• Education has a limited but important role to play in preventing violent extremism
• School curriculum should encourage children to reflect critically on history and culture
• Embed culture of peace and tolerance in social, political, and economic institutions
• Governments and politicians of all stripes have to walk the walk, not just talk the talk
• Rhetoric of peace and tolerance must be matched by action to improve people’s lives
• Important to constantly reinforce messages of shared humanity and evils of tribalism

“It is crucial to ensure that education does not stoke chauvinism or perpetuate dehumanising stereotypes,” asserted Prof. Edward Vickers, holder of the UNESCO Chair on Education for Peace, Social Justice and Global Citizenship, Kyushu University, Japan, in an interview with The Sunday Morning.

Rather than promoting uncritical pride in particular identities, school curricula should encourage children to reflect critically on the history and culture of their ‘own’ group, he added. 

Outlining key messages we need to give our youth to ensure that violent extremism does not continue generation after generation, Prof. Vickers said: “We need to constantly reinforce messages of shared humanity and the evils of tribalism. It is also very important to avoid telling national history as a one-sided story of aggrieved victimhood and cultural or moral uniqueness.”

However, he emphasised that verbal messaging or classroom preaching was not enough, “because young people’s consciousness tends to be shaped far more powerfully by their experience of society outside the school gates than by anything that happens inside them”.

Therefore, he emphasised on the importance of governments and politicians of all stripes walking the walk: “Governments and politicians of all stripes have to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. Spouting homilies about the value of peace and reconciliation without taking action to promote social justice, security, and dignity for all citizens is pointless.”

Following are excerpts of the interview:

Sri Lanka is a country saddled with violent extremism. While the civil war ended over a decade ago, there has been no real effort towards reconciliation between its people while the State has continued to play politics with the issue. Incidents of religious extremism are commonplace to date. What role can education play in preventing violent extremism?

I think that education has a limited but important role to play in preventing violent extremism. It is crucial to ensure that education does not stoke chauvinism or perpetuate dehumanising stereotypes of ‘out-groups,’ however these are defined.

Rather than promoting uncritical pride in particular identities, the school curriculum should encourage children to reflect critically on the history and culture of their ‘own’ group. An awareness of the diverse nature of identity, and of how any one person can possess multiple identities that can shift over time, is also crucial to challenging attitudes that fuel prejudice and hatred. 

But I’m afraid that the capacity of education on its own to prevent violent extremism is often exaggerated.

What steps should governments take in adopting an education-based approach aimed at social cohesion and the prevention of violent extremism?

I think that the premise of the question is somewhat flawed. An ‘education-based approach’ to building social cohesion and preventing violent extremism is unlikely to succeed on its own. 

Education needs to be part of a broader package of policies designed to promote security and trust within any society. This should involve policies relating to public welfare, labour market regulation, and other areas crucial to people’s livelihoods and their sense that society is ordered in a just or fair way. 

Without such policies, social inequality will tend to spiral and the stakes attached to success or failure in public examinations will drive teachers, students, and their families to focus their energies exclusively on the pursuit of examination success – or give up and drop out.

Insecurity drives intense educational competitiveness and the alienation of those in society who are simply unable to compete. At the same time, it drives out space or time in the school curriculum for the sorts of activities (debate, discussion, reflection on the complexities of history and identity) that are conducive to promoting reconciliation and building tolerance.

In other words, without attention to the social, economic, and political context within which it operates, education will tend to become reduced to an arena for the competitive pursuit of qualifications. 

In your experience, what is the real cost of violent extremism to a nation? 

My experience is very limited compared to that of many Sri Lankans, but when I was growing up, Britain was subject to a long terrorist campaign related to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. My father served there in the Army in the 1970s. Stories of Northern Ireland’s Troubles were constantly in the news when I was young. 

In order to understand the origins of that spiral into violence in Northern Ireland, we certainly need to understand the historical role of education in reinforcing segregation between the province’s Protestant and Catholic communities. 

But we also need to understand how key institutions – the electoral system, the police service, arrangements for public housing, the labour market – contributed to the sense of injustice and alienation that sparked the descent into violence in the first place. Once that vicious spiral starts, it can be very difficult to break it. 

The case of Northern Ireland shows that peace is possible – but the achievement of peace there had very little to do with education. It depended on a range of institutional reforms that helped to build a fragile trust on both sides of the province’s divides.

