Global Change, Peace & Security

formerly Pacifica Review: Peace, Security & Global Change

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Teaching peace in the midst of civil war: tensions

between global and local discourses in Sri Lankan
civics textbooks

Denise Bentrovato & Marie Nissanka

To cite this article: Denise Bentrovato & Marie Nissanka (2018) Teaching peace in the midst
of civil war: tensions between global and local discourses in Sri Lankan civics textbooks, Global
Change, Peace & Security, 30:3, 353-372, DOI: 10.1080/14781158.2018.1505716

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14781158.2018.1505716

Published online: 14 Aug 2018.

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GLOBAL CHANGE, PEACE & SECURITY
2018, VOL. 30, NO. 3, 353–372
https://doi.org/10.1080/14781158.2018.1505716

Teaching peace in the midst of civil war: tensions between

global and local discourses in Sri Lankan civics textbooks
a
Denise Bentrovato and Marie Nissankab
a
Department of Humanities Education, Groenkloof Campus, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa;
b
National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Focusing on Sri Lanka, this article complements existing research on Received 16 July 2018
the adoption of global norms and discourses around peace Accepted 25 July 2018
education by illuminating the tensions between global and local
KEYWORDS
demands in a multicultural society torn by conflict. In analysing a Sri Lanka; peace education;
series of donor-funded official civics textbooks issued during the peacebuilding; citizenship;
civil war, it identifies textbooks as sites of the conflictual textbooks; norm diffusion
‘hybridisation’ of the liberal peacebuilding paradigm and the
challenge to it posed by local interests and sensibilities. The
analysis of the discourses around ‘good citizenship’ in Sri Lankan
textbooks elucidates a case of the political co-optation of donor-
driven agendas, traceable in the uneasy blend of a traditional and
a global model of citizenship education simultaneously embracing
and undermining liberal ideals of peacebuilding through
emphases and silences that may risk compromising national
reconciliation. The textbook discourses which enact these
processes construct notions of social cohesion around civic
virtues, frame rights as privileges earned through compliance
and gratitude towards authoritative institutions, promote
understandings of peace and conflict which highlight individual
responsibility while obscuring systemic violence, and affirm social
justice, democracy and human rights while evading the realisation
of these ideals in practice.

Introduction
In recent years, we have seen the rise of a fast-expanding field of practice and research at
the intersection of peace studies and education. Peace education is one of the many sub-
fields within this body of scholarship and practices. Often critiqued for a lack of clarity and
consensus on its definition and for overly ambitious goals, it has frequently served as a
catch-all concept and a supposed panacea subsuming many of the elements and under-
lying principles at the core of peacebuilding initiatives in educational settings.1 UNICEF’s

CONTACT Denise Bentrovato denise.bentrovato@up.ac.za

1
See, inter alia, Daniel Bar-Tal, ‘The Elusive Nature of Peace Education’, in Peace Education: The Concept, Principles, and Prac-
tices around the World, ed. Gavriel Salomon and Baruch Nevo (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002), 27–36; Claire
McGlynn et al., eds., Peace Education in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies: Comparative Perspectives (New York, NY: Pal-
grave Macmillan, 2009); Gavriel Salomon and Edward Cairns, eds., Handbook on Peace Education (New York: Psychology
Press, 2010).
© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
354 D. BENTROVATO AND M. NISSANKA

broadly adopted definition conceptualises peace education as a complex and multi-

layered
process of promoting the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values needed to bring about
behaviour changes that will enable children, youths and adults to prevent conflict and vio-
lence, both overt and structural; to resolve conflict peacefully; and to create the conditions
conducive to peace, whether at an intra-personal, interpersonal, intergroup, national or inter-
national level.2

Under the aegis of international organisations such as UNICEF and UNESCO, peace edu-
cation has found its way into schools around the world and in many instances has been
integrated into existing subjects. One of these ‘carrier subjects’ is civic or citizenship edu-
cation, understood here as a key vector of selected knowledge, skills, attitudes and values
which relevant authorities deem essential to young people’s participation as informed and
ethical national and global citizens.3 Concomitant to this worldwide integration of peace
education into school curricula, a model of global citizenship education has recently come
to the fore, again supported by international bodies. Distinct from a traditional model of
civic education aimed at patriotic nation-building, this increasingly popular concept
embraces an international rights-based discourse aimed at building a global culture of
peace.4 Sponsored by international organisations and bilateral and multilateral donors,
this model and discourse have found adoption in countries around the world, prompting
scholarship on world culture theory which, proceeding from a neo-institutional perspec-
tive, has turned a research spotlight on this global convergence of worldwide educational
practices and identified it as a product of globalisation and of the diffusion of global
norms.5 Existing analyses have demonstrated curricula and textbooks’ expanding incor-
poration of a global discourse encompassing human rights, democracy, equality and
social justice, diversity and multiculturalism, and sustainable development, and relatedly
embracing approaches geared towards nurturing critical thinking skills and marrying
content with form by the employment of learner-centred and multi-perspective
pedagogies.6
Literature on post-conflict education and related processes of reform has suggested
there is peacebuilding potential in global citizenship education models that include
such discourses and pedagogies, thus positing their particular relevance in societies

2
Susan Fountain, Peace Education in UNICEF (New York: UNICEF 1999).
3
Kerry J. Kennedy, ‘Global Trends in Civic and Citizenship Education: What Are the Lessons for Nation States?’, Education
Sciences 2, no. 3 (2012): 121–35; Laura J. Quaynor, ‘Citizenship Education in Post-Conflict Contexts: A Review of the Lit-
erature’, Education, Citizenship and Social Justice 7, no. 1 (2012): 33–57.
4
James A. Banks, ‘Teaching for Social Justice, Diversity, and Citizenship in a Global World’, The Educational Forum 68, no. 4
(2004): 296–305; Eleanor J. Brown and W. John Morgan, ‘A Culture of Peace via Global Citizenship Education’, Peace
Review 20, no. 3 (2008): 283–91; Ian Davies, Mark Evans, and Alan Reid, ‘Globalising Citizenship Education? A Critique
of “Global Education” and “Citizenship Education”’, British Journal of Educational Studies 53, no. 1 (2005): 66–89; Lynn
Davies, ‘Global Citizenship: Abstraction or Framework for Action?’, Educational Review 58, no. 1 (2006): 5–25; Audrey
Osler and Kerry Vincent, Citizenship and the Challenge of Global Education (Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham, 2002); UNESCO,
Global Citizenship Education. Preparing Learners for the Challenges of the 21st Century (Paris: UNESCO, 2014).
5
Kathryn Anderson-Levitt, ed. Local Meanings, Global Schooling: Anthropology and World Culture Theory (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2003); John W. Meyer et al., ‘World Society and the Nation-State’, American Journal of Sociology 103, no. 1
(1997): 144–81.
6
Elizabeth Buckner and Susan Garnett Russell, ‘Portraying the Global: Cross-National Trends in Textbooks’ Portrayal of Glo-
balization and Global Citizenship’, International Studies Quarterly 57, no. 4: (2013): 738–50; John W. Meyer, Patricia
Bromley, and Francisco O. Ramírez, ‘Human Rights in Social Science Textbooks: Cross-National Analyses, 1970–2008’, Soci-
ology of Education 83, no. 2 (2010): 111–34; Francisco O. Ramírez, Patricia Bromley, and Susan Garnett Russell, ‘The Valor-
ization of Humanity and Diversity’, Multicultural Education Review 1, no.1 (2009): 29–54.
 GLOBAL CHANGE, PEACE & SECURITY 355

