School textbooks, peace and conflict: an introduction

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article, and of the special issue it introduces, is to claim a more prominent role for the analysis of school textbooks when studying peace and conflict. School textbooks can contribute to several core discussions in this research field because they are indicators of dominant political knowledge, have privileged access to a large audience, and are objects of peace and conflict processes themselves. We reflect how the analysis of school textbooks has already contributed significantly to peace and conflict studies and outline avenues for further research.

KEYWORDS:

• School textbooks
• peace
• conflict
• education
• security

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Tobias Ide is coordinator of the Research Field Peace and Conflict at the Georg Eckert Institute and an associated lecturer at the Brunswick University of Technology. He is interested in questions related to peace and conflict studies, education, environmental security and international politics. Recently, he has published in Nature Climate Change, the Journal of Peace Research and Political Geography, among others.

Jakob Kirchheimer is a doctoral candidate at the Center for Conflict Studies (CCS) at the Philipps University of Marburg, Germany. His research focuses on the effect of Transitional Justice Interventions on education reforms. From 2014 until 2018, Jakob worked as a researcher for the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research conducting research and transfer projects on the representation of conflict and reconciliation in textbooks as well as their production and teachers’ perspectives on history education in Guatemala, Peru and Colombia.

Denise Bentrovato holds a Ph.D. in History from The Netherlands and an M.A. in Conflict Resolution from the UK. Over the past decade, she has worked in academia and for government institutions, international organisations and NGOs on issues of education and youth in conflict-affected and post-conflict contexts in Africa. She is currently employed as a Research Fellow in the Faculty of Education at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, where she also acts as the co-director of the African Association for History Education. At present, her work focuses on examining educational approaches to historical conflict and injustice in transitional societies.

ORCID

Tobias Ide http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8401-2372

Denise Bentrovato http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4828-0596

Notes

1 Charles Ingrao, ‘Weapons of Mass Instruction: Schoolbooks and Democratization in Multiethnic Central Europe’, Journal of Educational Media, Memory and Society 1, no. 1 (2009): 180–89; Tobias Ide, ‘Critical Geopolitics and School Textbooks: The Case of Environment-Conflict Links in Germany’, Political Geography 55, no. 1 (2016): 61–70.

2 Catherine Vanner, Spogmai Akseer, and Thursica Kovinthan, ‘Learning Peace (and Conflict): The Role of Primary Learning Materials in Peacebuilding in Post-War Afghanistan, South Sudan and Sri Lanka’, Journal of Peace Education (2016).

3 Simone Lässig, ‘Textbooks and Beyond: Educational Media in Context(s)’, Journal of Educational Media, Memory and Society 1, no. 1 (2009): 1–20.

4 Daniel Bar-Tal, ‘The Rocky Road toward Peace: Beliefs on Conflict in Israeli Textbooks’, Journal of Peace Research 35, no. 6 (1998): 723–42, here 725–40.

5 Alan Peacock and Ailie Cleghorn, ‘What Do We Believe Are the Issues with Text-Based and Other Learning Materials? Are We Caught in the Web or Lost in the Textbook’, in Caught in the Web or Lost in the Textbooks?, ed. Éric Bruillard, Mike Horsley, Bente Aamotsbaaken, and Susanne V. Knudsen (Paris: Jouve, 2006), 35–48; Dan A. Porat, ‘It’s Not Written Here, but This Is What Happened: Student’s Cultural Comprehension of Textbook Narratives on the Israeli-Arab Conflict’, American Educational Research Journal 41, no. 4 (2004): 963–96.

6 See for example: Tobias Ide, Adrien Detges, and Timo Leimeister, ‘Securitization through the Schoolbook? On Facilitating Conditions for and Audience Dispositions Towards the Securitization of Climate Change’, Journal of International Relations and Development online ahead of print (2017); Nico Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim Voth, ‘Nazi Indoctrination and Anti-Semitic Beliefs in Germany’, PNAS 112, no. 26 (2016): 7931–36.

7 Lynn Davies, ‘The Different Faces of Education in Conflict’, Development Outreach 53, no. 4 (2010): 491–97.

8 Peter Buckland, Reshaping the Future: Education and Postconflict Reconstruction (Washington DC: The World Bank, 2005); Lynn Davies, Education and Conflict: Complexity and Chaos (London: Routledge, 2004).

