Peace education, militarism and neo-liberalism: conceptual reflections with empirical findings from the UK

Abstract

This article explores ‘peace days’ in English schools as a form of peace education. From a historical overview of academic discussions on peace education in the US and Great Britain since the First World War, we identify three key factors important for peace education: the political context, the place in which peace days occur and pedagogical imperatives of providing a certain narrative of the sources of violence in politics. Although contemporary militarism and neoliberalism reduce the terrains for peace studies in English schools, peace days allow teachers to carve out spaces for peace education. Peace days in Benfield School, Newcastle and Comberton Village College, Cambridgeshire, are considered as case studies. We conclude with reflections on the opportunities and limitations of this approach to peace education, and on how peace educators and activists could enlarge its reach.

Keywords:

• Peace education
• UK
• militarisation
• neoliberalism

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Erratum

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all at Benfield School (especially Karen Hall and Janice Wanley) and Comberton Village College (in particular Mark Dawes), who helped make this research possible but more importantly have been dedicated to teaching peace creatively. We would also like to acknowledge the help of David Leat and Rachel Lofthouse, of Newcastle University, and Matt Jeziorski of the Peace Education Network.

Notes

1. In the following we do anonymise individual teachers of these schools, however, mention the school names. Free information on the schools’ participation is available at www.mlkpc.org.

2. On this methodological approach of semi-structured individual and group interviews (focus groups with students), see the methodological and ethical guidelines for design, data collection, and data storage as well as important further literature at http://www.qualres.org/HomeFocu-3647.html. As mentioned in the note above, we have anonymised the name of interviewed teachers and students as sensible data, however, not of the involved schools and academics.

3. FOI 205/06654, FOI 2017/02545 and FOI 064161. We requested figures for all armed forces visits to schools in the Cambridgeshire and Newcastle Local Education Authorities 2012–2015. Due to incomplete figures being provided (possibly due to a confusion between academic and calendar years) we have used the complete 2013–2014 year. We would also note that as the MOD records visits by town rather than LEA, these figures may not be entirely accurate.

4. Interview at Comberton (18/9/2015).

5. Interview at Comberton, (18/9/2015).

6. Interview with David Leat, Newcastle University (5/6/2015).

7. Interview at Comberton (18/9/2015).

8. Interview at Benfield school (12/8/2015).

9. Interview two teachers from Benfield school, 12/8/2015.

10. Interview two teachers from Benfield school, 12/8/2015.

11. Because of student-based focus groups conducted after the Benfield day, there will be greater emphasis on the Newcastle peace day.

12. http://peace-education.org.uk/teach-peace (Accessed September 2016); see also https://research.ncl.ac.uk/martinlutherking (accessed December 2016).

13. Focus group with year 10 students at Benfield School, 9/7/2015.

14. Interview at Benfield school (12/8/2015).

15. Interview with Nick Megoran (founder of the peace study day Newcastle) Newcastle University, 17/12/2015.

16. See note xi.