affected by and recovering from conflict. Notwithstanding the increasing adoption of the
ideals underlying this model the world over, emerging empirical research has revealed
variation in the extent of local adoption, as well as identifying adaptation of these
global discourses and norms within civics curricula and educational media in deeply
divided contexts. Educational research in such settings, including several quantitative text-
book studies, has highlighted two related trends: the frequent circumvention in these
media of particularly controversial discussions relating to cultural diversity and minorities’
rights and perspectives within a local frame of reference, and a greater adherence, in com-
parison to educational media from countries not affected by violent conflict, to a tra-
ditional understanding of civics education emphasising national unity and allegiance to
the nation-state.7
This article aims to complement the nascent empirical research into civics education in
politically fragile and deeply divided contexts while contributing to broader debates in
peace and conflict studies around liberal peacebuilding interventions and concomitant
processes of ‘hybridisation’ resulting from the (conflicting) interplay of external and
internal forces and interests, and inherent dynamics of power and agency.8 Its aim is to
further shed light on the tensions and negotiations between global and local demands
which surround the application and implementation of global educational discourses,
norms and related concepts geared towards promoting a culture of peace in societies
torn by conflict. It specifically focuses on state-sanctioned textbooks, identifying them
as key manifestations of policy implementation, as powerful conduits of political desirable
discourses, and as sites of visible manifestation of the tensions at the heart of our interest.
The article draws on the particular case of Sri Lanka to gain insights from the experience of
a multicultural country whose government, supported by international actors, sought to
foster social cohesion through education reform and textbook revision in the midst of a
prolonged civil war fought between the Sinhalese-dominated government and Tamil
separatists. The article examines the content of a series of official civics textbooks, pro-
duced at the height of the armed conflict with the intention to mainstream peace edu-
cation into the national school syllabus. In scrutinising the dominant themes, values,
emphases and omissions of Sri Lanka’s war-time peace education discourse, as conveyed
through these textbooks, the study sheds light on inbuilt contradictions and considers the
implications of these teachings for this transitional, multicultural society today. In so doing,
it enriches an emerging field of textbook research in Sri Lanka, which has uncovered a
combination of multiculturalism and cultural and political bias towards particular experi-
ences and perspectives.9 Recognising Sri Lanka’s contradictory textbook discourses as

7
Julia C. Lerch, Susan Garnett Russell, and Francisco O. Ramírez, ‘Wither the Nation-State? A Comparative Analysis of Nation-
alism in Textbooks’, Social Forces 96, no. 1 (2017): 153–80; Susan Garnett Russell and Dijana Tiplic, ‘Rights-Based Edu-
cation and Conflict: A Cross-National Study of Rights Discourse in Textbooks’, Compare 44, no. 3 (2014): 314–34.
8
Roger Mac Ginty, ‘Hybrid Peace: The Interaction Between Top-Down and Bottom-Up Peace’, Security Dialogue 41, no. 4
(2010): 391–412; Oliver Richmond, ‘The Dilemmas of a Hybrid Peace: Negative or Positive?’, Cooperation and Conflict
50, no. 1 (2015): 50–68.
9
Anne Gaul, ‘Where Are the Minorities? The Elusiveness of Multiculturalism and Positive Recognition in Sri Lankan History
Textbooks’, Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 6, no. 2 (2014): 87–105; Ariel Sánchez Meertens, ‘Courses of
Conflict: Transmission of Knowledge and War’s History in Eastern Sri Lanka’, History and Anthropology 24, no. 2 (2013):
253–73; Elizabeth Nissan and R. L. Stirrat, ‘The Generation of Communal Identities’, in Sri Lanka: History and the Roots
of Conflict, ed. Jonathan Spencer (London: Routledge, 1990), 19–44; Marie Nissanka, ‘The Nature of Multiculturalism
within the Civics Textbooks of Sri Lanka’, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 18, no. 2 (2016): 97–112; Birgitte Refslund
Sørensen, ‘The Politics of Citizenship and Difference in Sri Lankan Schools’, Anthropology & Education Quarterly 39, no. 4
(2008): 423–43.
356 D. BENTROVATO AND M. NISSANKA

manifestations of and instruments for the maintenance of a ‘hybrid peace’ that is the
product of local adaptations of global norms, the article concludes by reflecting on the
limitations to peacebuilding efficacy which may derive from the contradictions identified.
Ultimately, it argues that the promotion of certain norms and values, be they framed as
local or global, may be meaningless or indeed counterproductive if it is not accompanied
by efforts to critically address domestic experiences of violence, its root causes, its present-
day legacies, and related continuing controversies.

Context: a multicultural society with a recent past of protracted armed

conflict
Sri Lanka is a multicultural country characterised by cultural, religious and linguistic diver-
sity. The most recent census, taken in 2012, records a population of over 20 million, 75% of
which consists of predominantly Buddhist Sinhalese. The largely Hindu Tamil population
amounts to 11% of the total, and an additional 4% are Indian Tamil. Nine per cent of Sri
Lankans are Moors who are predominantly Muslim. Further, less than 1% are of Eurasian
or other ethnicities.10 Sri Lanka’s population also includes a Christian community, com-
posed of Sinhalese, Tamils and Eurasians. The country has three national languages, Sin-
halese, Tamil and English, all of which are currently recognised as languages of
instruction in government schools.
The history of intergroup relations in Sri Lanka is a largely troubled and contested one.11
Records of intercultural coexistence date as far back as several centuries before the begin-
ning of the Common Era. In the 1800s, British colonial authorities brought the various king-
doms on the island under their central control. They also encouraged significant Tamil
migration from India in order to secure a workforce on the cash-crop plantations. There
is a perception among nationalists in the Sinhalese population, which is contested in
some Tamil circles, that colonial rule brought the Sinhalese socio-economic disadvantage
compared to a better-educated English-speaking Tamil minority and thus inflamed inter-
group relations.12
The arrival of independence in 1948 saw the ascent of Sinhalese nationalism to the
detriment of minority groups. A prominent product of post-colonial Sinhalese nation-
alism was the passing of the Ceylon Citizenship Act in 1948, which remained in force
until 2003 and denied citizenship to the historically particularly disadvantaged Indian
Tamils. Another was the Sinhala Only Bill of 1956, a discriminatory policy which
declared Sinhalese as Sri Lanka’s only official language, marginalising the country’s
cultural minorities. A partial amendment to the policy in 1958 permitted the adminis-
trative use of the Tamil language in the Tamil-dominated Northern and Eastern Pro-
vinces. Increasing dissatisfaction led to a further revision in 1978, with the
10
In total, Buddhists comprise 70.1% of the population, Hindus 12.6%, Muslims 9.7% and Christians 7.6%. Census of Popu-
lation and Housing 2012, Department of Census and Statistics, Sri Lanka.
11
Patrick Peebles, The History of Sri Lanka (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006); Jonathan Spencer, ed., Sri
Lanka: History and the Roots of Conflict (London: Routledge, 1990); Jonathan Goodhand, Benedikt Korf, and Jonathan
Spencer, eds., Conflict and Peacebuilding in Sri Lanka: Caught in the Peace Trap? (London: Routledge, 2011).
12
What appears to be established is that those favoured in colonial Ceylon had received English and western-oriented edu-
cation from Christian missionaries; in addition to European descendants, these people were more likely to be high-caste
Tamils, alongside a smaller group of Sinhalese who had converted to Christianity. At the same time, however, the Indian
Tamil estate labourers were among the least educated and thus the least privileged in colonial society.
 GLOBAL CHANGE, PEACE & SECURITY 357

authorities constitutionally recognising Tamil and English as national languages in

addition to Sinhalese.
Decades of mounting tensions arising in part through such policies fed Tamil separatist
aspirations for the creation of a self-governing Tamil state in northern Sri Lanka. These ten-
sions formed the backdrop to a protracted and bloody civil war, with the separatist agenda
militantly pursued since the late 1970s by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
against the Sinhalese-dominated government. Fighting continued unabated throughout
the negotiation of various ceasefires and agreements under the Kumaratunga Adminis-
tration (1994–2005), with the help of Norwegian mediators.13 During the negotiations, a
federal system was debated, ultimately unsuccessfully, as a compromise between the
two-state solution pursued by the LTTE and the centralised unitary state favoured by
the government.
The final blow to the peace process came as a new government, headed by President
Mahinda Rajapaksa (2005–2015), launched a crushing military campaign in the Tamil-
dominated regions of Sri Lanka between 2007 and 2009, eventually leading to the end
of the war through unilateral military victory of the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) in
May 2009. The conflict – which, while primarily fought in the Tamil regions, inflicted con-
sequences nationwide due to offensives by Tamil guerrillas – saw instances of extreme vio-
lence on both sides. The United Nations estimated that it claimed over 100,000 lives over
the course of 26 years, with as many as 40,000 having perished in 2009 alone.14 Despite
progress in the country’s reconstruction and rehabilitation since the war’s end, national
reconciliation appears to have remained elusive in a context of ‘peace’ coming through
violent means.15

