Teaching the violent past in secondary schools in newly independent South Sudan

Abstract

This article analyses the teaching and learning of South Sudan history from 1955-2005 in secondary schools in South Sudan with a specific focus on national unity. The article draws on two periods of focused ethnography, from September to December 2014 and July to September 2015, including classroom observation and interviews with teachers, student teachers and students in two geographical locations. Additionally, 69 written essays from secondary school students of History have been analysed in order to get an insight into their knowledge of the recent violent past. The use of classroom video observation makes a significant contribution to the field as most studies focus on documents and textbooks. The analysis focuses on national unity and uses theories of collective memory and attribution to examine the narratives of the past. The article argues that the national narrative of South Sudan is still closely tied to enemy images of the former enemy of Sudan in the north, while internal ethnic tensions are suppressed and excluded from the official national narrative taught in the classroom.

Education and Armed Conflict in Sudan and South Sudan: The Role of Teachers in Conflict Resolution and Peace Building

“…In interviews done outside the classroom the teachers uttered opinions and told stories quite different from what they expressed inside the classroom. In the interviews, they were eager to characterize some of the ethnic groups (particularly the two biggest) in terms of dispositional attributions, not unlike how they characterized their Northern enemies (Skårås and Breidlid, 2016). The discrepancy between classroom teaching and what was said in interviews was most probably a conscious move by the teachers to suppress conflicts in classrooms with pupils of different ethnic backgrounds.…”

“…Both Nuer and Dinka ethnic groups were included in the sample together with a number of other ethnic groups. (Skårås and Breidlid, 2016). Convenience sampling was carried out since any student who had time and wanted to contribute to the study for an interview was selected.…”

“…Admittedly teaching history with hardly any teaching material available is of course a very challenging task. 4 In a study from 2016 (Skårås and Breidlid, 2016) it was found that classroom teaching on the current conflict is quite different from the teaching about the North-South conflict. The teachers teaching about the civil war between the North and the South were explicit about the South's grievances against the North's oppressive policies.…”

“…However, schools may also be one of ''the most successful instruments for the … dissemination of militarism'' (Vriens, 2003, 71). Moreover, Sommers (2002, 8) states that ''many who conduct modern wars are expert at using educational children'' (see also Breidlid 2010; Skårås and Breidlid, 2016).…”

‘Not yet Uhuru’: Interpreting the Education System in Post-Independence South Sudan

“…The rest took the South Sudanese examinations. South Sudan attained its independence from the Sudan on July 9, 2011, but there are many state schools that teach foreign curricula, especially Sudanese, Ugandan and Kenyan ones (MoEST, 2016;Skårås & Breidlid, 2016;Novelli et al, 2016). The existence of the foreign-based curricula, primarily colonial one, in the country, is reminisced of Kenya's political situation of the 1960s, encapsulated by Oginga Odinga (1967), the Kenyan nationalist leader, in his autobiography-Not yet Uhuru.…”