A COMPARATIVE ORAL HISTORY STUDY OF THE LEARNING EXPERIENCES OF WORLD WAR II AND AFGHAN WAR SURVIVORS
by
Julia Dicum
A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto
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Abstract
This dissertation presents the findings of a comparative oral history study of twenty-seven learner experiences of education in two complex emergencies -- World War II and post-1979 Afghanistan. Built around an oral history methodology, the study contributes to the developing research practice on education in emergency situations. The dissertation begins with a review of the literature on emergency education, which identifies a gap of learner experience expressed in or contributing to the discourse. Each of the case studies describes curriculum experiences in these war environments focusing on learner experiences of school and classroom routine, materials, teachers and teaching methods in both formal and non-formal learning including using primary, secondary, post-secondary, apprenticeship, paid work as learning environments. The analysis within and between the cases brings forth crucial similarities and differences in five analytical categories which arose through the transcripts, but which also match discussion in the existing literature: maintenance, adaptation, resilience, politicization/resistance, and identity. The tensions that arise between the five themes offer an unresolved sense of normalcy and chaos as central to the image of learning in emergencies. The small size of the participant base, while offering a rich opportunity for the gathering of detailed histories, did not lend itself to applying the outcomes rigorously to existing policy and program reports or theoretical treatises. The dissertation therefore concludes with recommendations for expanding the scope of research through the use of oral history in further comparative studies on education in complex emergencies. Recommendations include expanding research on these two case studies, the permanent archiving of recorded oral histories for use by others, more research on learner experience in different cases to build knowledge and further develop the five characteristics, using the outcomes
u of the research to influence the development of emergency education curriculum theory, education in emergencies policy and program development.
in Acknowledgements
Foremost I thank my supervisor Dennis Thiessen and the rest of my committee,
Joe Farrell, Shahrzad Mojab, and Sarfaroz Niyozov, for their work and support. I also thank Lynn Davies for being an inspiring external examiner. OISE's efforts to have Lynn attend in person were deeply appreciated. I was lucky to have many academic mentors determined to see me through to the end. Special mention goes to: the late David N.
Wilson, my stalwart Jason Nolan, Lucille Gilbert and my undergraduate mentor, Donald
Schwartz, who paid me the ultimate complement by surprising me as chair my defense.
Thanks to those individuals and organizations that helped me advertise the study, but which remain nameless here to protect my participants. I was also appreciative of those who made me look good with transcribing and editing assistance. Robarts Library and the Ottawa Public Library reaffirmed the importance of libraries for me.
The Comparative International Development Education Centre at OISE/UT and
The Centre for Refugee Studies at York University provided me with space to bounce ideas off students and faculty. The other two members of my PhD completion trio -
Bruce Collet and James Cowan - were perfect companions for the post-comps road. My family, friends, and colleagues played a pivotal role plying me with humour, housing, and copious amounts of tea throughout this yeoman's effort. Finally, I cannot thank my twenty-seven participants enough for trusting me with their oral histories.
This thesis was funded in part by a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship.
IV CONTENTS
ABSTRACT II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ., IV SECTION I: LEARNING, WAR, AND EMERGENCIES: THE STUDY OF THE LEARNER'S PERSPECTIVE 1
CHAPTER 1: 1 FRAMING THE ISSUES IN EMERGENCY EDUCATION 1 The Background 2 Background Literature from "the practical" 5 ...to the Theoretical. 12 Curriculum Experiences in the Dialogue on Emergency Education 17 Five Curriculum Experience Themes on Learning During War 21 Introducing The Research Method 26 Oral History Methodology 26 Choosing Cases and Participants: World War 11 and Afghanistan 27 Structure of the Dissertation 29 Conclusion 29 CHAPTER 2: ORAL HISTORY METHODOLOGY IN THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EDUCATION DURING WAR AND CONFLICT 31 Putting the Discourse Into Action: Finding a Research Methodology 32 The Challenges of Research in War and Conflict 35 Choosing Oral History for the Research Methodology 38 Oral History Methodology in Comparative International Education 44 Developing and Implementing the Study 46 Choosing the Communities 47 Choosing Participants 49 Designing the Oral History Interview 53 Conducting the Interviews 55 Information Management and Analysis 61 The Writing Process 68 Conclusion 71 SECTION II: THE CHILDREN OF WORLD WAR II LOOK BACK: LEARNING FROM AND IN SCHOOLS, BOMB SHELTERS, GHETTOS, HIDING, AND DP CAMPS 73
CHAPTER 3: .. 73 INTRODUCTION: 73 SETTING THE CONTEXTS OF LEARNING AMONG THE CHILDREN OF WORLD WAR II 73 Participants 76 Background: Pre-War Education Curriculum 81 Conclusion 85 CHAPTER4: 1939-1945: LEARNING AT THE HEIGHT OF THE WAR 87 Eastern European Memories 88 Primary School 88 Secondary School 93 Post-Secondary School , 104 The War in School 108 Learning Opportunities for Jewish Learners 115 German Children's Memories 123 Conclusion 129 CHAPTER 5: 131 1945-1952: 131 LEARNING IMMEDIATELY "POST-WAR" 131 Learning in the British and American Zones 132 Primary and Secondary Learning in the DP Camps of Germany 133
V DPs' Post-secondary Learning in Germany and Austria , 140 German Memories 144 Learning in Soviet Occupied Countries to 1953 146 Conclusion 152 CHAPTER 6: .' 154 SYNTHESIS OF LEARNING DURING WORLD WAR II 154 Maintenance of Learning Across the National Contexts 154 Maintenance of Familiar Learning Curricula .....,, ,. 155 The Roles of Teachers and Mentors in the Classroom 156 Adaptation 157 Resilience/Tenaciousness 161 Politicization and Resistance 163 Politicization and Political Resistance 163 Learner Resistance in the Classroom 167 Identity Issues 168 Conclusion 171 SECTION III: ONE CORNER OF THE CARPET: LEARNING AND SURVIVING DURING CONFLICT IN AFGHANISTAN 174
CHAPTER 7: 174 SETTING THE CONTEXT OF AFGHAN LEARNING 174 The Participants 175 The Structure of Formal Education In Afghanistan 179 Conclusion 183 CHAPTER 8: 185 LEARNING IN CONFLICT RIDDEN AFGHANISTAN: 185 1978 - C. 2001 185 Primary Education School Routines 185 Secondary Education: 195 School Routines Breaking Down 195 Classroom Life in Primary and Secondary Schools 200 Post-secondary Education 205 War and Violence in School 214 Conclusion 217 CHAPTER 9: 218 AFGHAN LEARNING IN REFUGEE CONTEXTS 218 School-based Education in the Refugee Context 218 Pakistan 219 The Afghan private system 220 Afghans in the Pakistani system 223 Post-secondary education 232 Adult Education 233 Iran 235 Home education 235 Secondary education 236 Post-secondary education 238 Learning Through Work in the Refugee Context 241 Conclusion 250 CHAPTER 10: '. 252 WEAVPWG THE CARPET OF LEARNPNG: 252 COMPARPWG EXPERIENCES ACROSS AFGHAN ORAL HISTORIES 252 Maintenance Across the National Contexts 254 School Routines and Expectations , 255 The Roles of Teachers and Mentors 258 Adaptation 263 Changes in School Routine and Teaching 263 Identity and Politicization in Afghan Learning Environments 266 Resilience and Tenaciousness 268
VI Conclusion 270 SECTION IV: LEARNER EXPERIENCES IN COMPARISONAND IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION IN EMERGENCIES 273
CHAPTER 11: 273 THE EMERGING DIALOGUE ACROSS THE LEARNING EXPERIENCES AND THEORIES 273 Maintaining the Familiar in Chaos 274 School Routine ... ,....274 Teaching Methods and Classroom Routines 276 Adaptation, Resilience and Resistance... 280 The Impact of War on Learning Spaces and Methods 280 Learning in Non-formal and Informal Ways 292 Identity in Wartime Learning Experiences 296 Identity in the World War II Context 297 Afghan Identity Development 299 A Summation of the Curriculum Experiences of Education in Emergencies 305 Rooting the Outcomes in Theory and Policy Discourse : 311 Oral History as Emergency Education Research Method. 320 Implications for Further Research 323 Conclusion 325 REFERENCES 327
vn Appendices
APPENDIX A: INTERVIEW PROTOCOL 334
INTERVIEW TOPIC 1: GENERAL INFORMATION ON SCHOOLING DURING CONFLICT 334 INTERVIEW TOPIC 2: CLASSROOM EXPERIENCES DURING THE CONFLICT/WAR 335 Themes: ; 336 INTERVIEW TOPIC 3: FOLLOW-UP AND TRANSCRIPTION REVIEW 338
viii SECTION I:
LEARNING, WAR, AND EMERGENCIES:
THE STUDY OF THE LEARNER'S PERSPECTIVE
Chapter 1:
Framing the Issues in Emergency Education
Looking back on childhood experiences, and sharing them with the next generation, is a natural part of many adult lives. When memories focus on experiences which for reasons of context or history might be interesting to others, it becomes important that researchers find ways to gather memories, analyze them without altering the value of the memory itself, and present them for the scrutiny of others. The experiences of children growing up during war and conflict are of particular interest to
Western academia as war theatres become more remote and more removed from our lives, as there develops a greater focus on war contexts and peacebuilding in a post-cold war world, as child participation becomes increasingly important to humanitarian assistance, and as the Convention on the Rights of the Child increasingly comes into its own.
