Lingering Colonialities as Blockades to Peace Education: School Violence in Trinidad

Abstract

Book Summary: Bringing together the voices of scholars and practitioners on challenges and possibilities of implementing peace education diverse global sites, this book addresses key questions for students seeking to deepen their understanding of the field. The book not only highlights ground-breaking and rich qualitative studies from around the globe, but also analyses the limits and possibilities of peace education diverse contexts of conflict and post-conflict societies. Contributing authors address how educators and learners can make meaning of international peace education efforts, how various forms of peace and violence interact and around schools, and how the field of peace education has evolved and grown over the past four decades. Chapter Summary: By using data on violence from field research Trinidad and Tobago (TT), I argue that in the knowledge production of 'school violence,' 'school' is subtracted as a descriptive [term], and its place is hoisted the category of 'youth,' inscribed as the 'Other,' the predominant signifier of violence. In so doing, the predominating discourse about what constitutes violence itself, and its drivers/'causes,' takes on a limiting and individualizing nature. As a result, the principal interventions that emanate from such a discourse are correspondingly narrow and therefore fail to reveal the structural violence which youth violence school is embedded. I posit this discursive violence as a lingering coloniality, and thus, as a blockade to the implementation of sustainable peace education TT's schools. [excerpt]