency? Adams (1991) analyses the responses to student protest within the educational context, and identities four categories: denying the reality (a symptom of adolescence); suppression without dealing with the underlying causes (tightening discipline, bringing in the police); making token or minor changes (token democracy); and making significant change. For the last category, Adams claims that it is hard to find a case where significant change has been initiated by teaching staff as a response to pupil protests. This may be shifting now, with the growth of more-than-token school councils which can provide an avenue for grievance without students having to resort to protest. Conversely, councils can be seen as yet another form of subtle social control. Adams therefore distinguishes 'democratisation' and 'empowerment'. The former he locates as a 'consumerist' strategy — school-site management, collaborative management, parental involvement, school councils, parental choice, revolutionary committees in China. Empowerment on the other hand means increasing the rights of pupils — to complain and to respond to complaints; changing the curriculum; and extending the repertoire of strategies and tactics of protest. Taking a Freirian approach, he argues for pupils to be conscientised, given power as well as rights, which implies also the empowerment of teachers. My interruptive democracy is therefore closer to his empowerment, and distinctly not about the liberal or market versions implied by a consumerist democracy. For Byrne (1998), the idea of citizenship must include within it the possibility that the political actions of citizens matter in terms of determining the course of events. He claims that increasingly this is not true. There is a crisis of political engagement, both in terms of visible actions by people, most notably in the decline in voting, and in relation to the actual content of politics itself. Labour is seeking to replace the deliberative democracy of its annual policy forming conference with a combination of fan club rally and 'policy forums' [sic]. . . . In these processes the citizen who acts becomes replaced by the passive consumer whose action is confined to choice among available product suppliers, with the produce being distinguished by superficial packaging rather than essential content. (Byrne 1998: 151) In contrast, interruptive democracy and action would stem from the engagement or outrage mentioned earlier, not just from passive 'choosing'. So perhaps every day we should do a small thing. I remember the buzz when I found out recently you can email Ariel Sharon directly (in my case to protest


about the destruction of olive trees on Palestinian land). It will make not a jot of difference, I know; but I felt agentic, and this spreads to other areas of life. In education, a particular form of critical pedagogy becomes the key to a disposition to act. Apple (2002) describes teaching immediately after 9/11 and how he wanted his students to appreciate fully the fact that the US-led embargo of Iraq had caused the death of thousands upon thousands of children each year that it had been in place. He wanted them to understand how US policies in the Middle East and in Afghanistan had helped create truly murderous consequences. However, he realised too that unless their feelings of anger and their understandings were voiced and taken seriously, the result could be 'exactly the opposite of what any decent teacher wants'. Instead of a more complicated understanding of the lives of people who are among the most oppressed in the world — often as a result of Western and Northern economic policies . . . students could be led to reject any critical contextual understanding largely because the pedagogical politics seemed arrogant. In my experiences both as an activist and a scholar, this has happened more often than some theorists of `critical pedagogy' would like to admit. (Apple 2002: 4) Fortunately, the majority of students were willing to re-examine their anger, to put themselves in the place of the oppressed, to take their more critical and nuanced understandings and put them into action. A striking result was a coalition of students being forced to engage in concrete action in their own schools and communities to interrupt the growing anti-Islamic and jingoistic dynamics that were present even in progressive areas. These 'politics of interruption' are significant at these key bifurcatory points induced by crisis, which can lead either to greater jingoism/patriotism or to greater understanding of global interdependence. Elsewhere (2000), Apple has argued that social criticism is the ultimate act of patriotism. Rigorous criticism of a nation's policies demonstrates a commitment to a nation itself. It says that one demands action on the principles that are supposedly part of the founding narratives of a nation and that are employed in the legitimation of its construction of particular kinds of polities. It signifies that Ì/we live here' and that this is indeed our country and our flag as well. No national narrative that excludes the rich history of dissent as a constitutive part of the nation can ever be considered legitimate. This is a very important point. Agency and criticism can show care, not just resistance. They are a very important part of positive conflict. And as we saw in Chapter 8, teachers need to do the 'daring acts', to model and act out such protest if their schools are genuinely going to interrupt negative conflict outside. This may seem highly risky, but risk is an essential part of critical action. As Murphy points out,


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Growth is dependent upon our willingness to risk ... Human life without constant risk is morbid, degenerative, less-than-human. . . . And risk has nothing to do with cost/benefit analysis. . . . Risk is a question of values, not acquisition. Every decision of risk is a choice of values. ( Murphy 1999: 26)