This dissertation contributes to this growing effort to understand children's perspectives by presenting the results of two oral history case studies in comparative perspective: Eastern European and German survivors of World War II and Afghan survivors of the post-1979 Afghanistan. The study engaged twenty-seven participants in orally sharing their historical memories of learning during these wars prior to and
1 2 immediately after migration to countries of first asylum as refugees. In examining a fairly small sample of oral histories, this study sought primarily to gain deeper insight into the participants' curriculum experiences. In so doing, new ground in research on war- affected populations is forged which contributes to the growing body of research on and knowledge of war, learning, and childhood experience.
This first chapter lays the groundwork for the rest of the dissertation. It reviews the literature in the field of children, education, and emergencies with an eye to laying groundwork for understanding the study in the context of education in emergencies research. In doing so, my positions on certain key terms and ideas specific to the fields of emergency education and curriculum studies are explored. Finally, the dissertation's organization is introduced on a chapter-by-chapter basis.
The Background
The ability to carry on schooling in the most difficult of circumstances demonstrates confidence in the future: communities that still have a school feel that they have something durable and worthy of protection. (Machel, 1996)
The statistics relating to children and youth living with armed conflict are so large and all-encompassing that they are little more than overwhelming indicators of a challenging social environment most Western-based researchers can only hope to understand. These statistics include statements such as ninety percent of war casualties are civilians; four out of five refugees and displaced persons are women and children; and seven million children worldwide were either killed or injured by conflict in the 1990s
(Davies, 2004, pp. 3-4). Following the birth of the Convention of the Rights of the Child 3
(CRC) in 1989, a small determined group of humanitarian assistance providers, policy makers, and academics increasingly took up the education of children in war and conflict situations - bookmarked at the 1990 Jomtien conference on Education for All (Davies,
2004; Crisp, Talbot, & Cipollone, 2001) - as a potential rallying point for addressing the statistics representing childhood in war and conflict.
Although this study is about children's curriculum experiences at a time of conflict, war, and migration, from a terminological perspective, it is largely about something which has been labeled by practitioners as "emergency education", "education in emergencies", and less frequently as "complex emergency education". These terminologies come directly from the practical side of the aid policy literature and refer to structured learning in a variety of "emergencies" - wars, conflicts, economic crises, natural disasters, or a mixture thereof. The term "complex" in particular is used to refer to emergencies that are composed of more than one specific type and/or are protracted or long-term situations (Pigozzi, 1999; Davies, 2004; Sinclair, 2001, 2002; Tomlinson &
Benefield, 2005). Some of the literature distinguishes the terms "education in emergencies" and "emergency education" from "complex emergency education" in that the first two terms should perhaps relate to short term interventions for a single immediate emergency rather than aiming to acknowledge that most of the current short term emergencies are embedded within more complex situations (INEE, 2004; Sinclair,
2002). The problem with this assumption is that it attempts to isolate immediate reaction to certain types of emergencies without acknowledging their wider implications. Such delineation furthermore necessitates the clear demarcation of the notions of "start" and 4
"finish" when in fact most emergencies do not "end" but quietly morph into another state of being at unpredictable rates. For the most part, the "emergency education" literature uses the terms loosely to encompass all forms of formal and non-formal education for emergency affected populations. As such, rather than differentiating between these terms this dissertation uses them all interchangeably to refer to what is otherwise thought of as
"complex emergency education". In so doing, it recognizes the importance of the word
"complex", with its implicit references to complexity or chaos theory and the suggested relationship between the ideas (Davies, 2004, pp. 19-37). The complexity or intricacy of an environment in which the wider political, economic, and social context is necessarily non-linear, non-cyclical or unpredictable is at the core of what is required of an environment for it to engage in "emergency education".
In spite of the fact that practice has dictated that "emergency education" is coming to refer more and more to a specific set of structural interventions (INEE, 2004) through the creation of co-coordinating bodies, minimum standards for educational interventions in emergencies, and other initiatives, the dissertation does not make the assumption that the participants will have either knowledge of or experience of involved education structures, policies, and practices. Rather, the line of inquiry puts the potential problematics of the phrases aside and is very much about trying to understand what
"emergency education" means to the participants as former children and youth who experienced the reality of learning in an "emergency". 5
Background Literature from "the practical"...
Although it does not have a long history, the literature on childhood, learning, and war is steeped in a tradition curriculum theorist Joseph Schwab called "the practical"
(1983). Rather than being immersed in academic or theoretical custom, much of the literature has been written and published by practitioners in the field to meet the interests of a number of humanitarian agencies; hence, the possibility of organizational agendas exists in this writing. Many of these practitioners are highly qualified and experienced in designing, implementing, and evaluating policy and programming for discreet aspects education in complex emergencies including refugee education, peace education, basic primary education, girls' education, planning for emergencies and post-traumatic stress counseling (Sinclair, 2001, 2002; Sommers, 2001, 2002, 2004; Crisp, Talbot, &
Cipollone, 2001; Rugh, 1998 & 2000; Tomlinson & Benefield, 2005).
Crisp, Talbot, and Cipollone's book, Learning for a Future, is one of the more current and comprehensive looks at "best practice" field-based examples of refugee education. Although it has been pointed out that "lessons learned" and "best practice" documents tend to gloss over the challenges and opportunities for real reform and change in humanitarian assistance programming (Sommers, 2004, p. 79), Learning for a Future provides an important starting point for understanding and developing a deeper understanding of education in emergencies in substance and style. Available for free download from the United Nation's High Commissioner for Refugee's website, and published by the UNHCR, this ebook consists of five chapters, each by a different author, whose collective work aims to root the UNHCR's practices in current policy debates 6 surrounding the United Nation's Education for All (EFA) campaign. The EFA initiative prescribes that all children should have access to free compulsory basic education by
2015 and specifically recognizes the need of the UN community to adequately address the EFA needs of war-affected children through the work of Graca Machel (1996) and the
EFA conferences of 1990 and 2000.
While each of the chapters bears its own importance, one chapter in Learning for a Future, which is of particular importance to this dissertation, is Margaret Sinclair's chapter Education in Emergencies. Sinclair's overview of the field serves as one of the most comprehensive early attempts to define the term "education in emergencies" and to root it within refugee response in UNHCR-run camps drawing on field examples including Sinclair's own experiences managing UNHCR programs. In her conclusion,
Sinclair recommends the expansion of community-based approaches to emergency education, increased institutional capacity in the UNHCR for a rapid response that prioritizes education more, an increased leadership role for the UNHCR in education, and better interagency cooperation (2001, pp. 66-75). When taken in conjunction with
Sinclair's 2002 UNESCO paper Planning Education in & After Emergencies, in which she outlines key issues humanitarian implementing agencies face in preparing and addressing education needs in emergencies, Sinclair's work gives defining shape to the current range of practical action being undertaken in the international humanitarian assistance community. Building on Sinclair's call for more comprehensive research, evaluation, and documentation and embedding research design into project management in emergencies, Tomlinson and Benefield (2005) examined the state of research in the 7 field of education in emergencies and concluded similarly that more research needed to be consciously embedded into the emergency education system and more widely shared among practitioners and academics in order to strengthen the experience of education and to meet EFA goals.
The body of work Marc Sommers has produced during a long series of consultancies for a number of UN agencies is as pertinent and as influential as Margaret
Sinclair's work to the current discourse of policy and practice within field praxis (2004;
2003; 2002; 2001). While a number of his reports, books, evaluations, and papers are referenced at different points in this dissertation, his 2004 work for UNESCO's
International Institute of Educational Planning Coordinating Education During
Emergencies: Challenges and Responsibilities builds on the ideas Sinclair outlined in her
2002 publication for the same agency on planning. In her 2002 paper, Sinclair suggested that strengthening the role field-based research plays in implementing emergency education - or in the project cycle in general — would assist in addressing problems of documentation gaps, community-participation, enrollment, and meaningful or relevant learning opportunities thereby strengthening the overall effectiveness of learning in these environments. She suggested that the way forward to more effective education in emergencies was in better coordination, cooperation and idea sharing between and among agencies (Sinclair, 2002, p. 130). In his 2004 book, Sommers picks up on the role stronger coordination could play in delivering education in emergencies and presents five reasons for strengthening this area of work: education, indeed coordinated education, strengthens communities and holds them together across war zones and in refugee camps; 8 second education is the most practicable and durable peace-making enterprise; third the work of many "experts and advocates" suggests that a coordinated education system could effectively decrease war-associated "trauma, abduction, forced labour, and a range of social and economic obligations"; fourth uncoordinated emergency education responses makes social and educational reconstruction more challenging when learners have studied and "learned" different skills and ideas at different paces; finally, coordination "magnifies the coherence and utility of education for students, teachers, and communities" (2004, pp. 80-82).
