1 00:00:00,180 --> 00:00:08,610 Thank you very much, everyone, for the day so far and thanks to the elbow for the invitation to be here. 2 00:00:08,610 --> 00:00:16,260 Andre invited me to come and talk for 15 minutes about peace education, which is a very daunting task, even when it came through in the email. 3 00:00:16,260 --> 00:00:20,760 And then I got the programme and saw that John Paul literati would be introducing the day, 4 00:00:20,760 --> 00:00:28,050 and he wrote a book Ebtekar Kerala Pass in 1984, which raises a number of the tensions that I'm going to discuss today. 5 00:00:28,050 --> 00:00:33,270 And I think that's an interesting point that we're still discussing many things that have 6 00:00:33,270 --> 00:00:38,460 been in the literature since John Paul wrote that book since Paolo Ferri wrote before him. 7 00:00:38,460 --> 00:00:40,140 Since Antonio Brown, she wrote before him, 8 00:00:40,140 --> 00:00:46,920 So many of the tensions that I'm going to raise in this presentation are things that those of you interested in education 9 00:00:46,920 --> 00:00:52,770 and many every met all of us who've been through some form of education have probably encountered and thought about. 10 00:00:52,770 --> 00:01:01,470 So that's an interesting reflection for us, I guess, around the ways in which we're still talking about and not moving past some of these tensions. 11 00:01:01,470 --> 00:01:06,360 So thinking about how to fill this 15 minutes in this daunting task, 12 00:01:06,360 --> 00:01:13,800 I thought I would really reflect upon this question about who builds peace and these and the 13 00:01:13,800 --> 00:01:17,940 prompting that the conference has asked us to do around relationships at international, 14 00:01:17,940 --> 00:01:29,260 national, regional and local levels. So starting with the international, there's a really strong conviction, 15 00:01:29,260 --> 00:01:32,670 and this is just epitomised by the quote that we see here from former secretary 16 00:01:32,670 --> 00:01:38,130 general Kofi Annan that education has a crucial role to play in building peace. 17 00:01:38,130 --> 00:01:45,420 There's an assumption and a conviction and a certainty, in fact, that education does build peace. 18 00:01:45,420 --> 00:01:52,440 And we hear this time and time again, despite the fact that there's not necessarily convincing evidence of that. 19 00:01:52,440 --> 00:01:59,400 This is the case, particularly looking at formal education, and we mentioned the Ukraine situation earlier, 20 00:01:59,400 --> 00:02:05,400 and there's enormously high levels of education in both Russia and Ukraine formal education. 21 00:02:05,400 --> 00:02:11,670 So this conviction that going through some form of formal education will necessarily be peacebuilding. 22 00:02:11,670 --> 00:02:15,010 It's one that we need to be critical of, I think. 23 00:02:15,010 --> 00:02:24,600 Nonetheless, there's been huge effort, particularly this century, to generate resources for and build evidence around this conviction. 24 00:02:24,600 --> 00:02:28,020 And we've talked a lot about peacebuilding actors at the conference so far. 25 00:02:28,020 --> 00:02:33,780 There's also been a lot of work in education from development and humanitarian actors. 26 00:02:33,780 --> 00:02:38,940 So I'll try to briefly outline the contours of this conviction at international level. 27 00:02:38,940 --> 00:02:48,480 So in the international development sector, education has long been seen as central from both economic understandings of of development, 28 00:02:48,480 --> 00:02:56,040 and that education builds human capital and from human rights understandings of development in that education is innate and enabling right. 29 00:02:56,040 --> 00:03:03,630 That helps us to then access other rights via becoming educated people and conflict within international 30 00:03:03,630 --> 00:03:09,390 development understandings is understood as development in reverse to borrow a World Bank term, 31 00:03:09,390 --> 00:03:20,590 and therefore its restoration is seen as an important peace dividend in the reconstruction after conflict again to use World Bank language. 