When war is better than peace: The post-conflict realities of children born of wartime rape in northern Uganda

This paper examines the realities and perspectives of a sample of 60 children born of wartime rape within the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and currently living in northern Uganda. These children were born to mothers who were abducted by the LRA, held captive for extended periods of time, repeatedly raped and impregnated. The paper explores the multiple challenges that these children face in the post-war period including, rejection, stigma, violence, socio-economic marginalization, and issues of identity and belonging. Participants underscored the profound violence and deprivation that they experienced while in LRA captivity. However, because of post-war marginalization, participants individually and collectively articulated that wartime was better than peacetime. Multiple systems of support are needed to ensure the rights and protection of these children and importantly, to address and reverse young people’s perceptions that “war is better than peace”.     

Transformative Readings: Harry Potter Fan Fiction,Trans/Queer Reader Response,and J. K. Rowling

The politics of children’s literature and the actors surrounding it have never been more visible than they are now, in the digital age. As one of the first children’s series to gain widespread popularity concurrently with the spread of the internet, the Harry Potter septet arrived on the global stage at the perfect moment to develop an avid, connected fandom. But the fandom has laid bare the many conflicting ideologies of the fans themselves and of the actors surrounding the texts. This article examines the contentious issue of gender nonnormativity and its relation to the Harry Potter texts, the queer/trans reading practices and political resistance common to the fandom, and the ongoing disagreements over gender, made visible on social media, between Rowling and the fans of her series. The article discusses the Harry Potter novels’ varied and conflicting ideologies; queer/trans readings of the Potter septet, including both invitations and resistances to queer/trans reading by Rowling herself; how gender is queered and queried in and through fan fiction; and finally, the recent hostilities between Rowling and her fans. It concludes by discussing the worsening relationship between Rowling and her fans and highlighting how fans are using their collective power to undermine Rowling’s gender politics through fan fiction. By doing so, the article traces the complex politics of the reception of books for young people in the digital age, demonstrating that authors’ powerful voices continue to shape readers’ responses to texts long after their publication but showing, too, that readers often resist authors’ attempts to influence not only their textual interpretations but their politics.

     

The educational intentions of the Islamic State through its textbooks

This article’s results are part of project Sami, which examines the school system imposed by Islamic State (ISIS) on the territories under its control between 2014 and 2017. It describes and explores ISIS’s educational intentions as formulated in the textbooks and workbooks the organization produced to frame how secular subjects were taught in primary schools. The results shed light on how ISIS describe its curriculum and analyzes what has been included in the Arabic, mathematics, science, geography, history and English textbooks. The article concludes that each of these school subjects has been used by ISIS to further its political and religious agenda, although in very different ways like militarization, banalization of violence and the establishment of its complex and extreme but also fragile Islamic doctrine. It also suggests possible courses of action, intervention and research for internally displaced children or children in detention who have experienced this alternative education system during wartime.     

杨东莼“战时教育”思想及其特色

在抗战的特殊背景下,基于战争的现实诉求及对教育的探索与实践,杨东莼逐渐形成了系统全面、理论丰富的战时教育思想。杨东莼的战时教育思想是战争时期的一种非常态教育理念,他以抗战需要为起点和归宿,以教育、文化为切入点,统合了战争与教育的互助之效,对战时教育的任务、内涵、原则与策略进行了较为系统的论述,探究了争取抗战胜利之良途与教育出路之所在。     

Children's participation in school grounds developments: creating a place for education that promotes children's social inclusion