In addition to this focus on planning, research, and coordination, there are a number of papers, evaluations, and reports focused on specific issues relating to learning itself. Only a handful of this body of work will be mentioned here to show the range of the debates and issues at the school, classroom, or learning level of the emergency education field. Prior to the establishment of the Interagency Network for Education in
Emergencies (INEE) following the Dakar conference on Education for All in 2000, the
UNHCR had a comprehensive education policy and set of practices in place for addressing the learning needs of some war-affected children - namely refugees (UNHCR,
2002; INEE, 2004). Both within the realm of refugees and other emergency-affected populations, the policy emphasis is on (re)starting schooling using familiar curricula in coordination with whatever curricula is being used in the rest of the [home] country as soon as possible to reinforce a sense of "normalcy", familiarity, and to foster community around the routine schools bring to families with children. If necessary, supplementary subjects dealing with specific emergency-related issues - for example trauma, language, 9 and survival - can be included. In evaluative studies and other best practices reports, the suggestion seems to be that issues of access, quality, and child participation are at the forefront of concerns in a number of real case scenarios.
There is a broad range of papers stemming from the level of field praxis, which focus on issues relating to limitations and challenges of access. The work of Andrea
Rugh on Afghanistan during the Taliban (1998 and 2000) highlights what happened in one specific context when education is politicized during war and conflict leading to multiple curricula for one national group and limited access for certain social groups - particularly girls and working boys. At the same time, Rugh's project evaluation of Save the Children's Home Based Girls' Schools also suggests that it is possible to create community-oriented culturally appropriate responses to the needs of specific groups - in this case refugee village dwelling Afghan girls of Pashtun ethnic origin (Rugh, 2000).
Other practitioners have also written on the how accessibility issues can be solved using community-based initiative and solutions while remaining flexible on what constitutes a school in a physical sense particularly with reference to specially marginalized groups of learners. This group of writers includes Mary Joy Pigozzi (1999, p. 17) in her definitive paper on Unicef s position on the then emerging notion of education in emergencies,
Margaret Sinclair (2001) in her Learning for a Future chapter, Jane Lowicki (2002) in her work on urban Afghan refugee working children, and Peter Singer (2005) on child soldiers. Writing about accessibility tends to particularly focus on specific groups of learners - especially younger children, who face especially tough war-related challenges 10 to accessing learning be it related to indicators of gender, politics, economics, religion, culture, or systemic destruction.
While access is a widely acknowledged issue facing emergency-affected learners,
James Williams has added to the emerging dialogue in the field by summarizing issues on school quality and attainment issues with specific reference to refugee schools in the chapter he contributed to Learning for a Future (2001, pp. 85-108). Williams summarizes some of the literature in quality and attainment outside of the war context and then applies it to what is known about refugee education. He concludes by suggesting four basic lessons for refugee education: that quality is understood in different ways by different stakeholders and cultures, that quality includes multiple factors interacting together to bring change on a balance, that improvements in educational quality may not necessarily be expensive or heavily resource dependent, school improvement is best achieved on site involving the participation of all stakeholders who will be immediately affected (2001, p. 85). It is open to discussion how one can rely on literature related to learning in peaceful, economically privileged contexts or environments to help understand quality attainment in the refugee context, and nevertheless to conclude that locally derived solutions will yield better results. Nevertheless, Williams outlines some important ideas in relation to the strengthening of schools in emergencies: flexibility, participation, low-cost simple solutions, and cultural relevancy.
For Williams, participation is very much school-based and focuses around issues of high attendance rates, low drop out, and consistently good scores on subject area tests 11
(2001, p. 99). This type of school-based definition of participation is useful on the level of school-based evaluation and in addressing the EFA policy project. However, many other educationists take a much broader view of participation - particularly learner participation, which seeks to encompass the community-building role of schooling, non- formal methods and places of learning, and informal learning. A broader, more holistic, view of participation and learning helps to bring into the fold the use of non-formal education praxis which seems to be common in the emergency field if the range of articles, evaluations, and epapers on these practices is anything to go by. For some layers of field-based practice, particularly among those who support the EFA goals above and beyond all other policy in education, the use of holistic understandings may be seen as counter-productive. However, in the context of my own work as a whole and this study in particular, broader perspectives on these terms allows participants to decide which experiences are related to learning during war and emergencies, be they school-based or not. Purely from the perspective of literature, broad perspectives allow one to take into account non-school and higher school opportunities for learning, such as drop-in centres for working children (Lowicki, 2002), home schools (Rugh, 2000), child soldier deprogramming and reintegration centres (Singer, 2005) among others thereby being able to provide a more complete understanding of the full range of learning in emergencies.
It is here that the field-based practical literature begins to present itself for theoretical debate and consideration. If it cannot all be fit neatly into the UN policy initiative on Education for All, then what is emergency education and how should researchers understand it? To begin to answer this possibly unanswerable theoretical 12 question, it is perhaps better to turn to those recent publications, which focus on academic theory and research on emergency education.
...to the Theoretical.
A much smaller portion of the literature represents academic research conducted by professional academics (Davies, 2004; Boyden & deBerry, 2004; Marten, 2002;
Dicum, 2005). While many of these academics also work as consultants for international agencies, and employ certain theories in their consultancy practices, the difference in this section is that it does not draw on consultancy or "practical" literature. Rather, the literature examined in this section looks at independent publications which therefore implies a more independent streak of thought and which can have a much more purposeful theoretical discourse since practical outcomes and suggestions are not necessarily warranted. Nonetheless, the majority of this independent theoretical literature draws on program and project praxis within the assistance community in order to form an opinion based in theory and/or to reach a higher level of understanding relating to learning in wars and emergencies. Hence, the difference between this set of literature and that covered in the previous section lies in the intention of the writing, the audience it addresses, and the loudness of the theoretical voice.
One of the more comprehensive of these works is Lynn Davies' Education and
Conflict: Complexity and Chaos (2004) in which the author produces a thorough literature review of the work and suggests that one way to approach an understanding of education and conflict is to draw upon the tenets of complexity theory, also known as chaos theory. In doing so, Davies recognizes the general neglect of theory and theorizing 13 within the field of education to explain the contribution(s) schooling has made to national and global conflict (2004, p. 19). Her choice of complexity theory is perhaps considered unusual by some, because the theory is more of a collectivity of ideas coming from a variety of disciplines, strays away from too much grand narrative, and is more usually found in cultural studies and computer science where it is used to explain how increased global connectivity is leading not to increased harmony but increased confusion, diversion, and conflict. This choice of theories is therefore even more unusual given that most of the world's conflicts and wars are taking place in the least privileged parts of the world where connectivity through modern communications mechanisms is rarely available. The use of complexity theory allows Davies to examine the challenging communal roles schools play during war and conflict both as healers and binders of identity and as destroyers and disruptors. Unlike the more perennially optimistic tone portrayed in "the practical" literature, Davies aims to encourage readers to see the school as a less than perfect whole that it often is in war zones. In her final conclusion (2004, pp.
203-224), however, Davies attempts to salvage some hope for the role formal schools could play in conflict areas seeking to encourage readers to think of ways in which schools, by being adaptive, could provide an education which engages learners in
"positive conflict" rather than "negative conflict", or as a place where healthy conflict exists and can be resolved thereby teaching learners skills to cope with the negative
(irresolvable violent) conflicts outside of the school gates. The role of the school would therefore become "interruptive" in the cycle of conflict going on in the wider community outside of the school or outside of the refugee camp where relevant. 14
The second book which contributes to this field of theory-building on education in emergencies in academia is Jo Boyden and Joanna de Berry's edited book of chapters entitled Children and Youth on the Front Line: Ethnography, Armed Conflict and
Displacement (2004). Unlike Davies' book, Boyden and de Berry's work is not explicitly about formal education but reexamines how research is done on children in war zones, how children and childhood are viewed in the war context, and therefore implicitly relates to learning - or growing and knowledge acquisition - in a more holistic manner.
Of particular relevance are the two chapters relating to children's narratives and the final section relating to research methodology. The chapters on children's narratives, in particular Jason Hart's chapter on Palestinian children's identities, encourage the involvement of children's experience and view points in research about them, something which seems to be missing or hidden in the literature discussed until this point. While children are often observed at school, and sometimes spoken to during evaluations, there is a tendency in the practical literature to interpret children's voices for them and to try to fit their opinions into predetermined policy boxes rather than to give their voices central relevance and to make recommendations address children's issues directly. The final section on research methodologies in a war zone will be referenced more specifically in this chapter's section on the research methodology used in this study. However, it is worth mentioning here that Boyden and de Berry examine how qualitative research can be conducted in fluid, unstable environments without compromising the rigors of research. In short, Boyden and de Berry's book has multiple uses and relevancies to the study of education in emergencies even though it excludes explicit discussion of education or organized notions of learning. 15
Where there is continuity between Davies' work and Boyden and deBerry's is a sense one gets that the authors are all working from a similar set of assumptions about definitions of children, childhood, and education, which seem to stem from the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child and the EFA framework. The fact that all three authors work as academic researchers and consultants in the humanitarian assistance field suggests that these cross-fertilizations should not be unexpected. It is virtually impossible to divorce oneself entirely from field perspectives and these works show that by using case studies from the work of the United Nations and international non-governmental organizations. Such challenges are also evident in my own refereed journal article (2005) in which I argued that education program in the Afghan refugee camps of the Pakistan's
Balochistan province during the Taliban (1995-2001) represented a case study of how diverse multi-faceted community-oriented educational solutions which engage the entire community in the act of learning -formally and non-formally ~ help the entire refugee population cope with the changes war and displacement have brought.