Conclusion: the interruptive school

Education on its own will not create world peace. Nor will a school be able to heal and control children living in violent or drug-related communities. I am not over-romanticising the possibilities for schools. But I do think schools can interrupt the processes towards more violence. Putting all the above together, the features of the interruptive school are tenfold: 1 the existence of a wide range of forums for positive conflict (councils, circle time, representation on governing bodies, representation on curriculum committees, going to youth parliaments, support for school student unions) 2 provision of organised and frequent ways to generate dialogue, deliberation, connectivity, argument, information exchange, empathy, feedback and listening between students, between teachers in front of students, and between teachers and students as encounters between equals 3 encouragement of avenues for belonging which are not exclusionary or segregated, and the promotion of identity which values hybridity, not purity 4 a critical pedagogy and political education which surfaces inequalities such as class, ethnicity, gender and (dis) ability as well as global inequality, and which contains language and media analysis 5 an emphasis on rights, and active responsibilities to other learners 6 the learning of conflict mapping and conflict resolution skills and dispositions (for students and teachers) which lead to new behaviours and new reflection 7 acknowledgement of unfinished knowledge and unfinished cultures, of fuzzy logic 8 creativity, play and humour, both to heal people and to interrupt dogma 9 modelling by teachers of protest and resistance, of imperfect duties, of sins of commission, and encouragement of students to exercise agency against injustice 10 risk taking and limit-testing which pushes the school towards the edge of chaos and to creative emergence.

I know schools which do some or all of the above, and am thankful for their inspiration and 'possibility space'; these are the 'post-pessimists' of the


educational world. But they are by no means enough. I do not know whether, if we had enough complex adaptive schools across the world, this would at least help to avert conflict and produce generations attuned to alternatives to violence; but I am clear that as they are at the moment, the majority of schools will just be doing their bit for the war effort.

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Index 243

Index

Adams, Robert 12-13, 44, 51, 205, 218, 221 Adie, Kate 13, 81, 104 Afghanistan: Al-Qaeda 30, 31; female education 62; post-conflict 166; structural violence 46; Taliban 61, 62 agency 64, 220-3 Agency for Cooperation and Research in Development (ACORD) 145 Agerback, L. 9 agricultural subsidies 46-7 Aguilar and Retamol 145, 146, 147, 149, 155, 158, 163, 176 AIDS education 59 Al-Qaeda: complexity theory 30-1, 34-5, 36; economic warfare 34, 81; information 30-1, 34; jihad 34, 81; revenge 80, 81; spiritual capital 85 alienating violence 11 Amman mid-decade review (1996) 6 Anderson, Benedict 85 Angola 150, 154 Apple, Michael 43, 46, 55, 79-80, 222 armed conflict: civil see internal conflict; shifts in nature 10; territorial claims 5 arms trade 4, 208-9 Arnhold, N. 45, 95, 96, 99, 102, 149, 151, 159, 168, 173, 179 Associated Schools project Network (ASPnet) 36, 126, 129-30, 138-9, 219 Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) 117 attractors: butterfly attractors 29, 43; complexity theory 23, 27-9, 34, 35; hegemony 49; masculinity/femininity 58; normality 165; social exclusion 28; specialness 122; strange attractors 28 attribution theory 14 Avruch and Black 185, 186

Balfour, Michael 179 Barley, Nigel 121, 122 Belarus 132 Bemak and Keys 183-4, 194-5 Bernal, E. 44, 112 Bernath, T. 133, 174, 180-1 bifurcation 28-9, 48, 52, 84, 87, 222 BiH see Bosnia (Bosnia-Herzegovina) Blair, Tony 114 Bosnia (Bosnia-Herzegovina): curricula 119-20, 173-4; pluralism 75, 85, 166; Project DiaCom 161-2; recovery 151; religious 173; returnees 170; teachers 98, 104-5, 159, 168; textbooks 98 Bougainville 53 boundaries 21, 166 Bourdicu, P. 12 Brazil 52, 210 Brooke-Smith, R. 19, 20, 28, 32-3 Bush and Saltarelli 165, 170 butterfly attractors 29, 43 butterfly effect 22, 125 Butterfly Garden 151-2, 153 Byrne, D. 19-20, 23, 28, 32, 37, 43, 221 Cairns, E. 11, 77, 99, 114, 125, 139, 146, 150 Callender and Wright 83 Cambodia 109 Cameroon 121 Canada 43, 112-13, 128 capitalism 28, 43, 45, 166 Caritas 171 Carnoy and Samoff 49- 50 Carothers, T. 178 Carpenter and Kennedy 16 Castro, Fidel 114

Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation 71 change: dynamics 10, 20-1; normative change 51; trajectory 166-7 chaos: edge of chaos 30, 31-4; theory 23, 125 Chechnya 149, 150 child soldiers: effects of violence 101-3; female 153; trauma 153-4 children: participatory research 162-3; preparation for conflict 109-11; resilience 103-4 China: Confucianism 115-16; revolutionary committees 221 Christie, P. 110, 171 citizenship: difference 89; education 5, 88, 89-90, 91, 178; nationalism 88-91; Northern Ireland 132, 178 civil war see internal conflict civilian casualties 3 Civitas 178 class conflict: internal class relations 49-52; negotiable interest-based disputes 50 Clements, K. 41, 89, 123, 125, 206-7 Cockburn, Cynthia 65, 76, 77-8, 124, 212, 213, 220 coercive heterosexuality 69 Cohn, C. 17 Cold War, end 3, 10, 125 Colombia 5, 44, 112, 121 colonialism 49 competition: ability cleansing 122; complexity theory 26-7; disruption 121; masculinity 66, 67, 70, 71 complaints, sexual violence 67 complex adaptive systems (CASs): edge of chaos 32, 33; environmental scanning 217; freedom to interact 75; gender 69; information 48; meaning 20; reconstruction 182; recovery 152; reiterative process 209; selforganisation 24, 25, 26 complex emergencies 144-8 complexity shutdown 15, 37, 204 complexity theory: Al-Qaeda 30-1, 34-5, 36; attractors 23, 27-9, 34, 35; bifurcation 28-9, 48, 52, 84, 87, 222; boundaries 21; chaos 23, 30, 31-4; competition 26-7; complex nested systems 21; conflict 19-37; connectivity 8; control parameters 28;

Darwinism 26, 27, 31, 34; democracy 208-11; dissipative systems 21-2, 32; dynamics of change 10, 20-1; exquisite sensitivity on initial conditions 22; frozen accidents 33, 211; information 29-31, 34, 35, 36, 48; initial conditions and amplification 22-3, 34; metaphor 17; modelling 23, 26, 107, 136, 161; multiplier effect 23, 126; mutation 32-3; newness 87; non-linearity 20-2, 34, 36, 47, 219; phase transition shift 31, 32; political violence 22; selforganisation 24-7, 33, 35, 36, 106-7; self-organised criticality 31, 34; small turbulences 34, 35; theory 17 conflict: aftermath 165-82; age-old rivalries 10; arbitration 193-4; armed conflict 5, 10; causation 14-16; cognitive/affective 9; current/ recurrent 146; definitions 8-10; economic and class relations 41-56; education in times of conflict 143-64; essentialism 81, 82; gender relations 10-11, 57-73, 163; language 17; long-term 145-6; pluralism 74-92; positive/constructive 204-8; postconflict 146-8; prevention 190-1; rebuilding society 165-82; spirals of conflict 16-17; styles 189-90; teaching and learning 131-2; violent see violence conflict resolution: alternative dispute resolution (ADR) 185, 190; analysis/ understanding 187-9; anger management 194-5; consensus seeking 195-6, 208; criticism 184; debates 184-7; effectiveness 36; mediation 184, 192-3; negotiation/ bargaining 191-2; policy 198-9; restorative justice 196-7; schools 183-99; terminology 17; training 197-8; underfunding 3 Connell, R. 43, 60, 68, 70 conservatives 166 corporal punishment 66, 67, 72, 115--17 Coser, L. 8-9, 77 creativity 217-18 crisis defined 10 critical pedagogy 114, 135, 177, 214, 222 Cuba 49

