history, memory and peace education: history's hardest questions in the classroom

HISTORY, MEMORY, AND PEACE EDUCATION:

HISTORY’S HARDEST QUESTIONS IN THE CLASSROOM

by Cheryl Lynn Duckworth

Many peace educators wish to be able to do more than foster enhancedcommunication or cultural skills, but further wish to interrupt macro-historical causes of violence. Peace education can be usefully advanced bydrawing on the literature on what is often called historical or collectivememory. An important area of interest in peace studies, scholars workingin this area seek to understand the role of the “heavy hand of history” inconflict. This article explores the nexus between peace education and his-torical memory, filling a current gap in the literature by addressing thequestion of what classroom teachers might actually be able to do in theirsettings to interrupt transgenerational cycles of violent conflict. I exploretwo possible ways forward for implementing such an audacious goal inthe classroom: oral histories and “futures visioning,” inspired by EliseBoulding’s notion of the 200-year present.

An enemy is someone whose story we have not heard.

Gene Knudsen-Hoffman

Many peace educators wish to be able to do more than foster

enhanced communication or cultural skills (as worthwhile as that is),

but further wish to interrupt macro-historical drivers of violence. I

believe the literature and curriculum on peace education can be use-

fully advanced by drawing on the growing literature on what is

often called historical or collective memory. An important area of

interest in the broader field of conflict resolution, scholars studying

memory seek to understand the role of the heavy hand of history in

conflict. They seek in particular to understand how groups which

have been subjected to some historical trauma, such as a civil war, a

genocide, slavery, or the Holocaust, survive and process such horrific

suffering—not just as individuals but as a collective and as a culture.

PEACE & CHANGE, Vol. 40, No. 2, April 2015

© 2015 Peace History Society and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

167

What are the impacts of historical trauma and what survival strate-

gies can we observe? How do impacted groups understand these

experiences?

Most of the literature on and curriculum in peace education, very

reasonably, addresses developing communication skills, cross-cultural

skills, listening, compromise, and peer mediation. The basic building

blocks include engaging learning communities in dialogue about toler-

ance, stereotypes, and discrimination. Peace education originated as a

way to address increasing levels of bullying and other violence in

schools, teach students mediation and facilitation skills, and enable

them to understand the causes and possible solutions for the kinds of

conflict in their own lives, communities, and (as students got older)

the world. Much of the original literature articulates the case for

including peace education (often called conflict resolution education)

in the public school curriculum.1

As the literature on peace education has matured, key works have

defined its history, pedagogical and philosophical foundations, institu-

tional challenges, and community impacts.2 In addition, evaluative lit-

erature has begun to assess educational outcomes for students,

although there remains an urgent need for this in the field.3 The litera-

ture on “critical” peace education holds a broader view of the field of

peace education in that it explicitly looks to foreground issues of

power inequalities, engaging students in challenging and transforming

systems of oppression that impact them. Teaching Tolerance, a project

of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Facing History and Our-

selves are excellent examples of such curricula creating space for his-

tory’s hardest questions in the classroom. For example, Zvi

Beckerman’s work on the role of peace education in addressing espe-

cially ethnic conflict offers key insights; he dwells on the difficulties of

transforming deeply ingrained historical narratives. So too does Claire

McGlynn’s edition on the role of peace education, especially in con-

flict and postconflict environments. Lynn Davies also examines the

role of education in environments that are currently experiencing vio-

lent conflict or which have only recently seen the end of conflicts. She

is particularly interested in the role educational systems and curricula

play in shaping identities and reproducing conflicts and argues for

hybridity in our views of diversity and difference if schools are to be

able to contribute to a more peaceful culture.4 In Teaching the Violent

Past, Elizabeth Cole and contributors focus specifically on the role of

history textbooks and history education in the aftermath of violent

168 PEACE & CHANGE / April 2015

conflict. This volume’s case studies of teaching in the aftermath of the

“dirty war” in Guatemala, as well as the comparison of history text-

books from India and Pakistan, are fascinating in their demonstration

of state ideological manipulation to ensure that a certain version of

history is the one that becomes the official record and thus gets

handed down. Here is a key mechanism of the transgenerational trans-

mission of historical trauma.5

Scholars studying transgenerational transmission of historical

trauma seek to understand how groups who have experienced collec-

tive trauma, consciously or not, pass this legacy on to their progeny:6

Through what identifiable processes, mechanisms, and institutions is a

culture-sharing group’s collective memory of a violent trauma inher-

ited by the next generation? The evidence of the relevance of histori-

cal memory and transgenerational trauma for peace education is

compelling, but in comparison with the wider literature on peace edu-

cation, the literature which explores this nexus is still underdeveloped

and much additional work must be done. Scholars such as Zvi Beck-

erman and Michalinos Zembylas have contributed strong theoretical

work based on their personal and research experience of divided

Cyprus and Israel.7 Still, there remains a need for more case studies

to be conducted and the geographical areas studied need to be

expanded. There is also a need for more literature that speaks directly

to teachers and educational leaders (in addition to more purely theo-

retical literature). I hope to offer to this dialogue concrete and

“actionable” thoughts on what classroom teachers worldwide might

actually do in their learning communities.8 The heart of this article,

then, is to suggest to teachers, youth development workers, educa-

tional leaders, teacher trainers, and curriculum designers two specific

activities that can readily be used in the classroom: oral histories and

“futures visioning” (inviting students into a dialogue on what a more

peaceful future might look like). I will discuss these activities and

their relevance to peace educators helping to interrupt historical cycles

of violence below.

Because of the violent and protracted nature of conflicts character-

ized by historical memory and transgenerational trauma, such conflicts

are notoriously difficult to resolve. I will aim here to identify what

peace educators might be able to use from the literature on history

and memory and how bringing these two literatures into a conversa-

tion with one another can perhaps further empower peace educators

to handle history’s hardest questions in the classroom. Our field

History, Memory, and Peace Education 169

has been seeking and implementing ways to move beyond simply

teaching peer mediation to realizing a larger social and political role

in transforming conflicts and the systems of structural violence which

drive them.9 Drawing on several essential insights from the literature

on history and memory might well be a way forward. Given the large-

ly theoretical focus of much of the current literature, I will include a

perhaps more curriculum-focused discussion below, including oral his-

tories and Elise Boulding’s notion of the 200-year present as a means

of helping students (and teachers) begin the challenging work of narra-

tive transformation in the classroom.