Education reform as peacebuilding in war-torn Sri Lanka

It is against this backdrop that, among the plethora of initiatives funded by Western
donors to promote peace, Sri Lanka saw the launch of a citizenship education curriculum.
It was introduced in 2000 during the Kumaratunga Administration that supported the Nor-
wegian mediation process between the GoSL and the LTTE, and was continued under the
subsequent Rajapaksa Administration, which attained military victory against the LTTE in
2009. Since then, Sri Lankan students aged between 10 and 16 have been receiving citi-
zenship education, taught as ‘Life Education and Citizenship’ from Grade 6 to 9 and ‘Citi-
zenship and Governance’ in Grades 10 and 11. At its core are lessons on rights and
responsibilities, social structures and governance systems, and issues of human rights
and democracy.
It is important to locate this peacebuilding initiative within the framework of broader
education reforms which, consistent with the recommendations of international sponsor-
ing bodies, came into being during the war with the aim of promoting social cohesion and
addressing historical inequalities.16 One of the acts associated with these reforms was the
13
Mark Salter, To End a Civil War: Norway’s Peace Engagement in Sri Lanka (London: Hurst, 2015).
14
United Nations, Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka (2011).
15
S. I. Keethaponcalan, ‘Violence, Nonviolence, and Ethnic Reconciliation in Post-War Sri Lanka’, in The Promise of Reconci-
liation? Examining Violent and Nonviolent Effects on Asian Conflicts, ed. Chaiwat Satha-Anand and Oliver Urbain (New York:
Routledge, 2017), 87–102.
16
Peter Colenso, ‘Education and Social Cohesion: Developing a Framework for Education Sector Reform in Sri Lanka’,
Compare 35, no. 4 (2005): 411–28; Lynn Davies, ‘Sri Lanka’s National Policy on Education for Social Cohesion and
358 D. BENTROVATO AND M. NISSANKA

introduction in 1991 of a cornerstone policy, called the National Education Commission

Act 19, which aimed to promote national cohesion through the integration of peace
and multicultural education into the school curriculum; it also instituted a bilingual
school system with a view to reducing the linguistic segregation that had historically
characterised Sri Lanka’s deeply divided education system. Since 1997, initiatives for the
revision of ethnocentric textbooks, which had historically portrayed the Tamils as invaders,
have accompanied these reforms.17 The aim of the textbook revisions, whose editorial
board now also encompassed Tamil and Muslim scholars, was to eliminate identity-
based bias and stereotyping against minority groups while promoting students’ appreci-
ation of diversity and intercultural cooperation. The integration of such global discourses
and norms relating to peace, social justice and multiculturalism into textbooks and edu-
cational policy was undoubtedly connected to the reliance of educational reconstruction
and reform activities on external funding within a broader context of active foreign invol-
vement in Sri Lanka’s peace brokering process.
These various reforms additionally reflected an emphasis on the cultivation of national
harmony, as is explicitly articulated in curriculum policy documents published by the Min-
istry of Education’s Social Cohesion and Peace Unit in 2008 and 2009. The policies recog-
nised education as ‘a powerful means to shape the people’s minds and hearts towards
peace’.18 In so doing, they highlighted the importance of ‘respecting diversity’ in a multi-
cultural society and of schools tackling the ‘more controversial issues surrounding national
unity and national conflict’ while also acknowledging the risks to peace posed by unad-
dressed forms of structural violence. Policymakers remarked that ‘[p]eace cannot be
built as long as violent social structures exist in society’, as ‘[n]aturally such structures
will lead people to act violently’.19

Methodology
This article analyses civics textbooks that were produced in line with the 2000 curricu-
lum during the civil war in 2007. Our research sample consists of a complete set of six
official textbooks – one for each grade, from grade 6 to 11.20 As are all state-sponsored
textbooks in Sri Lanka, these sources, which are provided free of charge to all students
in government schools, are published by the Educational Publications Department in
Sinhala and then translated into Tamil and English.21 For reasons of accessibility, this
study exclusively analyses the English version of the textbooks. Importantly, the

Peace’ in Learning to Live Together: Education for Conflict Resolution, Responsible Citizenship, Human Rights and Humani-
tarian Norms, ed. Margaret Sinclair (Doha: Education Above All, 2013), 224-33; Angela W. Little, ‘Education Policy Reform
in Sri Lanka: The Double-Edged Sword of Political Will’, Journal of Education Policy 26, no. 4 (2011): 499–512; Lal Perera,
Swarna Wijetunge, and A. S. Balasooriya, ‘Education Reform and Political Violence in Sri Lanka’, in Education, Conflict and
Social Cohesion, ed. Sobhi Tawil and Alexandra Harley (Geneva: UNESCO International Bureau of Education, 2004), 375–
433.
17
Nissan and Stirrat, ‘The Generation of Communal Identities’; Colenso, ‘Education and Social Cohesion’.
18
Government of Sri Lanka, National Policy and a Comprehensive Framework for Actions on Education for Social Cohesion and
Peace (ESCP) (Colombo: Social Cohesion and Peace Unit, Ministry of Education, Government of Sri Lanka, 2008), ii.
19
Ibid.
20
The analysis of only one book per grade is related to the fact that Sri Lankan government schools, like public schools in
many developing countries, rely on a single standardised textbook per grade and school subject as the main text on
which examinations are based. The books we analysed here were written by different teams of local authors employed
by the government. Perhaps due to this circumstance, they are inconsistent in terms of the variety of English employed.
21
Gaul, ‘Where Are the Minorities?’.
 GLOBAL CHANGE, PEACE & SECURITY 359

sample analysed here was in use until recently. A revision of curricula, and conse-
quently of the books, effected in 2016, did not substantially change their central
message. Alongside increased sensitivity around issues of multiculturalism and
gender, the most significant change characterising these new editions, as we will high-
light in the discussion of the findings, concerns the omission of most direct references
to the domestic conflict and civil war.
We used qualitative content analysis to systematically cluster and categorise textbook
quotes into emerging themes through open coding.22 Based on our understanding of
textbooks as cultural artefacts shaped by power and politics,23 we further scrutinised
the emerging themes via discourse analysis. Our intention was to deconstruct these
media’s language and messages and their associated political discourses and implications,
and discern how state-sponsored educational discourse produces, reproduces and legiti-
mises particular knowledge.24 We framed the analysis around a number of questions
which we adapted from Richard Jackson’s work on language and politics in relation to
the war on terrorism.25 Our analytical framework considers the assumptions and values
underlying the language used in the text; the nature of, and reasons for, particular
emphases and omissions, and overall bias; and the role language plays in either conform-
ing to or challenging existing power relations, and thus making the text serve specific
actors and agendas. Part of this analysis entailed considering the specific meanings and
connotations that appear to attach to concepts and ideas associated with a global
culture of peace as they are translated and appropriated, fittingly or otherwise, by local
actors pursuing particular agendas. Ian Harris, in a study on the ‘conceptual underpinnings
of peace education’, has observed that ‘[p]eace has different meanings within different
cultures as well as different connotations’.26 The same could be argued of other concepts
at the core of peace-oriented education.
This study’s textbook-focused methodological approach builds on a number of pre-
mises and observations deriving from extant scholarship on these media.27 First among
them is the premise that textbooks act as key instruments for shaping young people’s
worldviews and for cultivating values and knowledge aimed at promoting a type of citi-
zenship considered desirable by those influencing their content.28 The significance and
power of these media in this respect is especially evident in developing countries, includ-
ing Sri Lanka, where alternative resources tend to be scarce and school textbooks may fre-
quently be the only books that people will ever read. Second, and following from the
previous point, the study recognises textbooks as frequent sites of societal contention
on inclusions and exclusions; these decisions are intrinsically linked to politics and