244 Index

culture: definition 186; fear 121; hybridity 76, 86; interculturality 86; learning 171-2; peace 128-30; pluralism 75; resistance 125-7; student culture 66 currency flows 46 curricula: explicit curricula 127-8; nationalism 119-20; Palestinians 160, 169; peace education 5, 7, 128-39; permeated 127, 128-39; reconstruction 173-80 Cyprus 107, 184, 198 Dakar Framework for Action 6 D'Amico, F. 91 Davies, L. 106, 110 Dayton Accords 120, 166 deliberative democracy 53, 216 democracy: complexity 208-11; deliberative democracy 53, 216; democratic organisation 133-4; dialogue 215-17; education for democracy 114; interruptive democracy 203-24; noisy/irreverent 136; participatory democracy 52-4; positive conflict 203-24; universalism 213 difference: citizenship 89; education and difference 82-5; identity 212-15 Dimitrov, V. 207, 208, 217 direct violence 11 disaster, definition 10 disputes: definition 9; labour/ management 50-1; negotiable interest-based disputes 50 Djibouti 156 domestic violence 58-60, 100 Dore, Ronald 122 Duncan, N. 67-8, 70 Eade, D. 3, 144 East Timor 160 economic migrants 155 Education for Humanitarian Law (EHL) 174-5 education systems 28, 49 educational planning, reconstruction 167-8 EFA initiatives 6 Eisler, R. 59 El Salvador 44, 50, 97 empowerment 221

Index 245

Enloe, C. 14, 60 Epp, J. 43, 112, 116 equity 14, 27 essentialism: conflict 81, 82; gender relations 57, 59-60, 63, 64-5; identity 214; interruption 214-15 ethical foreign policy 4, 5 ethnicity: diversity 75; ethnic cleansing 164; ethnification 166; ethno-praxis 186; institutional racism 83; plastic ethnicity 86, 91 European Youth Against Violence 36 examinations 121 face-threatening 16 feedback processes 25, 30 Feuerverger, Grace 88, 119, 134, 135, 136, 143 field theory 14-15 Figuera, P. 75, 92 Fisher, S. 14, 58, 126, 132, 187, 206 fitness for purpose 24-5, 36, 107, 180, 203 foreign policy 4, 5 Frank, B. 69-70 Freire, Paulo 51, 66' 135,, 139 „ 214 221 frozen accidents 33, 211 frozen struggles 15-16, 121 Fullan, M. 19, 24, 27, 140 fuzzy logic 208, 217, 223 Gaddafi, Muammar 104, 114 The Gambia 72, 218 Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand 181 gender relations: agency 64; conflict 10-11, 57-73, 163; economic position 61-2; essentialism 57, 59-60, 63, 64-5; peace and violence 62-5; policymaking 65; pupil conflict 67-8, 197; reconstruction 169; scripts 64; under-represented forms 72; Yugoslavia 63 Germany 168 Ghana 66, 67 Giddens, A. 23, 29, 43, 66, 70 Gillborn, D. 74, 83, 86 Giroux, H. 136, 214 globalisation 42, 46-8 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 82 Goldenberg, S. 80 Grace, Gerald 85 Graham-Brown, S. 44, 97, 154, 155-6

Gramsci, Antonio 49 Green, P. 159, 161, 162 Grosjean, Etienne 205 Guatemala 44, 97 Gulf AA'ar (1991) 134-5, 143 Hamas 80 Harber, C. 67, 71, 82, 101, 108, 111, 112, 115, 172, 198, 204 Hatcher, R. 52-3, 54-5 Heater, D. 89 hegemony 49 hierarchies 25 history: identity 81; nationalism 88-9 Hitler, Adolf 77, 114, 120 Holocaust 77, 119, 131 homophobia, schools 69-70, 118 Honduras 44, 97 hostility, predisposition 5 human rights education (HRE) 132-3, 175, 181 humanitarian law: children 101; Education for Humanitarian Law (EHL) 174-5; intervention 144 humour 218-20 Huntingdon, S. 74 hybridity 76, 79, 86, 87, 91, 214 identity: community 85-6; difference 212-15; Europe 178; exclusionary collective identities 213; formation 76-82; history 81; identification 78; identity hurt 78, 92; inequality 44; loyalties 79; nationalism 212; revenge 80, 82; self-organisation 84; social identity theory 77; vulnerabilities 77 lkramov, A. 62, 166 i mpact, evaluation 162-4, 180-2 India 64, 120, 181 indirect violence 11 Indonesia 30, 160 inequality 42, 44, 46-8 information, gender-based violence (GBV) 70-1 institutional racism 83 interactionist theory 15 interest groups 50 internal conflict: arms trade 4; child soldiers 101-3, 153-4; description 13; educational infrastructure 95-9; ethnic diversity 75; imagined communities 85; zone of conflict 41

