Learning About Peace Within the War History Curriculum: The Cultivation of Compassion, Intercultural Dialogues, and Global Citizens

• In Event: Comparative Studies in Education (I)

Proposal

This research study aimed to examine students’ perceptions of the values of intercultural exchanges and dialogues within the secondary education of mandatory war history education for peace-building using war testimonies, particularly those who have experienced either theoretical or physical wars. This qualitative study interviewed five students from Syria, Nepal, Taiwan, and Bangladesh. Four research questions were developed to guide the study (1)what is the null curriculum in the current educational system in promoting peace in learning war histories, (2)how do testimonies promote intercultural dialogues in cultivating students’ compassion and conflict-resolution abilities within the curriculum, (3)how can the war history teaching pedagogy facilitate students’ critical consciousness and transformative praxis in creating peaceful resolutions to global conflicts, and (4)how can students’ voices of feedback and engagement help contribute to a positive educational change.
Both studies of Peace and War explain factual historical events, but their purpose for education and applications are very different. Peace education focuses on conflict resolutions, while war history education concentrates on the “why and how” wars happened and is often narrated under a particular political view. Nevertheless, war is not limited to physical violence but can also be political, social, economic, and psychological (Dutta et al., 2016). Any acts of violence and wars can be perpetuated in a society through direct, cultural, and structural violence (Galtung & Fischer, 2003). The advocacy of peace seeks to break down the oppressive structural violence that occurred historically and systematically to protect human rights, equality, equity, and justice for all people of different ages, classes, gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, or ableism (Ragland, 2015). Learners of peace education entrusting everyone has the potential to become “good” (Kirsch et al., 1968) and “more human” through education (Goulah & Ito, 2012) because “everything which is distinctly human is learned” (Dewey & Rogers, 2016, p. 180). The “explicit curriculum,” “implicit curriculum,” and “null curriculum” theorized by Eisner (1985) explained that this memorization of numeric information about past histories neglects the necessity of empowering students to have the innate ability as self-efficacy to connect with individual stories in creating positive social change for peace. By committing to the intercultural dialogical process and Global Citizenship Education, it strives to build up a sense of common worldwide identity as global citizens to hold compassion and take action towards global issues (Cabrera, 2008; Van, 2014; UNESCO, 2015).
I present six major themes around the research questions, (1) a guided peace for justice is needed in war history curricula since the definition of Peace is not the same for everyone; (2) there is an existing curriculum deficit in peace-building about war; (3) the authentic voice of survivors can provide actual reality for learners to build connections and understanding of each other; (4) a need to create conversations in actualizing critical peace without the borders of cultural differences in actualizing critical peace; (5) improving the roles of teachers in influencing students’ self-efficacy in peace-building; (6) the Significance of students’ voices in shaping the educational curriculum.

Author

• Man Kwok