Why is narrative transformation necessary for sustainable peace-

building? Conflicts driven by historical memory often feature clear

conflict narratives which tell the story of a particular group’s experi-

ence and which often serve to justify the group’s violent actions during

the conflict. Typically, they present the enemy group as wholly to

blame and often feature enemy images which, at especially high levels

of conflict escalation, dehumanize and demonize the Other. As Cobb

writes, “Marginalization is the consequence of delegitimization in nar-

rative.”10 In such contexts, critical peace educators can be a part of

the overall peace system by facilitating critical awareness of such nar-

ratives and opening space for students to participate in dialogues

which can move a community (and thus a society) toward narrative

transformation. Narrative transformation, to simplify considerably, is

the shared reimagining of the past in order to create a sustainable,

secure future. It entails rehumanizing the Other and acknowledging

one’s own group’s complicity in the violence. Figure 1 illustrates the

shift that is being advocated.11

FROM PEACE EDUCATION TO PEACEBUILDING

If the cycle of what Volkan calls “chosen traumas” is not trans-

formed, very likely the conflicting parties will continue to be trapped

in a cycle of grief, enmity, and violence.12 Helping to interrupt such

cycles is admittedly a rather audacious goal for peace educators, but

given the primacy of schools to group—especially national—identity

formation, schools, teachers, and curriculum must be a part of the

peacebuilding system if conflicts characterized by historical trauma

and memory are to be transformed. This basic premise of peace educa-

tion is widely accepted (at least in the peace education community),

but there remains a need for more clarity on exactly how students and


educators can impact larger peace and conflict systems and especially

their identity formation aspects. What specific pedagogical and meth-

odological approaches can we identify for teachers to use in such con-

texts? There remains also a need for better articulation of the role of

peace education in conflict resolution for those who are not in the

peace education community and whose conception of security is lim-

ited to Track I (government) activities such as formal peace talks and

disarmament. That approach rests on a definition of security that

defines such in solely state-centric terms. My focus here is more broad

and, in my view, transformative. I conceive of security in more

humanistic terms; human security is concerned with the security of

individuals and local communities. It goes beyond state security to

assert that we have achieved security if families can safely and reliably

access food and water, if girls can go to school without suffering

attacks, or if boys can walk to school without being conscripted into

an army. The notion of human security understands that unless fami-

lies and communities are secure, neither is the state secure. Peace edu-

cators have contributed to expanded notions of human security,

creating spaces for heterodox narratives, specifically challenges to state

narratives. And peace education classrooms are spaces where commu-

nity with those historically defined as the enemy can begin.13

Figure 1. The dynamics of narrative transformation.


SCHOOLS ARE OF THE STATE

Before elaborating on oral histories and futures visioning, it is

helpful to review some context regarding the realties facing peace edu-

cators, especially those in conflict zones. One key insight that I believe

to be underrecognized is that schools and school systems are instru-

ments of the state (unless we are speaking of private schools, which

are often still subject to state testing and curriculum requirements).

This reality means that in some conflict contexts, we may need to

look beyond schools as a venue for critical peace education. To the

extent that the literature on historical memory and peace education

has been linked, at least by implication, a sizeable amount of peace

education literature has examined how history is taught (or not), espe-

cially in grades eight through twelve. Karina Korostelina examined

the content of history textbooks in China, Taiwan, and the Koreas,

analyzing their presentation of historical conflicts and the resulting

impact on student ethno-national identity.14 Elizabeth Cole and col-

leagues edited a useful volume whose contributors discuss textbook

content and curriculum censorship.15 Numerous works have examined

a critical view of history and the importance of exposing students to

subaltern narratives, examining alternatives to the dominant national

narrative and the importance of fostering a student’s view of herself

as a powerful actor in history.16 Some curricula, such as the one

developed by Oxfam International, encourage students to examine the

systems creating and entrenching global inequality; their lesson plans

on underdevelopment, trade, and debt come to mind. Yet, even in the

United States, significant barriers remain to a critical engagement with

the history of this nation’s conflicts for every young person. One bar-

rier is rather a paradox: Public education is essential for racial, social,

gender, and economic justice, yet like any other bureaucracy, self-

preservation is too often bureaucracy’s highest priority. That is, public

schools are part of an overall government system which has its own

interests and power foremost in mind. Nowhere is this reality more

clear than when teaching the history of a conflict, especially a conflict

to which the government in question has been a party. Conflicts that

are characterized by historical memory are often incredibly resistant

to resolution precisely because of the entrenched power interests

which seek to reproduce their own narrative of the conflict. Typically,

this involves silencing or at least delegitimizing opposing narratives.

Stamped with the social, cultural power of officialdom and backed by


the economic and military power of the state, alternative voices more

often than not struggle to be heard.

This is a common enough observation; what is not as often articu-

lated is the resulting need for peace educators to seek venues other

than public schools to create and protect spaces for critical dialogue

around peace, justice, conflict, and reconciliation. A clear drawback to

this suggestion is that the compulsory aspect of public schooling

(where such laws apply) would be lost; some teachers and students

could fall through the proverbial cracks. This means that the facilita-

tors and designers of such “off site” peace education dialogues would

need to be more mindful than ever of the relevance and visibility of

their program. Also, in some contexts where conflict remains active,

perhaps even violent, protecting space for opposing views and dia-

logues around peace and justice will likely be seen as a direct attack

on the regime. Work in such contexts, of course, is inescapably sub-

versive and dangerous. Yet development of community-based, inter-

generational curricula for venues outside of the formal school system

can create space not available in public schools whose mandated stan-

dards and curriculum that have not (yet) reformed could make critical

peace education possible. Such venues might include community cen-

ters, museums, libraries, workplaces, houses of worship, or youth

development organizations. Peace educators might also consider home

schooling, if other venues are not available.17 Organizations such as

UNICEF, UNESCO, and the International Network for Education in

Emergencies (INEE) may provide alternatives when public schools are

not able to serve as sites for critical peace education.

RECLAIMING CLASSROOMS AS CRITICAL DIALOGUE SPACES

If implementing methodologies such as futures visioning or oral

histories is to prove possible, we must reclaim classrooms as spaces

for critical dialogue. While more developed nations pride themselves

on the diversity and sophistication of their curriculum, the recent

backlash against peace education in the United States, such as in Ari-

zona and Texas, speaks of an urgent need for American teachers to

reclaim critical space in the classroom.18 The very idea that multicul-

tural curriculum has been or is in the process of being made illegal

ought to be shocking. Regarding the 2010 efforts of Texas activists,

Paulson reported, “The slave trade would be renamed the ‘Atlantic tri-

angular trade’, American ‘imperialism’ changed to ‘expansionism’, and


all references to ‘capitalism’ have been replaced with ‘free enter-

prise’.”19 Critical peace educators will naturally recognize this as a

classic teachable moment; we should invite our students into the dia-

logue about why the backlash against peace education has accelerated.

The conflict here is clearly over such large historical traumas as slav-

ery, official American treatment of our first peoples and how we

should best understand the legacy of colonialism. We can pose in our

classrooms critical questions such as what context might explain the

desire to make multicultural curriculum illegal and why it is seen as a

threat at this particular historical moment. We can invite students to

explore previous models of nonviolent social change and how they

can apply such models.20 And we can invite U.S. educators to reflect

upon and articulate their own understanding of American history and

what it means to be American; what sort of values and beliefs does

this imply? How have we ended up in at least two wars during the

lifetimes of many of our students and what do they think of this?

