On International Day for Education, learning for lasting peace is a pipe-dream for many who do not get to school.
Above:Tsuma Kombo teaches an after-school club meeting at Vuga Primary School in Kaloleni, Kenya. Credit:CBM/Hayduk
The sixth International Day of Education will be celebrated on 24th January 2024 under the theme “learning for lasting peace”, with the assumption that education contributes to more peaceful societies. The idea is that the more educated a society is, the less likely it is to enter into wars of aggression and conflict.
It certainly isn’t true that educated leaders are less likely to engage in wars or bring society together. Lenin graduated from high school ranking first in his class. He distinguished himself in Latin and Greek and (eventually) qualified with a first-class Law Degree. Pol Pot was reportedly a mediocre student who benefited from a scholarship that enabled him to study in Marseille, however he did not finish his undergraduate degree. Hitler was similarly a poor student. Robert Mugabe studied economics at the University of London, albeit remotely, while Idi Amin had little formal education.
Research from the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) indicates that higher government spending on education is correlated with fewer and shorter conflicts. It doesn’t however establish a causal effect that one flows from the other.
Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker’s famous book The Better Angels of Our Nature, notes the importance of education in reducing conflict. Pinker highlights “the escalator of reason”—with education as a central component—as one of the most important “pacifying forces” of humanity’s violent history. However, a study by Otsby et al in 2019 found that while the existing evidence converges toward a consensus that education has an overall pacifying effect on conflict but that these general conclusions are challenged by evidence showing above-average levels of education among terrorists and genocide perpetrators.
For sure, involvement in conflict causes a reduction in investment in education – it isn’t conclusively true that the causation moves in the opposite direction. The GPE argues that investing more in education can foster economic growth and social equality, which, in turn, are associated with a decrease in conflicts.
All of this is noble and good of course. The aim of reducing conflicts, saving lives, building peaceful societies is a good thing. However, this comes with a risk of instrumentalising education which is a good in itself, not just something that contributes to other goods.
This is particularly true when we are talking about education in under-resourced settings, and when investment in ‘peace education’ and similar initiatives are prioritised over investment in the basic building blocks of education. While many claim that peace education is more necessary than ever, in a world mired in conflict, the evidence base that teaching children about peace and the values of harmonious living lead to more peaceful societies is sketchy at best.
Sustainable Development Goal 4, to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all by 2030, remains well off-track and with significant setbacks due to war and conflict particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.
UNESCO Director General, Audrey Azoulay said that education is in a state of emergency as recently as September 2023. Over 250 million children are out of school across the world. Since 2015, the number of children completing primary education has increased by less than three percentage points to 87%. The number completing secondary education, meanwhile, has increased by less than five to just 58%. Six years from 2023, we are way off track.
For a huge number of children across the world, basic numeracy and literacy, let alone general proficiency in reading and mathematics remains a pipe-dream. Globally, South Sudan has the lowest expected years of schooling at 5.5 years, followed by Niger (6.9 years) and Mali (7.4 years). Compare that to Ireland with 18 years.
Until the building blocks are put in place that will allow children to attend and complete a quality education, peace education feels like a luxury investment in vast swathes of the world. While countries in the ‘developed world’ are spending between 4 and 6% of GDP on education, investment in education in Africa is stuck at 2-3%, and that drawing from a much, much lower GDP per capita. Funds are scarce in the poorest parts of the world.
For people with a disability, the situation is even more stark. As expected, less children with a functional difficulty will access less education and for a shorter period of time. For instance, in Mali, the ever attended school rates stand at 19%, 30% and 40% for persons with at least a lot of difficulty, some difficulty and no difficulty respectively.
The Disability Data Initiative, in the absence of clear commitments of governments when they signed up to the Sustainable Development Goals to collect data on progress for people with disability, has been gathering evidence on the disparate impact of education progress on people with disabilities.
The data points, drily, to the sad reality that “with universalization efforts for primary and secondary education, a priority in SDG Goal 4, attendance among children with disabilities needs to improve fast. Otherwise, inequality across disability status in terms of literacy may be widening and feed into a disability and development gap, a situation where disability related inequalities may expand as countries develop.”
While education for lasting peace may be a noble goal, it should be put in context of the reality of the world for millions of children, and children with disability in particular. The evidence points towards the potential that education in itself can contribute to peace, and to a much greater extent than scripted initiatives such as peace education and other curriculum additions.
This is not to say that we should scrap ‘peace education’ but with so many children missing out on education entirely, with so many failing to achieve any form of proficiency, with children with disability doubly marginalised by poverty and lack of accessible schools and teaching, when choices have to be made, investment needs to be focused on the building blocks rather than the architectural flourishes particularly when resources are already far below what is needed to ensure a solid foundation.
Dualta Roughneen is CEO of Christian Blind Mission (CBM) Ireland. This article appeared in The Irish Catholic