The James Marten book Children and War: A historical anthology (2002) diverges from the other two books and the intricate relationship they have with field praxis by putting together a wide range of chapters about children's experiences of war going back as far as the American Revolution and moving forward to Liberia in the
1990s making stops in a wide variety of cultures, conflicts, and wars in between and pushing readers to think of children and war more often divorced from current international humanitarian assistance practice. While each of the chapters in this 16 anthology is important in different ways and for different reasons, there is an overall sense that the importance of the book lies in the historical experiences of children's roles in war - as soldiers, politicized agents of propaganda, and workers - rather than in addressing current field-based debates on children, war, and learning. While the chapters do not always directly reference children's interpretations of their experiences, Marten does seem to go further in this direction than the work mentioned so far. Given the wide range of issues touched on in this anthology, it is difficult to summarize the entire book here, although several chapters are referenced in the first case study of this dissertation.
The challenge with much of the available literature, be it "theoretical",
"practical", or somewhere in between is that it does not necessarily seek to understand learning in emergency environments from the perspective of the children and youth themselves independent of policy influences either pre-migration, during migration, or post-resettlement (Hart, 2003). Whether or not it is possible to divorce children's perspectives from those of adults - particularly when the researcher is an adult embedded in the practical - is a topic of some debate. Moreover, by focusing on individual projects of varying size and by being endorsed on some level or other by the official structures of the assistance community, the literature tends to veer away from engaging theory in the discourse, engaging a broad range of voices in the research, and seeing participation in learning during long term war and migration as a continuum of a life lived. Instead, the emergency context is taken as a discreet moment in time with no past or future participation expected or acknowledged. 17
There is a recognized need among emergency education practitioners that more independent research should be carried out in order to begin the development of a deeper understanding of war and conflict, learning, and childhood (Sinclair, 2002; Tomlinson &
Benefield, 2005; Hart, 2003). The development of a richer discourse on these topics would begin to build the foundation for a stronger platform from which to develop theories, policies, and the practical.
Curriculum Experiences in the Dialogue on Emergency Education
Central to this study is the acknowledgement of learners as experts on their own experience and as important stakeholders in the process of building understanding of children, learning and war. As such, the study focuses on comprehending learning not just as it might be embedded within a single learning environment, school, classroom, aid project, or apprenticeship, but as part of the continuum of life, community, forced migration, conflict and personal growth. The engagement of pupils' learning experiences in research is unusual even in a strictly Western-centric research on schools and schooling (Pollard, Thiessen, & Filer, 1997, p. 5). Knowing that governments under stress, humanitarian assistance agencies, and individual researchers have difficulty accessing, documenting, and researching war and conflict environments (Sinclair, 2002;
Davies, 2004), the central question of research in this study really has been to ask what learners' hindsight perspectives can say about how the curriculum is experienced in pre- migration and migration [refugee] situations during war.
The study was not designed with a specific theoretical agenda or analytical framework in mind, because it aimed to put the learners' experiences at the centre of the 18 study rather than to try to fit experiences into a specific set of expectations. The analysis of information and presentation in the dissertation are therefore centred on presenting learners' curriculum experiences during war and conflict. However, this is not to suggest that there are no theories at work underlying this study or the use of certain key terminologies. In the social sciences, theory either consciously or unconsciously underpins the basic tenets of research lending potential biases, assumptions, and expectations to the analysis and outcomes. This section therefore attempts to bring forward those underpinnings of which I am conscious and address how they may have affected certain choices made in the course of the study.
In the field of education studies, "curriculum" is one of the most theoretically challenging concepts to grasp. Much has been written about it on a philosophical level.
My own position on these debates is informed broadly speaking by the realm of critical pedagogy, an educational philosophy whose definition was well-summarized by Stevens when she wrote:
.. .the term has traditionally referred to educational theory and teaching and learning practices that are designed to raise learners' critical consciousness regarding oppressive social conditions. In addition to its focus on personal liberation through the development of critical consciousness, critical pedagogy also has a more collective political component, in that critical consciousness is positioned as the necessary first step of a larger collective political struggle to challenge and transform oppressive social conditions and to create a more egalitarian society. As such, critical educators attempt to disrupt the effects of oppressive regimes of power both in the classroom and in the larger society. Critical pedagogy is particularly concerned with reconfiguring the traditional student/teacher relationship, where the teacher is the active agent, the one who knows, and the students are the passive recipients... (Stevens, n.d.) 19
Where my own thinking diverges from Stevens is to view the [formal] school classroom as only one of the possible locations for learning. If the central goal of critical pedagogy is to reconfigure the student-teacher relationship, then there is also space within it to reconfigure the terms under which the relationship functions or the notions of
"school" and "classroom". The broadening of what constitutes a learning space is in keeping with the work of Paolo Friere and Ivan Illich who are sometimes included in the literature on critical pedagogy and who focused on organizing non-school learning on different levels (Stevens, n.d.; Dicum, 2005; Weiss & Nolan, 2001).
My visions of curriculum and curriculum spaces might have informed the design of this study and the justification for examining learner experience; however, these views may go beyond how the participants would themselves define these terms. Moreover, altering the student-teacher relationship in a study based on past experiences is neither expected nor likely. Hence, I have tried to use my adherence to these theories in a very loose way throughout the study by trying to centre the participant and his/her own views throughout. Centring the participants includes using their authentic voices and own terminologies for their learning environments and experiences and allowing them to define through their own stories what constitutes a school or learning space.
Nevertheless, it would be wrong to think that this work is not somehow informed by my belief that teachers, schools, and communities are potentially radical learning spaces to be used for the (self) empowerment of learners. 20
In the context of this study, which takes a wide understanding of where "learning" occurs, a broad notion of "curriculum" necessarily follows. In this view, curriculum attempts to describe both what and how learning - or knowledge and skills building ~ takes place in schools and other formal institutions, in society and community, in family, in the workplace, and how learning is woven between these various locations (Jackson,
1992, pp. 7-11; Eisner, 1979; Illich, 1970; Freire, 1970; Huiskamp, 2002). Such broad inclusion opens space for participants to speak about learning outside of the strict confines of formal learning institutions, a situation that regularly occurred in the interview process as war experiences became more and more chaotic. In keeping with the work of Elliot Eisner (1979) and Phillip Jackson (1990, 1992) on the various "parts" of the curriculum in primary schools, it is important to recognize the place of the explicit
(goals and subjects), hidden and implicit (the structural surroundings, routines, and the lessons learned from them), and null curriculum (lessons consciously excluded from the learning moment) in every learning environment. Others academicians, such as Dennis
Thiessen, have found the notions of intended (planned), taught (what teachers do in the classroom), and experienced (how pupils receive and perceive) to be more useful in comprehending how curriculum works particularly in settings where learning is formalized (1997). While many of the curriculum theory debates focus around primary or elementary school environments, there are longstanding traditions of applying the same terminology to learning outside of formal institutions.
At the core of this study is Thiessen's experienced curriculum - or what learners remember about how they actually engaged in and practiced the "what" and the "how" of 21 learning. Yet in spite of this focus on the experienced curriculum, many of the memories describe different aspects of the implicit curriculum at a descriptive level and an unconscious level of lessons learned. Eisner's understanding of the implicit curriculum includes the basic structures of the learning space, available materials to facilitate learning, the atmosphere of the location, and the hidden lessons learners take from this experience (1979). In order to answer the central research question, the focus of the line of inquiry came to be on asking participants to reconstruct as much of their curriculum experiences as possible.
Five Curriculum Experience Themes on Learning During War
While research on learners' curriculum experiences during war and conflict is largely absent from current literature, there are certain prominent themes relating to learning, particularly in [primary] schools, which are suggestive of the shape curriculum experiences may take. While these themes were not consciously taken up in the design of this study, over the course of the analysis period they became more and more prominent in the collective educational history, which was being woven together and presented in the case studies. These five themes are: maintenance, adaptation, resilience, politicization/resistance, and identity. It is important to emphasize from the outset that with the exception of maintenance, and to a lesser extent adaptation, the study did not plan to explore these themes at the outset and the interview protocol did not seek to gain insight into them. Rather, these are the overriding topics that emerged during analysis phase. That each theme has its own set of background literature, which helps to define it and to give it shape, is to some extent irrelevant to this study although it may have implications for the further research. 22
Central to the line of inquiry was to ask participants to reconstruct their various learning structures and daily routines so as to document a rich description of a variety of emergency learning environments. Within this effort lies an attempt to address the issue of documentation identified by numerous authors in the field including Sinclair (2002),
Sommers (2004), Tomlinson and Benefield (2005). Where aid agencies, governments, and researchers have not been able to document the basics of life in emergency learning environments, the memories of participants - particularly learners - serve as an alternative way of documenting emergency education while simultaneously addressing the aforementioned missing learners' perspectives. Hence, the case studies, in addition to some minor memories of the explicit or intended curriculum, ultimately give rich detail about the implicit curriculum particularly about daily school and classroom life, materials, and student-teacher interactions. In short, this theme broadly addresses attempts to maintain learning in pre-war manners. Because the definitions of learning and curriculum have been taken broadly, curriculum experiences through work, migration, and other communal interactions are also explored particularly during periods of formal learning "gaps" due to war.
