Impeding or Enriching Education for Just Peace? Teachers' Implemented Curricula in Mexico, Bangladesh, and Canada

Abstract

What is the relationship between teaching toward shared values and engaging with the social differences and inequality conflicts at the heart of social cohesion challenges, in different cultural settings? This paper compares the ways some teachers represented social differences relevant in their contexts, and endeavored to foster peaceful social relations across those differences, in part by teaching cultural, moral and religious values. The settings were ordinary school subject lessons in state schools in economically marginalized urban contexts-in three countries neither divided nor recently at war but experiencing local violence. Teachers volunteered to participate because they felt concern about peace and/or citizenship goals, but did not consider themselves to be peace educators. In Bangladesh, participating teachers taught the moral precepts and exemplary narratives of Islam-for instance, that it is immoral to treat women disrespectfully and moral to materially aid the poor-and a national enmity narrative in relation to Pakistan. In México, the teachers taught abstract values principles linked to interpersonal behavior-for instance, respect, honesty, and solidarity-and a national narrative of mestizaje (seamlessly blended indigenous and European origins). In Canada, the teachers taught multicultural awareness and individual character to 'make a difference,' and narrated a peaceful 'nation of immigrants.' Within each context, a few curriculum excerpts linked social cohesion values with participatory or equality dimensions of democracy, whereas in other excerpts the values were presented in generic, unidimensional ways. Comparing these curriculum choices for teaching social cohesion values in contrasting contexts-as compliant tolerance and accommodation that would not rock the boat, or as democratic justice foundations for sustainable peace-makes visible alternative comprehensive or narrow approaches to value-laden education for building peace.Social cohesion is generally imagined through what it is not: war, intolerant aggression (extremism) or intractable social division (Altier, Christian, & Horgan, 2014;Ercan, 2017;Macdonald, 2016;Mattsson & Säljö, 2018). Thus, social cohesion is roughly equivalent to what Galtung (1969) called negative peace, meaning absence of direct violence. Galtung's point, still relevant to today's social cohesion efforts, is that the achievement of such (symptomatic) peace requires social transformation processes for redressing the causes of un-peace-the social injustices and accompanying beliefs that fuel and legitimize direct physical violence, and vis versa (Galtung, 1990). Theories of action differ: what are those social processes for achieving and sustaining peace?Often, social cohesion efforts may be operationalized as securitization, emphasizing assimilation and compliance (Ford, 2017;Novelli, 2011). Discourses may over-emphasize individual responsibility (culpability, and inculcation of governmentality) for peace and justice violations, rather than