9 Mario Novelli, Mieke T. A. Lopes Cardozo, and Alan Smith, ‘The 4Rs Framework: Analysing the Contribution of Education to Sustainable Peacebuilding in Conflict-Affected Contexts’, Journal of Education in Emergencies 3, no. 1 (2017): 14–43; Julia Paulson, ed. Education and Reconciliation: Exploring Conflict in Post-Conflict Situations (London: Continuum, 2011); Falk Pingel, ‘Can Truth Be Negotiated? History Textbook Revision as a Means to Reconciliation’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 617, no. 1 (2008): 181–98.

10 Yoshiko Nozaki and Mark Selden, ‘Historical Memory, International Conflicts, and Japanese Textbook Controversies in Three Epochs’, Journal of Educational Media, Memory and Society 1, no. 1 (2009): 117–44.

11 Vanner et al., ‘Learning Peace (and Conflict)’.

12 Susanne Buckley-Zistel, ‘In-between War and Peace: Identities, Boundaries, and Change after Violent Conflict’, Millennium 35, no. 1 (2006): 3–21, here 6.

13 Stuart Kaufman, ‘Symbolic Politics or Rational Choice? Testing Theories of Extreme Ethnic Violence’, International Security 30, no. 4 (2006): 45–86.

14 Muhammad Ayaz Naseem and Georg Stöber, ‘Introduction: Textbooks, Identity Politics, and Lines of Conflict in South Asia’, Journal of Educational Media, Memory and Society 6, no. 2 (2014): 1–9; Achim Rohde and Samira Alayan, ‘Introduction’, in The Politics of Education Reform in the Middle East: Self and Other in Textbook and Curricula, ed. Samira Alayan, Achim Rohde, and Sarhan Dhouib (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012), 1–14.

15 Sami Adwan, Daniel Bar-Tal, and Bruce E. Wexler, ‘Portrayal of the Other in Palestinian and Israel Schoolbooks: A Comparative Study’, Political Psychology 37, no. 2 (2016): 201–17; Porat, ‘It’s Not Written Here, but This Is What Happened’.

16 Simon Dalby, ‘Recontextualising Violence, Power and Nature: The Next Twenty Years of Critical Geopolitics?’, Political Geography 29, no. 5 (2010): 280–88, here 281. See also: Kolson Schlosser, ‘Education and Intimate War of Position: The National Security League’s Committee on Patriotism through Education, 1917–1919’, Political Geography 60, no. 1 (2017): 66–75.

17 Tariq Amin-Khan, ‘New Orientalism, Securitisation and the Western Media’s Incendiary Racism’, Third World Quarterly 33, no. 9 (2012): 1595–610; David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005).

18 Maja Touzari Greenwood and Ole Wæver, ‘Copenhagen-Cairo on a Roundtrip: A Security Theory Meets the Revolution’, Security Dialogue 44, no. 5–6 (2013): 485–506.

19 Ide, ‘Critical Geopolitics and School Textbooks’.

20 Nicole Nguyen, ‘Education as Warfare?: Mapping Securitized Education Interventions as War on Terror Strategy’, Geopolitics 19, no. 1 (2014): 109–39.

21 Vanner et al., ‘Learning Peace (and Conflict)’.

22 Ann Emmerson, ‘The Making of the (Il)Legitimate Citizen: The Case of the Pakistan Studies Textbook’, Global Change, Peace and Security 30, no. 3 (2018).

23 Cynthia Cockburn, ‘Gender Relations as Causal in Militarization and War’, International Feminist Journal of Politics 12, no. 2 (2010): 139–57.

24 Luigi Cajani, Simone Lässig, and Maria Repoussi, ed. The Palgrave Handbook of History Education Conflicts (London: Palgrave, 2018).

25 Kazuya Fukuoka, ‘Japanese History Textbook Controversy at a Crossroads? Joint History Research, Politicization of Textbook Adoption Process, and Apology Fatigue in Japan’, Global Change, Peace and Security 30, no. 3 (2018).

26 Eric W. Cox, Why Enduring Rivalries Do - or Don’t - End (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2010).

27 Lynn Davies, ‘Justice-Sensitive Education: The Implications of Transitional Justice Mechanisms for Teaching and Learning’, Comparative Education Review 53, no. 3 (2017): 333–50; Vanner et al., ‘Learning Peace (and Conflict)’.

28 Novelli et al., ‘The 4Rs Framework’; Alan Smith, Erin McCandless, Julia Paulson, and Wendy Wheaton, The Role of Education in Peacebuilding: Literature Review (New York: UNICEF, 2011).

29 Elizabeth A. Cole, ‘Transitional Justice and the Reform of History Education’, International Journal of Transitional Justice 1, no. 1 (2007): 115–37.