The other three issues stem largely from outcomes related to the war and conflict environment and the need for survival. Adaptation concretely examines the ways in which schools, learners, and communities had to adapt [formal] learning so as to enable children and youth to continue to engage in learning in spite of issues of economic, social, and political chaos, insecurity, and violence. While the first theme-maintenance- 23 examines the ways in which learning is essentially similar to what might be expected of learning in non-war environments, adaptation looks at ways in which learning had to change in order to be able to continue. War comes into the oral histories in three ways.
First, the chronological order in which participants were asked to share their histories led to stories about learning gaps, adjustments, and changing explicit and implicit curricula.
Second, the ways certain events and changes in schooling affected the atmosphere, design, and materials available in the learning spaces. Third, war often led to learning experiences, particularly skills learnt outside of school and politicization, which participants would otherwise not have gained. The curriculum of war within these learning experiences, as in other research, is alternately central and superficial to the individual and collective memories in this particular group of participants. As with statements by other war-affected children and youth (Pont, 2001; Boyden & deBarry,
2003; Marten, 2002), a sense comes over the reader that at times the war itself was implicit, or in the background, to the explicit lessons learned at school.
The resilience of war-affected children has been noted regularly in the literature
(Sommers, 2002, p. 8; Newman, 2005, pp. iv-v; Buckland, 2005, pp. 11-12; Davies,
2004, pp. 103-108). Resilience is defined as "how children overcome adversity to achieve good developmental outcome" and is characterized as a process, a capacity and an outcome (Masten & Coatsworth, as cited in Anderson, 2004, p. 53). In this view of war- affected children, the literature steers away from images of children as passive victims of the adult world, seen in some Western-centric models of childhood, and instead focuses on their strengths, their adaptability, coping skills, and abilities to become leaders of 24 households, economic breadwinners, and to otherwise actively contribute to their own survival. To some extent the notion of resilience in the aid literature reflects Neil
Postman and Charles Weingartner's contention that the basic function of education is to
"increase the survival prospects of the group" (1976 (1969), p. 195): Supported by
Mich's work on deschooling through co-operatively engaged learning networks (1970),
Postman and Weingartner propose that in rapidly changing situations, the human learning need becomes unlearning knowledge which is no longer relevant or useful to the situation, identifying new learning goals, and engaging in them for survival (1976, pp.
195-6). In the context of this study, therefore, evidence emerges of resilience and the ways in which learning facilitates resilience.
Lynn Davies recognizes the role which learning plays in the politicization of learners and schools (2004, pp. 109-123). Davies notes the multiple ways in which war politicizes education and brings violence, politics, and conflict into the learning process including: the formal curriculum and textbooks, the recruitment of child soldiers, war- related violence, school-related violence such as physical punishment, and the fear and intimidation of learners through hierarchy and engrained learning processes including examinations, oral testing, and strict discipline. It may be worth adding political propaganda being engrained through changes in daily school routines including national anthems and flags, messages given during school assemblies, leaders' photos on the walls, and other physical alterations in the building itself. Under some politically tense situations, the use of schools and schooling as centres for political resistance - or conflict resistance - may be the natural communal reaction to these changes. The relationship 25 between politicization and resistance in learning environments is an important issue in the literature.
The fifth key issue on learning during war is that of identity/Identity issues in existing literature take multiple forms and may encompass issues of gender, ethnicity, race, tribalism, and religion among other identity markers (Davies, 2004, pp. 76-94). In keeping with the theoretical underpinnings of her book, Davies points out how identity issues play out in complicated, sometimes subtle but often overt ways during war and conflict. While identity issues can be classified as positive (or peaceful) and negative (or violent and conflicting), often the building of any identity experience can be both positive and negative. Identity development during war and conflict was not something initially thought of as a potential overriding issue in this study. However, as the study wore on and the transcripts were examined, subtle cues and experiences shared suggested overwhelmingly that different forms of identity acquisition and change presented an important area of learner experience of the curriculum.
Of the many issues related to childhood, learning, and war brought up in the various pieces of available literature, it was these five ~ maintenance, adaptation, resilience, politicization/resistance, and identity - which appeared consistently in the oral histories collected for this study. The small sample size of participants, the implicit influence of existing literature, and the potential for other themes to be fleshed out makes one cautious about coming to forthright conclusions about the place these issues play beyond being convenient locators for the presentation of these particular oral histories. Introducing The Research Method
The available literature on education during war suggests a number of important issues for research. First it suggests that an important area yet to be comprehensively studied is that of learners' curriculum experiences thereby opening up an opportunity for new research. Secondly, the literature identifies multiple issues from the field, five of which were present in the oral histories analyzed enabling a deeper understanding the learners' experiences: maintenance, adaptation, resilience, politicization/resistance, and identity. The problem for developing a strong research method and process is that it must address the challenges of war context, participant trauma, and the fact that the research history in children, learning, and war is not as comprehensive as it could be.
Oral History Methodology
The desire to conduct research on war-affected learning environments could not reconcile the security challenges inherent in war zones with the need to ensure participant safety. Taking these issues into consideration a comparative oral history study was chosen, in which two groups of participants would share their memories of learning and war for two specific contexts. Oral histories of learners who went to school during a war would enable the gathering of evidence to (re-)create a collective learner perspective without compromising personal safety and security. Moreover, given the lack of documentation of child-civilian histories during wars and conflicts, particularly of educational histories, this method could enable access to ideas and information which curriculum specialists might otherwise not have access to. Choosing exact cases was more of a challenge requiring the consideration of sufficient access to war-affected 27 learners, background knowledge and experience of different communities and wars, cases which were historically significant to the humanitarian aid field, and enough willing participants.
Choosing Cases and Participants: World War II and Afghanistan
Taking into account the above-mentioned issues of access, significance, and willingness, two seemingly different cases were chosen: Eastern European-Canadians and
Afghan-Canadians who had grown up and attended a variety of learning institutions during World War II or the Afghan conflict respectively. At first glance, the choice of
Eastern Europeans who experienced World War II and Afghans who experienced post-
1979 Afghanistan present an odd choice due to vast cultural, linguistic, historical, and political differences between them. At a deeper level, however, the chosen wars represent important world political conflicts taking place at the start (World War II) and the end
(Afghanistan) of the Cold War period. Moreover, participants in each case study experienced education during the war, education as displaced or refugee learners, and resettlement to a third country (Canada), where coincidentally nearly all of the participants experienced further formal learning opportunities. Thirdly, the politics and the history of both wars are of significant interest to a wider public and have been researched and written about extensively albeit largely from a militaristic or political perspective than a civilian perspective. Finally, although this was to some extent a tertiary consideration, picking communities with which I have significant familial
(Eastern Europeans) and professional (Afghans) ties would likely facilitate entrance and acceptance of the research project. 28
In the end, a total of twenty-seven participants were interviewed - sixteen World
War II participants and eleven Afghan participants. The number of Afghans was lowered from the planned number of fifteen participants, due largely to the fact that willing participants were limited to a specific group - those mostly under age thirty and who were all currently enrolled in educational institutions in Canada. While this group is representative of the wider Afghan population in other ways - ethnicity, religion, language, and social class, it was becoming increasingly limited in others - predictability of the history, attitude, and level of access to formal education. While participants are discussed further in chapter two, months of trying to expand access to the community did not bear new participants and in the end the existing eleven became the focus. World War
II participants, on the other hand, went slightly over the expected number of fifteen due to relatively less suspicion in the involved communities and stronger personal - especially familial ~ ties between the researcher and the community in Canada.
Hence, the study and therefore the dissertation, captures the curriculum experiences of these twenty-seven Eastern-European and Afghan Canadians during their respective war time experiences. In presenting the cases and analyzing them, an effort is made to respect the differences between the cases and yet to highlight their similarities in relation to one another and to what is already known about learning during war from the literature. While the cases are presented in largely chronological manner, analytically the five experiential issues of maintenance, adaptation, resilience, politicization/resistance, and identity are further developed. 29
Structure of the Dissertation
The dissertation is divided into four sections. The first section introduces the theoretical and methodological considerations relating to the research and research design. The second and third sections comprise the case studies. The second section, which focuses on World War II, consists of four chapters. The third section, also consisting of four chapters, focuses on Afghanistan. While each of these two sections is roughly modeled along the same lines - an introduction to learning in the context, the pre-migration phase, the refugee phase, and an intra-case comparison, in a detailed sense the sections differ reflecting the different temporal, political, and cultural details of each war and differences therein. The fourth section brings together the case studies in comparative perspective and focuses on lessons learned during the research. The eleventh chapter is the synthesis chapter and compares the two case studies to identify major similarities and differences in the histories presented. The final chapter of the dissertation refocuses the outcome of the research by locating the outcomes within the field of curriculum studies theory, searching for wider implications within the practical field of emergency education policy, and examining the future possibilities for this particular type of research proj ect.
