The teacher state: navigating the fusion of education and militarisation in Eritrea and elsewhere

ABSTRACT

This paper uses the case of Eritrea to explore tensions between education and militarisation as forms of everyday state-making and examine how teachers constitute the state in the process of navigating these tensions. In 2003 Eritrea merged educational and military institutions. Teachers responded to the new policies by alternately joining in with students’ tacit resistance to them, and engaging in strict, often violent, measures to reclaim control and exert ‘teacher sovereignty’ over schools. Teachers’ intermingling of resistant humour and foot-dragging with violence and authoritarianism suggests that teachers, as agents of the state in Eritrea and elsewhere, may resist militarisation yet also reproduce authoritarian violence. While this policy, which effectively merged military and educational institutions was unique to Eritrea, the disjuncture between education and militarisation exposed by this case illuminates the complex role that schools and teachers play in state-making and nuances our understanding of education, the state and armed conflict.

KEYWORDS:

• Eritrea
• teachers
• the state
• state-making
• militarisation

Acknowledgements

Research for this article was supported by funding from an International Dissertation Field Research Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council, a Spencer/National Academy of Education Postdoctoral Fellowship and a research grant from Fulbright/IIE. I would also like to thank the Georg Arnhold Program on Education for Sustainable Peace for supporting the workshop, organised by Dr Susan Shepler. I would also like to thank Dr Shepler and the anonymous reviewers for their careful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this article was supported by funding from a Spencer Foundation/National Academy of Education Postdoctoral Fellowship, an International Dissertation Field Research Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council and from a research fellowship from Fulbright/IIE.