Human and integral education: educational paradigms from the Indian context expanding meanings of peace and conflict

ABSTRACT

Post-independence, the Indian context has witnessed conflicts between religious groups, structural/cultural violence, and discrimination based on socio-cultural factors such as socio-economic status, religion, gender, sexual identity, caste, language among others. Even though the perpetuation of these power imbalances at the macro-national level are being manifested in schools through educational interventions, there are ongoing efforts, as part of peace curriculums, to engage with/transform this culture of conflict towards cultivating a culture of peace. This study seeks to understand how school curriculums engage with ideas of peace and conflict. A document analysis of micro-peace curriculum (two school sites) that incorporated both a deductive and inductive approach of analysis was undertaken. Guided by a critical peace education framework implicating that curriculum engaging with conflict, positive relationships, and transformation can contribute towards cultivating peace guided the process of analysis. Curriculums reveal a focus on human education, a sense of oneness with the self, world and environment, and integral education, developing all faculties of the human being-including the soul and spirit, which are both directed towards addressing sources of structural violence while cultivating a sense of collective consciousness to build a peaceful world.

KEYWORDS:

• Peace
• conflict
• education for peace
• school curriculum

Acknowledgments

The author extends gratitude to the participating schools.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Data availability statement

The author confirms that the data supporting the findings of this study can be made available on request.

Notes

1. Indirect or structural violence is violence that exists within the structure, manifested as unequal power or resources and results in unequal life chances (Galtung 2010).

2. Galtung (2010) defines positive peace as the absence of indirect or structural violence.

3. Critical approaches to peace education aim to empower learners as transformative change agents who critically engage with and analyze power dynamics and intersectionalities across class, gender, religion, geography, sexual orientation, race, ability/disability, and other forms of stratification (Brantmeier and Bajaj 2013; Freire 1970).

4. A fivefold structure, Many Peaces encompasses families of peace interpretations, which includes energetic, moral, modern, postmodern and transrational.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kamiya Kumar

Kamiya Kumar is currently pursuing a PhD in Social Studies Education at Columbia University. She holds an Ed.M. in Curriculum and Teaching from Columbia University and an M.Sc. in Social and Cultural Psychology from London School of Economics. Her current research is focused on peace education and how young people are engaging with constructs of peace and conflict.