Conclusion
Research on the curriculum experiences of war-affected children and youth is an area of work which is currently being refocused by the introduction of academic rigor at the level of the practical - or the practitioner - and by increasingly finding space for theoretical treatise at the level of academia. Much of the research work being done m the field of comparative international education and curriculum studies on issues of children, war, and learning derives its relevance from practical applications being undertaken at the project and programming levels and therefore borrows terminology, practice, and ideas from policy-related documents, reports, and evaluations.
The literature has shown not just the complexity of the war context, or of conducting research in war zones, but has equally shown the limitations of focusing solely on the solutions used in the assistance field. By widening the scope of research to go beyond the narrow parameters of the Education for All campaign, the field is opened to developing a broad understanding of pre-migration and migration experiences of learning in formal and non-formal settings.
The current state of research on children, learning, and war is such that there are many opportunities for working on a wide variety of problems. The need to bring learner perspective into the fold is particularly important in that it can help to document learning practices and experiences which are otherwise left out of the existing discourse while increasing learner participation in curriculum studies. The choice of a comparative study focusing on two politically important conflicts of the last century - World War II and
Afghanistan — makes the research slightly more dynamic for purposes of analysis and forging deeper understanding of the threads of commonalities and differences in learner experiences of education in emergencies. Chapter 2: Oral History Methodology in the Comparative Study of Education During War and Conflict
Research on war and on children's experiences of war is a broad area of work, which includes investigations in trauma, psychiatry, psychology, medicine, and peace education (Marten, 2002; Boy den & deBerry, 2004, pp. xii-xix; Sinclair, 2002). Issues of security, access, trauma, and the ethics of research on children challenge education-in- emergency researchers to seek appropriate and useful ways to engage themselves in a process of deeper understanding. Current work on research and research methodologies in the study of war, learning and children tends towards the use of qualitative research methods rooted within the broad scope of comparative international education
(Tomlinson & Benefield, 2005). These methods include ethnography (Boyden & de
Barry, 2004), narrative (Singer, 2005), and oral history (Slim & Thompson, 1995, pp. 32-
33). Methodologically, this study aims to build on research methodology and practice in the field of comparative international education (CIE) while simultaneously contributing a greater understanding of education during two war contexts. After considering the various options, constraints and the current state of the research on education in emergencies oral history was chosen as a methodological focus.
This chapter is essentially divided into two halves. First, it outlines the central issues involved in oral history methodology within a comparative framework and the process through which it was chosen as the central research method for this study on education during World War II and the war in Afghanistan. The second half of the
31 32 chapter focuses on this study in specific including how it was conducted, how participants were identified and chosen, the structure of data analysis, and reflections on the writing process. There is a central theme in the second half as it seeks to address challenges faced in the process and how they were addressed. The chapter also directly associates particulars of the research process with statements made by key oral historians about the method. Central to the study design is the work of Paul Thompson whose own methodological praxis remains the main methodological inspiration behind this study.
Putting the Discourse Into Action: Finding a Research Methodology
The decision to focus on learner experience in order to widen the understanding of education in war and conflict led to a need to consider various research methodologies used in curriculum studies and comparative international education (CIE). Positivist, modernist, and quantitative approaches were largely ruled out due to the inability to find substantial primary and secondary documentation on this subject. The inability to gather statistics reliably due to insecurity in and near war zones, or to find archived statistical information, coupled with the historical context ruled out quantitative analysis. Hence, it became apparent that the likely solution was to conduct a qualitative study. In choosing the exact type of qualitative methodology, four considerations were taken into account.
The first consideration was to ensure that the study brought out learner experiences of education in emergency. Dwelling on the work of social space theorist
Henri Lefebvre brings forward the idea that space can be transformed into a '"lived experience' by a 'social subject'" (1991, p. 190). By centering the study on the lived experience of the learner, or social subject, a deeper understanding of emergency space 33 and emergency learning could be developed external to the environment itself. Such a study would delve deeper than existing documentation within the humanitarian assistance field by gathering candid experiences of those who experienced learning by going beyond school or institutional learning alone. By giving participants the opportunity to define learning and learning environments, through the memories they chose to share, the research would not necessarily be constrained by expectations that all learning takes place in schools or environments defined by adults, societal and governmental structures.
The second consideration relates to the use of existing curriculum theory in influencing research design and directions for analysis. The lack of existing theory relating to learning for education in war and conflict suggests that it may be inappropriate to borrow from common views of learning in existing curriculum theory. Debates relating to cultural relativity and appropriateness of transfer are at the fore of such a consideration. At the same time, some guidance was needed to give shape to the directions analysis and research design could take. To acknowledge and to draw loosely on some existing theory for a basis of definition, design and analysis is as important as acknowledging and drawing on the existing literature in the field even though it may not be complete, comprehensive, or without agency bias.
The third consideration is to use a comparative method by using case studies. The potential for using comparative international education in order to study emergency education has been noted by several writers (Sinclair, 2002; Tomlinson & Benefield,
2005). At the centre of CIE research is the tendency to use case studies to build a knowledge base on a particular issue and eventually to apply practical knowledge to theory building. Hence, focusing on two wars, rather than choosing participants from a wide variety of wars, would enable the development of stronger basis for analysis through case study development and presentation and could allow a more complete understand of individual experiences in a broader context.
The fourth consideration focuses on the emergency environment itself, particularly the war and conflict environment. The safety and security of the researcher and the participants would be a primary issue in conducting research in an emergency environment. It is often this consideration which hinders assistance agencies from conducting research on their humanitarian work, including but not limited to program evaluation and the sponsoring of university-agency partnership in curriculum development and research as is done in the development field. One solution to this problem is to seek ways to embed research in the project management cycle used by humanitarian assistance agencies (Sinclair, 2002; Tomlinson & Benefield, 2005).
However, embedded research can be hindered by organizational politics and expectations. The method used in this dissertation, therefore, is unembedded research that looks at education during an emergency in historical context. Research in the historical framework could go further to ensure participant safety while disengaging the research from the challenges of organizational expectations.
Taking these methodological issues into consideration, it was decided that a comparative oral history study, in which two groups of participants would share their 35 memories of learning and war for two specific contexts, could address the four considerations. Oral histories of learners who went to school during a war would provide information which could enable a (re-)creation of collective learner perspectives. The method engages-participants from a position of past experience ensuring greater personal safety and security. Moreover, given the lack of documentation of civilian histories during wars and conflicts, particularly of educational histories, this method could provide important insight which curriculum specialists might otherwise not gain. The remainder of the first half of this chapter expands on these considerations in detail.
The Challenges of Research in War and Conflict
Information relating to civilian experience of war and conflict, particularly to the experiences of children and their education, is difficult to find. Accessing secondary and primary documents related to the cases to be examined here was no exception. In the case of World War II, written history found in available libraries was "traditional" in that it focused on the battles of the war and the experiences of few specific groups of people: soldiers, Holocaust victims, political leaders and, in fictional work, the (often embellished) lives of specific civilians. While it is possible that some comprehensive secondary resources are available in indigenous languages of the countries involved, I am either not fluent enough or do not know the languages at all. Given that the Eastern
European theatre of the War covered a broad range of languages, it is impossible that one person can have strong enough skills in every language in Eastern Europe. Moreover, neither my own searches nor those done by specialist librarians of United Nations' or other library archives found extensive resources relating to the schooling and learning experiences of different groups of Eastern European children during that conflict. 36
Afghans are immortalized largely in political history books, the autobiographies of journalists covering the Soviet-Afghan conflict, and ethnographies and narrative stories written by a small group of female anthropologists, aid workers, and activists
(Dicum, n.d.). With the exception of a few short chapters on women's education1 (Pont,
2001; Ellis, 2000), the majority of resources record specific moments in Afghan education, particularly aspects of the refugee experience in Pakistan particularly during the 1997-2001 Taliban era (Rugh, 1998,2000; GTZ, 2002; Sinclair, 2001; Save the
Children 1999, 2000; Lowicki, 2002; Dicum, 2005). Moreover, while a few are available for download from the Internet (Rugh, 2000; Lowicki, 2002), many of these documents on Afghan education are project and policy documents available only to a small group of insiders including the organizations which produced them, regional colleagues, and supporting donors. Finally, that which is available gives little, if any, space to learner experience. In summary, both cases suffer from insufficient background documentation related to education in these contexts.
The dearth of previously published, or available, research work on the educational experiences of learners in these groups is hardly surprising given that the majority of written history is largely that of political or war actors with much less attention given to the study of civilians. Moreover, given that education in complex emergencies was not of great interest to humanitarian policy makers and field practitioners until recent years, the need for research in this area was not previously emphasized. Margaret Sinclair (2002, p.
1 This refers specifically to the historical, pre-2001 perspective. Since 2001 there has been a flurry of activity relating to writing about education inside Afghanistan, but much of it is focused solely on the contemporary era without addressing the missing twenty-two years. 129) has suggested that the barriers to conducting research in emergency environments, particularly on education projects, surround poor documentation, a lack of security, urgency leading to action without procedural due diligence, and high staff turnover rates during critical phases of emergencies. To remedy this, Sinclair urges the development of
"real-time documentation" and embedding research into management structures (2002, p. 129).