32 00:03:20,590 --> 00:03:23,350 Since the turn of the century, the excuse me, 33 00:03:23,350 --> 00:03:32,740 protracted nature of conflict and ensuing displacement has required humanitarian actors also to expand their remits into education. 34 00:03:32,740 --> 00:03:39,760 So education is now considered a fourth pillar of humanitarian response alongside food and water, health and shelter. 35 00:03:39,760 --> 00:03:49,630 And this means that humanitarian actors are now involved in providing education, as well as providing other forms of humanitarian assistance. 36 00:03:49,630 --> 00:03:57,880 So we see that education squarely a part of international response to conflict by both development and humanitarian actors. 37 00:03:57,880 --> 00:04:03,010 Development actors have concentrated on expanding access to education and improving its quality, 38 00:04:03,010 --> 00:04:05,890 including within the Sustainable Development Goals agenda, 39 00:04:05,890 --> 00:04:13,630 where Target four point seven explicitly includes the provision of education to build a culture of peace and non-violence, 40 00:04:13,630 --> 00:04:23,230 which is a first for these education and school related agendas to explicitly include peace education within the goal targets. 41 00:04:23,230 --> 00:04:30,310 Humanitarian actors, like I said, have become provide education providers, delivering education in refugee and displacement situations, 42 00:04:30,310 --> 00:04:38,950 and also increasingly developing strategies for longer term responses, including the integration of displaced learners international systems. 43 00:04:38,950 --> 00:04:43,000 Now critics, including those concerned with peace and peace education. 44 00:04:43,000 --> 00:04:46,900 I'm looking at Hillary, who sat here and her colleagues are here. 45 00:04:46,900 --> 00:04:51,700 Another daunting part of my responsibility, given the expertise in the room. 46 00:04:51,700 --> 00:04:55,840 But critics concerned with peace education have argued that these development approaches 47 00:04:55,840 --> 00:05:00,700 have promoted and expanded a universalised approach to education that's more 48 00:05:00,700 --> 00:05:04,960 concerned with getting children's bums on the seats and instrumental learning outcomes 49 00:05:04,960 --> 00:05:10,450 than with relevant and culturally sustained forms of learning and humanitarian. 50 00:05:10,450 --> 00:05:17,650 The introduction of humanitarian actors into the education field adds additional challenges because they've raised the 51 00:05:17,650 --> 00:05:26,170 challenges for them of introducing education work and working with what they describe as a political thing which education, 52 00:05:26,170 --> 00:05:33,190 of course, inevitably is. But humanitarian actors find that working in education compromises their neutrality, 53 00:05:33,190 --> 00:05:38,050 and therefore they can't discuss things like how historical narratives are taught. 54 00:05:38,050 --> 00:05:45,820 In fact, it's easier to not teach history whatsoever in order to maintain this concern with humanitarian neutrality. 55 00:05:45,820 --> 00:05:54,370 So in in general, there's questions around these ideas of neutrality and detachment from politics and humanitarian work. 56 00:05:54,370 --> 00:05:56,890 But then trying to maintain that sort of false, 57 00:05:56,890 --> 00:06:04,870 arguably commitment to neutrality and politicisation in the education sector raises additional challenges, especially for peace education. 58 00:06:04,870 --> 00:06:08,680 And this means sorry. Now I've gone off my notes. 59 00:06:08,680 --> 00:06:12,880 Where are we? So taken together, 60 00:06:12,880 --> 00:06:17,410 we've got this universalism universalist approach to what education is and what it looks like and how 61 00:06:17,410 --> 00:06:22,570 it's delivered and what the important things that learners should take from it are plus a commitment, 62 00:06:22,570 --> 00:06:31,630 in some cases, to neutrality in its delivery. This means that discussions of peace beyond the most generalised understandings are often impossible 63 00:06:31,630 --> 00:06:38,710 in education situations in international approaches to teaching about peace and conflict. 