22
Klaus Krippendorff and Mary Angela Bock, eds., The Content Analysis Reader (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2009).
23
Michael W. Apple, ‘The Politics of Official Knowledge: Does a National Curriculum Make Sense?’, Discourse 14, no. 1 (1993):
1–16.
24
Teun A. Van Dijk, ‘Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis’, Discourse & Society 4, no. 2 (1993): 249–83; Norman Fairclough,
‘Intertextuality in Critical Discourse Analysis’, Linguistics and Education 4, no. 4 (1992): 269–93.
25
Richard Jackson, Writing the War on Terrorism: Language, Politics and Counter-Terrorism (Manchester: Manchester Univer-
sity Press, 2005).
26
Ian Harris, ‘Conceptual Underpinnings of Peace Education’, in Peace Education: The Concept, Principles, and Practices
Around the World, ed. Gavriel Salomon and Baruch Nevo, 17.
27
For a general overview, see Eckhardt Fuchs and Annekatrin Bock, eds., The Palgrave Handbook of Textbook Studies
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). See also Falk Pingel, UNESCO Guidebook on Textbook Research and Textbook Revision.
2nd rev. (Paris/Braunschweig: UNESCO/Georg Eckert Institute, 2010).
28
James H. Williams, ed., (Re)Constructing Memory: School Textbooks and the Imagination of the Nation (Rotterdam: Sense
Publishers, 2014).
360 D. BENTROVATO AND M. NISSANKA

issues of power, and influential societal groups tend to claim, or win, the right to make
them.29 Third, and relatedly, we consider textbooks as media which, by virtue of their rep-
resentation of dominant voices and discourses, reflect and may aggravate existing power
imbalances and conditions of societal conflict. Ample research has evidenced the promi-
nence of ethnocentric bias and ‘othering’ practices, including marginalisation and nega-
tive or stereotypical portrayal of non-dominant groups, in textbooks from countries
undergoing protracted conflict around the world.30 Fourth, this study recognises the
recent and current ascendancy in textbooks of a donor-driven global human rights
agenda, whose discourses have often conflicted with domestic nation-building agendas
in conflict-ridden and post-conflict societies. As we have previously indicated, emergent
research has uncovered nationalist and patriotic trends in post-conflict textbook
content, often to the detriment of the recognition and appreciation of diversity and cul-
tural plurality advocated by international actors.31

Findings
The analysis of Sri Lanka’s civics textbooks revealed a set of dominant norms and values
approached and foregrounded through discourses around issues that are typically associ-
ated with peace education. Specifically, it identified three broad key themes of particular
relevance to the purpose of this study, which we have categorised as follows: i) Social
cohesion around civic virtues: rights framed as privileges earned through compliance
and gratitude; ii) Understanding and resolving conflict: highlighting individual responsibil-
ity, obscuring systemic violence; iii) Social justice, democracy and human rights: upheld in
theory, evaded in practice.

Social cohesion around civic virtues: rights framed as privileges earned through
compliance and gratitude
The first theme we identified in our analysis of Sri Lanka’s civics textbooks points to a
primary understanding of citizenship education as a vehicle for moral and patriotic edu-
cation whose apparent principal purpose is to cultivate social cohesion through the incul-
cation of civic norms and values for the country’s collective good. The textbooks, then,
appear as agents of socialisation whose central aim is to impart a collective, homogenised
understanding, ostensibly rooted in local culture, of what it means to be an ethical and
29
Michael Apple and Linda Christian-Smith, eds., The Politics of the Textbook (New York: Routledge, 1991); Heather Hickman
and Brad J. Porfilio, eds., The New Politics of the Textbook: Problematizing the Portrayal of Marginalized Groups in Textbooks
(Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2012).
30
Denise Bentrovato, Karina Korostelina, and Martina Schulze, eds., History Can Bite: History Education in Divided and Post-
War Societies (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2016); Denise Bentrovato, ‘History Textbook Writing in Post-Conflict Societies:
From Battlefield to Site and Means of Conflict Transformation’, in History Teaching and Conflict Transformation: Social
Psychological Theories, History Teaching and Reconciliation, ed. Charis Psaltis, Mario Carretero, and Sabina Cejahic-
Clancy (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 37–76; Muhammad Ayaz Naseem and Georg Stöber, ‘Introduction:
Textbooks, Identity Politics, and Lines of Conflict in South Asia’, Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 6,
no. 2 (2014): 1–9.
31
Lerch et al., ‘Wither the Nation-State?’; Russell and Tiplic, ‘Rights-Based Education and Conflict’. The closely related issue
of local resistance to internationalised standards of textbook revision in conflict-affected regions is addressed in the
present special issue, with reference to Cyprus: see Eleni Christodoulou, ‘Deconstructing Resistance towards History Text-
book Revisions: The Securitization of History Textbooks and the Cyprus Conflict’, Global Change, Peace and Security 30, no.
3 (2018).
 GLOBAL CHANGE, PEACE & SECURITY 361

responsible citizen in the Sri Lankan context. This manifests in their stated intention to
promote ‘learning to live in society in a virtuous way’ among young Sri Lankans, on the
basis of moral teachings around ‘what is good’ and ‘what is bad’ in society.32 Among
the virtues and behavioural traits of a good citizen as emphasised in Sri Lankan civics text-
books are resilience, discipline, productivity, a good work ethic and frugality, as well as a
sense of goodwill, altruism, generosity, honesty, humility and patience. It is of note here
that the textbook content also presents an understanding of good citizenship which
closely links civic virtues to civic duties, exhorting loyalty towards and respect for authority
– in the form of parents, teachers, religious leaders and the government – as well as active
and responsible community participation in social institutions, including the family, school,
and religious and civic organisations.
We noted a particular emphasis on the societally cohesive action of familial responsibil-
ity. The textbooks promote respect of and compliance towards parental authority and lea-
dership, and encourage participation in sacrosanct family traditions, also referred to as
‘laws of the family’; these include wholehearted participation in religious activities, a
precept of significance in a country where religion is both a salient identity marker and
a dimension of intergroup tensions. The use of the family as symbol, synecdoche and smal-
lest unit of wider society is evident in the articulation of the belief that ‘[t]he primary dis-
cipline that is acquired within the family helps immensely in social good’.33 The invocation
of the familial metaphor for the wider role of citizenship sees students called upon to be ‘a
worthy citizen of Mother Lanka’34 by serving ‘our country’.35 The emotive references to
‘Mother Lanka’ and ‘our country’ and the civic nationalism they seek to promote largely
echo the post-independence rhetoric historically favoured by the Sinhalese-dominated
Sri Lankan government, whose intention was to protect national culture within a sovereign
unitary state. The message is further reinforced through historical references to intergroup
cooperation around common goals, notably during the independence movement at the
time of foreign colonial rule.36 This suggests a continuation of certain historically dominant
discourses whose underlying messages appear essentially unchanged despite the seman-
tics of peacebuilding. Of particularly striking significance in this context is the textbooks’
encouragement of respectful, compliant and obliging attitudes among students towards
those in authority who grant them rights, particularly the state. Among the textbooks’
admonitions to readers are: ‘When receiving education as your right, it is your duty to
[…] try to serve the family, society and country by becoming a good citizen’,37 and ‘the
state spends a colossal amount of money to provide free education, and it is our duty
to give our services back to our country’.38

32
Educational Publications Department (EPD), Life Education and Citizenship, Grade 6 (Government of Sri Lanka, 2007), 41.
33
EPD, Life Education and Citizenship, Grade 8, Book 2 (Government of Sri Lanka, 2007), 23.
34
EPD, Citizenship Education and Governance, Grade 11 (Government of Sri Lanka, 2007), 87.
35
Ibid., 88.
36
The Grade 7 textbook emphasises a message of unity through common goals and ideals by asserting that, ‘[t]o gain inde-
pendence for Sri Lanka, leaders of Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim communities worked in unison’. EPD, Life Education and
Citizenship, Grade 7 (Government of Sri Lanka, 2007), 146. The textbooks additionally highlight commonalities among
all religions and cultures and contain positively-connotated depictions of diversity by presenting, for instance, religious
celebrations marked by minorities. This particular emphasis in civics textbooks contrasts with the approach found in a
recent study of Sri Lankan history textbooks, which critiqued the ‘elusiveness of multiculturalism and positive recognition’
characterising a school subject that foregrounds Sinhalese legends and heroes at the expense of the histories of the coun-
try’s minorities. Gaul, ‘Where Are the Minorities?’.
37
EPD, Life Education and Citizenship, Grade 7, 108.
38
EPD, Citizenship Education and Governance, Grade 11, 88.
362 D. BENTROVATO AND M. NISSANKA

