Experimenting With Peace Education in the Israeli Context: Critical Perspectives

• In Event: 49.072 - Critical Perspectives on Peace Education: Engaging Localized Research and Praxis in the Pursuit of Justice

Abstract

Over the past three and a half decades there has been considerable growth of peace education as a field of social education that is concerned about war, conflict, and violence and how to promote peace in the world (Galtung, 1969; Harris, 2010; Reardon & Cabezudo, 2002; Salomon & Nevo, 2002). In Israel/Palestine, a land plagued with conflict for over one hundred years, initiated encounters geared towards the reduction of animosity between Jews and Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israeli have been implemented since the 1980’s (Helman, 2002) with more or less enthusiasm according to the socio-political conditions ruling at the time. It is the aim of this paper to review, briefly, theoretical and empirical research conducted on short term encounters while more extensively focusing on what can be considered a rather new educational approach reflected in the creation of integrated bilingual (Arabic/Hebrew), bi-national (Jewish/Palestinian) schools in Israel.

While ‘peace education’ is a term that is often used for a variety of programs and initiatives—some of which may make simplistic assumptions about how overcome ‘conflict’ and reach ‘peace’—it has been recently argued that peace education as a field, a philosophy, and a movement has to reclaim its ‘criticality’ (Bajaj, 2008; Bekerman, 2007; Brantmeier, 2011; Diaz-Soto, 2005); that is, it needs to become more critical about its theoretical assumptions concerning issues of power relations, social justice as well as the terms of ‘peace’ and ‘conflict’ themselves. Clarifying the theoretical premises of these issues is valuable, because theoretical premises have important implications in terms of our (in)ability to envision and enact particular solutions as responses to conflict. Surveying the scholarly work on peace education over the past three decades, one encounters a set of fundamental premises that seem to be taken for granted (Bekerman & Zembylas, 2012; Ben-Porath, 2008; Gur Ze'ev, 2001; J. Page, 2004). One such premise, for example, is that ‘peace’ is the opposite of ‘conflict’: peace is ‘good’, conflict is ‘bad’. If a strict dichotomy is drawn and any conflict is viewed as evil or destructive, then there will be consequences in terms of whether individuals become able to distinguish between productive and destructive forms of conflict.

Based on ethnographic data gathered at multiple sites in Israel where long and short term peace education programs are implemented (e.g. intergroup encounters, integrated bilingual bi-national schools), this paper questions whether working through the same premises which are constituted and constitutive of the modern western world - fundamental conceptions of natural law and the nation-state and western psychologized epistemologies - under which have flourished many of the conflicts which coexistence education is expected to help smooth and ultimately overcome, is the right direction such an education should take. The elements to be outlined in the presentation could become an important point of departure for re-constructing some fundamental theoretical premises in peace education and articulating further how different versions of critical peace education may have a ‘real’ impact on the world.

Author

• Zvi Bekerman, Hebrew University of Jerusalem