64 00:06:38,710 --> 00:06:46,000 So this is evident, this kind of very toned down and neutral and content free, 65 00:06:46,000 --> 00:06:53,530 almost understanding of peace is evident in lots of the internationally produced materials, and I thought a couple of examples up here. 66 00:06:53,530 --> 00:07:01,420 So we see peace education when included in these kind of interventions, which it often isn't. 67 00:07:01,420 --> 00:07:08,020 But when included, it tends to focus on human rights knowledge, on attitudinal change, on individual level skills. 68 00:07:08,020 --> 00:07:15,070 And it's very conceptualised in terms of the locus of change on the individual learner as a detached autonomous person whose 69 00:07:15,070 --> 00:07:24,190 attitudes will generate peace if those attitudes can be shaped in this universalist understanding of human rights education. 70 00:07:24,190 --> 00:07:28,960 So we really see that individual learner in their psychology as the locus of change 71 00:07:28,960 --> 00:07:33,340 and the place where peace is built without an attention to conflict analysis, 72 00:07:33,340 --> 00:07:38,440 to contextual specificity or to structural change. 73 00:07:38,440 --> 00:07:44,440 So that's a brief picture of this kind of level of international commitment, which is very strong and striking, 74 00:07:44,440 --> 00:07:49,300 but has these tensions which, as I mentioned, have been highlighted for a long time. 75 00:07:49,300 --> 00:07:53,350 When we move beyond commitments and convictions and goals at the international level, 76 00:07:53,350 --> 00:07:59,080 however, it becomes clear how implicated education is with conflict and violence, 77 00:07:59,080 --> 00:08:02,860 and therefore how important attention to conflict analysis, 78 00:08:02,860 --> 00:08:11,170 structural change and contextual dynamics are to the processes and prospects of meaningful peace education. 79 00:08:11,170 --> 00:08:19,420 So on this slide, we thought a smaller photo of a group of Palestinian students and their teacher, 80 00:08:19,420 --> 00:08:23,590 and they're holding their lesson not in their school, 81 00:08:23,590 --> 00:08:33,250 but at a checkpoint, because they were denied the possibility to pass the checkpoint on that particular day and get to their school. 82 00:08:33,250 --> 00:08:38,650 The other photo is from a beautiful series by Colombian photographer Juan Manuel. 83 00:08:38,650 --> 00:08:44,470 Excuse me, Juan Manuel Echevarria called Silencio, and it's one of a series of photographs of schools, 84 00:08:44,470 --> 00:08:53,630 empty schools and communities displaced by armed conflict, and there's a whole series in their stunning photos. 85 00:08:53,630 --> 00:09:04,070 So both of these examples, I think, are really evocative demonstrations of the ways that children and young people learn about conflict and peace, 86 00:09:04,070 --> 00:09:09,140 not from those universalised descriptions of what human rights are, 87 00:09:09,140 --> 00:09:14,000 but from their own encounters and lived experience with conflict and peace and the ways in 88 00:09:14,000 --> 00:09:19,640 which violence enter their schools and their classrooms and their daily lived experience. 89 00:09:19,640 --> 00:09:25,760 So through very direct forms of violence like we see in these slides and also through normalised forms 90 00:09:25,760 --> 00:09:31,370 of structural and cultural violence that can shape the kinds of schools that they're able to access, 91 00:09:31,370 --> 00:09:34,440 who they do and do not encounter in their classrooms. 92 00:09:34,440 --> 00:09:41,090 It was really striking when we heard from Brandon earlier that it's still 93 percent of children, and I think it was ninety three, was it? 93 00:09:41,090 --> 00:09:49,520 Yeah. Of students in Northern Ireland who are still learning in segregated schools, according to their faith groups. 94 00:09:49,520 --> 00:09:57,440 So this a chance or not chance to encounter others in school is really important, I think. 