| The aim of Reshaping the Future is to draw international attention to the key role that education can play in both preventing conflict and in reconstructing post-conflict societies. The author also hopes to alert developing countries and donors alike to the devastating consequences of conflict on a country’s education systems and outcomes, as well to emphasize the importance of maximizing the opportunities to reform education systems presented by a reconstruction setting, adopting a long-term development perspective, and emphasizing equity and quality in the delivery of education services.
Every education system has the potential to exacerbate the conditions that contribute to violent conflict. Based on this notion, the author argues that education warrants high priority in both humanitarian response and post-conflict reconstruction. The central message of this book is that education plays key role in both conflict prevention and in the reconstruction of post-conflict societies. It highlights significant findings on education and post-conflict reconstruction drawn from thorough research and literature review, a survey and database of key indicators for 52 conflict-affected countries, and a review of 12 country studies.
Violent conflict, with its bloody assault on people and institutions and its invariably debilitating aftermath, is the epitome of “development in reverse.” Sadly, as the many case studies in this book and other publications amply demonstrate, conflict and poverty are closely interwoven. Conflict blunts, and subsequently unravels, years of hard-won economic and social development. Recent research also shows us that development patterns—which worsen inequalities, deepen poverty, or slash at the ties that bind societies together—can themselves contribute to the likelihood of conflict and its haunting recurrence.
One of the most devastating impacts of violent conflict is the damage it inflicts on education systems and the children and students they serve. More than two million children have died as a direct result of armed conflict over the last decade. At least six million children have been seriously injured or permanently disabled. Long after the guns stop firing, the lives of students and teachers continue to be imperiled by the discarded litter of war: landmines, unexploded shells, and the proliferation of assault rifles, guns, and ammunition. Some schools in Cambodia and Angola will be closed for years to come because they sit in the middle of a minefield, and whole villages have simply become “no-go” areas.
Teachers often bear a heavy cost in times of conflict. In Rwanda more than two-thirds of the teachers in primary and secondary schools were killed or fled. In Cambodia the carnage was even greater, leaving the system virtually without trained or experienced teachers. In Timor Leste, the impact on teacher numbers of that relatively short conflict was uneven: in primary schools, 80 percent of the teachers were Timorese and remained, while almost all secondary school teachers were Indonesian. The failure of the Indonesian teachers to return left Timor Leste with almost no trained or qualified personnel for its secondary system and no access to tertiary education. |