This paper advances the idea that ‘education for the social inclusion of children’ is similar but different to ‘inclusive education’ as it has come to be understood and used by some authors and UK government documents. ‘Inclusive education’ tends to carry an inward emphasis on the participation of children in the education system (with discussions on school culture, transitions, truancy, exclusion rates, underachievement, and school leaving age). In contrast, education for the promotion of children's social inclusion requires an outward emphasis on children's participation in ‘mainstream’ society while they are still children. The latter emphasis is seen to be lacking in educational policy discourse in Scotland though a recent shift in policy towards education for active citizenship is noted. Examples are provided to show how many policy statements enact a limitation on the scope for education to promote children's social inclusion by emphasizing children's deficits as social actors and focussing on the ‘condition’ of social exclusion. The paper draws on an empirical study of children's participation in changing school grounds in Scotland. The analysis shows how the enclosure of learning in books, classrooms and normative curricula was challenged. Learning from school grounds developments was constructed relationally and spatially, but the scope of what was to be learned was often delineated by adults. The paper closes with a discussion of how education that promotes the social inclusion of children will benefit from seeing both children and adults as current though partial citizens and using socio-spatial opportunities for the generation of uncertain curricula through their shared and/or differentiated participation.     

Artificial intelligence and education in China

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the political economy of artificial intelligence (AI) and education in China, through an analysis of government policy and private sector enterprise. While media and policy discourse often portray China’s AI development in terms of a unified national strategy, and a burgeoning geopolitical contestation for future global dominance, this analysis will suggest a more nuanced internal complexity, involving differing regional networks and international corporate activity. The first section considers two key policy documents published by the central Chinese government, which are shown to implicate educational institutions as influential actors in national and regional strategies for AI development, with a significant role in plans to train domestic expertise. The second section outlines three prominent private education companies: New Oriental Group, Tomorrow Advancing Life (TAL), and Squirrel AI. These companies are selected to represent important aspects of China’s development of educational AI applications, including the influence of a well-established private education sector, and a growing interest in international corporate activity. The paper concludes with the suggestion that while central government policy reserves a significant role for education in the national AI strategy, the private sector is utilising favourable political conditions to rapidly develop educational applications and markets.     

辽与后唐定州之战及其影响

辽朝与后唐的定州之战发生于辽太宗即位之后,是辽太宗践行武力入主中原政策的一次试探。定州之战的导火索是后唐王都的反叛,辽朝出兵援助王都进而引发了辽朝与后唐的武装冲突,最终以辽朝兵败而结束。辽朝兵败的原因有出兵非时、军队补给不稳定、中原人民的反抗、地形限制等多种因素。定州之战对辽朝与后唐政权都产生了一定的影响,战后的辽朝与后唐的政治格局和社会面貌都发生了一些微妙的变化。     

‘I don’t want to catch it’. Boys,girls and sexualities in an HIV/AIDS environment

This paper examines young South African school children’s understanding of HIV/AIDS. Based on ethnographic work in two schools in Greater Durban, it explores the impact of HIV/AIDS on the ways in which gender and sexuality are articulated against the backdrop of race and class specific contexts. The first part of the paper examines the children’s discourses of sex, sexuality and HIV/AIDS. We show that young children’s meanings of sex, sexuality and are not straightforward and are actively produced and defined through a range of social processes. These processes shape the extent to which young children experience sexuality within discourses of fear and pleasure. Young children’s meanings of HIV/AIDS are explored in the second part of the paper. Here we show how their knowledge of HIV/AIDS is socially structured through class/race and gender and these forms of social relations provide the framing and reference points for children’s constructions of meanings around HIV/AIDS. We finish the paper by raising some theoretical and practical/political questions about the implications of what we have found for HIV/AIDS education in South Africa.     

The reconstruction of Palestinian education: between history,policy politics andpolicy making

This paper reflects on the key actors in education policy making in Zimbabwe. It looks at the contextual complexities that characterized policy-making in this country to make sense of the contestations that the state had to confront and accommodate. The policy network approach is employed as an analytical framework to clarify how, in particular non-state actors, have had an impact (or not) on educational governance through influences on policy. Policy documents, research reports and the reactions of non-state actors to these aspects are examined to explore the impact of the latter on policy making. The significant roles of the various policy networks are also given attention to establish how they have affected the reconfiguration of the state. The argument developed is that in spite of the ostensibly strong state, education policy formulation has been a product of compromise between policy networks and the predilections of those in office. As a political and contested enterprise it had to accommodate both local and international concerns.     

