Chapter 6: Echoes From the Periphery: Challenges to Building a Culture of Peace Through Education in Marginalized Communities

Governments’ provision of schools is commonly done in the name of a predominant ideology. Capitalist countries profess to build schools in good part to prepare citizens for political participation in the policymaking process and the marketplace. Socialist and some authoritarian governments place greater emphasis on the provision of education to equip citizens with skills needed by, and an attachment to, the collective whole. As a government uses schools to spread its form of political culture and values, education becomes an instrument of globalization, incrementally penetrating into communities remote from the cultural mainstream and displacing indigenous worldviews and practices. Such penetration raises critical questions about a government’s use of education in promoting or, conversely, retarding a culture of peace.