News Release
Education Cannot Afford To Ignore Our Violent Past
Schoolchildren who were not even born when Northern Ireland’s era of daily armed conflict ended, want to understand the causes of the ‘Troubles’.
That is one of the findings in a report launched by the University of Ulster’s UNESCO Centre today.
Researchers gathered the views and perspectives of children and young people, from across Northern Ireland and Bosnia and Herzegovina – two regions that have experienced violent conflict.
The purpose was to gain insight into their experience and understanding of conflict, its legacies in their homelands and implications for the role of education in reconciliation processes in the two European regions.
Clare Magill, Research Associate at the University of Ulster’s School of Education, presented the findings at a recent Save the Children Conference in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
She says: “The key message that I have taken away from listening to all these young people, no matter where they came from and what their experience, is that they want to be included in the debate about the future of their societies."
The report - The Role of Education in Reconciliation: The Perspectives of Children and Young People in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Northern Ireland – is based on interviews with 90 children and young people, which took place between January 2007 and September 2008.
Ms Magill, who is based at the UNESCO Centre on the Coleraine campus, worked alongside researchers in the central European nation.
Three distinct generations of young people - aged 11, 16-18 and 24-25 - from different backgrounds in Northern Ireland and Bosnia and Herzegovina were questioned.
She said: “Despite very different experiences in very different places, young people of all ages and in both places echoed each other in their views about wanting to understand the causes of the conflict in their regions, and also wanting education to play a role in helping them understand the recent past and contribute to a better future.”
During interviews one eleven year old from Bosnia and Herzegovina said: “Somehow I feel that if we talked about it [the war], it might be too difficult for us. It might frighten us too much. And then again, if we don’t talk about it, then we will not know anything. We should know what happened.”
An older participant from Northern Ireland commented: “I never understood why it [the Troubles] happened. There are probably a lot of factors, but I have never fully understood why it happened, or why it couldn’t have been prevented very easily.”
Professor Alan Smith, Director of the UNESCO Centre, who oversaw the research project, recently gave presentations at USAID and the World Bank in Washington about the implications of the research.
He said: “In both Bosnia-Herzegovina and Northern Ireland it is more than 10 years since the peace agreements, so there are very few children in our schools with any direct memory of these violent conflicts.
“We face the same challenge as many other societies in terms of how to explain a violent past to successive generations of children and young people. A key recommendation is that the education authorities need to make a decision on how this might be done through the school curriculum.
“Different approaches have been tried – in Peru for example, the education authorities produced curriculum resources to be used in all schools, whilst in Rwanda the education authorities decided to put a moratorium on the teaching about the genocide for at least ten years.
“In Northern Ireland the Eames-Bradley report makes frequent reference to the need for education to have a longer-term role in helping young people understand the Troubles, and the EU Peace and Reconciliation programme now includes funding to produce education materials. However, schools and teachers will obviously look for explicit guidance from the new Education and Skills Authority on how to deal with this sensitive issue.”
For more information and to receive a copy of the report please contact Clare Magill (c.magill@ulster.ac.uk) or Professor Alan Smith (a.smith@ulster.ac.uk).
For further information, please contact:
Press Office, Department of Communication and Development
Tel: 028 9036 6178
Email: pressoffice@ulster.ac.uk
