Africa Research Seminar
Date and Time
Location
"From Classrooms to Conflict in Rwanda: A Talk with the Author"
Speaker:
Elisabeth King, Fellow, Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo.
Co-sponsored by the Committee on African Studies.
Contact:
Bethany Lynn Hoag
bethany_mulimbi@mail.harvard.edu
Chair:
Sarah Dryden-Peterson, Assistant Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education.
From Classrooms to Conflict in Rwanda (Cambridge University Press, 2013) questions the conventional wisdom that education builds peace by exploring the ways in which ordinary schooling can contribute to inter-group conflict. Based on fieldwork and comparative historical analysis of Rwanda, it argues that from the colonial period to the genocide, schooling was a key instrument of the state in contributing to the construction, awareness, collectivization, and inequality of ethnic groups in Rwanda – all factors that underlay conflict. The book further argues that today's post-genocide schools are dangerously replicating past trends. This book is the first to offer an in-depth study of education in Rwanda and to analyze its role in the genesis of conflict. The book demonstrates that to build peace, we cannot simply prescribe more education, but must understand who has access to schools, how schools are set up, and what and how they teach.