international conflict, economic interests 46 International Foundation for Electoral Systems 179 interruptive democracy 203-24 Iraq: educational infrastructure 96; invasion 46; Iran/Iraq war 102; recovery 150; sanctions 222 Isenhart and Spangle 9, 14, 16, 17, 189, 191-2, 197 Islam 30, 72, 75, 80, 81, 84 Israel: curricula 160; educational policy 85; identity 212; language 88, 134-6; militarism 60; Palestinian conflict 80, 97, 100-1, 111; religion 76; UN resolutions 46; UNGA Resolution 181 (1947) 176-7; vulnerabilities 77, 119 Jamaica 121 Japan 112, 115, 121, 122 Jomtien Declaration and Framework (1990) 5 Kahneman, Daniel 47 Kant, Immanuel 206 Kashmir 80 Kelly, L. 10, 14, 60-1, 69, 169 Kenya 157 Keynes, John Maynard 47 Kimmel, M. 72 Klein, U. 60, 77 Kosovo: culture of learning 171-2; educational infrastructure 95-6; parallel education 106-7, 107; postpessimists 35, 36; reconstruction 167, 168, 179; resilience 106; selforganisation 106-7; trauma 99-100; UN Mission (UNMIK) 35 Kupers, R. 24-5, 33 landmines 4 language: conflict 17; English 87-8, 158; Israel 88, 134-6; reconstruction 168, 172-3; refugees 156, 158 Leach, F. 67, 71 leadership, self-organisation 24 learning organisations 26 Lebanon 80, 103, 127, 150 Lewin, R. 23, 26-7, 29, 31 Liberia 102, 103, 127, 150, 153 Libya 104

246 Index

listening 216-17 Lustick and Miodownik 56, 216 MacDonald, I. 113-15 McDonaldisation 210 McLaughlin and Jucevicience 90 McLaughlin and Regan 79, 169, 170 McMaster, J. 169-70 Malawi 49, 66, 67, 158 Malcolm, Noel 107 market economics: acceptance 179; neo-liberalism 45, 46; non-linearity 47; structural adjustment 48 Martineau, S. 43-4, 117 Marx, Karl Heinrich 51 masculinity: communication 70; competition 66, 67, 70, 71; ethnicity 83; militarism 58-61; religion 58 Mathews, D. 3, 181, 182 mediation 184, 192-3 migration 87, 155 Mijatovic, A. 177 militarism 58-61 military expenditure 4 Miller and Affolter 101, 102, 105, 109, 110, 143, 144, 147-8, 149, 153, 159, 163-4, 165 Milosevic, Slobadan 120 Mitchell and Banks 184, 186, 187, 188 modelling 23, 26, 107, 136, 161 modernisers 166 Molteno, M. 95, 98, 103, 145, 146, 147, 153, 155 Morocco 115 Morrell, R. 58, 59, 60, 72, 115 Mouzelis, N. 37 Mozambique 49, 97, 109, 147, 150, 151, 154, 158 Murphy, Brian 7, 77, 78-9, 205-6, 220, 222-3 Namibia 97 nationalism: citizenship 88-91; curricula 119-20; history 88-9; identity 212; Yugoslavia 118 NATO 3, 96 Nepal 45, 105 The Netherlands 134 New Right 45, 47 Nicaragua 50, 97 Nigeria 218

Index 247

Nixon, Richard Milhous 15 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) 7, 144, 198 non-violent direct action 12-13 Northern Ireland: citizenship 132, 178; community division 82; female violence 63; identity 79; mediation 192-3; peacemaking 64; reconciliation 125-6, 166, 169-70; religious violence 41-2, 76 Novak, Michael 45-6 O'Donnell, Kevin 125 Offe, C. 166 Open Society Fund 178 Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) 3, 178 Osama bin Laden 31, 34, 114 O'Sullivan, E. 42, 59, 155 Ozacky-Lazar, S. 160, 212 pacificism, maternalism 63 packs 148-50, 188, 192 Palestinians: attitudes 100; curricula 160, 169; democracy 179; domestic violence 100; identity 212; schools 97, 111, 155; suicide bombers 80; violence 100-1 Papua New Guinea 53-4 Parsons, Talcott 37 participation 213 participatory democracy 52-4 participatory research 162 Payne, Lias 103, 104, 157, 162 peace, definition 14 peace education: alternatives to despair 125; culture of peace 128-30; culture of resistance 125-7; curricula 5, 7, 127-39; democratic organisation 133-4; doing peace 124; Essential Learning 130-1; human rights education (HRE) 132-3; Let's Talk 137-9; Neve Shalom/Wahat Al-Salam 134-7; refugees 157; specialness 122; textbooks 176-7 Peace Pillar Initiatives Awards (PPIA) 129 Peru 50, 210 phase theory 15 Philippines 41, 50, 151