These kinds of critical dialogues around history’s hardest questions are

essential to critical peace education’s goal of interrupting historical

cycles of violent conflict and creating critical citizens.

Some teachers are in fact using their classrooms as critical spaces,

but we need far more to do so if classrooms are going to contribute to

interrupting historical cycles of violence. In my own classroom, I try

to create spaces where my students can encounter the Other. Recently,

I and two colleagues in Beirut (at the Lebanese American University,

or LAU) hosted online dialogues so that our students could have a

direct encounter with one another. Many of my students had had very

little contact with Muslims, or indeed foreigners, and likewise many

of the LAU students who joined our dialogue had had little prior time

with Americans. Our students exchanged views on the Arab Spring,

the U.S. response to 9/11, Israel in the Middle East, higher education’s

role in conflict resolution, and how Americans perceive and are per-

ceived by the world. Currently, we are hoping LAU and SHSS students

can dialogue in person, possibly in 2014.

Building on this model, I designed a direct encounter for my stu-

dents in a “hybrid” (both in person and online) course that includes a

ten- to fourteen-day field immersion component. Eight graduate stu-

dents joined me during June 2012 in Morocco where we had the

opportunity for person-to-person dialogue with Moroccan students, as

well as other students from Syria and Turkey, about conflict and peace

processes, stereotypes, Othering, and culture. In reflective journaling


and presentations, students described the experience as “transforma-

tive” and “life changing.” The core of critical peace education, espe-

cially when it is engaging persistent narratives of trauma, enmity, and

conflict, is (re)building relationships. Hence, we were pleased to return

this summer to continue the dialogue, more deeply engaging difficult

issues of historical trauma relevant to the U.S. relationship with pre-

dominantly Muslim countries. Dialogue topics included 9/11, terror-

ism and counterterrorism culture, democracy, human rights,

development, the Arab Spring, Palestine, stereotypes, racism, and

similar topics.

Prior to these international dialogues, I did what I could to design

similar experiences for my students in the juvenile detention center

where I taught writing, literature, and conflict resolution from 2007 to

2010. While we obviously could not leave the facility, I insisted that

my classroom would be a space for critical thinking through writing,

dialogue, drama, art, and literature. For example, students wrote and

performed skits that told a story or expressed a truth about the reali-

ties of their blocks and about living in “juvie.” They also kept reflec-

tive journals, shared poetry, and wrote short essays on social,

educational, and political issues impacting them, such as the “school

to prison pipeline,” violence in schools, racist and/or sexist curricula,

immigration, juvenile justice, and similar legacies of our deeply racist

past (and present). While imperfect and limited by our context, these

activities provided at least some means through which students could

engage in the debate about how they experienced these realities in

their daily lives, and how they thought we might finally overcome

racial and gender inequalities. With these activities, they had an

opportunity to reflect on the collective memory of shared traumas

such as slavery or Jim Crow, and what those legacies mean for us

now.

Yet no one should pretend that such dangerous dialogues will not

encounter resistance, especially in the context of war or other large-

scale violence. In querying some of my graduate students as to how

teachers in today’s public school classrooms should handle the back-

lash against the very idea of multicultural education (let alone critical

peace education), I heard the reply that teachers should simply refuse

to comply with state mandates. I would suggest that this is na€ıve,

especially given the current political and economic context in which

teachers can so easily be dismissed from their jobs for mere insubordi-

nation. A plan that hopes for such heroics will, I fear, not gain much


traction. This context of a clear backlash against peace education is

another reason why I believe an additional way forward (even as we

continue to organize and advocate together to mainstream critical

peace education in each and every classroom worldwide) is to expand

into other venues outside the formal classroom as well. The barriers

discussed above suggest that peace educators will have a difficult time

critically engaging contested historical narratives in peace education

venues without such expansion.

THE CROSS-CUTTING TIES THAT BIND

The two central concepts of this study, oral histories and futures

visioning in the peace education classroom, are best implemented in

partnership with the school’s community. After all, historical (and

present) inequalities and tensions within the community are bound to

be reflected in the teachers, staff, and students of the school. When

rebuilding communities after a conflict, or when working to prevent a

conflict from beginning, facilitating the development of cross-cutting

community ties can often prove effective. As conflict groups form and

dynamics of contention and hostility escalate, polarization of the

entire community can occur as conflict group leaders demand that

community members choose a side.21 When communities are segre-

gated or merely unfamiliar with one another, this polarization can

escalate even more rapidly. The less diverse a community is—that is,

the fewer cross-cutting community ties it enjoys—the more rapidly it

can be mobilized into a conflict. I understand communities not as geo-

graphically bound groups, but rather as groups of people who self-

identify as belonging in some sense to one another through shared

experiences, interests, history, cultural practices, ethnicity, religious

practices, and other aspects of human identity. Conflict groups can

form around a number of events or drivers, but very commonly, par-

ticularly violent and protracted conflicts involve elements of world-

view, culture, and identity. Aspects of identity such as ethnicity,

religion, and nationality are often prominent in such conflicts. Hence,

if communities are able to form cross-cutting ties across the barriers

of ethnicity and other identity shapers, they are less likely to experi-

ence highly escalated, protracted violent conflict.22 Social, political,

business, and other relationships which integrate or cut across identity

groups, even if only in a limited manner, can both prevent and

de-escalate conflicts because potential recruits have exposure to the


Other, which can make dehumanizing them more difficult. Also, given

that we know identity groups help satisfy our human need for belong-

ing and community, if one has meaningful ties to a number of com-

munities (which are possible conflict groups), one is not quite so

threatened by the idea of being ostracized from one particular group

for perceived betrayal. Especially in contexts where large-scale histori-

cal violence or oppression has resulted in chosen traumas and thor-

oughly dehumanized perceptions of the other conflict party, beginning

to (re)build cross-cutting community ties across numerous identity

lines is an important aspect of postconflict social reconstruction and of

the prevention of future conflict.

SCHOOLS AS CENTERS OF COMMUNITY LIFE

All of this brings us back to the classroom. I have just suggested

it is necessary for critical peace educators to consider alternatives out-

side of the formal schooling venues. Another possibility to more fully

realize the potential of critical peace education for peacebuilding is

reimagining schools as community centers as a concrete way to

empower educators to facilitate critical peacebuilding dialogues

around collective historical traumas. In my observation, in many mar-

ginalized or developing communities, schools already serve this func-

tion in some practical respects as they sometimes are the only

infrastructure around. (Local meetings and community town halls are

sometimes held at the nearby school in such postconflict countries as

Paraguay and Zimbabwe.) Envisioning schools as community centers

would empower critical peace educators and their students in a num-

ber of ways. As I described above, the reality in many postconflict

environments (and frankly far too many democracies) is that public

schools are simply too beholden to the state, or to a particular politi-

cal regime, to reliably provide students with the critical space needed

to truly challenge government orthodoxy. This is even truer regarding

government conduct or policy making around issues of war and secu-

rity. Thus, the need for private (nonprofit) spaces or perhaps even

alternative public spaces for critical peace education is real. States are

almost inevitably implicated in the infliction of mass trauma in large-

scale sociopolitical conflicts, and so again, alternative spaces become

necessary. In addition, setting schools as centers of community life, if

designed and implemented strategically, can increase a student’s expo-

sure to a number of diverse ways of thinking and being. As Lynn


Davies argues, such education can serve to mitigate the extremism that

often results from collective historical traumas. I do not unproblemati-

cally accept the “contact hypothesis,” which argues that contact with

unfamiliar groups makes us less likely to stereotype them.23 Yet gain-

ing more factual, three-dimensional views of especially those groups

whom one has historically been in conflict with is essential for de-esca-

lation, preventing future conflict, and for the narrative transformation

that is our ultimate goal in conflicts driven by traumatized collective

memory.

