Beyond American Exceptionalism: Centering Critical Peace Education in U.S. Public School Reform

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

Abstract

In the contemporary US educational climate where accountability, punitive action, and the privatization of public schooling dominate educational policy, sound pedagogical methods that promote the development of the whole person are often viewed as supplementary or simply ignored all together. While many of these macro-level reform policies have been set in motion to ostensibly improve schools, studies have shown that these initiatives (ranging from high-stakes testing to zero-tolerance discipline) have actually done little to improve education for youth. In many cases, they have exacerbated existing inequities in schooling, particularly among students of color and low-income students (see Arbunot, 2011; McNeil et. al. 2008, Ravitch, 2014; Vazquez Heilig & Darling-Hammond, 2008). Rather than creating safer and more academically rigorous schools, these stringent policies appear only to have created hostile and degrading learning environments that have increased drop-out rates (Advancement Project et. al, 2011; American Civil Liberties Union, 2010; Lee et al., 2011; New York Civil Liberties Union, 2009; Suh & Suh, 2007; Sullivan, 200).

By creating mandates that focus solely on test scores and narrow conceptions of learning and discipline, policy-makers miss other factors, such as overall school culture, that may actually improve schools and address inequities in schooling (Knoestler & Meier, 2012; Matos, et. al, 2009; Nickerson, et. al, 2013). In response to over-policing and over-testing in schools, youth advocacy organizations have urged policy-makers and schools to adopt frameworks to education that restore dignity to students (Icope, 2012; Sullivan, 2007).

Given this context, I argue that a comprehensive approach to critical peace education in public schools might fill this void to both redress the structural violence and enduring inequities that persist in US schools, and reframe schools to be more humanizing and transformative spaces. Since ‘critical’ peace education (see Diaz-Soto, 2005; Bajaj, 2008; Bajaj & Brantmeier, 2011) emphasizes the centrality of critical pedagogy and participant realities and agency, I consider the ways that schools might be sites of inclusion and transformation, particularly for those most marginalized by schooling in the US.

While most peace education initiatives are often framed and enacted in post-conflict settings, I contend that peace education in the US is necessary to create a climate of dignity for young people that have been subject to the injustices of American schooling. Drawing from ethnographic data collected at a public high school in New York City, I explore how students make meaning of their educational experiences at a school that intentionally emphasizes democratic principles and a commitment to peace and social justice. The data shows that critical peace education not only promotes democratization, critical consciousness, and an obligation to social justice change, but also confronts institutional forms of structural violence by academically re-socializing youth that have been disaffected by school. Consequently, I present an alternative view to the dominant discourses that suggest peace education in the US context is superfluous; instead, I assert that critical peace education must drive the efforts at US school reform so that schools can be sites that truly pursue equity and social justice.

Author

• Maria Hantzopoulos, Vassar College