School as a place of violence and hope: Tensions of education for children and families in post-intifada Palestine

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2014.08.001Get rights and content

Abstract

For children living in the context of political violence, school is often conceptualized as a safe physical place with education representing hope for the future. Yet school can also be a place of violence for some children, especially as they encounter the Israeli military and settlers on their journeys to and from school. Framed by Relph's (1976) theory of place as physical setting, activity, and meaning, this paper uses examples from research with 18 Palestinian families to better understand the tensions posed by school as a place of both violence and hope. The research suggests that children and families’ understandings of the place of school are complicated by the ongoing occupation and protracted political violence.

Introduction

Despite over five decades of protracted political violence, education remains a priority for most Palestinians (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), 2013). In a 2003 survey, 60% of Palestinian youth (ages 10–24) indicated that education was their first priority, and at over 90%, the literacy rate for Palestinians is generally high for the region (The World Bank and the Bisan Center for Research and Development, 2006). Compared to other education systems in the region and the world, school enrollment in Palestine1 is relatively high, with gross enrollment rates above 90% for both males and females. School can offer protection and structure to Palestinian children living in political violence. Yet school may also be a place of multiple forms of violence. Even if efforts are made to make accessing and attending school safe, students may encounter physical violence from the Israeli military or Israeli settlers on their journeys to and from school, thereby restricting children's access to education. Within school itself, there may be physical violence from peers or corporal punishment from teachers. Despite these challenges, the act of accessing the place of school can be a form of resistance, with education providing Palestinian children with a foundation for a positive future.

Framed by Relph's (1976) conceptualization of place as consisting of physical setting, activity, and meaning, this paper weighs school as a place of both violence and hope, thereby uncovering tensions in place for Palestinian children and their families. Whereas most studies on schooling in emergency settings use the lens of students and teachers, this study views the place of school from the perspective of families and communities, thus widening the scope of how education develops and changes within the context of political violence. This paper represents data from a larger doctoral research project exploring the concept and meaning of place for Palestinian children and families. The research was organized around four different settings: home, school, neighborhood community, and nation-state. This paper specifically focuses on school. By tackling the theoretical concept of place, the research uncovers how and to what extent the occupation and political violence affects Palestinian children and families’ relationship with school and how education protects or does not protect children and families. The paper will first provide the historical background of education in Palestine, a theoretical framework of school as a place, and an overview of the research methodology. Then, turning to the data, the paper will describe the inherent tensions of school as a place of both violence and hope.

Section snippets

Palestinian education under occupation

Prior to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, which began in 1967, Palestinian education in the 1950s and 1960s was subject to Jordanian (in the West Bank) and Egyptian (in Gaza) policies (Abu-Duhou, 1996). During this time, the government education system suffered from deterioration in quality (Affouneh, 2007) and did not reflect Palestinian culture, values, or knowledge (Alzaroo and Hunt, 2003). When the occupation began in 1967, the Israeli military took full control over education in

Theorizing the place of school

Over the past several decades, multiple theorists have attempted to unpack the diverse and complex meanings of place. One such theorist is Canadian geographer Relph (1976) whose influential work on the phenomenology of place and placelessness conceptualized place as theoretically organized around three basic elements: physical setting, activities, and meaning. As a physical setting, place can be a geographic center, site, or location (Relph, 1976) that provides the basic components for living.

Methodology

This paper represents a segment of a larger research project exploring the concept and meaning of different places (e.g., home, school, neighborhood community, and nation-state) for Palestinian children and families. The research methodology took a qualitative approach—specifically rapid ethnography (Handwerker, 2001, Mignone et al., 2009, Millen, 2000) for data collection and grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006) for data analysis—which were used to effectively answer the overarching research

Violence resulting from the Israel military

Family interviews detailed encounters with Israeli police or soldiers who harass children on their way to or from school. While showing me her drawing, 10-year-old Farida explained: “[The map is] me on my way to school… There are jeish (army) jeeps and they throw tear gas” (H13). Nine-year-old Mabrouka and her eight-year-old brother, Ismail, similarly described how they were harassed by the military on the way to school in Hebron:

Mabrouka: My school is on the road. They come to focus something

Education as hope for the future

Despite continued political and economic instability in Palestine, interviews with Palestinian families revealed the value of education for Palestinians. Ten-year-old Mourad and his family were evicted from their home in East Jerusalem two years ago and have since lived in two other neighborhoods. When I asked him what place he liked more, he answered that his favorite place was his original neighborhood, because it is where he could easily access school. His explanation revolved around the

Conclusion

This paper focused on Palestinian children and families’ experiences with place of school as a physical setting, site for activity, and place of meaning. For children and families in this study, school represents a physical setting where children engage in the activities of learning, playing, and socializing, and ultimately symbolizes hope for a positive individual and collective future. Yet, Using Relph's (1976) place-based framework revealed that families’ understandings of school as a place

Acknowledgements

This research was funded through the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships (CGS) program administered by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Centre for Research on Children and Families (CRCF) at McGill University. I am grateful to all those who assisted with the research on which this paper is based, especially the children and families who opened up their homes and hearts to me and my research team. I would also like to thank Myriam Denov, Julie Norman, Lysanne

References (54)

  • I. Abu-Duhou

    Schools in Palestine under the occupation and the Palestinian National Authority

    The Palestine–Israel Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture

    (1996)
  • S.J. Affouneh

    How sustained conflict makes moral education impossible: some observations from Palestine

    Journal of Moral Education

    (2007)
  • B. Akesson

    Contradictions in place: Everyday geographies of Palestinian children and families living under occupation

    (2014)
  • N. Altinok

    An analysis of schooling quality differences in Israel and Palestinian National Authority during the second intifada (background paper prepared for the Education for All Global Monitoring report 2011 No. 2011/ED/EFA/MRT/PI/11)

    (2010)
  • S. Alzaroo

    Education Under Occupation

    (1988)
  • S. Alzaroo

    Education Under the Shadow of the Intifada

    (1989)
  • S. Alzaroo et al.