30 Eckhardt Fuchs, ‘Contextualizing School Textbook Revision’, Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 2, no. 2 (2010): 1–12.

31 Kathryn Sikkink, The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions Are Changing World Politics (New York: Norton, 2011).

32 Denise Bentrovato, ‘History Textbook Writing in Post-Conflict Societies: From Battlefield to Site and Means of Conflict Transformation’, in History Teaching and Conflict Transformation: Social Psychological Theories, History Teaching and Reconciliation, ed. Charis Psaltis, Mario Carretero, and Sabina Čehajić-Clancy (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 37–76.

33 Julia Paulson and Michelle J. Bellino, ‘Truth Commissions, Education and Positive Peace: An Analysis of Truth Commission Final Reports (1980–2015)’, Comparative Education 53, no. 3 (2017): 351–78; Pingel, ‘Can Truth Be Negotiated?’.

34 John W. Meyer, Patricia Bromley, and Francisco Ramirez, ‘Human Rights in Social Science Textbooks: Cross-National Analyses, 1970–2008’, Sociology of Education 83, no. 2 (2010): 111–34.

35 David Mendeloff, ‘Truth-Telling, Truth-Seeking, and Postconflict Peacebuilding: Curb the Enthusiasm?’, International Studies Review 6, no. 3 (2004): 355–80; Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm, Truth Commissions and Transitional Societies: The Impact on Human Rights and Democracy (London: Routledge, 2010).

36 Paulson and Bellino, ‘Truth Commissions, Education and Positive Peace’.

37 Denise Bentrovato and Johan Wassermann, ‘Mediating Transitional Justice: South Africa’s TRC in History Textbooks and the Implications for Peace’, Global Change, Peace and Security 30, no. 3 (2018).

38 Roger Mac Ginty and Oliver P. Richmond, ‘The Local Turn in Peace Building: A Critical Agenda for Peace’, Third World Quarterly 34, no. 5 (2013): 763–83; Roland Paris, ‘Saving Liberal Peacebuilding’, Review of International Studies 36, no. 2 (2010): 337–65; Oliver Richmond, A Post Liberal Peace (London: Routledge, 2011).

39 Barbara Oomen, ‘Donor-Driven Justice and Its Discontents : The Case of Rwanda’, Development and Change 36, no. 5 (2005): 887–910.

40 Elizabeth Oglesby, ‘Educating Citizens in Postwar Guatemala: Historical Memory, Genocide, and the Culture of Peace.’, Radical History Review 97, no. 1 (2007): 77–98; Michalinos Zembylas and Zvi Bekerman, ‘Peace Education in the Present: Dismantling and Reconstructing Some Fundamental Theoretical Premises’, Journal of Peace Education 10, no. 2 (2013): 197–214.

41 Eleni Christodoulou, ‘Deconstructing Resistance Towards Textbook Revisions: The Securitisation of History Textbooks and the Cyprus Conflict’, Global Change, Peace and Security 30, no. 3 (2018).

42 Jean-Louis Durand and Sebastian Kaempf, ‘Reimagining Communities: Opening up History to the Memory of Others’, Millennium 42, no. 2 (2014): 331–53.

43 See for instance: Michelle J. Bellino, ‘Whose Past - Whose Present?’, in (Re)Constructing Memory: School Textbooks and the Imagination of the Nation, ed. James H. Williams (New York: Springer, 2014), 131–53; Denise Bentrovato, Narrating and Teaching the Nation: The Politics of Education in Pre- and Post-Genocide Rwanda (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2015).

44 Notable exceptions include: Cajani et al., The Palgrave Handbook of History Education Conflicts; Tobias Ide, ‘Terrorism in the Textbook: A Comparative Analysis of Terrorism Discourses in Germany, India, Kenya and the United States Based on School Textbooks’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 30, no. 1 (2017): 44–66.

45 Mieke T.A. Lopes Cardozo and Celine C.M.Q. Hoeks, ‘Losing Ground: A Critical Analysis of Teachers’ Agency for Peacebuilding Education in Sri Lanka’, Journal of Peace Education 12, no. 1 (2015): 56–73; Vanner et al., ‘Learning Peace (and Conflict)’.

46 Exceptions include: Kazuya Fukuoka, ‘School History Textbooks and Historical Memory in Japan: A Study of Reception’, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 23, no. 3–4 (2011): 83–103; Porat, ‘It’s Not Written Here, but This Is What Happened’.

47 Maria Grever and Tina van der Vlies, ‘Why National Narratives Are Perpetuated: A Literature Review on New Insights from History Textbook Research’, London Review of Education 15, no. 2 (2017): 286–301.