Echoing research findings in other Asian contexts, notably Singapore, China and
Korea,39 the textbooks’ emphasis on these particular civic virtues and duties points to col-
lectivism as a prominent theme. In celebrating this collectivism, the Grade 11 textbook
delivers a notable critique of Western liberal values, deploring the impact of Western colo-
nialism on Eastern collectivist values. The textbook highlights the ensuing depreciation of
a sense of civic duty in favour of individualistic civic entitlement and respect for human
rights as an unfortunate legacy of the colonial past. It laments that ‘[t]he Eastern culture
found its way out due to the British rule and people got a Western touch to their behaviour
patterns’, in which people’s ‘main intention was to win their rights and not to perform their
duties and responsibilities’. In rejection of this attitude, the textbook reminds young Sri
Lankans of the conditionality of the rights thus claimed, insisting that ‘your rights are pro-
tected if you perform your duties and responsibilities well’.40
Significantly, the relationships of conditionality and owed gratitude associated with the
protection and granting of basic civic rights fundamentally contradict and undermine the
Western liberal paradigm upon which global discourses around a culture of peace are
based, and which recognises an individual’s rights as birth rights rather than framing
them as privileges earned as a reward for ‘good’ citizenship behaviours.

Understanding and resolving conflict: highlighting individual responsibility,

obscuring systemic violence
The second theme that the analysis discerned as charactering Sri Lanka’s civics textbooks
revolves around the promotion of knowledge, attitudes and skills geared towards under-
standing and resolving conflict. Whereas the first theme outlined above foregrounds col-
lectivist civic virtues and duties as key factors in the promotion of social cohesion, this
second theme emphasises individual attitudes and their importance in preventing and
mitigating conflict while evading discussion of systemic, structural violence, especially
in relation to the local context. We note again at this juncture that the curriculum
reform of 2016 prompted revisions to the books which saw most references to the civil
war removed.
The peace education content of Sri Lanka’s civics textbooks for the earlier grades, par-
ticularly Grades 6 to 8, focuses on encouraging personal attributes and attitudinal and
behavioural competencies deemed conducive to ‘minimis[ing]’ and ‘[r]esolv[ing]
conflicts amicably’ at an interpersonal level. Among other things, the textbooks seek to
foster kindness, empathy and respect for others’ views, as well as attitudes of inner
peace and the ability to control emotions.41 This focus reflects the textbooks’ understand-
ing of some of the causes of interpersonal conflict, which range from divergences in views
and opinions42 and attitudinal and behavioural issues such as ‘inattention, lack of good
39
Kara Chan, ‘Consumer Socialization of Chinese Children in Schools: Analysis of Consumption Values in Textbooks’, Journal
of Consumer Marketing 23, no. 3 (2006): 125–32; Youngdal Cho and Yunkyoung Park, ‘Textbook as a Contradictory
Melting-Pot: An Analysis of Multicultural Content in Korean Textbooks’, Asia Pacific Journal of Education 36, no. 1
(2016): 111–30; Joy Chew Oon Ai, ‘Civics and Moral Education in Singapore: Lessons for Citizenship Education?’,
Journal of Moral Education 27, no. 4 (1998): 505–24; Tan Tai Wei and Chew Lee Chin, ‘Moral and Citizenship Education
as Statecraft in Singapore: A Curriculum Critique’, Journal of Moral Education 33, no. 4 (2004): 597–606.
40
EPD, Citizenship Education and Governance, Grade 11, 86.
41
EPD, Life Education and Citizenship, Grade 8, Book 1, 34.
42
EPD, Life Education and Citizenship, Grade 7, 10.
 GLOBAL CHANGE, PEACE & SECURITY 363

Figure 1. Categorising conflicts. Source: EPD, Citizenship Education and Governance, Grade 10, 86.

social relationships, selfishness, taking decisions based on feelings’ to ‘lack of education’.43

The Grade 10 textbook further declares education and knowledge to be the only remedy
to humans’ ‘instinctive’ tendency to resort to conflict.44 Once again, it places the onus for
the emergence and avoidance of conflict on the individual, or human nature as expressed
through individual actions; the apparently Buddhist roots of this theory of conflict are
evident in its definition as ‘an expression of the heart and mind of an individual’.45 Its
additional mention of ‘disproportionate targets’ of conflict-related aggression may be
readable as a reference to the targets chosen by Tamil separatists.46
Alongside the textbooks’ focus on the individualisation of responsibility in preserving
peace appears a tendency, by no means unique to Sri Lanka among post-conflict set-
tings,47 to evade the pinpointing of structural or systemic roots of Sri Lanka’s recent
history of violence. One rare reference to the domestic experience with civil war is
found in Figure 1 reproduced below, taken from a chapter of the Grade 10 civics textbook
titled ‘Conflict resolution in a democratic society’.
Of note here is the textbook’s indirect reference to Sri Lanka’s civil war through its
mention of the desire ‘to have a separate state’ as a cause of intrastate war pitting a
government against ‘terrorists’. The terminology used here delegitimises the Tamil
cause by unequivocally referring, in generalising terms and without naming names,
to separatists as terrorists while omitting discussion of the roots of the separatist
agenda, which the literature widely traces back to historical grievances around sys-
tematic discrimination and structural inequality in the post-independence era. The
diagram further makes a distinction between intrastate conflict fought between gov-
ernment and separatist insurgents (or, in the diagram’s terms, ‘terrorists’) on the one
hand and intergroup conflict on the other; this is of note in terms of the book’s

43
EPD, Citizenship Education and Governance, Grade 10 (Government of Sri Lanka, 2007), 88.
44
Ibid., 89.
45
Ibid., 84.
46
Ibid., 85.
47
Bentrovato, ‘History Textbook Writing’; Quaynor, ‘Citizenship Education’.
364 D. BENTROVATO AND M. NISSANKA

discourse, as the latter category equally applies to the Sri Lankan case. The diagram’s
vague allusion to group identities in relation to the sources of intergroup conflict once
again obscures the grievances underlying identity-based strife. This apparently selec-
tive omission appears still more glaring when contrasted with the textbook’s more
detailed specification of environmental, political, ideological and economic issues
underlying interstate conflict.48
References to the background of the antecedents to the civil war can be found in an
earlier, separate section in the Grade 10 textbook. Its authors frame the discussion
within the context of decentralisation and devolution of power in Sri Lanka, which they
explicate without exploring the backdrop of identity-based politics. In this context, they
mention a list of Tamil proposals for self-governance, citizenship rights and language
equality advanced in the wake of independence, which, the authors add, were opposed
by the Sinhalese population and eventually rejected by the government.49 The authors
affirm that ‘since the majority of the population of the country protested against these pro-
posals they had to be abandoned’.50 The use in the passage cited above of key terms
associated with democracy, along with the implication of self-evident submission to
majority rule in the assertion that the proposals ‘had to be abandoned’, may appear as
a discursive legitimation of the refusal to the Tamils of these rights of self-determination.
Equally crucially, the textbook omits discussion of the socio-political context of power
imbalance that prepared the ground for the proposals. It is also silent on the reasons
for the objections to the Tamil requests, which some scholars have posited as related to
a banal understanding of nationalism stoked by feelings of insecurity and threat to
ingroup survival among the Sinhalese. Similarly, the textbooks do not discuss the repercus-
sions for the Tamils’ predicament of the abandonment of these proposals, nor its accom-
paniment by the ratification of the contentious Sinhala Only Bill of 1956. They further
evade discussions on the implications of such an intransigent position for peace; after
the rejection of the proposals, violence broke out, leading to widespread displacement
among Tamils and Sinhalese alike and the declaration of a state of emergency.
Another set of indirect references to Sri Lanka’s civil war appears in the Grade 10 text-
book’s description of the destructive nature of war. Among other effects, the textbook
speaks of ‘[p]eople becoming physically disabled’ and of ‘mental disorders, disruption of
family life, the emergence of refugee camps caused by the destitute and disturbance to
the entire social system’,51 including disruption of services and development, and
amplified intergroup animosity. This broad description of the human and material costs
of armed conflict accurately reflects the particularly dire situation experienced in Sri
Lanka’s Northern Province during the civil war, although there are no specific references
in this context to these experiences and to related human rights violations and their
impacts. The Grade 6 textbook provides the only reference – removed in the revised

