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Abstract
This paper investigates the interference of local politics with a peace education initiative in Greek-Cypriot education and the consequent impact on teachers’ perceptions and responses. Focusing on a recent educational attempt to promote ‘peaceful coexistence’, the authors explain how this attempt was seen by many teachers as being a part of a local leftist agenda and was therefore often rejected. When though the same initiative was positioned – through a series of teacher training seminars organised by the authors – within the global field of ‘peace education’, and was grounded in humanistic ideals, the teachers appeared much more comfortable to engage with it. Taking the local political complexities into consideration, the authors argue that despite the existing thorough critiques of the humanistic discourse of peace education, a seemingly ‘neutral’ humanistic discourse of peace education can be legitimised on the basis of two arguments: first, a humanistic discourse could serve as an entry point for talking about ‘peaceful coexistence’ in schools and second, it might offer a way to overcome the strong political connotations that these concepts appear to have locally.
Notes
1. Anorthotiko (Progressive) Komma (Party) Ergazomenou (of the Working) Laou (People). Since 1974 AKEL has been using the word ‘Rapprochement’ to describe its systematic efforts to improve and/or preserve the links between Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots.
2. In 1878 the British took the administration of the island from the Ottomans (who had ruled for three centuries). In 1925, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Cyprus was annexed by the UK and remained a Crown Colony until 1960, when the island was declared an independent state.
3. For an analysis of the role that British Administration played in the development of nationalist discourses see Bryant Citation2004; Hitchens Citation1984; Mallinson Citation2005.
4. Nevertheless, according to Mavratsas (Citation1997), in the Greek-Cypriot community Cypriocentrism has been also supported by an industrialist elite who did not belong to the leftist movement but had economic interests in the independence of Cyprus.
5. Kavazoglou, who was assassinated by Turkish-Cypriot nationalists in 1965, was the last Turkish-Cypriot involved in the leadership of AKEL.
6. Despite its Marxist internationalist character and anti-nationalist orientation, there were still times that AKEL adopted the ‘enosis’ ideology (especially in the 1940s) in an effort to widen its appeal and unify the internal divisions of Greek-Cypriots, as well as to participate in the anti-colonial discussions initiated by the Church and the nationalist circles (Mavratsas Citation1997; Panayiotou Citation2006a, Citation2006b). This fact reveals the hegemonic status of ‘enosis’ in Greek-Cypriot society, which was understood at the time as the only option against Colonialism (Bryant Citation2004; Panayiotou Citation2006a, Citation2006b).
7. The northern part is under the suspension of the European Law, since it is not controlled by the Republic of Cyprus government.
8. As they argue the new elements that now seem to preoccupy discussions on national issues are sovereignty, territoriality, identity and power-sharing (Ibid. 40).
9. After the intercommunal troubles in 1963, a (Greek-Cypriot) Ministry of Education was established in 1965.
10. Although school discourses target mainly the ‘Turks’ as the most significant national Other, and not as explicitly the Turkish-Cypriots, research has showed that children and teenagers have difficulties in distinguishing between the two (Charalambous Citation2009; Spyrou Citation2006).
11. In the scholarly literature there is a distinction between the concepts of ‘reconciliation’ and ‘peaceful coexistence’, treating usually the latter as “an intermediate step that is easier to attain and is a necessary phase in reaching the final goal [reconciliation]” (Bar-Tal Citation2004, 269). However, as there is no evidence that the Greek-Cypriot policy makers were aware of this conceptual distinction, when we use the phrase ‘peaceful coexistence’ here we follow the lexicon of the objective and we do not draw on the literature that points out their difference.
12. As Charalambous (Citation2012) reports, young Turkish-language learners consistently repeated the names of ‘Che Guevara’ and Fidel Castro during their Turkish lesson, and in interviews they complained that they were often called ‘communists’ by their peers merely because they attended Turkish language classes.
13. We do not have enough evidence here to argue that the reason Polina refused to participate in the last phase of the research was, indeed, the fact that she did not follow the discursive shift from rapprochement to peace education. However, this stance should be seen together with her general resistance against most of the ideas that the seminars aimed to put forward.
14. Grillo (Citation2003) also points out a significant inconsistency between contemporary post-structural academic discourses and popular/political discourses on ‘culture’ that operate at the level of everyday practice.