Since Sinclair voiced her opinions on the need for more research in 2002, there has been some documentation of attempts within non-governmental and service agencies to integrate research into the practice of education in emergencies (Tomlinson &
Benefield, 2005; Buckland, 2005). Tomlinson and Benefield's contemplation of the state of research on education in emergencies included a search for existing secondary resources and chronicles their findings. By providing one of the most comprehensive surveys of available published or widely disseminated unpublished research on education in complex emergencies, they seem to- agree with others who have previously worried about the lack of evaluative research carried out at the field level, the lack of availability of research for wide dissemination, and the general lack of awareness and dialogue between academic researchers and field-based practitioners (Tomlinson & Benefield,
2005, pp. 12-14). This study does not change the gaps in research, dissemination and education during war and conflict nor would it be within its scope to do so. However, it does seek to contribute to the process of bringing together the three tenets: research, education in emergencies, and dissemination by conducting primary research specifically on education in emergencies and disseminating the findings through this dissertation. 38
Choosing Oral History for the Research Methodology
Having established the need for more rigorous research in emergency environments as part of wider attempts to understand learning in this challenging environment and the need to integrate learner experience of the curriculum into existing discourse on complex emergencies, the question then becomes how can such research take place and yet be done in such a way that it protects the researcher and the participants from a precariously insecure environment? Moreover, one may also question what can be done to address the lack of background research and documentation. One possible answer lies in the study of conflicts past - or at the least of the experiences of persons now removed from the conflict and no longer in danger from participating in research related to their experiences of that conflict. By reconstructing individual memories of education and learning, a picture emerges of a variety of forms of education in complex emergencies. In attempting to reconstruct memories of war and learning, oral history rises as the most appropriate methodology in its ability to meet the needs of all stakeholders.
William Cutler III explained the potential use of oral history in the education field in 1971 as "a methodological resource for the study of the history of education. It bears no ideological bias; its use implies no theoretical orientation." (as cited in Wieder, 1988, p. 131) Wieder goes on to note how a group of educational historians have grasped the importance of documenting and constructing a vision of education and learning which is built from the experiences of ordinary people of their participation in learning environments (1988, p. 131). In spite of Cutler's view of the neutrality of oral history, 39 other methodological theorists have since cited the potential of oral history to be purposefully biased, to enable researchers to examine and to include otherwise excluded voices from historical work as a way to address multiple perspectives within the known or "traditional" sense of history (Wieder, 1988, p. 132; McCulloch & Richardson, 2000, pp.113-116; Thompson, 2000). Still others have seen oral history work as "a source on which to build history as an alternative and complement to the documents on which historians normally rely" (Caunce, 1994, p. 7). The publication of books dedicated to allied soldiers' experiences of fighting World War II, by authors such as Terkel (1984),
Owen and Walters (2004), and Bell (2000), could be considered one example of a genre of oral histories that complement documentary and visual archival evidence normally used in historical research on World War II.
The uses of oral history data have been equally varied. In some cases oral histories have been collected solely for the purpose of creating oral archives, videos and films. Often researchers do not attempt to analyze the information but to allow it to stand for itself in the form of biographies (Yow, 1994), input for community development projects (Slim & Thompson, 1995), and other qualitative studies which focus on presenting rich description over rigorous analysis of collective experiences against theory. If one believes that one of the purposes of collecting oral histories is to make the archives available to others for thoughtful analysis and to encourage their use in developing a richer understanding of curriculum by including learner experience in the process, then space must be made in academic research to allow experienced researchers to use, understand, and analyze information in different ways. 40
The use of oral history in the study of education in complex emergencies, would largely require the avoidance of the way Stephen Caunce suggested, since the limited availability complementary documents suggests that the building of oral histories to complement existing historical records hinders researchers' abilities to combine the oral data with traditional forms of historical evidence - documents, records, and secondary sources. Indeed, it is in situations where documentation has not survived or is incomplete that McCulloch and Richardson suggest the use of oral history in educational settings
(2000, p.l 13). Wieder's observation that "oral history itself creates historical evidence within the interaction of the interviewer, the interviewee, and their historical theme"
(1988, p. 132) provides a basis for entering into a method of interviewing which does not collect a person's complete life history per se, but seeks to understand a specific time period of life within a specific context. It was for these potential strengths behind the methodology that oral history was chosen as the research tool for this study. The methodology is flexible, allows research to be conducted on specific periods of time or events, has been used by others broadly working in education, can be used to create historical evidence where none exists or to add to existing history, and can be done safely and securely after war and conflict has ceased.
It is important to draw a distinction between oral history methodology and three other qualitative research methodologies used in the field of comparative international education, which might be considered appropriate for examining learning in war and conflict under different circumstances or with a different set of research objectives: 41 narrative, ethnography and historical memory research. Historical memory research focuses largely around the memory of trauma and the pedagogy of learning trauma with much of the existing work focusing specifically on remembrance of the Holocaust.
Recently this field has started to take steps to expand its understanding of human remembrance of trauma beyond the scope of Holocaust studies; however, its expansion is currently in early stages (Simon, 2005; Simon, Rosenberg & Eppert, 2000). In order for historical memory research to be relevant for this study, the focus of the study needed to be specifically on traumatic memories of schooling and education during a war. In spite of the certain fact that war experience is traumatic and stressful, schooling and educational memories within a war period may not necessarily be traumatic - in the sense of actively violent, harmful, or stressful. Certainly in the sense of school experiences within war or conflict environments, the routine of schooling is sometimes thought of as the bridge between non-violent times and violent or as maintaining the routine of "normal life" as much as possible in an effort to minimize trauma (Sinclair, 2002; INEE, 2004;
Davies, 2004). Hence, in asking participants to remember their schooling histories, rather than their violent histories, this research is not specifically seeking to address the remembrance of traumatic events. This does not mean that traumatic memories may not surface during an interview; however, it does mean that historical memory research methodology is not appropriate for this study, as it is not focused on memories of trauma.
The second research method that needs qualification is that of narrative, which is often used in comparative international education. While narrative is one of the tools used by historical memory researchers, it is also a research tool used by many other qualitative researchers in the education field. Narrative methodology represents a broad range of styles in research incorporating critical and positivist thinking about research. According to Connelly and Clandinin (1990), "Humans are storytelling organisms who, individually and collectively, lead storied lives. Thus, the study of narrative is the study of the ways humans experience the world." The focus of this methodology is therefore on human stories or engagement of the world. On a definitional level alone narrative is an umbrella term, since nearly all forms of qualitative research deal with human storytelling.
Narrative might therefore actively include all qualitative research methods that gather human experience including oral history and historical memory research. To some researchers, narrative goes well beyond the narrow act of gathering and writing descriptions to include the use of experience to stimulate socio-political action thereby representing the full range of qualitative research discourse (Polkinghorne, 1995). Hence, in the scope of this study at least, oral history research can be placed under the broader
"title" of narrative inquiry, by focusing on human experience, gathering stories from participants, and seeking to understand experience in context. Where oral history seems to differ from narrative, however, is in the depth of the inquiry or experience gathered.
Most narrative methodologies seem to focus on in depth full life histories or stories, in some cases using a small single-digit number of participants. Oral history, on the other hand, tends not to gather the entire life story but a small period of a single life and to involve a much larger community of participants. It is perhaps for this reason that oral historians do not seem to place this method in the rubric of narrative in methodological writing on oral history. 43
Ethnography, the third research methodology considered, is central to the field of anthropology although it is also widely used in education, including CIE. There is a wide range of theory related to ethnographic method allowing the method to be engaged in a range of research environments. Ethnography requires the researcher immerse him/herself in the research community, take on an insider role while conducting the research, and remain rooted in the community for long periods of time (Seymour-Smith,
1986, pp. 98-99). The basic nature of ethnography, therefore, can be challenging and pose a great threat to the researcher and participant-community in a war or conflict situation. As such, ethnography was not considered as a possible methodology for this study.
Although oral history has not been as widely used in educational research as narrative or ethnography, several aspects of research design suggest that this method is useful for researchers of education in complex emergencies. It ensures safety and security of all participants, including the researcher, by gathering evidence only after the event is over. It tends to have larger participant groups and does not delve as deeply into a life story as some forms of narrative inquiry do, allowing for memory loss due to age and memory shut out due to trauma. Finally, oral history creates historical evidence on issues, or moments in history; and can therefore be useful in situations where other documented forms of primary and secondary research are unavailable, which is often the case in war and conflict situations. In considering oral history for this study, however, examining the possibility of using oral history in a comparative manner needs further discussion because neither oral methodologists nor comparativists have written on oral history in a comparative perspective.
