Colombia has a long history of civil conflict: over sixty years of fighting has seen millions of people displaced, hundreds of thousands killed, missing, or subjected to sexual violence, and many minors recruited by armed groups. In 2012, peace dialogues between “Las FARC” (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and the Colombian government were announced, giving some hope to the Colombian people after decades of war. During the presidency of Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018), a law was signed that placed education as the central tool to promote a culture of peace in Colombian schools. This law and its subsequent decree established the “Cátedra de la Paz” or the Peace Lecture (PL) as a mandatory course in every school throughout the country. Although the decree recommended integrating the PL within specific fundamental school courses, the law’s flexibility was seen as an opportunity for English teachers (ETs) to demonstrate that the language field could promote peacebuilding initiatives. These efforts challenge the traditional perspective that English Language Teaching (ELT) is focused on grammar instruction and dismisses the integration of students’ local realities.
The University of Cordoba’s Bilingualism for Peace project, which provides English language classes for children from low-income families in Monteria, Colombia, is a major ELT peacebuilding initiative. The University recently announced that it will be open to more students in the city. Since its creation in 2017, this initiative has positively impacted 1,500 children by promoting values to expand their vision of the world, encouraging peaceful interactions with others, and reducing the economic and social inequality in the area.
ETs’ interest in leading peacebuilding initiatives came from the violent behavior observed in their students. Physical and verbal aggression, bullying, and discrimination interfered with their learning process and a healthy classroom environment. Bilingualism For Peace was designed to address the violent situations of domestic violence, participation in gang activities, and the context of cocaine cultivation that many children encountered, which influenced their behavior and speech with others. Pre-service teachers from the University of Cordoba’s ELT program who have participated in this project identify the relevance of considering the educational needs of their students when planning lessons and addressing violence in the classroom. As a result, students have focused on acquiring a new ability, having other aspirations and opportunities, and changing the way they see their role in their community.
In addition to Bilingualism For Peace, a study published in 2020 and conducted by some ETs in an urban primary school explored the use of memory artifacts in English classes to develop resilience, and to understand the experiences of students who were victims of the conflict. Through didactic sequences, the authors explained topics like family, the animals, home, etc. with the objective that students connected the vocabulary with their background. In one of the activities, the students made animal artifacts with playdough, many of them recreated farm animals even though they lived in an urban area. This practice brought back some memories from their towns and encouraged them to play and tell stories to their classmates using the sculptures. Many events and experiences from the conflict such as forced displacement were reflected in the students’ creations, they found a way to be heard and express many aspects of their identities through the crafting of artifacts.
Before these project, “Peace in Action” emerged in 2018 as an initiative constructed by a researcher and an English teacher in a secondary school in Bogota. In this institution, violence was normalized, and students did not conceive peace as something tangible or applicable but instead as utopic. In class, the teacher encouraged students to discuss violent events they saw in their school and home to look for solutions while creating transcripts and performing role plays in English. As a result of these activities, students changed their attitude toward violence, and they developed skills like active listening, empathy, emotional intelligence, and conflict resolution. At the same time, they became peace ambassadors and made other members of their community aware of the violence around them. This project not only had an impact on the students, but also on the entire school, students’ families, and teachers from other courses.
These projects demonstrate the role that education plays in the construction of a culture of peace in Colombia. Although ELT is seen as disconnected from students’ realities and focused on reaching linguistic standards, these initiatives can encourage more ETs to promote a change in their classrooms.The government and other entities should also see them as examples of the potential of the field in advancing peacebuilding. All these actors and institutions can work as a team to advance a viable national peace project, and prevent internal conflict from returning to Colombia.
Lina Mora
Lina Mora Oviedo is a graduate student in the Department of Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). She worked as an English teacher in public and private institutions in her home country, Colombia. At present, she serves as a Spanish Teaching Assistant at UMBC. Her research interests are international education, first-generation international students, and diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education.