48
EPD, Citizenship Education and Governance, Grade 10, 87. The new edition of the Grade 11 textbook contains a new, direct
reference to the civil war experience in terms of ‘national security’, said to have been maintained through ‘a great effort
[…] challenged when weapons are supplied unofficially to terrorist groups’. EPD, Civic Education, Grade 11 (Government
of Sri Lanka, 2016), 132.
49
EPD, Citizenship Education and Governance, Grade 10, 39.
50
Ibid. In a section titled ‘Attempts to devolve power in Sri Lanka’, the new edition of the book more vaguely states that ‘the
enforcement of these pacts was not possible in the expected manner’. EPD, Civic Education, Grade 10 (Government of Sri
Lanka, 2016), 41.
51
EPD, Citizenship Education and Governance, Grade 10, 85.
 GLOBAL CHANGE, PEACE & SECURITY 365

edition – to the personal consequences of Sri Lanka’s civil war, which it conveys through
the use of a fictional story apparently randomly located within a chapter on self-aware-
ness. The innocuous-sounding headings ‘Unforgettable events in one’s life’ and ‘People
who help us in life’ cover content with striking political significance here. The authors
briefly recount that:
Ranga who was a friend of Lakmal wrote a letter about his brother’s death. His brother was an
army officer. He died in a bomb blast. […] He had written how the funeral was held with full
military honours after bringing his body home.52

This reference exclusively represents the suffering of Sinhalese families bereaved in the
war, with no similar reflection or recognition of the suffering and loss experienced by
Tamils or Muslims in the same war; indeed, no such recognition appears anywhere in
the civics textbooks. Again, the wartime peace education discourse in evidence here
appears as highly selective, omitting to acknowledge the victimhood of the societally
marginalised.
An additional set of references to Sri Lanka’s civil war can be found in discussions of the
topic of conflict resolution appearing in the Grade 10 textbook, whose exploration of
conflict prevention and resolution strategies includes the detection of warning signs
and the setting up of communication channels to allow the identification of disagree-
ments and appropriate resolutions to differences.53 The textbook includes a flow
diagram of a dialogue or negotiation process between two parties geared towards reach-
ing a solution to an identified problem through discussion and trade-offs.54 Notably, it
employs the value-laden term ‘sacrifice’ – with a later reference to ‘necessary sacrifices’
– in the context of such trade-offs and compromises. While this particular linguistic
choice may be traceable to a matter of translation,55 it may also be illustrative of the
authors’ view of such processes in the light of Sri Lanka’s experience, to which they
refer as an example of the conflict resolution processes visualised in the flowchart. In
the Sri Lankan context, the authors speak of opposing parties to the conflict ‘clinging
hard on to their own views’, adding that:
It will not be possible to find a solution to this conflict, so long as the Sinhalese community in
the south clings to the concept of unitary government and the armed Tamil group LTTE in the
north clings to the idea of a separate state.56

Thus the textbook, in taking an ostensibly neutral stance and highlighting the obstacles
posed to peace by uncompromising attitudes in the opposing parties, implicitly assigns
‘blame’ to both sides and suppresses mention of the inequalities and abuses perpetrated.
In this context, the textbook underscores the importance of engaging in negotiations as
non-violent and democratic processes of problem-solving that address human needs in
mutually acceptable terms.57 It does so, however, in apparent ignorance of the contradic-
tion between this advocacy of negotiated conflict resolution and the military path

52
EPD, Life Education and Citizenship, Grade 6, 6.
53
EPD, Citizenship Education and Governance, Grade 10, 90.
54
Ibid., 92.
55
Unfortunately, the authors were unable to retrieve the respective term used in the Sinhalese and Tamil versions of this
textbook and thus ascertain any differences in meaning and connotation.
56
EPD, Citizenship Education and Governance, Grade 10, 92.
57
Ibid., 90.
366 D. BENTROVATO AND M. NISSANKA

eventually taken by the government that oversaw the publication of these textbooks. Simi-
larly significantly, the authors’ subsequent classification of the civil war purely as an ‘ethnic
problem’ may be regarded as another example of omission through blatant simplification
of the root causes of Sri Lanka’s conflict. Echoing the content conveyed in the Grade 10
textbook’s visual representation of conflict typologies discussed earlier, the above classifi-
cation by the same textbook appears to allude to the assumption that ethnic differences
may lead to violent conflict while again omitting references to historical grievances linked
to experiences of social injustice.

Social justice, democracy and human rights: upheld in theory, evaded in practice
The evasion and selectiveness observed with regard to Sri Lanka’s domestic experience with
conflict re-emerges in the context of the textbooks’ discourses around social justice, democ-
racy and human rights, concepts which are key to peace education and highly relevant to
the Sri Lankan conflict and its legacy. The analysis revealed the textbooks’ engagement with
these themes to take place on a predominantly abstract and principle-led basis and to
largely omit discussion around their practical application in the local context.
One example appears in the textbooks’ repeated reference to the importance of guar-
anteeing equality among all people, with a simultaneous absence of critical discussion
around existing power structures and embedded inequalities that marginalise some
groups and privilege others. The textbooks, notwithstanding their regularly occurring
emphasis on the normative values of equality and non-discrimination, also fail to
provide context-specific examples of its implementation or lack thereof. The Grade 11 text-
book, for example, generically asserts that ‘[a]ll men are born free with equal rights’ and
‘should enjoy [them] irrespective of differences such as their ethnicity, color, gender,
language, religion, political ideas and nationality’.58 Relatedly, the textbook for Grade 10
emphasises the value of democracy, describing a democratic country as one where
people can enjoy ‘freedom, rights, and equality […] without any discrimination’59 and
where the ‘law is fair and just for all’.60 The textbooks’ discussion of human rights draws
on examples of their violation in world history, such as the Holocaust and the dropping
of the atomic bomb during the Second World War. Likewise, the books outline the histori-
cal processes that led to the legal enshrinement of human rights, explaining that ‘[m]ost of
the rights enjoyed today are won by man through the historical revolutions of the past’.61
In contrast with the discourse employed around the international struggles cited, the text-
books do not accord to local conflicts around rights of self-determination a categorisation
as campaigns for human rights. Instead, they tend to describe them as the manifestation
of a largely unexplained desire for a separate state. In an analogous manner, civics text-
books in Sri Lanka evade discussion of domestic social inequalities, for instance in employ-
ment62, and land rights of the displaced, who are mostly Tamil.63 An image of tea
58
EPD, Citizenship Education and Governance, Grade 11, 55.
59
EPD, Citizenship Education and Governance, Grade 10, 8.
60
EPD, Citizenship Education and Governance, Grade 11, 34.
61
EPD, Citizenship Education and Governance, Grade 10, 9.
62
Angela W. Little and Siri T. Hettige, Globalisation, Employment and Education in Sri Lanka: Opportunity and Division
(London: Routledge, 2013).
63
Shweta Singh and Marie Nissanka, Connectors and Dividers: Challenges and Prospects for Conflict Transformation in Kashmir
and Sri Lanka (Colombo: Regional Centre for Strategic Studies; New Delhi: Manohar Publishers & Distributors, 2015).
 GLOBAL CHANGE, PEACE & SECURITY 367

plantation workers used to highlight Sri Lanka’s multiculturality and diversity remains
uncontextualised by any exploration of the structural disadvantage affecting this group
despite their endowment with all civic rights afforded to the population.
In a similar vein, the textbooks, while asserting that ‘democracy is the system of govern-
ance that prevails in Sri Lanka’,64 omit discussion of undemocratic practices that have been
prevalent in Sri Lanka during the war and in its aftermath, including cases of state-spon-
sored and civilian-initiated electoral violence, unequal political representation of Tamil and
Muslim minorities, and restrictions on freedom of speech and expression. There is also
silence on gender inequality and discrimination, notably in discussions of Sinhalese,
Tamil and Muslim customary laws related to land, marriage and divorce.65
The value accorded to democratic principles in the abstract contrasts notably with
the way in which the textbooks utilise narratives and pedagogies which preclude the
dialogue and debate inherent and essential to the concept of democracy. The Grade
11 textbook’s legitimising discourse on capital punishment, nominally reintroduced66
as a legal penalty for serious crimes in 2004 under Kumaratunga despite significant
public protest, provides a patent example of the manner in which these media forestall
students’ independent thought and judgement on a contested issue while contraven-
ing the key vocation of peace education to promote alternatives to violence. The text-
book states that:
In common parlance, an anti-social act and one in contravention of values are considered a
crime. It is a crime to kill a person according to criminal law. But to hang a person on a
court order is not a crime.67

