From Classrooms to Conflict in Rwanda [Hardcover]

Based on fieldwork and comparative historical analysis of Rwanda, this book questions the conventional wisdom that education builds peace.This book nuances the belief that education builds peace by exploring the ways in which ordinary schooling can contribute to intergroup conflict. It shows that in Rwanda, schooling contributed to underlying conflict by limiting who had access to schools and helping to create exclusive and stigmatized identity groups. Unlike most books, which study only one part of Rwanda's history, this book covers Rwanda over three different periods (colonial, independence, post-genocide) and argues that in each period, education was conducive to intergroup conflict.This book nuances the belief that education builds peace by exploring the ways in which ordinary schooling can contribute to intergroup conflict. It shows that in Rwanda, schooling contributed to underlying conflict by limiting who had access to schools and helping to create exclusive and stigmatized identity groups. Unlike most books, which study only one part of Rwanda's history, this book covers Rwanda over three different periods (colonial, independence, post-genocide) and argues that in each period, education was conducive to intergroup conflict.This book questions the conventional wisdom that education builds peace by exploring the ways in which ordinary schooling can contribute to intergroup conflict. Based on fieldwork and comparative historical analysis of Rwanda, it argues that from the colonial period to the genocide, schooling was a key instrument of the state in contributing to the construction, awareness, collectivization, and inequality of ethnic groups in Rwanda  all factors that underlay conflict. The book further argues that today's post-genocide schools are dangerously replicating past trends. This book is the first to offer an in-depth study of education in Rwanda and to analyze its role in the genesis of conflict. The book demonstrates that to build peace, we canls"