Over the past year, the world has watched several high-profile conflicts with horror. These include the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, and growing animosity over racial, ethnic, and political divisions in many countries, perhaps most strikingly in the United States. While textbooks are meant to educate the next generation, our research finds that they also perpetuate the divisions in society that feed conflict. On some occasions, they also promote peace.
We interpret conflict broadly to include armed conflict as well as social and structural inequalities and divisions. In addition to the case studies we have conducted on primary school textbooks in Sri Lanka, South Sudan, and Afghanistan, we collected case studies from other authors on the use of textbooks in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Burundi, Jordan, and Pakistan, and on secondary school textbooks in South Sudan and Afghanistan. Across these diverse contexts, a central theme is that textbooks most often serve as an accomplice to conflict through the perpetuation of discriminatory stereotypes, historical divisions, and power discrepancies between groups of people. For example, in Sri Lankan textbooks, despite references to the importance of ethnic, religious, and linguistic diversity, there is a consistent privileging of the dominant Sinhala culture. By disproportionately featuring examples of Sinhala language and culture and the Buddhist religion—and at times completely excluding examples from minoritized cultures or identities—the textbooks suggest a Sri Lankan national identity as Sinhala-Buddhist. An even more stark example is found in Maja Halilovic-Pastuovic’s research on textbooks within Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Two Schools Under One Roof policy. In this case, students of different ethnicities within the same school are separated into different classes with different curricula reflecting their ethnic identities. For example, students of Croat background in Bosnia-Herzegovina are taught using textbooks from Croatia that exclusively describe the geography of Croatia with no reference to Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Despite this tendency to reinforce conflict within the pages of a textbook, each of our case studies also identifies ways in which school textbooks are contributing to peace, social justice, and inclusion, although usually in smaller and more subtle ways. A prominent example is evident in Emily Dunlop’s analysis of textbooks from Burundi, which actively address clauses from the country’s peace agreement, including sections that are devoted to “Education for Peace” and require students to analyze factors that promote peace. Provoking students to critically analyze factors that promote peace and justice like this is, unfortunately, rare. More often, transformative moments in textbooks appear in the form of intentional representation of women in non-traditional roles or the acknowledgment of the importance of peace and equality and the negative effects of war. Textbooks can deepen these transformative moments by provoking critical reflection on what they represent, as in the case identified from Burundi.
The victimized role of textbooks appears most clearly when conflict prevents students from accessing textbooks. In South Sudan, education spending for many years has been curtailed while funds from social services are diverted to military spending. This has led to low levels of accessibility and distribution of textbooks resulting in high pupil-textbook ratios at primary school levels and, as Merethe Skårås’ research identifies, no accessibility to secondary school textbooks until very recently.
Our work calls on educational stakeholders at all levels to recognize the politicized nature of textbooks. We call for cautious attention to the content of textbooks and the need to work with diverse representatives from multiple sides of a conflict—particularly historically marginalized groups—to ensure that the textbooks that reach classrooms are ultimately going to do more to promote peace and equality than a resurgence of conflict.
This blog post describes research from a 2022 book entitled Teaching Peace and Conflict: The Multiple Roles of Textbooks in Peacebuilding, available at: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-04676-6
Catherine Vanner
Catherine Vanner is an Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations at the University of Windsor. Her research uses qualitative and participatory methods to examine the relationship between gender, violence, and education in North American and Sub-Saharan African contexts. Her current research analyzes teacher and student experiences on education about gender-based violence in Canada and is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She has worked as Postdoctoral Fellow at McGill University and as Education Advisor for Plan International Canada and the Canadian International Development Agency (now Global Affairs Canada). She holds a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Ottawa and a M.A. in International Affairs from Carleton University.
Spogmai Akseer
Spogmai Akseer has over 16 years of experience working in the field of educational development and research in Canada and internationally focusing on gender and conflict. She has worked as a consultant with UNICEF and UNESCO on various educational initiatives to improve educational equity and equality in the Global South, particularly in conflict-affected environments. Recently she supported UNESCO-IIEP in the development of a continental report examining Sustainable Development Goal 4 and the African Union’s Continental Education Strategy for Africa. Previously, Spogmai managed a USAID-funded project to help develop new graduate degree programs, as well as Registrar and professor at the American University of Afghanistan. In these roles, she worked closely with the Ministry of Higher Education of Afghanistan to develop a national quality assurance and accreditation framework, as well as a graduate education policy framework. Presently, Spogmai is working on the implementation and monitoring of the Ministry of Education’s anti-oppression and anti-racism directives across over 250 elementary and secondary schools in Ontario, Canada. She has a PhD in Education and Comparative, International Development Education from the University of Toronto.
Thursica Kovinthan Levi
Thursica Kovinthan Levi is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow and lecturer at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. Her current research focuses on trauma-informed pedagogies for integration and reconciliation in refugee education. This research builds on her doctoral dissertation examining the interface between gender, education, and conflict in fragile contexts, focusing on Sri Lanka. She has worked and conducted research in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Central America with various NGOs and as a research consultant. Thursica is also an educator with the Toronto District School Board, where she teaches children with refugee experiences. She has worked as an Education Policy Analyst at Global Affairs Canada and Part-time Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa. Thursica holds a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Ottawa and a M.A in Child Studies and Education from OISE.
