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Citizenship textbooks in Sri Lanka

Mon, March 26, 1:15 to 2:45pm, Hilton Reforma, Floor: 2nd Floor, Don Diego 1 Section A

Proposal

Context
Since the end of a 30-year civil between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Elam (LTTE) in 2009, Sri Lanka has made several commitments to reconciliation and peace building. Education is one sector that has been a consistent area that the government has targeted to promote values of peace and social cohesion between the various ethnic groups. Access to and the content of education has been and continues to be a source of tension between the three major ethnic groups: Sinhalese, Tamils, and Muslims. Sri Lanka has been a textbook example of promoting ethnic tension through divisive curricula that demonized the ethnic other and consequently played a key role in fueling the civil war.

Recognizing the role of education in Sri Lanka’s drawn out conflict, the Ministry of Education (MoE) has been promoting social cohesion through education. Social cohesion has become a common running theme in several Sri Lankan government and donor documents. Influenced by the OECD’s (2012) emphasis that social cohesion is critical for maintaining long term economic growth, Sri Lanka has been promoting social cohesion in all sectors, including education, to reach its goal of becoming a middle-income country (Aturupane & Wikramanayake, 2011). Within the MoE, there is both department and policy focused on promoting social cohesion.

Objective
One tangible outcome of Sri Lanka’s education reforms is the revised civics curriculum: Life Competences and Citizenship Education (Grades 6-9), the goal of which is to foster a common citizenship among the various ethnic and religious groups. The new curriculum’s intention is to reflect the values of the policy on social cohesion, which aims to develop a citizen who can live in a multicultural society, respect diversity and individual rights, and values or tolerates other cultures (Ministry of Education, 2008). This ideal citizen is also empathetic, democratic, possess civic virtues, and can analyze intercultural conflict and transform it, communicate, solve problems, discovers inner peace, and protect Sri Lankan traditions, cultures, and values (Ministry of Education, 2008). This presentation will examine how the new civic textbooks for Grades 6-9 promotes the values of Sri Lanka’ policy of social cohesion as well as how it contributes to peacebuilding.

Methodology
A document analysis of the textbooks developed for the revised civics curriculum Life Competences and Citizenship Education (Grades 6-9) will be examined using coding process for thematic analysis described by Braun & Clarke (2006). Coding will be conducted using Nvivo. Data will be analyzed using an iterative process of existing analytical subthemes, identified during our joint literature review: development assistance, language, religion and ethnicity, historical context, governance and gender, and emerging themes that arise during coding. Analysis is currently ongoing until December 2017.

Preliminary Findings
The content of the civics textbooks for Grades 6-9 has made significant progress in becoming more student-centered by drawing on issues related to children’s immediate lives. It promotes values of peace through multiculturalism and emphasizes the various ethnic and religious groups in Sri Lanka with a focus on traditions and celebrations. Despite these achievements, it falls short in developing the type of citizen “who can live in a multicultural society, respect diversity and individual rights, values or tolerates other cultures, can analyze intercultural conflict and transform it, communicates, solves problems, discovers inner peace, possesses civic virtues, is empathetic, is democratic, and protects Sri Lankan traditions, cultures, and values” (Ministry of Education, 2008). In fact, the surface level emphasis on multiculturalism, the complete omission of the 30-year conflict between the various ethnic groups, the gendered nature of the text, the exclusive emphasis on addressing interpersonal conflict rather than societal or structural conflict to achieve peace collectively work against the goal of social cohesion and peacebuilding.

Works Cited

Aturupane, H. & Wikramanayake, D. (2011). Report No. 46 South Asian human development sector: The promotion of social cohesion through education in Sri Lanka. World Bank, September 2011.
Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3, 77–101.
Jenson J. (1998) Mapping social cohesion: The state of Canadian research, Canadian Policy Research Networks, CPRN Study No. F.03.
Ministry of Education (2008). National policy and a comprehensive framework of actions on education for social cohesion and peace (ESCP). Social Cohesion and Peace Education unit.
OECD (2012). Perspectives on global development 2012: Social cohesion in a shifting World. Organization for economic cooperation and development. Available at http://www.oecd.org/site/devpgd2012/49067954.pdf

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