We have discussed in great detail how education has the potential to carry out a more heinous role if ill-intended.
But, the way I see it in a post-conflict area, it is most important to focus on education and reform educational institutes to allow children time to heal and process. I hold education as a tool for post-conflict states integral because it gives citizens a chance to rebuild.
But the more important question is, how do you return to "normal" in terms of educational prospects?
1. Curriculum: In a post-conflict setting, it is essential to reform the curriculum to allow it to be tailored to the needs of a post-conflict state and its citizens. Transparency in terms of why the state encountered conflict is important in laying down the foundation to learn from past mistakes (Cole and Barsalou, 2006). Not only this, there needs to be a reform pertaining to the history courses as that allows space to take ownership of the country's narrative in peacebuilding. Most importantly, there needs to be psycho-social help provided to every student. This is paramount as it will allow the child to heal from the trauma of witnessing a conflict, losing a loved one, losing a home, etc.
2. Peace Education
This conversation ties to the idea of "Peace Education (Harris and Morrison, 2011)." One where an individual is taught the repercussions of violence and several possible strategies to bring about peace. I find this concept most important because it allows young, impressionable minds to understand the implications of violence and teaches them a more peaceful way to mitigate political or social divides.
3. Teacher Development
One is not obvilious in understanding the pivotal role a teacher plays in the well-being of an individual. Teachers become even more important in a post-conflict setting because they help students heal and deal with the trauma they have faced. A teacher who lacks a professional understanding of the unique needs of a student who stems from a post-conflict area will not be able to cater to him the way someone with professional training can. Capacity-building workshops for teachers need to be implemented so they can learn different learning and teaching styles that can cover longer absences from the classroom. UNESCO-Liberia trained over 1300 teachers in 3 countries, improving children's classroom experiences.
4. Equality in Acess to Education
It is integral that everyone is given the opportunity to receive an education, especially young children. Education is the only way social factions can find cohesion within society. Education helps with uniform experiences, quality of life, and standard of living.
The only way I see this is through government intervention, greater resource allocation, and more concentration acknowledgement of the role education plays in one's life.
There's, of course, a lot more to do in post-conflict areas to educate people, but these are some stepping stones. However, the ease and how pragmatic implication of such policy mechanisms is, is a whole other discussion.
It's really an insightful blog to understand the mechanisms to deal with post-conflict educational crisis. As discussed earlier in class, in balochsitan, there have been no reforms since 2010 floods to cater students; there's still infrastructural issues, lack of basic school comodities, teachers' post conflict training issues, facilitation and proper policy making insufficiency that has led to still "underconsideration" debate of resolving post-conflict educational crisis in balochistan. the facts depict the state failure to provide post-conflict educational facililites to its people. According to UN, Pakistan is 23% less supportive in post-educational affairs towards its citizen as compared to other countires in the world. however, while reading these statistics, multiple questions poped up in my mind. First, if, we being students,…
Before launching an education program, policymakers and program planners should devote sufficient time to analyzing the country's backdrop, as well as the function education plays within it. This is especially vital in times of crisis or war.
Students in war and disaster zones often confront formidable obstacles to education, such as few resources and unqualified instructors. These obstacles should not be used as an excuse to provide a substandard education.
Great post. This post, specifically the point relating to reforming the history curriculum, reminded me of Rwanda. After the 1994 genocide, Rwanda completely took a 180 degree turn and changed its curriculum. So where differences and hate were once taught, now love and unity is being taught. Furthermore, they also reformed their history curriculum so cater to the fact that the upcoming generations do know what happened but they need to understand why it happened and what can be done to avoid such an occurrence in future.
I believe that the title of the blog itself portrays a very important aspect that how these young minds can be affected easily. When these children are recovering from conflict, it is important to pay attention to the kind of education they are being given.
I feel that it is important to give teachers trainings on how to deal with these children but also make sure that these teachers can actually take care of the children. A teacher can perform very well at a training but may be unable to do so in reality. It should also be made sure that these teachers are not affected by the conflict. They have a major responsibility of taking care of young minds…
This is one of the most important posts in my opinion as we have heard everyone to just "integrate" these students but are we really doing anything to do that? Your post helps provide many answers on how to integrate these students into society. I am glad to see teacher development as one of the point because during conflicts and post conflict many people tend to ignore that teachers though are affected also have to handle these students post conflict. Furthermore, I would like to suggest creative activities using art, music etc. and mental heath sessions for both teachers and faculty.