Reshaping the Future: Education and Postconflict Reconstruction

World Bank, (2005).
Washington, D.C.: World Bank; 93 pages. ISBN 0821359592.

When Burke famously said that “education is the chief defense of a nation,” he hardly would have visualized a situation where education would be the chief instigator of conflict. Rather than preventing war, educational systems have provoked internal dissensions. Surmounting the usual refrain of financial strangulation of educational systems and prevailing over the unvarying emphasis on commercialization of education, this monograph by the Human Development Network Education Hub of the World Bank focuses on the ability of education “in both preventing conflict and rebuilding post-conflict societies.” Specifically, what is the fate of schools after war / conflict?

In this study, 52 war-affected or conflict-ridden territories were identified. Alarmingly, about 60 percent of countries rated “low” on the Human Development Index have been involved in some form of conflict since the 1990s. This is an explicit reiteration of the fact that a nation’s stage of development and presence of conflict have a few things in common. This economic concern notwithstanding, a few other factors exacerbated the situation in risk-prone societies, including ethnic dominance, civil war, discrimination and a distorted curriculum.  

Triggers, Target and Effects

Besides bringing down the statue of Saddam Hussein, Iraqis rejoiced at the public burning of textbooks that had pictures of the dictator—a very clear case of using the educational system as an apparatus of propaganda. Impeded access to education is another important trigger of conflict, with Burundi (cultural bigotry) and Kosovo (Kosovo Albanian students forced out of public schools) being testimony to it. Furthermore, the occurrence of shift in the medium of instruction from Tamil to Sinhalese in the 1960s and 1970s in Sri Lanka, along with the reduction in quota for Tamils in Sri Lankan universities, led to the Tamil separatist movement on the island.

This is one part of the issue. The other is the strategic importance of a school or a college during conflict, given the incidence of destruction of places of learning. The physical infrastructure of a functioning school is often seen as an appendage of the ruling party’s clout over society, and this often instigates an immediate agenda to destroy the building. Killing of both teachers and the taught, over and above tearing down schools and colleges, is often perceived to be a symbol of weakening a state’s hold over civil society. What is more, such institutions more often than not serve as barracks, places of storage, and temporary shelters for displaced people, becoming, in a conflict event, easy and immediate targets for dissenters. True to form, Iraq has had about 85 percent of its classrooms destroyed, and Kosovo has only 35 percent of its classrooms intact. Timor-Leste has escaped with a paltry five percent of its classrooms unharmed.

Loss of life—of teachers and students—is the most explicit of the effects of war / conflict, buttressed by the psychological trauma of the survivors. Survivors are at greater risk in areas of mines and unexploded ordinances; permanent disability is yet another potential facet of a survivor’s life. 

Post conflict, it is a sanguine aspiration of the people to have more political space, providing greater role for civil society, as witnessed by El Salvador and Guatemala. This is not the case in every nation. Widespread chaos and myopic policies can supplant the earlier regime. In all events, the World Bank study advocates a “sequence in post-conflict reconstruction” of educational systems, on the following lines:

1. Let people know that children are returning to school. That is, get the system to function.
2. Purge all pre-conflict symbols in schools, e.g., distorted curricula, offensive textbooks, insulting murals and graffiti on walls.
3. Develop consensus among people.
4. Ensure community participation and introduce stakeholder dialogues.

The above points may be easier said that done. Nevertheless, there are countries that have re-established a good educational system, post-conflict. In the run-up to this goal, there are many challenges to be met. It is in the itemizing of these issues that the strength of the study lays: need for reconstructing curricula, training teachers, inducting displaced / refugees into the system, coordinating the inclusion of child soldiers and orphans, designing strategies to take in physically and mentally affected students, inter alia. Vocational training and accelerated learning modules for adults too are advocated. The role of civil society is highly sought after in this reformist operation. After all, a functioning school is a positive indication of a society’s empowered status.

There are two aspects on which the present study is unwavering: negation of the “access first, quality later” principle of war-torn systems, and promoting peace education through attitude and value formation.

Reflective of the title, the study does aim to “reshape the future” of children, but lacks any futuristic guidelines on how to prevent war through education. Despite being a recent publication, the study is conspicuously silent on the post-Taliban effect of Afghanistan’s education and the concomitant gender dimensions. However, the study is suggestive and raises a lot of issues, hopeful of eliciting positive and constructive responses from the intelligentsia. As the 2000 Dakar Framework for Action of UNESCO highlights, “The significant growth of tensions, conflict and war, both within nations and between nations and peoples, is a cause of great concern. Education has a key role to play in preventing conflict in the future and building lasting peace and stability.”

G. Narasimha Raghavan