Rwanda Civic Education

Teaching Rwanda with Rigor and Integrity

Palestine and Civic Strengthening

Purpose and Elements of Civic Education in Palestine

• Enhance Civic Knowledge of Founding Ideas, Documents, Values, Institutions, and Practices

• Strengthen Cognitive Civic Discernment (Analytical, Investigative, Scientific Competences of Teachers and Students)

• Engender Participatory Civic Skills of Teachers and Students

• Develop Civic Dispositions

Civic Education is the Foundation

• Healthy Schools

• Healthy Families

• Healthy Communities

• Healthy Nations

• Citizenship

Civic Education Fosters

• More knowledge of world and world events• More skepticism of institutions and leaders• Greater commitments to stay informed

Participatory Engagement and Collaboration• Skilled and Credible Teachers• Highly Intelligent Students Capable of Making

Commitments to the Health of Their and Others’ Communities and Nations

Palestinian Civic Education Can

• Impact how children understand community

• Influence their conceptions of fairness

• Make schools exemplary places for civic learning

• Teach students how to confront difficult subjects with integrity, objectivity, with healthy skepticism and confidence

Civic Education in Palestine Means

• Teaching Respect for the Rule of Law

• Teaching Mutual Respect for Others and the Self

• Teaching the Value of Human Life and Dignity

• Teaching and Valuing Accountability

• Teaching Duties and Rights

Assessing Learning Outcomes in Civic Education

• What counts as evidence that civic education is taking hold in Palestinian schools?

Outcome Measures

• Increased levels of founding civic knowledge, institutions, values and ideas, including knowledge of global civic documents, values and practices

• Enhanced capacity of faculty and students for discernment, analysis, investigation, communication, as demonstrated by rigorous reading lists, multilingual competencies, high proficiency on examinations, collaborative assignments, capacity to critique and be critiqued, to draft ideas for public view, regional and international recognition

More Outcome Measures

• Greater levels of competencies in participatory civic skills such as team building, networking, discursive practices, such as opinion writing, dissenting opinion writing, extemporaneous reasoning, and independent learning; and

• Change in civic dispositions of faculty and teachers as measured overtime

• Measure the capacity of schools to model civic practices and institutionalize them

Every Assessment Plan

• Must ask and answer several questions:• Do students and teachers know the Basic Law

and Declaration of their country? (How do you assess this knowledge at grade appropriate levels?)

• Do teachers and students understand and can they articulate (1) the institutions responsible for governing the nation; (2) The powers and authority of these institutions; (3) the values explicit or implicit in institutional functioning

More Assessment Questions

• Can teachers impart credible knowledge about other nations’ founding documents, their values, and challenges in a contemporary world , in an enthusiastic and interesting manner?

• What are the most effective pedagogical tools to achieve the ends of civic education?

Benchmarks in Civic Education

• What levels of performance are you seeking in civic knowledge, civic discernment, civic engagement and civic dispositions?

• ? Are your performance benchmarks uniform across all schools or are expectations higher for some than others?

Civic Education Assessments

• Pre-tests• Pilots• In-stream tests or measures• Post-Tests• Implementation and Continuous Assessment• Tell the Story of Your Progress, Challenges and

Successes

• In-stream measures allow schools, teachers, and students to make adjustments as courses progress. They permit valuable feed-back in a timely fashion and they show a level of care and commitment to civic education as a professional field of endeavor.

Rwanda

• Fifteen Years Ago Rwandans’ Killed and Maimed Each Other…

• Tutsi and Hutus• Rulers and servants• Tall and short• Then just prior to independence (Belgians)

authorities changed their positions and decided on majority rule (now Hutus, the majority, would govern the Tutsi).

What Happened?

• See materials in the Teachers’ Manual and practice how to teach students three valuable lessons:

• Historical Discrimination and abuses by Colonizers (Germans and Belgians) were reproduced by Rwandans once Rwandans gained their freedom.

• Attempted annihilation of Tutsis and their Hutu sympathizers April 4, 1994)

Civic Education: Rwanda

• Rwanda teaches the need for citizens to know and think about past injustices, stereotypes, and atrocities, for the purpose of recognizing human fragility and the capacity for evil against other humans and hatred of them.

• Rwanda teaches civic and human responsibility, whether as on looker, victimized, or perpetuator…

Civic Education: Rwanda

• What does Islam teach about suffering that is relevant to civic education and the case of Rwanda?

• Who is Watching?

• Who knows our thoughts?

• Who knows our feelings?

• Who or what keeps citizens accountable?

Rwanda

• What does the Palestinian Basic Law teach about obligations to others and to the government?

• Is the Palestinian Basic Law a moral document? Does it indicate how we should behave toward others?

• Is the Rwandan constitution a moral document?

• Do both teach values of conscientiousness?

Rwanda: Civic Education

• The Rwandan genocide teaches the injury and suffering people, families, and nations endure when limitless power is unconstrained.

• Rwanda teaches the power to endure as whole citizens and not as the victimized

Rwanda and Vengeance

• Does vengeance propagate across generations, through the surrounding population.

• Stripped of ideology what are Bosnia, Somalia, Sierra Leone, and Iraq?

Rwanda and Child Soldiers

• The regress of the entire society into a state of madness...

• Children are too young to repress their cruelest impulses …

Community and Civic Education

• How can or should communities respond to mass murder—public killings?

• Who or what can break the cycle of hatred?

• Again, does civic education teach accountability? Only if the core documents and human practices of tolerance and respect are central to the rule of law.

Values: Justice

• Are we able to forgive what we cannot punish?

• As a value, justice seeks to restore the equality between the persons wronged and the wrong doer.

Values: Blame

• U.S.

• France

• The United Nations

• The Germans

• The Belgians

Aftermath

• Where all are guilty who can be punished?

• Who are “persons of integrity”?

• New “gacaca” law.

• ICTR (UN)

• Civic Regeneration