Formal history education in Lebanon: Crossroads of past conflicts and prospects for peace

Challenges for Peacebuilding and Citizenship Learning in Colombia

“…For instance, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite the interest of students to understand the reasons of their war, teachers excluded from their instruction the history of the conflict. Similarly, Lebanon's official history textbooks and history classes silence controversial episodes and perspectives regarding their civil war to avoid discord in classrooms (van Ommering, 2015;Tawil & Harley, 2004). Particularly in Colombia, official social studies guidelines from grades 6-9 th omit the study of Colombian recent violent history (MEN, 2006).…”

“…Curriculum materials, as well as teachers' fear and/or reluctance to teach recent conflictual events (such as direct violence, social injustices, interests of actors involved in conflicts), causes, and parties that triggered and escalated violence is a form of repression or "alienating violence" ("violence by omission") (Salmi, 2000): students are denied with opportunities to understand their own reality and to develop capacities to express their own points of view towards issues that surround them, and that in many cases concern them. For instance, the above-mentioned study conducted by Erik van Ommering (2015) in Lebanon, demonstrates selected young students' difficulty (despite frequent willingness) to understand and critically evaluate the current problematic social and political conditions in their country, and their possibilities to overcome one-sided narratives and actions of the conflict. Additionally, omission of content knowledge and skills (i.e., how to assess dissenting perspectives) may reproduce destructive social conflicts because, on the one hand, young citizens are not equipped to critically evaluate, question and/or discuss the interests of each stakeholder behind a conflict (Williams, 2004).…”

History Textbook Writing in Post-conflict Societies: From Battlefield to Site and Means of Conflict Transformation

“…This vacuum may allow the unchallenged thriving of sectarian and partisan conflict narratives in society while forestalling opportunities for younger generations to critically examine and make sense of the past and its pervasive legacy. In the face of curricular and textbook silence, these narratives have indeed been found to be commonly embraced by young people, thus favouring societal rifts (Barton and McCully 2005;van Ommering 2015). Against this backdrop, one may argue that evasive strategies are likely to be beneficial as long as they are pursued temporarily and the ensuing vacuum effectively serves the purpose of revising textbooks based on unobstructed academic research and unrestricted public debate.…”

“…In Bosnia, Cyprus, Israel/ Palestine and Lebanon, for instance, where formal history curriculum and textbook revision has been (tentatively) undertaken in the wake of peace processes, such educational policies and structures appear to have severely undermined efforts to harmonise history teaching and reconcile conflicting narratives through textbooks. Here, sectarianism continues to be pervasive within the context of highly segregated education systems, pointing to the obstinacy of competing group narratives in such contexts (nasser and nasser 2008;Torsti 2009;van Ommering 2015;Zembylas 2013).…”

Whose memory and why: A commentary on power and the construction of memory

“…These fields have explored the ways in which hegemonic representations of the past become part of reproducing and keeping alive hostile intergroup relations (Paez & Liu, 2011), how stigmatized pasts become re-imagined in order to serve protective identity functions (Obradović, 2016), and how institutions become part of shaping these memory processes by legitimizing specific versions of the past (Podeh, 2002;van Ommering, 2015). This literature shows clearly what is at stake in processes of remembering, and the power one holds by being able to shape the ways in which the past is understood.…”