Teaching Violent Conflict to Secondary Students: 6 Learning Objectives

A few years ago, when I set out to write my master's thesis ("A Pedagogical Framework for Global Citizenship Education: Teaching Violent Conflict to Secondary Students"), I had no idea how timely, important, and relevant it would continue to be. One part of my work has been the creation of learning objectives for a secondary study of violent global conflict, which I have posted below. Over the next few weeks, I will post excerpts of my research, and in depth discussions of these objectives. Feel free to share and comment, but please do not copy or reprint without my permission.

Student Objectives:  
Objective 1: Students will analyze the ways in which humanitarianism and humanitarian intervention impact communities, including, but not limited to, their positive effects and unintended consequences.

Objective 2: Students will explore the changing interactions between conflict and gender (i.e. the ways in which women are used to justify conflict and participate in conflict, as well as the ways in which violent conflict affects women in particular).

Objective 3: Students will analyze the political and economic colonial origins of conflict including, but not limited to, the impact of globalization on conflict starting with colonization, colonial roots of structural violence, and the colonial roots of conflict in the United States in particular.

Objective 4: Students will turn the outward gaze inward by making connections between global and local conflict and analyzing Western involvement in global conflict. (This may include United States’ role in international relations since World War II, American exceptionalism, fostering conditions for global terrorism, and making connections between global and local grassroots movements as a solution/response to conflict.)

Objective 5: Students will investigate the role of identity and ideology in conflict and terrorism, which may include the role of single-group identity in conflict, terrorism as an ideological response to perceived injustice, homegrown extremism, and the rise of xenophobic movements as a response to terrorism.

Objective 6: Students will examine diverse cultures and understand various cultural points of view, as well as differing perspectives within particular cultural groups; recognize cultural interconnections; and be able to explain the points of view of diverse cultures without distorting them through ones’ own cultural lens.