One such example of educators working to intervene in a pro-

tracted conflict, one especially characterized by historical trauma, is

the battle between the Israelis and Palestinians over the Occupied

Territories. No one would argue that peace education curriculum

alone can transform such a violent and protracted conflict. Economic

development, political settlement, and the end of the occupation are

essential. Still, peace educators have been for decades now, in both

Israel and Palestine, working to help create the social and cultural

context in which the needed political transformations can have a

hope of taking place. For example, a colleague of mine helps to run

a dual-language Hebrew/Arabic school. Here, students in early ele-

mentary learn and play together daily, speaking one another’s lan-

guages and addressing basic concepts like how they are alike and

different. As Zvi Beckerman relates, peace education work has also

addressed teacher training. His research, for example, centered on

teacher narratives of attempts (sometimes successful, sometimes not)

to engage their older high school and undergraduate students in dia-

logues about the painful history between Israel and Palestine. Accord-

ing to the authors, even the teachers experienced difficulties with

honesty and empathic dialogue. After all, teachers themselves are

members of identity groups and parties to the conflict. These dia-

logues were the most successful when facilitators were able to

empower the weaker party and to create a safe space for emotion

—“critical emotional praxis,” as Michalinos Zembylas calls it.24 This

critical emotional praxis involves dialogue and reflective space to

reflect on one’s role in the conflict, one’s perception of the Other,

the emotions the conflict has engendered, one’s social and political

privilege, and similar issues. Needless to say, this is difficult psycho-

logical and emotional labor, and not every student (or parent or

administrator) will be ready. Success is never promised. Yet such

interventions, again, are essential if we are to finally create the social


and cultural climate in which the economic and political reforms nec-

essary for conflict transformation can occur.

The salient point here in this discussion of schools as a center of

community life is that if teachers are going to take on the sorts of

activities I recommend below, two things are essential. One is that the

participants in any possible futures dialogues or oral histories must

reflect the diversity, and yes the divisions, of the community, or the

point is moot. Second, school leaders must do all in their power to

integrate the school into partnerships with the community and build

the relationships needed to build support for the sort of curriculum I

recommend in this article. As I observe throughout this article, it will

be inescapably political and controversial, and so I dwell here some

on the context and groundwork necessary to maximize chances for

success.

RECLAIM THE AFFECTIVE DOMAIN

I once had a middle school student ask me why so many students

always cried in my class; her question was prompted by a new round

of journal sharing in my critical literacy class. The girls’ entries were

often honest and emotional, and indeed, the tears would flow. As a

critical peace educator, I was determined that I would guard space for

the critical literacy, emotional lives, and creative expression of my stu-

dents. Critical literacy refers to empowering students with the skills to

“deconstruct” a text to understand its possible role producing or chal-

lenging hegemonic historical narratives of the powerful. For me, this

student’s comment was a powerful reminder of the importance of the

“affective domain,” which refers to the role of emotion in deep, trans-

formative learning, in any peace education classroom. Arguably, this

is even truer of a critical peace education classroom which wishes to

be a part of exposing, interrupting, and transforming large, historically

entrenched cycles of violence and the hegemonic narratives which

serve to legitimize them. The affective domain is especially relevant to

curriculum and pedagogy related to conflicts driven by historical mem-

ory because of the deep, often transgenerational trauma that typically

characterizes protracted social conflicts.25

The implications for peace educators teaching about conflicts

involving serious historical trauma are several. One, if peace educators

are going to be able to address some of history’s hardest questions in

the classroom, we must be prepared to facilitate incredibly personal


and painful dialogues with students whose families may well have

been on opposing sides of a violent conflict. In my experience and

observation, little in our formal training as educators prepares us for

this demand. Teachers who themselves may have experienced loss or

trauma due to a violent conflict must give explicit attention to their

own mental health and healing. To foster this, school systems must be

intentional about creating space for what are sometimes called profes-

sional learning communities. As the name suggests, these communities

include educators who are partially excused from teaching and other

duties regularly to collaboratively solve problems, create integrated,

interdisciplinary curriculum, offer one another professional develop-

ment in a particular area of expertise, and similar activities. In com-

munities that have been impacted by violent conflict, and therefore are

still processing the collective memory, trauma healing, community

building, and analysis of the drivers of the conflict, as well as possibili-

ties for resolution, will need to be central objectives of such school

communities. Of course, the local community must embrace these

goals as well; schools are never separate from their communities, as

we reflected above. The affective domain will be a key part of making

effective use of futures visioning and oral histories in the peace educa-

tion classroom; certainly, engaging historical narratives of trauma will

surface raw emotion for students and teachers alike.

THE 200-YEAR PRESENT AND FUTURES VISIONING

The above, of course, has provided some background on critical

peace education, its potential for helping to realize sustainable peace-

building, and some of the more systemic changes needed to make the

sort of peace methodologies I am suggesting possible. Here, we come

to a discussion of one of those methodologies: futures visioning. Class-

rooms in postconflict societies can be spaces for what Elise Boulding

referred to as the 200-year present—the collective visioning of where a

community wishes to be several generations from now. She suggested

that if we as a community are mindful of the “200-year present,” this

consciousness can contribute to a peace culture by enhancing aware-

ness of future consequences resulting from present actions.26 The

underlying concept is that community members involved in a conflict

often become entrapped in a number of social and psychological pro-

cesses that can escalate the conflict. One such process is a desire for

revenge, which can even overpower what the conflict party’s original


goals were. The other is a tendency to expend resources—blood and

treasure—implementing conflict behaviors that are not producing the

result the conflict group wishes to achieve. One further process is that

all too human ability we have to filter out information that discon-

firms our preconceptions and focus only on information that proves

what we wish to believe.27 Dialogue frames like the “200-year pres-

ent” can provide a way to counter such tendencies. The concept inher-

ently focuses participants on the future, nudging us out of the traps of

the present. It asks us to focus on what we want to see for future gen-

erations, calling directly for solidarity. One particular insight of Boul-

ding’s framework is how wasteful and destructive of resources

conflicts often are, especially water, food, land, and infrastructure. In

this way, her frame pushes parties to the conflict to consider the

impact of this on future generations as well. I did this with my own

students in the juvenile detention center, inviting them to imagine their

own lives, their families, and communities in twenty years. These sorts

of “future visioning” exercises invite students into a space of potential

healing.