Criticism of the current legal system exercised by the textbook’s authors revolves around
its inefficiency, which it regards as encouraging the ‘escalation of various crimes and
corrupt practices [and] denigration of equality and equity’.68 The indictment of ineffi-
ciency, as effectively a non-deliberate by-product of the system’s workings, removes
any potential spotlight from systemic practices which promote inequality or contravene
democratic values.
The textbooks thus present a particular interpretation of democracy as an abstract
concept, and fail to critically discuss the scope of, and the power relations that underpin,
this concept as it applies in Sri Lanka. Overall, when it comes to the application of democ-
racy and its meaning, the textbooks again reflect the voice of those in power, namely the
GoSL. In a country which has seen the detention, killing or ‘disappearance’ of numerous
human rights activists and journalists for contesting government positions, for reporting
on and protesting against state-sponsored abuse, and for partaking in peace rallies,69
the textbooks legitimise the silencing of oppositional voices, for instance by explaining
that ‘[w]hen the country is in political instability, the government can enforce laws

64
EPD, Citizenship Education and Governance, Grade 9 (Government of Sri Lanka, 2007), 131.
65
Specifically, the textbooks do not critique the gender-discriminatory nature of the Thesawalamai (Tamil) and the Moham-
medan (Muslim) law, which confers on men sole authority over legal matters relating to property and divorce.
66
Despite this legislation, no executions have taken place in Sri Lanka since the mid-1970s; death sentences are often com-
muted to life imprisonment.
67
EPD, Citizenship Education and Governance, Grade 11, 7.
68
Ibid., 35.
69
Amnesty International, ‘Sri Lanka 2017/18’, retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/asia-and-the-pacific/
sri-lanka/report-sri-lanka/ (last accessed 29 June 2018); Committee to Protect Journalists, ‘Sri Lanka’, retrieved from
https://cpj.org/asia/sri-lanka/ (last accessed 29 June 2018).
368 D. BENTROVATO AND M. NISSANKA

against holding meetings, expressing ideas, and engaging in picketing’.70 As well as high-
lighting the government’s power in regulating civic behaviour, the quotation contains
implicit justification of the potential curtailment of liberal democratic civic rights by
stating that this would be done in times of ‘instability’ and therefore giving rise to the
inference that such actions would serve to restabilise and thus essentially protect the
nation. Thus our analysis comes full circle, with the prioritisation of national cohesion
and the putative national good over the principles enshrined in the Western liberal
democracy whose abstract rhetoric pervades the textbooks.

Discussion
Our analysis of Sri Lanka’s civics textbooks and the norms and values they foreground
through careful content selection and interpretation points to a particular view of the
knowledge deemed as legitimate and desirable of being nurtured among the country’s
younger generations at the time the textbooks were written. The emphases and silences
appearing in these official educational media evidence an understanding of desirable citi-
zenship which is largely inconsistent with and often contradicts the global educational dis-
course around the culture of peace to whose tropes the textbooks make explicit recourse.
The analysis suggests that this local conceptualisation of ‘good citizenship’ encom-
passes an uneasy marriage between respect for diversity and the prioritisation of obedi-
ence to social institutions and their authority, and locating responsibility for the
cultivation of inner peace and interpersonal harmony in personal self-control and regu-
lation of individual attitudes and behaviours. The particular emphasis that emerges in
our analysis on raising patriotic, loyal, respectful, law-abiding and self-restrained peaceful
citizens may be interpretable as the manifestation of a government’s wish to promote
national cohesion and political stability in a conflict-ridden society. It may, however,
also be read as rhetoric which risks neglecting examination of systemic causalities at
the roots of violence and intergroup conflict by charging with moral worth the individual
response to historical grievances and situations, actual or perceived, of injustice and dis-
advantage. Accordingly, the discourses in the textbooks analysed fail to recognise such
instances of injustice.
The content of educational discourses may fall under specific influences proceeding
from donor-driven global agendas on peace, social justice, human rights and democracy.
This case study has brought to light the fact that the inevitably ensuing processes in which
global agendas undergo adaptation to local cultural norms and political priorities may
bring about notable tensions within the educational discourse and its associated practices
as a manifestation of conflicting global and local demands. In the case of Sri Lankan civics
textbooks, ruptures occur in the attempt to blend a traditional model of citizenship edu-
cation centring on the concept of national cohesion and a locally adapted model of global
citizenship. These ruptures, or faultlines, appear inter alia in the simultaneous embracing
and undermining of the liberal values underlying the global citizenship discourse. While
policy explicitly recognises that ‘[p]eace cannot be built as long as violent social structures
exist in society’,71 practice as apparent in official textbooks may fall short of supporting this

70
EPD, Citizenship Education and Governance, Grade 11, 85.
71
Government of Sri Lanka, National Policy, ii.
 GLOBAL CHANGE, PEACE & SECURITY 369

ideal. In their prescription and promotion of peaceful and patriotic attitudes and beha-
viours, and of respectful, uncritical attitudes towards authority figures, the textbooks fail
to critically address identity-based power relations and historical and contemporary struc-
tural inequalities and injustice. They thus cannot do justice to the ‘more controversial
issues surrounding national unity and national conflict’ which policy documents suggest
are of critical importance to the development of sustainable peace.72 By not approaching
the contradictions between the principles and practice of democracy and social justice,
the textbooks further fail in reflecting and taking account of a context in which textbook
discourse on peace education and inclusive civic nationalism contrasted bitterly with a
practical situation of continuing violence and human rights abuses perpetrated in the
name of ethnic nationalism.
The textbooks assert the conditionality of civic rights upon observance of civic duties
and obedience to the state’s authority and its laws, stating that ‘your rights are protected
if you perform your duties and responsibilities well’;73 they thus appear to be in fundamen-
tal contradiction to the ideas of social justice and inalienable human rights to which they
lay claim for Sri Lanka in their description of it as a democratically governed state. They
effectively legitimise this evident official discourse by foregrounding collectivist Asian
social values and critiquing Western liberal values and the associated model of democracy
that recognises freedom of speech and of independent expression as central civic rights. A
pedagogical embodiment of such contradictions between discourse and practice makes
itself visible in the textbooks’ affirmation of freedom of speech and respect for differing
views alongside a general denial of space for the employment of critical thinking and
for questioning the legitimacy of controversial official policies and practices.
Overall, our analysis suggests we might understand the contradictions inherent in Sri
Lanka’s wartime peace education discourse as the product of a particular political
context marked by tension between demands posed through internationally driven and
funded peace-related projects and ultimately successful Sinhalese aspirations to secure
‘peace’ by military means and defend the status of Sri Lanka as a Sinhalese majority
state. This more uncompromising agenda eventually overshadowed the original peace-
building intent of Sri Lanka’s wartime educational reforms that had accompanied the
peace process. Significantly, the aspirations and intentions underlying this agenda and
associated actions imply an altered understanding of the concept of ‘peace’. The textbooks
for which the then Kumaratunga Administration had secured external funding as part of
an education reform sponsored by donors and subject to aid conditionalities had concep-
tualised ‘peace’ as the outcome of a non-violent process of mediation. The new agenda
defined it instead in terms of ‘victory over terrorism’.74 In this context, it is nothing
short of remarkable that these textbooks were not substantially revised under Rajapaksa
to adapt them to the shift in the government agenda from the aim to create national
unity in the midst of civilian unrest to the pursuit of victory in war. The publication of
the textbooks in 2007 occurred at the moment of a critical shift between the Rajapaksa
Administration’s expression of support for a peaceful political solution to the armed
conflict in 2006 and its abandonment of the ongoing peace negotiations in 2008. Personal

