Discipline for Democracy? School Districts' Management of Conflict and Social Exclusion

Abstract

An examination of six urban Canadian school districts' policies and co-curricular programs for safe and inclusive schools shows contrasting implicit patterns of citizenship education. Peacekeeping-oriented districts relied heavily on standardized control and exclusion to achieve school safety and allocated few resources to affirming diversity. Peacemaking-oriented districts supplemented peacekeeping with some regularized opportunities for students to learn to manage conflict and diversity. Peacebuilding-oriented districts provided relatively comprehensive and inclusive programs of conflict management and anti-bias education, embracing conflict and diversity as natural learning opportunities. Clearly such system-level policy reflects prevailing understandings of problems that need fixing, not necessarily actual practice. The paper argues that the implicit, daily patterns of human relations and conflict management in school districts are powerful socializers, as well as powerful constraints on the explicit education for peacebuilding citizenship conducted in individual programs and classrooms.