Other peace educators are engaging in similar activities. A current

graduate student of mine has shared stories of futures dialogues

around the wars and atrocities in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Serbia. Teach-

ers in Guatemala, for example, invited students to share family experi-

ences of the civil war, despite the massively dangerous and politicized

context, emphasizing the need for an end to atrocities and partisan

violence.28 Beckerman and Zembylas both engaged in similar dia-

logues around collective memory and working toward a more peaceful

future with teachers participating in their research.29 Elise Boulding,

drawing on the work of Fred Polak, specifically spoke to the uses of

futures visioning for peacebuilding. She quotes him as observing that,

“societies tended to be empowered by positive images of the future.”30

The weight and pain associated with collective traumas seem best pro-

cessed in conjunction with being able to actively participate in articu-

lating a safer future.

In futures visioning, students hear the experiences and perspec-

tives of others, which might be radically different from their own, and

have their own basic needs, legitimacy, and humanity affirmed.

Futures visioning is also essential for reclaiming the classroom as a

critical and engaged space as previously discussed. Just as “futuring”

exercises can build empathy, community, and invite a student’s emo-

tional life into the classroom, they can also be a pedagogy which


invites students to build essential skills for critical participation in a

democracy, such as collaboration, setting collective priorities, and

problem-solving in diverse contexts. The awareness of one’s duty and

right to participate, as basic as it sounds, must be explicitly cultivated

in young people. This is especially true in societies that are working

to rebuild not just infrastructure but also trust and the social contract

postconflict.

NARRATIVE TRANSFORMATION AND FUTURES VISIONING

As I observed at the beginning of this article, the most genuine,

sustainable means of resolving conflicts characterized by historical

memory is narrative transformation. Massive historical traumas, such

as slavery, genocide, or civil war, are often legitimized by dominant

cultural narratives that seek to justify the unfolding violence.31 The

result is that those marginalized are often socialized and acculturated

to believe they deserve the violence or exclusion, or at least to concur

that they are powerless to fight back. Narrative transformation, I

argue, cannot truly occur without careful attention to the manner in

which textbooks tell the story of a particular conflict, and peace edu-

cators are developing a strong exploration of the content of history

textbooks.32 These textbooks typically present the official government

view of the conflict. Reformers have struggled in many contexts to

achieve real curriculum reform in highly politicized postconflict con-

texts.33 Given all we know regarding how central schools are to shap-

ing our identities, both as individuals and as members of potential

conflict groups, it is clear that peace and security more broadly are

not possible without such reforms. At the same time, scholarship on

peace education and historical memory has also worked to move

beyond the textbook, giving careful attention to larger issues of peda-

gogy and epistemology. In addition to preserving classroom space for

the affective domain, “futuring” with students can also open critical

dialogical space to identify and challenge these hegemonic conflictual

narratives so often codified in history textbooks. Humans, and perhaps

especially young people, are natural storytellers, and so classrooms

can also be a useful space for telling a new story—replacing old narra-

tives of violence, division, and enemy images with new collective nar-

ratives of shared humanity and superordinate goals. Replacing prior

destructive narratives with new ones in which all parties are viewed as

human and legitimate actors, where all have the right to have rights,


is the essence of narrative transformation in oppressive contexts. This

work is inherently subversive.34

While every context is different, perhaps the following will guide

teachers wanting to facilitate such dialogues with their students. One

guideline might be to not be alone! Collaboration and partnership

with parents and colleagues will be essential. Second, be prepared by

taking time to fully examine your own view of the conflict in question

and its history. Do all you can to be aware of your own biases and

pain. Teachers, in my view, should also be prepared to intervene, by

even removing a student if need be, if someone’s behavior results in

the classroom no longer being a safe space, either physically or emo-

tionally. Finally, of course, we must ensure that all views of the con-

flict are represented, even ones we disagree with. Focusing the

dialogue on the role of power, resources, and whose stories have been

heard (and whose have not) can help ensure that “representing all

views” does not reproduce a weaker group’s marginalization or create

a false equivalency.

I suggested elsewhere that class and small group dialogue can be

one way to guide students to challenging narratives of war and vio-

lence by actively cocreating alternative narratives of peace. Engaging

students in the arts is another powerful means of trying to accomplish

this goal. Peace educators, in venues both inside schools and in the

community, have been developing such programs in some of the most

difficult contexts. One program in Lebanon, for example, invites youth

to critically assess media narratives and stereotypes about various sec-

tarian groups and how they behaved during the civil war.35 Projects

like that of Search for Common Ground come to mind as well. They

engage young people not just in critiquing old cultural and media nar-

ratives which have fed violence, but actively call on youth to create

new narratives using children’s radio and TV shows. While under-

resourced programs alone cannot be expected to create a fully peaceful

resolution after such a bitterly fought and violent civil war, it is

important that the work of engaging youth in examining the historical

narratives they have received about the civil war is happening, espe-

cially in this difficult time for Lebanon with the Syrian civil war

ripping open old wounds.

As the above examples imply, peace education work is not limited

to formal schools. However, this visioning of the future can be woven

into traditional school subjects, such as languages, science, or social

studies, but it could also be given a dedicated space of its own in the


school day. This seems preferable wherever possible. Visioning of the

future and the encouragement of creativity and imagination are essen-

tial to creating the confident and innovative adults most societies

would wish to have. In postconflict societies still grappling with the

transgenerational transmission of trauma related to a conflict, such

pedagogical space becomes even more essential. I am reminded of the

work of educators like Augusto Boal here, considered to be the foun-

der of the theater of the oppressed.36 He used theater to encourage

young people on the margins of society in Brazil to tell the stories of

their lives, hopes, and struggles. When we are invited (or even gently

pushed) out of the perhaps safer spaces of distant intellect, we connect

with those in the classroom, learning community and building empa-

thy. Empathy, another central theme in the literature on historical

memory and peace education, is essential to rehumanizing former

combatants to one another, as dehumanization in the context of a

highly escalated, violent historical conflict is almost certain to have

taken place. Rebuilding community in such a context is essential to

future security and to long-term processes of political and social devel-

opment for any society. Today’s students, of course, are tomorrow’s

leaders. For these reasons, creating and protecting space for youth to

envision a future of coexistence is vital for peace educators implement-

ing their curriculum in the context of collective violence and the cycles

of historical memory and transgenerational trauma that such collective

violence ignites.

My central argument throughout this work is that critical peace

education must be a part of any attempt to transform conflicts driven

by collective memories of historical trauma; this is why the growing

conversation between the literatures on history and memory and peace

education must deepen. Further, I hope to usefully identify several

concrete ways in which classroom educators can be a part of inter-

rupting the cycle of transgenerational trauma and collective violence.

