The politics and pedagogy of war remembrance

Abstract

Drawing on analysis of learning materials, interviews and ethnographic observations of Scottish education, we analyse how projects aimed at teaching children to remember wars instil war-normalising logics through (a) substitution of self-reflective study of conflict with skill-based knowledge; (b) gendered and racial stereotyping via emphasis on soldier-centric (Scottish/British) nationalisms, localisation and depoliticisation of remembrance; (c) affective meaning-making and embodied performance of ‘Our War’. Utilising Ranciere-inspired critical pedagogy, we explore opportunities for critical engagement with the legacy of conflicts.

The post‐war generation remembers: A mixed‐method study exploring children’s attitudes towards World War II commemoration

“…Children who felt more sad during the commemoration they attended, perceived the event indeed more positive. Danilova and Dolan (2020) define this sadness as a ‘sanctioned affective engagement’ (p. 505) and argue that keeping silence while looking sad is a passive form of learning in which asking critical questions is considered disruptive and disrespectful. Notably, many new rituals of commemoration, with an initial attempt to attract children, were not understood or appreciated.…”

“…Several scholars have raised concerns about the way the World Wars are portrayed in education and remembrance culture, engaging children emotionally with the past, but limiting critical questioning about diversities and complexities connected to war (e.g. Danilova & Dolan, 2020;Pennell, 2018;Sheehan & Davison, 2017). Pennell and Sheehan (2020) argue that children are socialized with a particular way of remembering and are often passive recipients of memory, with limited agency in how to participate in rituals of remembrance.…”

Militarization of childhood(s) in Donbas: ‘Growing together with the Republic’

“…Similar to an objectified child, this understanding of children's agency precludes us from an understanding of children as 'complex social actors who might as readily align themselves with power, privilege, and injustice as against it' (Beier, 2020b: 230). In the context of militarization in D/LNR, this more complicated picture of lived childhoods allows for a critical analysis revealing spaces of everyday violence and roles children perform in shaping them (see also Agathangelou and Killian, 2011;Ahlness, 2020;Beier, 2011;Danilova and Dolan, 2020;Rech, 2016;Woodyer and Carter, 2020). Ann Agathangelou and Kyle Killian (2011: 22), in their analysis of militarization of Cypriot childhood, for example, illustrate how a 'child's emergence as militarized' represents a solution to geopolitical and social problems.…”

“…The study focuses on the instrumentalization of Soviet myths 3 and historical memory, particularly about World War II (WWII), and the amplification of a regional identity in the educational system to examine how processes of militarization infiltrate spaces of everyday life (Bernazzoli and Flint, 2009;Pain, 2015). The article also demonstrates how children engage in performative meaning-making practices of war remembrance (Danilova and Dolan, 2020;Pennell, 2020), thus becoming not only objects but subjects of militarization processes. Further, the article highlights how school museums 4 became spaces that allowed for the diffusion of militarization from the everyday to the geopolitical and vice versa (Henry and Natanel, 2016: 852).…”

Remembrance and ritual in English schools

“…Second, we introduce the Remembrance in Schools project and we discuss its findings relating to remembrance practices in schools in England between 2013 and 2020. Drawing on interview, questionnaire and observational data, we argue that rituals of remembrance in schools are complex, multivalent and multivocal activities that reproduce dominant discourses of national identity and ontologies of war (Danilova & Dolan, 2020) while also offering moments of ambiguity and ambivalence that lend nuance to how remembrance is enacted. Finally, we draw attention to the lack of engagement with discourses of decolonisation, or reconciliation with the brutalities of British colonial and military history.…”