Children’s Illustrated Magazines in the Era of Post-Soviet Transformation

Abstract

The study of Russian children’s illustrated magazines at the various stages of their formation and development remains a relevant topic due to the evolution of their printed forms in the context of the transformation of the media environment. The first Russian children’s magazine was Children’s Reading for the Heart and Mind [Detskoye chteniye dlya serdtsa i razuma] (1785–1789). This publication contributed to the creation of Russian periodical literature for children, and it provided the point of departure for the creative efforts of numerous publications that followed in its footsteps, including even present-day Russian children’s magazines.

The aim of the present article is to study the evolution of the forms of Russian children’s illustrated magazines under modern processes of the transformation of the media environment. This goal has determined the objectives of the paper: to study empirical materials related to this topic, consisting of numerous children’s publications from different historical periods; identifying the relevant stages of the development of children’s periodicals; examining the content and formal characteristics of children’s periodicals; applying an integrated approach to working with the most important aspects of Russian children’s magazines in the process of transforming the media reality.

Our research methodology is based on a structural approach, which has been updated to incorporate structural-functional, structural-formal, and system-synergetic approaches as well as linear regression methodology. The problems that arise from the epistemological context are determined by the significance of the integrated approach to the study of the formal structure of Russian children’s illustrated magazines. When we review the state of research in this area, we see that there have been very few studies of Russian periodicals for children despite the relevance of the topic.

During the process of their formation and development, children’s magazines came into being as a special type of publication with varying subject-thematic, ideological, political, pedagogical, and commercial orientations. They differed in their target audience, content, and presentation, and they were made available to a wide circle of readers. The content of these publications mainly included fiction, journalism, nonfiction articles, sociopolitical commentary, entertainment, and advertising. We have provided a theoretical justification of our research methodology, which uses the general scientific structural method and facilitates the study of the evolution of Russian children’s illustrated magazines. The methodology has allowed us to draw conclusions about how their formal structure as well as the larger media environment were transformed over time.     

Activism,agency and archive: British activists and the representation of educational colonies in Spain during and after the Spanish Civil War

In the late 1930s the Spanish Civil War captured the international imagination to an extraordinary degree. As in other countries British men and women were moved to intervene directly and the memory of the war, and of British participation in it, has held an enduring appeal in the UK. The Civil War was also notable for its use of the visual as a weapon of propaganda, and the Spanish Republican Government deployed visual imagery to great effect as an instrument through which it exhibited its progressive educational and welfare reforms to an international audience. This article focuses on the visual and textual representations of displaced children in Republican educational colonies in Spain that are preserved in British archive collections. Taking as its starting point a series of photographs of children in colonies gathered together as part of the International Brigade Memorial Archive in London, the paper will consider the construction, use, and circulation of these images and associated texts by British and American political and humanitarian networks and their subsequent collection and preservation in British archival institutions. The paper will assess the effectiveness of the images and texts as pedagogical and political agents and explore how their meaning shifted as they travelled through a range of performative spaces on a journey from their construction as artefacts designed initially to record and communicate the Spanish Republic’s progressive educational project, to commemorative objects in the archive.     

Adult discrimination against children: the case of abstinence-only education in twenty-first-century USA

This paper analyses abstinence-only education programmes and discourses within the frame of theories of adult discrimination against children. To begin with, a definition of abstinence-only programmes and of the political context in which they were created will be provided. These programmes will then be analysed through the lens of children's rights, as these have been defined by the United Nations. Finally, the concept of ‘childism’ as defined will be used to underline how abstinence-only education programmes can be seen to fit within the larger frame of discrimination against children.     

论西周策命制度与《尚书》文体的生成

伴随着＂制礼作乐＂的过程,周人的修辞技能和文体意识都不断提高,尤其是周代重要政治制度之一策命制度的建立和完善,使书面形式的＂策命＂代替了口头形式的＂命＂,促成了具有清晰文体特征的策命文书的形成。这种专门应用于特定策命典礼场合的政治性文书使灵活易变的口头文体固定化,由于经常性地撰制和发布,逐渐形成了形式严谨、体制固定、内容明确、词语古奥、语言高度雅化和程式化、风格庄严肃穆的文体特征,《周书》诸诰便是在这种策命文书的基础上经过加工改造后形成的。这种＂命体＂的策命文书体现了原初形态＂书＂篇的文体模式,决定了《尚书》诰命篇章的文体特征,对后世众多散文文体,尤其是官方应用性文体产生了重大影响。     