Reclaiming the affective domain, especially through futures visioning,

is one such technique. We turn next to oral histories in the classroom,

which I suggest can be another way for peace educators to reclaim the

classrooms as critical pedagogical spaces.

RECLAIM THE CRITICAL: ORAL HISTORY

A noticeable feature of the literature on historical memory has

been the use and importance of oral histories for the reclaiming of


memory by a community that has suffered trauma, oppression, or

marginalization. As Cobb notes, one strategy of an oppressor’s hege-

monic narrative is to render the other party invisible, or at least illegit-

imate.37 Recovering lost or suppressed collective memories of mass

trauma is a vital beginning to the process of social healing and gaining

justice for the victims. Brian Roberts, for example, writes that oral his-

tory “gives a voice to those who do not leave accounts or have biogra-

phers.”38 If oral history can indeed interrupt cycles of injustice and

the resulting violence, the importance of this ability to give voice to

those previously silenced cannot be overstated. This new visibility and

audibility, of course, are only the beginning of a long and often ardu-

ous process of healing, community development, and building peace,

but none of the latter processes can begin if a particular group remains

invisible. Regarding such empowerment, Roberts further argues that

“there is a need for a much more conscious history in which the

ordinary members of the public are part of the production of their

own histories.”39 With respect to postconflict situations, “oral his-

tory,” Roberts observes, can have a “complex role. . .in the processes

of ‘truth and reconciliation’ between communities—the difficulties of

‘coming to terms’ with the legacies of the past where, for instance,

there are competing claims (for land and resources) and past crimes

need to be recognized.”40

In her compelling edition Memory and Totalitarianism, Luisa

Passerini argues that in the process of recovering from totalitarian

regimes (or other mass violence), reclaiming colonized memory in the

Habermasian sense is vital. This term colonized memory speaks to the

process whereby an oppressed people internalize the hegemonic narra-

tive which the elite, oppressor group tells about them. Of course, the

dominant narrative will often describe an oppressed group as childlike,

violent, lazy, unstable, and other confining and controlling terms. Oral

historians thus argue that this methodology can empower dominated

groups to create and tell their own history as they see it, challenging

the hegemonic narrative. I extend this to suggest that, because of their

potential for empowerment via the self-production of one’s own his-

tory, oral histories are ideal for peace educators both in and out of the

formal classroom. They can allow students to both tell and hear the

Other’s narrative of historical trauma as a first step toward healing

and the cocreation of a more peaceful future. It is terribly easy for the

words on paper to minimize the pain, fear, and even nonviolent con-

flict that can be associated with this kind of peacebuilding. Again, I


do not at all suggest that such dialogue, pedagogical, cultural, and

community development processes necessary to build sustainable peace

are guaranteed, simple, or easy. They are highly contingent, lengthy,

painful, and complex. What I argue is that school systems and

the examination of historical narratives, especially when they involve

chosen traumas, must play a part in the peace process.

This process of building sustainable peace cannot take place with-

out pluralistic dialogue, again precisely because narratives of exclusion

typically have provided the social and cultural justification for perpet-

uating violence. As Passerini argues, “To be a democrat [note the

lower-case “d”] means to consider that the main political task is to

acknowledge that every person has the right, and thus should have the

opportunity to speak and to engage in real dialogue.”41 Her volume’s

case histories, spanning Europe’s devastation by totalitarian regimes in

the mid-20th century, include radical feminist resistance to Franco in

Spain, the near-disappearance from history of mass famine in the

Soviet Union, the cultural revicitmization of Jews who returned to

Holland after the Holocaust, and oral histories of surviving the Gu-

lags. Passerini’s study notes the manner in which autocratic regimes

can actively work to shape public memory to their advantage. She

writes of “the attempt to eradicate aspects of the past in, for instance,

the renewal of churches, new street and town names and so on. But

this is to pretend that events have not taken place—it is ‘the violence

of the present on memory’.”42 In some cases, this causes public mem-

ory to “go underground” (if one refuses to forget what it is too dan-

gerous politically to remember) or can cause “feelings of guilt and

complicity” as some are induced to cooperate with their own oppres-

sion.43 In such examples, we can see the role of oral history as one

part of the process of reweaving a torn social fabric and overturning

the silence and invisibility of the victims. Given the need of totalitar-

ian regimes to “. . .impose on the whole population the necessity of

reciting what ‘has to be said’,” the implication of schools in the crea-

tion and reproduction of totalitarianisms becomes clear.44

This is just as true for the more subtle undercurrents of totalitar-

ianism which can coexist inside developed democracies. If schools

can be sites of conflict and oppression, schools can also be sites of

nonviolent resistance (or when they cannot, we can seek other venues

for critical peace education). Peace educators in postconflict environ-

ments can engage students in communities which have experienced

collective trauma in collecting oral histories and, where students are


comfortable, sharing their own experiences for publication. As Boul-

ding argued, intergenerational experiences and relationships are essen-

tial for building a culture of peace and yet formal schooling rarely if

ever offers students (or adults) such opportunities. This is especially

desirable in conflict or postconflict situations which often cause deep

generational divisions.45 When one remembers the relevance of trans-

generational trauma to conflicts driven by historical memory, the

importance of such intergenerational learning opportunities becomes

even more clear. Healing the collective trauma and reweaving the

social fabric require difficult dialogues, and oral histories can be an

effective means of inviting students into those dialogues. As Passerini

writes, “. . .reciprocal critique and collaboration are essential to the

understanding of history.”46 Critical peace education seeks to foster

what Passerini calls a “democratic consciousness,” which is developed

in postconflict contexts (be they the collapse of totalitarian regimes,

or after a genocide or civil war). This democratic consciousness for

her, as an oral historian, and for us as critical peace educators, is to

“participate in different memories, to share their differences not to

demonstrate their universality but rather to insist on the diversity and

plurality of memory.”47 Here is perhaps the clearest benefit of the

growing dialogue between the literature on history and memory, and

the literature on critical peace education. Recovering lost or forbid-

den memories is essential precisely because the refusal of plurality is

the ethos behind all totalitarianisms, whether those totalitarianisms

are in Europe, China, or the United States. In this manner, oppressive

power groups can deny another group their very humanity and thus

their “right to have rights.”48 Few other actions could be more deep-

ly or radically political than telling the story of a people who were

once silenced.

From a classroom educator’s more pragmatic standpoint, oral his-

tories are a methodology simple enough that young people can learn

the techniques with some training. They can strengthen the role that I

discussed above of schools functioning as community centers. They

are also consistent with the experiential, authentic, dialogical ethos of

peace pedagogy. With such activities, students and schools are inti-

mately engaged in understanding historical conflict narratives and in

creating a space for shaping new narratives. And given the numerous

skills involved in such a project, such as research, writing, and presen-

tation, educators (and parents) can rest assured that students are gain-

ing important skills they need from a curriculum.