95 00:09:57,440 --> 00:10:05,120 And the kinds of knowledge and histories that are included and excluded from their curricula at school. 96 00:10:05,120 --> 00:10:11,150 So just highlighting the ways in which schooling transmits both direct and indirect or structural cultural forms of 97 00:10:11,150 --> 00:10:17,780 violence that young people learn about and encounter and either have tools or don't have tools to make sense of things, 98 00:10:17,780 --> 00:10:24,490 at least in part to whether or not there some form of peace education that can offer those tools. 99 00:10:24,490 --> 00:10:29,740 So a precooked to borrow a term from friend and anthropologist Jason Hart, 100 00:10:29,740 --> 00:10:36,840 who's done a lot of work with Palestinian young people and who is the person who's giving me this photo. 101 00:10:36,840 --> 00:10:43,360 He so, he says a pre-cooked approach to peace education curriculum is really unlikely to help children make 102 00:10:43,360 --> 00:10:48,910 sense of these experiences or to provide them with a sense of their potential roles and explaining them. 103 00:10:48,910 --> 00:10:57,220 And as Rula, a Palestinian girl who spoke to Jason about her experiences crossing checkpoints to get to school, said they talk about child rights. 104 00:10:57,220 --> 00:11:08,560 They don't see our situation. So this leaves a critically oriented researcher interested in peace education pointing 105 00:11:08,560 --> 00:11:14,540 to these tensions and challenges that have been pointed to for decades within a system, 106 00:11:14,540 --> 00:11:22,990 and I think this has been an interesting theme throughout today as well, our roles within a system that we're connected to and also complicit with. 107 00:11:22,990 --> 00:11:31,660 We've talked a lot about Connexions and relations and webs, but less about complicity within networks of geopolitics like Andre was pointing us to. 108 00:11:31,660 --> 00:11:41,710 So I think there's interesting reflections for those of us who inhabit more international roles, maybe particularly there. 109 00:11:41,710 --> 00:11:51,610 But yes, so the critical researcher is left pointing to tensions as calibrated as we already mentioned decades ago, 110 00:11:51,610 --> 00:11:58,150 and calling for the kind of radical transformations of education systems that we've not regularly witnessed. 111 00:11:58,150 --> 00:12:05,410 So I wonder sometimes, for example, if in Colombia there were an attention to structural change, 112 00:12:05,410 --> 00:12:14,140 structural reform of an education system that has huge inequalities between urban and rural in terms of the outcomes of education 113 00:12:14,140 --> 00:12:21,490 and the opportunities that are delivered and really great socioeconomic segregation in terms of private of public schooling. 114 00:12:21,490 --> 00:12:26,350 What if that kind of transformation were one of the institutions of a peace process? 115 00:12:26,350 --> 00:12:32,440 But these kind of radical transformations of whole education systems are not common. 116 00:12:32,440 --> 00:12:40,450 So calling for those also offers a frustrated suggestion to the teacher who's trying to deliver 117 00:12:40,450 --> 00:12:44,770 and make a difference and really committed to delivering peace education to their students. 118 00:12:44,770 --> 00:12:52,690 So and to peace to practitioners who are committed to the potential of education to be to build peace, 119 00:12:52,690 --> 00:12:58,780 which is certainly a real potential despite the challenges and tensions that we've raised. 120 00:12:58,780 --> 00:13:10,460 So I've had this. Amazing opportunity recently to try to move beyond that paralysis of pointing out a lot of problems, 121 00:13:10,460 --> 00:13:18,530 calling for radical change that is needed but hard to see happening, 122 00:13:18,530 --> 00:13:27,410 to try to do something that I think echoes with some of what Jonathan was saying around transferring resources and 123 00:13:27,410 --> 00:13:37,290 supporting educators who are starting from a point of analysis of those tensions and then trying to offer something that. 124 00:13:37,290 --> 00:13:40,020 Develops peace, education and creative ways. 125 00:13:40,020 --> 00:13:49,500 So this is a project with colleagues initially started with colleagues in Colombia, Cambodia, Pakistan and Uganda and now expanded to 18 countries. 