保卫苗侗民族的宝贵历史记忆库——黔东南“锦屏文书”抢救保护及编研利用的回顾与展望

2007年以来,黔东南州档案部门在各级党委和政府的支持下,投入了大量人力、物力和财力到“锦屏文书”(“清水江文书”)抢救保护工作中,取得了可喜的成效.但也存在一定程度上的“重抢救保护、轻编研出版”的倾向,今后要继续重视抢救保护,同时也要在编研出版和开发利用方面齐头并进,力争使“锦屏文书”成为苗侗人民的世界文化品牌.     

What the children’s literature of war is telling the children

This article discusses several issues arising from some wide reading of children’s literature of war and peace as part of a Comenius (EU) collaboration with partners in Belgium and Portugal. The focus here is on the content of the books rather than ways of telling. The issues raised concern national identities, gaps in the collective texts which perhaps reflect national identities, the emphasis on the home front rather than battles, the usefulness of children in wartime compared to most modern child readers, the ethical issues common to the literature in all three countries, the allegorical war literature available for young children, and, increasingly, the more realistic literature for the same group including stories of the holocaust.     

The problem of simplification: think-tanks,recipes, equity and ‘Turning around low-performing schools’

Non-government actors such as think-tanks are playing an important role in Australian policy work. As governments increasingly outsource policy work previously done by education departments and academics to these new policy actors, more think-tanks have emerged that represent a wide range of political views and ideological positions. This paper looks at the emergence of the Grattan Institute as one significant player in Australian education policy with a particular emphasis on Grattan’s report ‘Turning around low-performing schools’. Grattan exemplifies many of the facets of Barber’s ‘deliverology’, as they produce reports designed to be easily digested, simply actioned and provide reassurance that there is an answer, often through focusing on ‘what works’ recipes. ‘Turning around low-performing schools’ is a perfect example of this deliverology. However, a close analysis of the Report suggests that it contains four major problems which seriously impact its usefulness for schools and policymakers: it ignores data that may be more important in explaining the turn-around of schools, the Report is overly reliant on NAPLAN data, there are reasons to be suspicious about the evidence assembled, and finally the Report falls into a classic trap of logic—the post hoc fallacy.     

From an essential being to an actor’s becoming: political ecology transformational learning experiences in adult education

Adult education in political ecology entails critically and constructively observing the interactions among the actors involved in socioecological conflicts at global and local scales. This definition invites transcending environmental education and education for sustainability’s frontiers, examining the ontology, or the ‘place’, from where actors co-construct these conflicts. If actors don’t question the reified and divided assumptions of the ‘self’ and ‘reality’ at the base of these conflicts, the creative and transformative potential of becoming together cannot unfold. The transformational learning approach is a coherent way of addressing this challenge, as it promotes an ontological change in actors and their worldview. The training experience offered by the University of Santiago provides insights into how transformational education’s perspective can contribute to education in political ecology, inciting an acknowledgment of the self and the world as a complex and dynamic entanglement of actors.     

Engaging Youth in Community Development: Post-War Healing and Recovery in Bosnia and Herzegovina

In the aftermath of the Bosnian war, the country has been challenged with the task of responding to the atrocities that culminated in the killing of thousands of people. Furthermore, the country’s resultant political instability and economic underdevelopment have been complicated by the multiple transitions to which it has been subject since the war. As a consequence, the process of healing and reconciliation remains a challenge. Young people from different ethnic groups still live in separation and struggle to remain hopeful after witnessing many years of stagnation. This paper conceptualizes a participatory youth development framework designed to enhance the educational experience and active civic engagement of Bosnian youths from three ethnic groups in fostering community change and post-war healing through creative learning and Nonviolent communication. The proposed program aims to enable them to explore the stories of their shared history, challenge their shared future by facing up to their personal, wartime, pre-war and post-war experiences and view themselves as legitimate participants in the community development process.