    Education in the context of conflict and instability: the Palestinian case

    Social Policy & Administration

    (2003)
  • B’Tselem

    Statistics: Fatalities

    (2013)
  • P. Brey

    Space-shaping technologies and the geographical disembedding of place

  • N.J. Brown

    Palestinian Politics After the Oslo Accords: Resuming Arab Palestine

    (2003)
  • E. Casey

    Remembering: A Phenomenological Study

    (1987)
  • E. Casey

    Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-world

    (2009)
  • K. Charmaz

    Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide Through Qualitative Analysis

    (2006)
  • Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) et al.

    The Dangerous Road to Education: Palestinian Students Suffer Under Settler Violence and Military Negligence

    (2010)
  • Defence for Children International (DCI)

    Under Attack: Settler Violence Against Palestinian Children in the Occupied Territory

    (2008)
  • Defence for Children International (DCI)

    Under Attack: Settler Violence Against Palestinian Children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory [UPDATE]

    (2010)
  • Defence for Children International (DCI)

    Bound, Blindfolded, and Convicted: Children Held in Military Detention

    (2012)
  • Defence for Children International (DCI)

    Palestinian Children Travel Dangerous Route to School in At-Tuwani

    (2013)
  • Defence for Children International (DCI)

    Settler and Soldier Violence

    (2014)
  • B.G.V. Dyke et al.

    Educational reform in post-accord Palestine

    Educational Studies

    (2002)
  • B.G. Glaser et al.

    The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research

    (1967)
  • J.M. Halstead et al.

    Educating the human spirit in times of conflict: the case of emergency education in Palestine

    International Journal of Children's Spirituality

    (2006)
  • W.P. Handwerker

    Quick Ethnography

    (2001)
  • A. Hass

    IDF calls off escort of Palestinian schoolchildren in Hebron. Haaretz.com

    (2005)
  • R. Hollander

    The Debate About Israeli Settlements

    (2007, June 13)
  • D. Hutchison

    A Natural History of Place in Education

    (2004)
  • Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT). (n.d.). An Engineered Tragedy: Statistical Analysis of Fatalities (Statistical...
  • Cited by (23)

    • ‘Maybe that's how they learned in the past, but we don't learn like this today’: Youth perspectives on violent discipline in Lebanon's public schools

      2019, International Journal of Educational Development
      Citation Excerpt :

      Indeed, young people's resourcefulness and insights into their educational experiences and their needs as learners are often overlooked instead of being harnessed as active participants in educational change. For many young people living in contexts affected by adversities including unprecedented levels of direct violence and displacement, schools are places of violence and hope (Akesson, 2015), whereby the possibility of forging alternative futures is mediated by violences at various levels of operation. Given the embeddedness of violent discipline, attention to the interactions of direct, structural, and discursive violence within the structural and contextual layers of school, policy, law, and the broader sociohistoric milieu is critical to the promotion of children’s well-being that should be at the heart of any educational project to address violences in schools.

    • “We must cooperate with one another against the Enemy”: Agency and activism in school-aged children as protective factors against ongoing war trauma and political violence in the Gaza Strip

      2017, Child Abuse and Neglect
      Citation Excerpt :

      The right to play and to be educated are very important factors in Gazan children’s lives, which they wish to reinforce as situated forms of agency for resisting the occupation (Marshall, 2016; Veronese, Pepe, Jaradah, AlMurannak, & Hamdouna, 2017). In fact, school symbolizes hope for the future in the form of a physical and emotional safe place where children engage in activities of learning, playing, and socializing (Akesson, 2015). While on the one hand signs of the ongoing violence are clearly identifiable, for example in schools that have been bombed, or in the daily challenge of trying to study when the electricity is cut off every 6/8 h, on the other hand, Gazan children at school are constantly engaged in constructing meaning in relation to their own lives and that of their community (Relph, 1976; Veronese, Pepe, Jaradah, Al Muranak, & Hamdouna, 2015).

    • Beyond education: What role can schools play in the support and protection of children in extreme settings?

      2015, International Journal of Educational Development
      Citation Excerpt :

      School level initiatives to tackle discrimination and advance children's intercultural tolerance, must therefore be considered in relation to the macro, meso and micro contexts that characterize diverse school settings (ibid.). Both Akesson (2015) and van Ommering (2015) generate a critical understanding of the education-conflict nexus, questioning the potential of schools in settings of conflict to adequately prepare children for lives in situations of dire political conflict. Drawing on research with 18 Palestinian families, Akesson (2015) explores local representations and meanings of schools as a protective space.

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text