Violence, extreme violence and education

By ERIC PIET
The quest to define when violence is extreme violence, and the preventive role of education through schools’ meaningful engagement of children, in reinforcing skills to enable participation in general civic life help raise defences of peace against violence. But, what are these degrees of violence? How can we distinguish one from another? And when should children start learning necessary skills that can serve as the foundation for creating a meaningful and successful life? We are familiar with the issues of violence and the trail of destruction it can leave behind. Mara Wape, a teachers college inspector in the country and a participant at the Global Capacity Building Conference on Global Citizenship Education (GCED) who with 30 others from different countries converged in Seoul, Republic of Korea in 2016, explains how education can be the single biggest factor in curbing violence.

Violence in general is an abomination and can leave behind a devastating effect on people, property and infrastructure, and common sense is secondary.
Destruction with maximum adverse impact is the ultimate prize, from which recovery can happen over time, or sometimes not at all.
“The sad reality though is, violence is engineered by human elements – planned in secretiveness and achieved with success, and is called ‘violent extremism’ because the violence committed is intense,” Wape says.
He says that often when a person’s beliefs move from being relatively conventional to being radical, with a desire for drastic change in society, it becomes known as ‘radicalisation’, which is not necessarily a bad thing. This does not mean that these people will become violent.
Wape, however, stresses that what becomes of a violent extremism is when a person or group decides to act by instilling fear or terror in justifying ideological, political or social changes.
“In simple terms violent extremism is when persons hold their views strongly and do not allow for a different point of view, and wanting to impose their view on others with violence.”
Violent extremism takes many forms and for varied motivations with many relating to particular ideologies such as interpretations of political movements or religious beliefs, or issue such as environmental, economic, ethnic and separatist concerns.
Violent extremist actions by people or groups have threatened nations around the world and continue to be a threat as inflamed by technology and the information age, and Wape believes that PNG is not immune to such behaviours as democratic processes, core values and principles, human rights, rule of law, lives and property, equal opportunity and freedom are all under threat.
He points out that in our short history as an independent country we have experienced conflicts mainly related to natural resources, especially in regards to benefit or wealth-sharing, participation, ownership, and environmental destructions in provinces like Southern Highlands, Autonomous Region of Bougainville, Western, Hela, and Enga. The nation also has experienced election-related violence in Mendi and Wabag emanating from issues related to the conduct of elections, prosecutions and judicial decisions. Wape says that gender-based violence is a common occurrence in the country and characteristically is a manifestation of poor human behaviour such as lack of decency, care and love which are usually perpetrated by men on vulnerable and weaker members of society.
Other societal conflicts include sorcery-based violence in parts of PNG, among the students’ cult initiations, school fights, burning down of classrooms, and unsupervised inter-school student-initiated games, which have underlying forces of radicalisation that gives rise to violent extremist behaviour.
“Violent extremism is therefore among the most pervasive challenges of our time, and calls for safer community initiatives and exhaustion of full democratic processes. It is not confined to age, sex, group or community.
“Young people are particularly vulnerable to the messages of violent extremism,” Wape says.
Wape therefore calls on schools to take a stronger role in helping the young to learn to become individuals with a right character in early years through to upper levels in the educational phases.
“A good example is the Community Learning Centres (CLC) early childhood pre-schools with high impact levels of cognitive and social-emotional student assertiveness. Schools must above all contribute to a child’s knowing what is good.
Whilst everything begins with a curriculum, a school must educate or prepare a child more than just for a job,” Wape stressed.
Wape asserts that children need relevant and timely learning opportunities to develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes that can help them build their resilience to such violent acts by helping them develop the communication and interpersonal skills they need to dialogue, face disagreement and learn peaceful approaches to change; develop their critical thinking to investigate claims, verify rumours and question the legitimacy of extremist beliefs.
As literature suggests, a good curriculum respects and balances the need to educate the ‘three people’ in each individual child: the worker, the citizen, and the private person.
Is this true for our education system? This can only be compared against reality. Every school ought to thoroughly search and instil values in the curriculum to ensure what is worth knowing and delivered to children, then we can say that we have educated a child in totality.
Today as we look around we see deficiencies in our children not being academically proficient and adequately equipped with social-emotional life skills. Wape says this is because a large portion of the education is preparing and educating a child for cognitive orientation while the remaining 20 per cent is on socio-emotional aptitude.
“This injustice is not equipping a child holistically, it as the turnover rate which is the reverse opposite at 80 per cent dropout and 20 per cent selected for places at higher institutions and leaving behind a trail of marked human waste,” says Wape.
Wape says he likes the introduction of Christian religious instruction into the curriculum.
“The idea gels well and supports the notion of life skills development and must be encouraged,” Wape adds.
Educating a child is the goal of every nation for an educated society in meeting challenges of this century and beyond. Like every other thriving nation, PNG must prepare its next generation with smart intellectual capabilities, social and emotional life skills with every teacher’s efforts geared towards preparing each child’s development with absolute care.
Papua New Guinea needs citizens of good character built around an educated worker, an educated citizen, and an educated private person, which are a building blocks for a diverse, tolerant, inclusive and advanced society.
Wape rightly quotes former United States President Barrack Obama who was clear about the nature of the struggle against violent extremism: “Ideologies are not defeated by guns or violence but new ideas. The path is not less democracy but more democracy.”