Most important, in any critical peace education, activities and

curriculum must be of direct and immediate relevance to students’

lives. Gathering oral histories offers students a firsthand means of

learning from those involved what drove the conflict and how it

impacted people. Students should also be invited to form their own

views of the conflict. Exposure to a variety of views on what exactly

occurred via these oral histories is one way peace educators can

“reclaim the critical” in their classrooms. A critical theory approach

to peace education places priority on inviting students to examine and

challenge received wisdom and to grow in knowledge and awareness

of power dynamics relevant to their lives. This implements one of the

central, most basic insights of critical peace educators, which is that

students and marginalized communities must come to experience

themselves as powerful agents capable of acting in the world in their

own interest. Often the dehumanizing narratives of the hegemonic

group have been precisely (if not consciously) shaped to convince the

marginalized group of their own inferiority, and thus their need for

the power elites to remain in power. The methodology I am describing

here can be a part of the justpeace49 system by challenging and trans-

forming this dynamic.

PEACE IS POLITICAL

Given that much of the literature on historical memory, as well as

critical peace education, is so academic and theoretical, my goal here

has been to grapple with the realities of classroom teachers and school

administrators as they attempt to open space for reconciliation and

healing in their classrooms. A taller order is hard to imagine. Adding

to the challenges inherent in such work is the reality, as discussed

above, of the backlash against peace education, particularly when con-

tested history is involved. Thus, in some ways, this article is a call for

the politicization of peace education! This may strike some as odd in

such divisive times. Still, I would respond that the work of sustainable

peacebuilding is unavoidably political! When state violence, often

backed by narrative and cultural violence, characterizes a particular

history and sociopolitical system, to call for and teach peace is inher-

ently a political act. Just as other professionals, such as doctors and

lawyers, shape policy and demand the necessary resources for their

professions, I would encourage us as peace educators to not grow

weary in being activists and advocates for what we do.


I argue that this resistance and backlash are an opportunity for

peace educators, not a barrier. Recent events make it more than plain

that racial reconciliation has not occurred in the United States, for

example. Such events include the murder of Trayvon Martin and subse-

quent acquittal of his killer, as well as the legal challenges to any sort of

multicultural education in states such as Texas and Arizona. (What if

critical peace educators in Florida invited students to collect oral histo-

ries of experiences with local law enforcement?) What all of this again

means is that critical peace educators cannot escape the reality that

peace is political. This is true in my own context of the United States

and even more true in environments of overt, violent conflict (Syria) or

those grappling with recent, radical change (e.g., Iraq, Libya).

Conflict groups engage in violence for what they consider to be

valid, necessary reasons. Groups who have benefitted from the con-

tested status quo, naturally, will not want to see their power weak-

ened, and one can almost always follow the money to identify

individuals and groups creating wealth from the conflict. For these

reasons, the mere statement that achieving peace is a desirable state or

an end to strive for is a political statement. Groups whose collective

identity has been shaped around a historical trauma will likely even

find the idea of peace with the enemy dangerous and offensive. At

such high levels of protraction and violent escalation in a conflict, the

transgenerational transmission of trauma is common, as are enemy

images of the Other.50 As Zembylas, among others, notes, this means

that an essential job of teachers and students of peace education is

identifying, deconstructing and reconstructing the very narrative itself

that has been told about the conflict and the peoples who have

engaged in it.51 Blood has often been spilled and great trauma suffered

to defend narratives which, as a result, have become central, even

sacred, to a collective’s identity. They will not go quietly. Hence,

again, peace is political. Those of us advocating it in schools, which

we must remember are often compulsory, must be prepared for high

levels of emotion and resistance from students, colleagues, administra-

tors, and parents. One way of handling this is, as I noted above, seek-

ing spaces other than public schools for critical peace education, but

neither would I have us cede this space entirely. We must be prepared

to articulate and defend the argument that a state of peace is prefera-

ble and understand that such a stance can never be politically neutral.

Pretentions to neutrality or “teaching the conflict” are not adequate

for critical peace education goals.


Given the challenges and complexities above, I should articulate a

number of cautions. If classrooms and school systems are going to suc-

ceed as spaces of reconciliation and healing of mass historical traumas,

such as colonization, genocide, slavery, or civil war, teachers simply

must be given the support they need to work out their own struggles

with trauma. This includes, if need be, counseling and social supports.

Most education budgets worldwide, but especially those in postconflict

environments, make this a challenge; however, this support for educa-

tors is a must if programs of critical peace education are to be able to

interrupt cycles of transgenerational transmission of trauma. It is also

necessary ultimately to understand building a culture of peace as a

“multitrack” undertaking.52 I believe we must, as critical peace educa-

tors, continue to resist views of critical peace education that have the

effect of isolating schools from their community. Schools, we com-

monly acknowledge, are only one part of the overall peace and con-

flict system, yet we still do not act on this understanding effectively

enough. That is, we do not fully take advantage of all of the ways in

which schools and their communities could connect for mutual benefit

in building cultures of peace. While there is not space here to fully

explore this, effective curricula and programs might be guided by the

following questions: How can teachers and students be of service to

others in the community in addressing local challenges? How can

communities repay this service through resources and support, offering

perhaps expertise outside of education (such as trauma healing)? What

roles do local businesses, faith communities, and media play in the rel-

evant historical conflicts, and what opportunities for partnership might

exist for building students’ skills and enhancing a community’s peace

culture? I cannot offer definitive answers to such questions here, as

the answers must be generated organically and collaboratively at the

local level in a particular school system’s community, but my hope is

that these questions might inspire and focus such dialogue.

As the cautions above recognize, schools and teachers alone can-

not fully interrupt and transform historical, protracted cycles of vio-

lence. Yet neither can their centrality to the peace and conflict system

be underestimated. This is especially true of conflicts which are highly

characterized by memories of historical trauma around which group

identities have formed and been handed down from one generation to

the next. Along with the media, families, and faith communities,

schools are central shapers of human identity for most of us. This is

especially true when we take into account history and the role of our


own nation or identity group within history. Schools are where we

may encounter the Other. If well planned, they can be places of cross-

cutting community ties which enable us to confront historical biases

and consider critically our own role in larger conflicts. In highly polar-

ized communities or societies, a critical peace educator’s classroom

may in fact be the only space where peace and reconciliation is imag-

ined or spoken of as a viable possibility. In spite of the significant

challenges I describe here, the power of this potential is immense. As

Elise Boulding memorably wrote, “People can’t work for what they

can’t imagine.”53

NOTES

1. Tricia Jones and Randy Compton, eds., Kids Working It Out: Stories andStrategies for Making Peace in Our Schools (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002);

Linda Lantieri and Janet Patti, Waging Peace in Our Schools (Boston, MA: BeaconPress, 1996).