126 00:13:49,500 --> 00:13:58,620 That takes these tensions in peace education as a starting point, transfers resources in this case from the United Kingdom re what's it called? 127 00:13:58,620 --> 00:14:07,500 Research Institutes Global Challenges Research Fund to educators and activists who are delivering peace education approaches that start from there. 128 00:14:07,500 --> 00:14:13,320 Seeing the situation of their learners that Rouleau was talking about before the student that I quoted from Palestine. 129 00:14:13,320 --> 00:14:18,540 So seeing the situation and then trying to develop some kind of approach to peace, 130 00:14:18,540 --> 00:14:25,200 education and the project, it's called the Education, Justice and Memory Network. 131 00:14:25,200 --> 00:14:32,640 We have the privilege of having two million pounds to work with on this project over four years, which again is not a long enough time frame. 132 00:14:32,640 --> 00:14:42,480 But in research, funding world is also longer than we often have, and it includes working with colleagues here in the UK, 133 00:14:42,480 --> 00:14:47,310 which I think is really important to say and was a real challenge for our funders who want one minutes. 134 00:14:47,310 --> 00:14:49,320 That's perfect. I can do it. 135 00:14:49,320 --> 00:14:57,690 You want this money to be transferred to places that have problems with conflict, which is not the United Kingdom in their opinion. 136 00:14:57,690 --> 00:15:00,870 But we've managed to push back against that and work with colleagues in the UK who 137 00:15:00,870 --> 00:15:05,070 are addressing the complete absence of peace education in our education system here. 138 00:15:05,070 --> 00:15:14,220 Despite many divisions and inequalities and injustices, so we are working to develop creative approaches to peace education, as I said, 139 00:15:14,220 --> 00:15:20,750 and they include a clear focus on understanding past violence and injustice experienced by learners and their forbearers, 140 00:15:20,750 --> 00:15:24,330 and and exploring those legacies in the present. 141 00:15:24,330 --> 00:15:25,470 And because I have one minute, 142 00:15:25,470 --> 00:15:31,260 let me just really quickly highlight three things we're just beginning to try to think about how we synthesise this work. 143 00:15:31,260 --> 00:15:37,680 But one important thing to say is that most not all, but many of the projects are not working formally in schools. 144 00:15:37,680 --> 00:15:42,060 Some of them are conceptualising their work as directly about repairing the damage 145 00:15:42,060 --> 00:15:47,890 that formal schools have done to the young people that they're working with. 146 00:15:47,890 --> 00:15:54,340 Sad to say interestingly, well, they don't reject the the label of peace education entirely. 147 00:15:54,340 --> 00:15:59,620 Peace is not one of the most frequent words that they use when describing their methodologies and goals. 148 00:15:59,620 --> 00:16:09,010 So they talk about healing, repairing, redressing, decolonising, unravelling, remembering storytelling and co-creating, et cetera, et cetera. 149 00:16:09,010 --> 00:16:19,180 And these are perhaps. Steps towards peace or perhaps priorities that are the most important at this moment for this work. 150 00:16:19,180 --> 00:16:26,260 And finally, in the same way that universalised approaches fail to see the situations of violence 151 00:16:26,260 --> 00:16:30,870 direct and indirect that shape learners understandings of peace and conflict. 152 00:16:30,870 --> 00:16:35,280 They also fail to see the daily encounters with peace in the ways that young 153 00:16:35,280 --> 00:16:38,940 people are building peace in their daily interactions and their relationships, 154 00:16:38,940 --> 00:16:47,910 their feelings and their dreams. And so these projects are working to sustain those daily peace interactions, to amplify them and to learn. 155 00:16:47,910 --> 00:16:51,513 So that's.