History, Memory and Peace Education

One of the most important skills a student of peace studies can gain is the ability to deconstruct dominant, hegemonic and often structurally violent socio-political narratives. After all, these are the narratives which often lead us to war. Yet when compared to other aspects of a typical peace studies curriculum, this key skill, so essential to exercising power and participation in one’s society, is comparatively underemphasized (see Beckerman 2007 or Malott and Porfilio 2011). Henry Giroux calls on educators to facilitate the difficult and often painful task of helping society remember—specifically to remember episodes of cruelty or violence in which it may have been involved as either a bystander, victim, perpetrator or a combination of these (“Imposed Amnesia”, 2010). Yet this vital tool is often deemphasized in peace education practice as compared to the teaching of cross-cultural communication or conflict resolution skills. This presentation will argue that the project of advancing peace and justice globally cannot be fully realized without a critical theory approach to peace studies which helps communities come to terms with what has been called the heavy hand of history ; the presentation will also offer examples of such curriculum in practice

Muslim Youth Experiences in South Florida Communities

Peace education scholars and practitioners continue to call for the centering of the voices and lived experiences of marginalized students (Bajaj, Ghaffar-Kucker and Desai, 2016). Situated in this urgent tradition, this presentation presents data from focus groups with young Muslim community members in S. Florida in the post-9/11 era. As a religious and ethnic minority group in South Florida, Muslim students would seem to be uniquely vulnerable in this time of rising xenophobia and Islamophobia. This particular study builds on the researcher’s prior work regarding the “school to terror pipeline” impacting France’s Muslim students (Duckworth 2016), and how teachers approach teaching about the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 (Duckworth 2014).The study’s key methodology is qualitative focus groups, as they are especially well suited to eliciting data on group processes and dynamics, shared narratives and individual narratives (Cooper and Finley, 2014). Our focus groups explore youth experiences within schools of course, but also within the community at large. Neither schools nor students exist in a vacuum. We consider some of the following questions. How do local Muslim youth (defined here as 13-18 or so) perceive their schools, communities and world? What challenges, if any, do they feel they face particular to their identity as young Muslims, especially given the narrative and structural violence of the recent 2016 US election? If they perceive themselves as well integrated and valued as community members, can we determine what school and community leaders may be doing well?While situated within the broad, overall project of peace education to advance inclusion of marginalized and vulnerable students, the study also addresses the urgency of this particular moment in US history. For example, we know from local reporting and from the Southern Poverty Law Center that hate crimes against Muslim students (as well as black students, Jewish students and immigrants) have spiked (Sayre, 2017) and that FL ranks second in the US in activity of hate groups (Bordas, 2017). How do young Muslims in south FL explain and understand this? How do they cope?Finally, the presentation will look to draw insights from the qualitative focus group data in terms of classroom peace building. What tools can peace education offer? What pedagogical strategies can we design to interrupt narrative violence and promote the inclusion and equality needed for a school and community culture of peace? I will develop observations and guidelines based on the data our focus groups elicit. The more clearly we understand these experiences and hear the voices of S. Florida’s Muslim students, the better peace educators will be able to respond

Restorative Classrooms: Critical Peace Education in a Juvenile Detention Home

This article describes several of the more successful critical peace education methodologies and perspectives that I was able to bring to my classroom in a juvenile detention home. For example, reflective writing and community analysis of nonviolent peace movements formed the core of my curriculum, as did critical analysis of the social processes of stereotyping and dehumanization. As a result, numerous students grew in their ability to write, express empathy with others, identify bias and articulate critical analysis of their schools, among other political systems. This analysis will contribute to the growing body of work on the practice of critical peace education

Demos Kratos: New Expressions of People Power across the Globe

This paper explores the trend of people power by which ordinary citizens are using peaceful means to bring about social, economic and political change, focusing specifically on occurrences in Nepal, Indonesia, Yugoslavia, Hong Kong and Georgia from the 1990s to the present. The authors analyze the shared causes and characteristics of the case studies presented from the role undertaken by the military, IMTD and the international community. The paper explains that governments must contend with the “new reality” molded by people power in a principled, fair manner and truly listen to the needs of their constituencies. As was the case in Nepal, Indonesia and the other countries addressed, the people will simply leave behind leaders who will not do so

Restorative Writing: Connecting Adjudicated Students to Local and Global Communities

Poets and memoirists have known for millennia that the written word can clarify, beautify and heal, as the students of Room 5C often discover. Writing, of course, is also a key tool of peaceful social change. As such, the written word can be where personal and social change, structure and agency, meet in the classroom. Yet how often is this power leveraged in our juvenile detention home schools? How often do we ask juvenile offenders to be critical participants, even leaders, in their communities? Freire would remind us that the problems juvenile offender-students face are themselves the best curriculum. This presentation and workshop will equip participants with peace education curriculum that will empower student writers to find their voice as a first step towards taking action for global justice. In this way, personal and social change become quite connected. This curriculum challenges students to reflect on actions for social justice which they can pursue, as well as critically examine why disparities still exist. Participants will be invited to take part in an example successful classroom activity and to engage in dialogue regarding some theoretical reasons for its success. Hence participants, especially any classroom teachers, will engage in reflective practice regarding their own classroom. The workshop will end with generating specific policy recommendations, based on the barriers to peace education that workshop participants currently observe. This dialogue can then facilitate the inclusion of peace education in every classroom

Pedagogical Interventions for CLEAR: Initiatives in Québec

This presentation will engage urgent questions for today’s classrooms. Building on my prior study of how teachers are teaching about 9/11, this presentation offers preliminary data on how students, and especially Muslim American students, are experiencing public schools and learning about 9/11 in the post-9/11 era. The election of 2016 of course made this even more urgent. I will share my preliminary data, and contextualize the data in the context of my research agenda which focuses on the role of historical memory in conflicts and narratives involving traumatized memory drive conflict as it is essential that peace educators consider it in working to interrupt extremism in the classroom. Finally, I conclude the presentation with observations based on data and classroom experience as to mistakes we peace educators seem to continue making and how to avoid them