play 152, 218 pluralism: Bosnia (Bosnia-Herzegovina) 75, 85, 166; conflict 74-92; cultural pluralism 75; multiculturalism 85-8; uneasy pluralism 85 Poerwawidadgo, J. 17, 30 political violence 11, 22 Porte Alegre 52, 53 Porter, James 47, 48, 54, 217-18 post-pessimists 35, 36, 223-4 post-structuralist feminists 72 private education 45, 48, 122 psychodynamic theory 15 punishment: corporal punishment 66, 67, 72, 115-17; retribution 81 pupil conflict, gender relations 67-8, 197 pupil deviance: female 64; sociology 12; teacher classification 116; victimisation 113 pupil protest: characteristics 12; class conflict 51; play 218; strikes 52 pupil violence, teachers 113 qualifications, symbolic capital 45 rape 61, 66 Reagan, Ronald 17 Reardon, B. 57, 58, 63, 65 reconstruction: culture of learning 171-2; curricula 173-80; duration 143; gender relations 169; good governance 177-80; impact 180-2; language 168, 172-3; planning/ decision-making 167-9; rebuilding society 165-82; reconcilliation 125-6, 166, 169-70; relationships 169-71; retroreactions 177; trajectory of change 166-7 reflexivity 217-18 refugees: complexity 156; definition 154-5; education 154-9; peace education 157; policy dimensions 155; reintegration 157; United Kingdom 158-9 religion: capitalism 45; denominational schools 84-5; Hindu extremism 64, 120; Islam 30, 72, 75, 80, 81, 84; masculinity 58 religious violence: India 64, 181; Indonesia 30; Northern Ireland 41-2, 76; Philippines 41; Sri Lanka 41

repressive violence 11 resilience 103-8, 136 revenge 80, 81, 82 Richman, N. 100, 143 Rihani, S. 4, 33, 75, 102, 209, 210 Robinson, Mary 132-3, 192 Roche, C. 9, 10, 19, 20, 21, 145, 165 Ross, M. 186 Rubenstein, R. 50, 52, 53 runaway norms 17 Rushdie, Salman 87 Rwanda: brain drain 98; child soldiers 102; curricula 173; educational standards 45; female violence 63; genocide 63, 96, 131-2, 160; national identity 173; participatory research 162; police force 160; post-conflict 147, 149, 150, 160, 173; quota system 45, 82; street children 170-1; stressrelated disease 99; UN forces 164 Sadat, Anwar 16 Saddam Hussein 3 Salmi, Jamil 11-12, 68, 83, 95, 101, 115, 121, 221 Sandole and van der Merwe 183 Save the Children 95, 97, 103, 147, 155, 162, 171 Schein, E. 160 school councils 221 schools: anti-racism 86; bullying 112, 115; code of silence 113; complex adaptive school 203-24; conflict resolution 183-99; critical pedagogy 114, 135; culture of fear 121; denominational 84-5; education and difference 82-5; gender and violence 65-8; homophobia 69-70, 118; interruptive school 223-4; rape 66; sexual violence 66-7; social cohesion 83, 84; social exclusion 45, 46, 83; standards 122; status hierarchies 68; violence by omission 68; violent schools 111-14 Serbia: Albanian oppression 106; domestic violence 60; Kosovo see Kosovo; NATO bombing 96 Sharon, Arid 221 Shipler, David 119 Sierra Leone 44, 97, 102, 151 Sinclair, Margaret 157 Sintra Plan of Action 128-9