Could you tell us about the LIVHERE project related to Sri Lanka that you are currently working on?

The LIVHERE project looks at the relationship between heritage and conflict in contemporary Sri Lanka. It is coordinated by Dr. Mark Frost of UCL and relates to a longstanding international collaborative network looking at the politics of conflict-related heritage in East and Southeast Asia (www.warheritage.info).

With our local partners, we are investigating how narratives of the Sri Lankan past, as told at heritage sites, in the school curriculum and through popular culture, contribute to reinforcing or undermining reconciliation and peace. Through studying the case of Sri Lanka, we aim to enhance understanding of the circumstances in which heritage can help to enhance social cohesion, or fracture it.

What are the key messages we need to give our youth to ensure that violent extremism does not continue generation after generation?

We need to constantly reinforce messages of shared humanity and the evils of tribalism. It is also very important to avoid telling national history as a one-sided story of aggrieved victimhood and cultural or moral uniqueness.

But verbal messaging or classroom preaching is not enough, because in the end young people’s consciousness tends to be shaped far more powerfully by their experience of society outside the school gates than by anything that happens inside them.

What are the key education-related interventions that you would list as being successful in countering violent extremism?

One case that springs to mind is that of post-1945, where sweeping post-war reforms to schooling and curricula transformed a nation ruled by a tribalist death cult into a society deeply committed to peace. But that transformation depended on the simultaneous profound reform and rebuilding of the country’s political and social institutions.

It was also more limited than it at first appears, because underneath the rhetoric of a ‘peaceful Japan,’ there remained a deep conviction of the uniqueness of the Japanese nation, and of the special quality of Japanese suffering in war. That sort of conviction of the moral and cultural uniqueness of ‘our group’ contains the seeds of a potential revival of violent extremism in the future.

How important is it to stop sidelining the youth in addressing violent extremism? What are the risks of continuing to leave them out of the conversation when it is their lives and futures that are largely impacted – as victims, perpetrators or beneficiaries?

It is very important to listen to young people – but that listening must include hearing their concerns about insecurity, social injustice, climate change, and all the problems that loom over their futures.

Could you tell us about the UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace (MGIEP) intervention in relation to the youth in this regard?

MGIEP has coordinated some impressive work in this field, especially in its early years in the mid-2010s. But more recently MGIEP’s programmes have tended to focus too narrowly on ‘brain-based’ interventions and ‘social and emotional learning,’ without paying sufficient attention to how contextual factors – politics, economics, social institutions, cultural practices, etc. – shape and constrain education systems and influence young people. 

How do you view the UNESCO MGIEP #YouthWagingPeace initiative and how has it been received?

The #YouthWagingPeace initiative is one of MGIEP’s most impressive programmes. Its strength lay largely in its efforts to involve a wide range of young people themselves and to foreground their voices. It also looks beyond formal education at the influence of forces outside the school, including religious organisations and social media, in shaping young people’s views of the world.

The related report provides some interesting and useful examples of educational interventions to try to promote tolerance, understanding, and reconciliation – for example, through the use of drama. However, what is lacking in the focus on the ‘transformative’ potential of education is sufficient recognition of the limits of that potential and the crucial role of context in enabling or inhibiting it.

For example, one of the ‘case studies’ in the #YouthWagingPeace report involves yoga classes in Russia (Vladivostok). One look at the situation in Russia now, and its senseless war with Ukraine, should be enough to remind us of the very limited power of education to transform a society poisoned by hatred, riven with inequality, and governed by a self-serving elite.

How can the people’s buy-in be secured when aiming to bring about a culture of peace and tolerance?

A culture of peace and tolerance has to be embedded in social, political, and economic institutions. If the rhetoric of peace and tolerance is not matched by real action to improve people’s lives and to give them more agency and dignity, then talk of ‘peace’ can actually be counterproductive – fuelling cynicism, alienation, and mistrust in elites.

What role can governments, politicians, including oppositions, and the private sector play in these efforts?

Governments and politicians of all stripes have to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. Spouting homilies about the value of peace and reconciliation without taking action to promote social justice, security, and dignity for all citizens is pointless.

And while the private sector and civil society organisations can play a useful role in supporting government action and bringing pressure to bear on politicians, in the end it is public institutions that need to play the central role in achieving sustainable peace.