72
Ibid.
73
EPD, Citizenship Education and Governance, Grade 11, 86.
74
Singh and Nissanka, Connectors and Dividers.
370 D. BENTROVATO AND M. NISSANKA

conversations conducted by the authors in Sri Lanka before the latest curriculum reform
did not point to any accounts of revisions resulting from this political change, except
for the insertion of the then President’s name and picture. Our sources argued that
costly and time-consuming revision of these textbooks, whose content indeed does not
appear to undermine the new government and its agenda, was not a priority under Raja-
paksa’s wartime and post-war Administration. It may also have been the case that the fun-
damental rootedness of the Kumaratunga-era textbooks in then-dominant national
discourses and cultural values meant the Rajapaksa Administration regarded them as ade-
quate to its purposes. Another possibility is that political and cultural actors of the new
administration may have co-opted the peace education objectives of the Kumaratunga
period.

Conclusion
The findings discussed in this article raise questions around the nature of the lessons
taught through donor-funded wartime civics textbooks in Sri Lanka and their implications
for social cohesion in a post-conflict climate of ‘negative peace’. Peace and global citizen-
ship education may, in various circles, attract overly ambitious expectations which deem
them panaceas and which have fuelled their frequently uncritical dissemination and adap-
tation around the world within processes of curriculum reform and textbook revision. Pro-
fessor Lynn Davies, who oversaw curriculum reform and implementation in Sri Lanka,
rightly warned against the espousal of unrealistic aims, affirming that, while this type of
peace education initiative may not be able to directly address the roots of the conflict,
‘what it can do is help to build a culture in which conflict is less likely to happen in the
future.’75 This article has attempted to take up Davies’ argument and explore its validity.
Our analysis and findings question the potential of civics textbook discourse in Sri
Lanka in its current state to contribute towards conflict prevention and national reconci-
liation, and the likelihood that it will, in practice, do so.
The civics textbooks do appear to make significant inroads into highlighting cultural
commonalities and promoting interpersonal and intercultural understanding. Perhaps
notably in this context, two of the series’ illustrations of the importance of peaceful coex-
istence and cooperation, found in the Grade 7 and 9 textbooks respectively, assert that,
‘[t]o gain independence for Sri Lanka, leaders of Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim communities
worked in unison’76 and that ‘[c]o-existence amongst the ethnic and religious groups
within the country is the basis for peace and development’.77 Nevertheless, they still evi-
dence notable omissions whose effect is to foreclose students’ critical thinking and under-
standing of the conflict that ravaged Sri Lanka, its present-day legacies and possible
remedies. For the sake of fairness, we should observe that such silences and evasions
are not uncommon in fragile states whose education systems have faced the task of teach-
ing about the realities of violence and injustice while avoiding the exacerbation of existing
wounds or the entrenchment of deep-seated tensions and divisions. It may therefore be
understandable that, as in the Sri Lankan case, the peace education discourse pervading

75
Davies, ‘Sri Lanka’s National Policy’, 261.
76
EPD, Life Education and Citizenship, Grade 7, 146.
77
EPD, Life Education and Citizenship, Grade 9, 22.
 GLOBAL CHANGE, PEACE & SECURITY 371

textbooks might focus on encouraging individual behavioural change over engaging in

critical discussion of the structural violence that often lies at the root of armed conflicts.
However, the Sri Lankan textbooks’ silences surrounding systemic and identity-based
dimensions of the conflict may run counter to transformative reconciliation among
future generations. Karen Brounéus describes reconciliation as ‘a societal process that
involves mutual acknowledgment of past suffering and the changing of destructive atti-
tudes and behaviors into constructive relationships toward sustainable peace’.78 On the
basis of this definition, one may argue that the absence of such ‘mutual acknowledge-
ment’ may impede the action of peace education’s alleged panacea. While the silencing
of controversial issues as a band-aid may avoid antagonistic sentiment in the short
term, denial of historic grievances may prepare the ground for the recurrence of open
conflict in the future. Johan Galtung’s classic work on violence and peace79 reinforces
these doubts and concerns: one may argue that such textbook discourses have contribu-
ted to the establishment of a ‘negative peace’ as opposed to supporting the creation of a
durable ‘positive peace’. Scholars of peace studies point out the need to effectively
address forms of structural violence that may continue to prevail in contexts of negative
peace and thus perpetuate the social inequalities that may have driven the violent conflict.
In this context, there remains the problematising matter of the dynamics of local resist-
ance towards and subversion of the diffusion of global norms and discourses on which
world culture theory has thrown a spotlight. This study shows that textbook analysis is
a useful instrument for the exploration of these dynamics and the advancement of our
understanding relating to them. The study helps demonstrate how textbooks act as
sites of hybridity and ‘hybridisation’, considered here as a manifestation of broader pro-
cesses, observed in peace studies literature, of the co-optation and renegotiation of a
dominant liberal peacebuilding paradigm, central to externally sponsored peace interven-
tions but challenged and undermined by local interests.80 This article, then, urges critical
reflection and reconsideration, of both a practical and a scholarly nature, around the ways
in which local and international actors alike engage with the often conflicting demands
placed on education in conflict-ridden societies. From a practical perspective, it joins
much of the literature in arguing for the desirability of examining the possibilities (and
challenges) involved in adopting more inclusive and democratic approaches to processes
of curriculum and textbook design at local level.81 At the same time, the findings of this
study may prompt ongoing reflection on the desirability of more critical and rigorous pro-
cedures around the allocation of international funding to this type of educational
programme.
From a scholarly perspective, the study calls on further interdisciplinary research in
peace and education studies to complement and enrich the growing worldwide body
of empirical evidence with a view to better understanding the dynamics explored in
this article and their implications for practice and to refining the field’s ongoing efforts
in theorising the conditions and effects of educational practices in conflict-ridden

78
Karen Brounéus, ‘Analyzing Reconciliation: A Structured Method for Measuring National Reconciliation Initiatives’, Peace
and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 14, no. 3 (2008): 294.
79
Johan Galtung, ‘Cultural Violence’, Journal of Peace Research 27, no. 3 (1990): 291–305.
80
Oliver Richmond and Audra Mitchell, ‘Peacebuilding and Critical Forms of Agency: From Resistance to Subsistence’,
Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 36, no. 4 (2011): 326–44.
81
Bentrovato, ‘History Textbook Writing’.
372 D. BENTROVATO AND M. NISSANKA

societies. The promotion of a unified civic national identity while evading critical and dia-
logical engagement with contested narratives and views, and a focus on individual civic
responsibilities which sidesteps discussion of state accountability and responsibility, con-
travene both letter and spirit of the global democratic and liberal values which these dis-
courses themselves invoke. If content with the potential to inspire meaningful action is to
supersede this ‘lip service’, new ways of bringing together and robustly intertwining the
demands of the global and the local setting will need to come into being.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors
Denise Bentrovato holds a Ph.D. in History from The Netherlands and an M.A. in Conflict Resolution
from the UK. Over the past decade, she has worked in academia and for government institutions,
international organisations and NGOs on issues of education and youth in conflict-affected and
post-conflict contexts in Africa. She is currently employed as a Research Fellow in the Faculty of Edu-
cation at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, where she also acts as the co-director of the
African Association for History Education. At present, her work focuses on examining educational
approaches to historical conflict and injustice in transitional societies.
Marie Nissanka is a researcher, evaluator, and a Ph.D. Candidate at the National Centre for Peace and
Conflict Studies, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. Marie’s interests include multicultural
education, conflict sensitive development, evaluation methodologies and reducing social inequal-
ities including poverty and homelessness.

ORCID
Denise Bentrovato http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4828-0596