Education for peace everywhere and nowhere? Exploring Afghanistan’s new life skills curriculum’s emphasis on peacebuilding in primary social studies textbooks

• In Event: Printing for Peace: Contributions to Peace and Conflict Through Learning Materials in Afghanistan, South Sudan, and Sri Lanka

Proposal

The importance of the (re)development of education during and immediately following a conflict is a crucial yet often complex process. Generally, it is acknowledged by the international humanitarian community, educationalists, and local populations that education is an essential step towards recovery and healing from the conflict. As Novelli, Lopes Cardozo and Smith (2017) highlight, within conflict-affected societies, education has the potential to provide considerable contributions towards (sustainable) peacebuilding “by providing greater security, as well as political, economic, social and cultural transformations” (p. 18). It can serve as the instrument through which social inequities and injustices could be addressed (Maclure & Denov, 2009), and more crucially how they can be transformed (Novelli, Lopes Cardozo & Smith, 2017).

Yet as Bush and Saltarelli (2000) have imminently noted, education can also be “part of the problem not the solution” (p. 33), as it serves to further divide or exasperate existing challenges. Learning materials can serve as instruments through which this division is accomplished. This was evident in the findings of a literature scan examining the development of primary learning materials from 3 conflict-affected countries, (South Sudan, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan) (Panelists, citation removed for blind submission).

In Afghanistan, schools have, since the beginning of the 40-year conflict that is still ongoing, continuously served as a battleground for conflicting ideologies. The development of primary school textbooks by University of Nebraska for Afghan children during the Afghan-Soviet conflict of the 1980s, is a vivid example of how learning materials can be manipulated to serve political agendas rather than resolve the conflict or promote peace. In these textbooks, Soviets and non-Muslims were depicted through adverse and militant interpretations of religion and nation-building.

Since 2003 however, Afghanistan has developed a new Life Skills curriculum (Department of Compilation and Translation, 2003), which is presently taught in primary and secondary schools throughout the country. This is the first time that Afghanistan has developed a curriculum that makes explicit the positive role of education in promoting peace and stability. The main aim of this new curriculum is stated as fostering “national unity and social cohesion” (p. 15). More specifically, this curriculum is designed to “promote values such as peace and equip students for fighting against all forms of discrimination” (p. 16), and “reject violence, while understanding and appreciating differences” (p. 17).

This presentation examines how these goals are materialized through the new Life Skills curriculum. Along with a framework, this new Life Skills curriculum also includes the development of new primary textbooks which are currently in use throughout the country. This presentation will focus specifically on Social Studies textbooks for Grades 4 (where the subject is first introduced), 5, and 6 (where the subject is last taught). Its content will be explored within a broader context of how educational development and delivery operates in conflict zones, drawing from key themes observed in the literature review of the three countries included in this panel: the presence (and influence) of international development assistance, the politicization of religion (and culture), and the militarization of learning. Braun and Clarke’s (2006) method for thematic analysis involving deductive and inductive coding will be used to analyze the content of these three textbooks as well the socio-historical context within which they have been created, and are presently taught. Given the violent and pervasive history of Afghanistan’s militarization of textbooks, it is important to explore the current emphasis on peacebuilding and social justice within this historical context.

Works Cited:
Bush, K.D., Saltarelli, D. (2000). The two faces of education in conflict zones: Towards a peace-building education for children. Florence: Innocenti Research Centre. UNICEF.
Department of Compilation and Translation (2003). Curriculum Framework Afghanistan. Retrieved from: http://www.ibe.unesco.org/curricula/afghanistan/af_alfw_2003_eng.pdf (accessed September 20, 2017).
Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3, 77–101.
Maclure, R., Denov, M. (2009). Reconstruction versus transformation: post-war education and the struggle for gender equity in Sierra Leone. International Journal of Educational Development, 29(6), 612-620.
Novelli, M., Lopes Cardozo, M.T.A. & Smith, A. (2017). The 4 Rs framework: Analyzing education’s contribution to sustainable peacebuilding with social justice in conflict-affected contexts. Journal on Education in Emergencies, 3(1).
Panelists. Reference removed for blind submission.

Author

• Spogmai Akseer, Independent Researcher