248 Index

Smith, D. 74, 75, 78, 80 Smith, R. 113 Smith, Vernon 47 social cohesion 6, 27, 83, 84 social exchange theory 15 social exclusion: attractors 28; Colombia 44; educational strategy 54; schools 45, 46, 83 social reproduction 43, 46 sociology, pupil deviance 12 Somalia 80, 149, 156, 164, 170 Soros Foundation 179 South Africa: apartheid 44, 82, 101, 167; conflict 97; conflict resolution 197-8; corporal punishment 115; desegregation 167; desensitisation 101, 1 1 1; education and difference 82, 83; educational policy 85; Gautend schools 171; gender-based violence (GBV) 71; normative change 51; Novalis Institute 159; resilience 107-8; school violence 101, 114; sexual harassment 66; Soweto riots 82; war education 110 South Korea 122 Soviet Union 28, 114 Spain, Basque separatism 61 Spencer, S. 133, 197 Sri Lanka: the Border 79; cultural hybridity 76, 86; educational infrastructure 97-8; participatory research 162; peace education 127; religious violence 41; textbooks 119; trauma 99, 151-2 Stacey, R. 21, 24, 171 Stambach, Amy 66 Staub, E. 76, 77, 154 Stewart, S. 49, 55, 165, 183, 192, 193, 197 Stiglitz, Joseph 47-8 structural adjustment 48 structuration theory 29 student culture 66 Sudan 44, 97, 145, 153 Swann Report 74 symbolic violence 12, 66, 197 systems theory 15 Taiwan 110-11, 116, 117 Tanzania 149 Tawil, S. 6, 10, 12, 84, 119, 174, 175

Index 249

teachers: abduction 97; citizenship education 91; corporal punishment 66, 67, 72, 115-17; post-conflict 159-62; pupil violence 113; racism 86; resilience 104-5; teachereducation packs 148-50, 188, 192 territorial claims, armed conflict 5 terrorism: 9/11 attacks 34, 46; training 30-1; war on terror 3 textbooks: Bosnia (Bosnia-Herzegovina) 98; history 81; peace education 176-7; socialisation 118; Sri Lanka 119 Thailand 221 threat inflation 16 Toh, S. 46, 53 transformational theory 15 transversal politics 214 trauma: therapy/recovery 150-2; violence 99-100, 103 Uganda 59, 68, 103, 109-10, 132, 157, 162 Ulster Quaker Peace Education Project 127, 132, 192 UNESCO: Associated Schools project Network (ASPnet) 36, 126, 129-30, 138-9, 219; Culture of Peace and Non-Violence Symposium (2001) 41; Programme for Education for Emergencies and Reconstruction (PEER) 148-9, 156; RECREATE 148-9; Unit for Educational Rehabilitation and Reconstruction 168 United Kingdom: arms trade 4, 208-9; private education 45, 48, 122; refugees 158-9 United Nations: High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 154, 155, 156, 157, 170; peacekeeping 4; Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) 7, 155; UNICEF 127, 128, 170, 179, 188, 192; UNPROFOR 164 United States: 9/11 attacks 34, 46; constitution 178; corporal punishment 117; firearms 101; Lessons Learned Unit 164; religion 45-6, 79-80; USAID 144, 178, 179 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) 129

universalism 213 Unterhalter, E. 90 value-dark zones 208 Vincent and Warren 158, 159 violence: domestic 58-60, 100; educational institutions 95-108; female violence 63-4; gender-based violence (GBV) 70-1; interpersonal 11; political 11, 22; religion see religious violence; strategies 70-2; symbolic 12, 66, 197; systemic 112; themes 72-3; trauma 99-100, 103; typology 11 Waldrop, M. 17, 20, 24, 26 war: attitudes 100-1; definitions 10-11; economic warfare 34, 81; gender repositioning 23; rape 61; war education 109-23 Warfield, J. 185 Werbner and Yuval-Davis 88, 90 1 West Bank Nile Front (WBNF) 103, 104

White, Patricia 90 Williams, Sue 218 Willis, Paul 51 Willoughby-Mellors, D. 160 Women's International Network on Gender and Human Society 58 Woollacott, M. 16 World Bank 5, 41, 48, 59, 180 World Conference on Education for All (1990) 5 World Declaration on Education for All 124 World Education Forum (2000) 6 World Hindu Council (VHP) 120 Wright, C. 44, 97, 101 Young People's Parliaments 84, 133 Yugoslavia: Bosnia see Bosnia (BosniaHerzegovina); cultural diversity 179; ethnic cleansing 164; gender relations 63; nationalism 118; Serbia see Serbia

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Zero Tolerance Project Trust 71 Zimbabwe 66, 114, 115, 158, 168

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