In the community that I grew up in, “kurang ajar” is the worst insult that can be hurled at you. A loose translation: insufficient teaching/learning. And when a person with high academic qualifications behaves in a socially unacceptable manner, a common question asked: “Is s/he not educated?”
When partnering with schools to design a peace education course or explore how we can educate for peace, I have found it necessary to make time for my partners and I to examine our understanding of education with a critical theory lens. This is especially important when facilitating professional development workshops for teachers. Much in the following paragraphs is informed by the late Ken Robinson’s observations that resonate with my educator praxis.
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school”
Albert einstein
It is important to have a clear definition of “learning” and “education”. I use “education” with the understanding that it is a sub-set of one’s “learning”. Learning to be human, we gain knowledge, acquire skills, examine and live values and attitudes in three learning spaces: the informal, non-formal and formal1. I understand “education” as referring to our learning in the formal space i.e. schools2.
For all of us, our learning fulfils three roles: intra-personal, inter-personal and economic3. We therefore need to keep in mind that in all learning spaces (not just formal), we can engage with cognitive, affective and skills education that enable us to discover own-self, relate better with others at the individual and group levels, and become a contributing homo economicus.
When we fail to reflect on the deep narratives that underlie education systems, we are unable to conceptualize educating for peace; as well as design and deliver peace education that are transformative in depth and emancipatory in type.
The roots of contemporary education systems can be traced back to the Second Industrial Revolution. Thus, we now tend to (unthinkingly) view education primarily and exclusively as a mean for our becoming homo economicus4. Coupled with the ascendancy of state-centric arrangement of human civilization5, and the nature of bureaucracy6 (that education systems necessarily are), education in much of the world has evolved over the last two centuries to excel in the following: instrumental, school-based learning focused on education’s economic role; and generally shying away from the affective strand of learning.
We must NOT dismiss the importance of the economic role that learning fulfils. I am positing that for education to be more helpful for improving human condition and planetary well-being, our current limited and limiting world-view of what it means to educate needs to be expanded. Affective education must be attributed the same primacy as cognitive and skills education. Furthermore, what we explore in the latter two learning strands lie not only in learning’s economic role, but also the intra- and inter-personal.
Especially for us in the field of education, I believe it important that we engage first in this conversation. This allows us then to better identify the challenges and opportunities present in our unique contexts when we choose to educate our students for peace. In my next post, I shall share the distinction I make between peace education and educating for peace.
Suggested readings:
Illeris, K. (2007). How we learn: Learning and non-learning in school and beyond. Routledge.
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. (2019). OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030: OECD Learning Compass 2030.
Paige, G. D., & Robinson, J. A. (2009). Nonkilling Global Political Science. Center for Global Nonkilling.
Robinson, K. (2011). Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative. Capstone.
Robinson, K., & Robinson, K. (2022). Imagine If . . .: Creating a Future for Us All. Penguin Books.
Waters, T. (2012). Schooling, Childhood, and Bureaucracy: Bureaucratizing the Child. Palgrave Macmillan.