Pacifism and educational violence

ABSTRACT

Education systems are full of harmful violence of types often unrecognised or misunderstood by educators, education leaders, and bureaucrats. Educational violence harms a great number of innocent persons (those who, morally speaking, may not be justifiably harmed). Accordingly, this paper rejects educational violence used to achieve educational ends. It holds that educational violence is unjustified if the condition that innocent persons are harmed is satisfied, that this condition is satisfied in current educational practice (compulsory schooling), and that, therefore, the current education system (schooling) acts in an unjustifiable manner. If the means of educating cannot be justified, then that education system itself cannot be justified, since an end cannot be justifiably pursued if the means requisite to pursuing it are unjustifiable. I call this stance ‘educational pacifism’.

KEYWORDS:

• Violence
• education
• schools
• pacifism
• nonviolence
• innocence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. I believe this term is novel, and best describes my position.

2. Other potential foundations for peace education include those posited in Reardon (1988) and Harris and Lee Morrison (2013).

3. This approach avoids Ilan Gur-Ze-Ev (2001) criticism of peace education as a Western hegemonic construct that produces the violence it aims to eliminate. While peace education creates methods and objectives, educational pacifism rejects educational violence.

4. Relevant mentions of this concept can be found in Gay, Curtin, and Litke (1999) and Holmes, Cady, and Werner (1991).

5. For this reason, amongst others, students ought to be offered opportunities to learn and practice philosophy, but it also helps to explain why they are not [references removed].

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nicholas Parkin

Nicholas Parkin has held lecturing positions in political philosophy and applied ethics at universities in Australia and Hong Kong. He received his Ph.D. in political philosophy from the University of Melbourne and the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. His research interests include the ethics of war and peace, peace studies, the philosophy of education, and education studies. He currently holds a teaching position at Peace Experiment in Auckland, New Zealand.