Abstract
Schools are places where we can learn ways of being, seeing and living. They are transmission belts – social institutions that can engender values and attitudes from both how we learn and what we learn. Using content analysis, this mixed methods study assesses the national curriculum of Mexico – the Plan de Estudios Educación Básica, 2011 – for three components found in peace education programmes: recognizing violence (direct, structural or cultural); addressing conflict nonviolently; and creating the conditions of positive peace. These three components contribute to the analysis of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): quality education (SDG 4); gender equality (SDG 5); reduced inequalities (SDG 10); responsible consumption and production (SDG 12); and peace, justice and strong institutions (SDG 16). This component of the Peace Education Curriculum Analysis (PECA) Project finds that the Plan de Estudios contains limited content that recognizes violence, some evidence of techniques used in transforming conflict nonviolently and only select content that is concerned with contributing to positive peace.
Highlights
In 2012, rising violence in Mexico forecast significant consequences for students
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) states that peace education is: the process of promotoing the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values needed to bring about behaviour changes that will enable children, youth and adults to prevent conflict and violence, both overt and structural; to resolve conflict peacefully; and to create the conditions coducive to peace. (Fountain, 1999: 1). This analysis modifies the UNICEF principles as follows: preventing violence is understood to mean the recognition of violence, resolving conflict peacefully is established in this study as resolving conflict without violence and building the conditions conducive to peace is comprehended by the Peace Education Curriculum Analysis (PECA) Project as representing conditions that contribute to positive peace
Element Three shows evidence from the Mexican curriculum that relates to the nine categories that contribute to positive peace, previously mentioned
Summary
The escalating violence in the country looks to have severe economic and social impacts in both the short and long term. Violence leads to lower academic performance by increasing students’ stress levels, lowering attendance rates and causing students and teachers to migrate away from dangerous communities and sometimes out of the country. Does the violence impact students’ access to education and their levels of achievement, and schools become loci of conscription as ‘schoolyards have become recruiting grounds for gangs’, drawing whole communities into ‘the volatile and exceedingly violent world of organized crime’ (Lozano Garza, 2015: 200). With the environmental climate of violence present in Mexico, one might ask how education itself performs as a space that challenges rather than perpetuates the violence that students might find themselves exposed to
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callMore From: International Journal of Development Education and Global Learning
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