2. Elavie Ndura-Ou�edraogo and Randall Amster, eds., Building Cultures ofPeace: Transdisciplinary Voices of Hope and Action (Cambridge, UK: CambridgeScholars Publishing, 2009); Ian Harris and Mary Lee Morrison, Peace Education,2nd edition (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2003); Maria Montessori, Educa-tion and Peace, trans. Helen R. Lane (Chicago: Henry Regency Publishing, 1972).

3. Cheryl Lynn Duckworth, Terri Williams and Barbara Allen, “What DoStudents Learn When We Teach Peace,” Journal of Peace Education 9, no. 1

(2012): 81–99.4. Zvi Beckerman, “The Complexities of Teaching Historical Conflictual Nar-

ratives in Integrated Palestinian-Jewish Schools in Israel,” International Review ofEducation 55 (2009): 235–250; Claire McGlynn, Peace Education in Conflict andPost Conflict Societies: Comparative Perspectives (New York, NY: Palgrave Mac-

millan, 2009); Lynn Davies, Education and Conflict: Complexities and Chaos (Lon-don: Routledge, 2004).

5. Elizabeth Cole et al., Teaching the Violent Past: History Education andReconciliation (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007).

6. Vamik Volkan, Bloodlines: From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism (Boul-der, CO: Westview Press, 1998); Zvi Beckerman and Michalinos Zembylas, Teach-ing Contested Narratives: Identity, Memory and Reconciliation (Cambridge, UK:

Cambridge University Press, 2012).

7. Michalinos Zembylas, The Politics of Trauma in Education (New York,NY: Palgrave, 2008); Beckerman and Zembylas, Teaching Contested Narratives,71–114.

8. Cheryl Lynn Duckworth, “Growing a Gandhi: Critical Peace Education,Conflict Transformation and the Scholarship of Engagement,” in Conflict Resolu-tion and the Scholarship of Engagement: Partnerships Transforming Conflict, eds.Cheryl Lynn Duckworth and Consuelo Doria Kelly (London: Cambridge Scholars

Publishing, 2012).


9. Sara Cobb, “Narrative Analysis,” in Conflict, 2nd edition, eds. Sandra Chel-

delin, Daniel Druckman, and Larissa Fast (London: Continuum Press, 2008), 103.10. Ibid.

11. Cobb, S. “A Developmental Approach to Turning Points: ‘Irony’ as an

Ethics for Negotiation Pragmatics,” Harvard Negotiation Law Review, 11 (2006):

147–197.12. Volkan, Bloodlines, 36.13. Zembylas, The Politics of Trauma in Education.14. Karina Korostelina, “History Education and Social Identity,” Identity: An

International Journal of Theory and Research 8, no. 1 (2008): 25–45.15. Elizabeth Cole et al., Teaching the Violent Past.16. Howard Zinn, Howard Zinn on Democratic Education (Boulder, CO:

Paradigm Publishers, 2005).17. Elise Boulding, Cultures of Peace: The Hidden Side of History (Syracuse

NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 139–160.18. Raul Reyes, “The Other Arizona Battle: A New Law Makes Ethnic Stud-

ies Illegal,” Christian Science Monitor, June 3, 2010, http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010/0603/The-other-Arizona-battle-A-new-law-makes-eth-

nic-studies-classes-illegal; Amanda Paulson, “Texas Textbook War; ‘Slavery’ or

‘Atlantic Triangular Trade?’” Christian Science Monitor, May 19, 2010, http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0519/Texas-textbook-war-Slavery-or-

Atlantic-triangular-trade.

19. Paulson, Texas Textbook War.20. Duckworth, Growing a Gandhi, 50–71.21. Tamra Pearson d’Estr�ee, “Dynamics,” in Conflict, 2nd edition, eds. San-

dra Cheldelin, Daniel Druckman, and Larissa Fast (London: Continuum Press,

2008), 71–92.22. Ibid.23. Lynn Davies, Education and Conflict: Complexities and Chaos.24. Zembylas, The Politics of Trauma in Education.25. Zembylas, The Politics of Trauma in Education, 136–148.26. Boulding, Cultures of Peace, 163.27. Dean Pruit and Sung Hee Kim, Social Conflict: Escalation, Stalemate and

Settlement, 3rd edition (New York, NY: McGraw Hill., 2003).

28. Elizabeth Cole et al., Teaching the Violent Past: History Education andReconciliation.

29. Zvi Beckerman and Michalinos Zembylas, Teaching Contested Narra-tives: Identity, Memory and Reconciliation.

30. Boulding, Cultures of Peace, 105.31. Jason Campbell, “Genocide Prevention and the Scholarship of Engage-

ment,” in Conflict Resolution and the Scholarship of Engagement: PartnershipsTransforming Conflict, eds. Cheryl Lynn Duckworth and Consuelo Doria Kelly

(London: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), 170–178.32. Korostelina, “History Education and Social Identity,” 25–45; Jeannine

Spink, “Education and Politics in Afghanistan: The Importance of an Education Sys-

tem in Peacebuilding and Reconstruction,” Journal of Peace Education 2, no. 2(2005): 195–200; Zembylas, The Politics of Trauma in Education.


http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010/0603/The-other-Arizona-battle-A-new-law-makes-ethnic-studies-classes-illegal



http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0519/Texas-textbook-war-Slavery-or-Atlantic-triangular-trade



33. Elizabeth Cole et al., Teaching the Violent Past.34. Cobb, “Narrative Analysis,” in Conflict.35. Irma-Kaarina Ghosn, Educators and Youth Building Peace: Strategies

from In and Out of School (Lebanese American University, 2010), http://

www.lau.edu.lb/academics/centers-institutes/ipje/publications/EduYouthBuild-

Peace.pdf.36. Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed, trans. Charles A. McBride (New

York, NY: Theatre Communications Group, 1993).

37. Cobb, “Narrative Analysis,” in Conflict.38. Brian Roberts, Biographical Research (Philadelphia: Open University

Press, 2002).

39. Ibid., 102.

40. Ibid., 110.41. Luisa Passerini, Memory and Totalitarianism (Piscataway, NJ: Transac-

tion Publishers, 2005), 4.

42. Ibid., 9.

43. Ibid., 11.44. Ibid., 8.

45. Boulding, Cultures of Peace.46. Luisa Passerini, Memory and Totalitarianism, 14.47. Ibid., 18.

48. Seyla Benhabib, Dignity in Adversity: Human Rights in Troubled Times(Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2011).

49. Lisa Schirch, The Little Book of Strategic Peacebuilding (Intercourse, PA:Good Books, 2005).

50. Volkan, Bloodlines.51. Zembylas, The Politics of Trauma, 40–52.52. Louise Diamond and John W. McDonald, Multi-Track Diplomacy: A Sys-

tems Approach to Peace (West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press, 1996).

53. Boulding, Cultures of Peace, 29.


http://www.lau.edu.lb/academics/centers-institutes/ipje/publications/EduYouthBuildPeace.pdf



history, memory and peace education: history's hardest questions in the classroom

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