Oral History Methodology in Comparative International Education
Margaret Sinclair once suggested that the way forward for research in emergency environments and education might be in the realm of comparative international education
(2002). While Dewey (1938) proposed that theory informs praxis or action, the field of
CIE has tended to merge field lessons and practices with theory in a cyclical collaboration wherein theory informs praxis and vice versa (Amove, 2007; Hayhoe,
2000; Thomas, 1990). This notion of mutually beneficial knowledge building is one of the reasons why CIE has the potential to be useful to emergency educationists, as suggested in Margaret Sinclair's work (2001 & 2002). CIE focused traditionally on the systematic study of educational process within state structures using a combination of positivistic methods of comparison through quantitative studies and enhanced by sociological and other qualitative research methods (Amove, 2007). Amove has distinguished three dimensions of CIE - the scientific (theory building), the pragmatic
(sharing and improving policy practice in education) and the global (study which contributes to international understanding and peace) (2007, pp. 309). In order to build theory, Amove suggests, comparative methods examine case studies and search for
"generalisable propositions about the workings of school systems and their interactions with their surrounding economies, polities, cultures, and social orders"(2007, p. 4). In the case of complex emergencies, however, it is necessary for the researcher of CIE to 45 loosely view the term "school systems" such that non-formal and semi-formal schooling , which is the type of learning system more likely to be found in an emergency, might be eligible for inclusion in research. Moreover, such "systems" in an emergency may only exist for a few months meaning that usual comparative research methods - both quantitative and qualitative - are difficult to plan for and to implement. The notion of the state also needs to be considered loosely in emergencies given that in most complex emergencies state systems, particularly those ministries that implement social services, are often barely functional or non-functional. Such looser or more fluid distinctions of semi-, non-, and formal schooling are reflected in an increasing number of comparative literature including that of Joe Farrell (2007).
Over time, comparative research methods have come to include a wide array of quantitative and qualitative methods. In spite of an increase in the role of qualitative research methods in CIE, oral history methodology is not among the list of more popular methods. However, theoretically the potential for use of oral history research as a CIE method is indicated through the recognized crossover between oral history methods and those of narrative and life history (Yow, 1994, p. 4). Moreover, the use of oral history to create history on specific moments in time suggests that it could be used to develop comparable case studies on aspects of undocumented history. Wherever the same protocol is used to gather information and create a case study surrounding a single subject
- such as education during war, suitable cases for comparison could be developed.
2 Semi-formal schooling relates to any school-like establishment for children and youth which appears formal in terms of materials, schedules, routines, expectations, but which lacks formal accreditation and/or integration into a state-run school system. Community-based schools in refugee camps are one such example. A non-formal school, on the other hand, lacks the routine, schedule, and curriculum of the semi- formal, has much smaller class size, and may only teach one basic subject, such as literacy. 46
Hence, the use of oral history methodology can be used to support the principles of CIE and to enhance the already rich research methodologies available to comparative educationists.
The intention of this study is not only to gather oral histories, but also to develop them into case studies, which can provide opportunities for comparison in two ways. First there will be comparison within each case study - creating an image of the uniqueness of each person's experience of the same events. While the reader may subconsciously draw his/her own conclusions from the way the experiences have been put together, each case will also compare the experiences against the five themes outlined in chapter one: school maintenance, adaptation, politicization/resistance, resilience, and identity. Secondly, on an inter-case study level, each case serves as a comparative tool to enable thought on how learner experience reflects and relates to emergency education experience, practice and policy on a wider, more global, level across temporal and contextual space. In short, this study tests the ability of oral history to contribute to CIE work. The exact process of analysis and comparison used is discussed later in this chapter.
Developing and Implementing the Study
Having carefully chosen oral history methodology for this inquiry into learners curriculum experiences during war and conflict, the next stage was to design the modalities of the study itself. This process included choosing the cases, creating the interview protocol, choosing participants, managing information, and making decisions about transcription, analysis, and writing. The second half of this chapter examines these practical considerations related to conducting this oral history research project in detail. Choosing the Communities
The two complex emergencies chosen for the study were World War II (193 3-
1945) and the Afghan conflict after 1979. While these emergencies might seem to be more dissimilar than worthy of being the subjects of a comparative study, the opposite is in fact the case. Both represent large-scale conflicts that involved international actors and spheres of influence using a variety of weapons in the war, and conflicting local or regional parties. In both conflicts the displaced populations included educated middle and upper classes in addition to the rural and urban poor. While World War II is perhaps best known for the Holocaust and the development and use of nuclear weapons, the experience of war and conflict was much deeper than the genocide and nuclear bombs imply and includes all those who were caught up in the indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas, the destruction of school and healthcare systems, and the general chaos created by the wider political situation. The Afghan conflict, on the other hand, may be best known for the period of Soviet occupation from 1979-1989 and its distinction as the last Cold War conflict and the first conflict of what was initially called "The New World
Order". Like World War II, however, the experience of the Afghan conflict goes much deeper than its geopolitical fame suggests including the widespread destruction of civilian life, government services, and socio-economic structures. Although environmental and natural disaster may have had some effect on certain parts of World
War II-affected countries, it is the drought, earthquakes, and use of depleted uranium bombs in Afghanistan since the late 1990s, which has made the Afghan conflict additionally complex for the remaining population. What distinguishes these two conflicts from any others recently experienced on a global scale is their relative importance to and influence on the international political order. The end of World War II heralded an era of decolonization, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the creation of the United Nations system.
My own family's experiences of education during and immediately after this conflict suggest that the UN's policy towards curriculum for refugees (UNHCR, 2002) has its roots in World War IPs displaced person camps. The Afghan war, on the other hand, straddling the Cold War and the post-cold war world, has been considered by some, political analysts as an event which contributed to the end of the Cold War, brought changes to the UN and humanitarian aid system through the politicization of aid, and has given the world its second largest and longest serving group of refugees (Cooley, 2000;
Smilie & Minear, 2004, pp.74-109). In looking at civilian experiences of education during complex emergencies, choosing the two "bookends" to the Cold War makes some sense. .Such a study cannot be done without recognizing that there will be cultural and experiential differences, however, by choosing conflict-affected participants who might have had similar experiential patterns of conflict, forced migration, refugeehood, and resettlement to Canada creates a more likely scenario that participants' experiences will have been similar.
From within these emergencies, therefore, two specific populations were identified for participation in the study: Eastern Europeans who experienced war, forced migration, displaced person camps, and subsequent resettlement to Canada and Afghans who similarly experienced war, forced migration, refugee camps, and resettlement to 49
Canada. The choice of groups who have experienced education during the wars and who have been resettled to Canada largely excludes the uneducated rural and urban poor - or any groups who did not have educational histories within these parameters to share.
Choosing Participants
When originally proposed, the study aimed to gather thirty participants' oral histories or fifteen from each conflict. However, in the end sixteen World War II survivors were interviewed while eleven Afghans were interviewed. Access to these two communities became an important factor in choosing these conflicts and in choosing individual participants. In both case studies, access was more easily facilitated through personal contacts with each community. These personal contacts included personal family contacts, former colleagues, friends, and fellow students. Some of these contacts led to introductions to individuals working in resettlement agencies and ethnic organizations in Southern Ontario. In some cases one interview led to other participants and these participants led in turn to others.
In order to gain access to certain groups, however, it was also necessary to advertise, contact community organizations, and to contact immigrant service agencies.
This second tactic had mixed results. In the case of World War II survivors, advertising on community notice boards brought forward some willing participants of German origin.
While Germany is not considered part of Eastern Europe, their enthusiasm for the study led me to include some German participants. This move proved quite helpful in that their experiences sometimes remind one of the experiences some Afghan participants explore
- particularly those who spent many years inside Afghanistan and who therefore grew up 50 more directly within the construct of war. Finding Holocaust survivors willing to share their educational histories proved to be another significant challenge. In spite of advertising on a list serve for child survivors of the Holocaust, none were forthcoming. A poster placed in a Jewish community centre resulted in an enthusiastic and supportive phone conversation, but the trauma suffered by this person and the long gap in his formal education made him reluctant to participate. Four willing Holocaust survivors were eventually identified through some personal contacts I had with the Jewish community.
Their stories, however, are not as much the stories of concentration camp survivors but of those who for various personal and political reasons largely managed to avoid this experience.
In the case of Afghans, however, advertising and contact with service agencies did not reveal participants much of the time with the notable exception of one Afghan-
Canadian adult educator whose former students were enthusiastic participants. As it became clear that young Afghans currently enrolled in education institutions in Canada were more likely to be enthusiastic participants, I contacted the Afghan student associations of the University of Toronto, York University, and Ryerson University. In all three cases, however, my emails and phone calls went unanswered . Indeed even introduction through personal contacts within the community proved challenging.
Choosing Afghan participants in general presented a particular challenge as many did not wish to participate either out of fear that they would be identified, in spite of guarantees, or because they felt that they had little to contribute since in Canada many of them were
31 later met an Afghan-Canadian student from York University who told me that my email had been circulated on their listserve. However, it did not yield any responses. 51 not working in the fields for which they were training or had been trained prior to arriving in Canada. In one case, a female Afghan, who was introduced to me by another
Afghan participant, suggested that she could not participate because her family would not allow it. I had underestimated Afghan reluctance erroneously thinking that the three plus years I had worked with Afghans in Pakistan, where I was constantly complemented on how I understood and belonged in their community, would help to facilitate entrance to this community. Here in Canada, it seems, the community has become suspicious of outsiders - even outsiders whom they would have accepted in the past - and isolated themselves. With some of the older Afghans I approached, the informed consent letter represented both a help and a hindrance. Several wanted to see the questions, the proposal, and the study before they would agree and in all cases I also provided a copy of the informed consent letter. Nevertheless, after reading the letter and asking further questions about what I would do with the interview, some potential participants refused to sign or to allow me to record them . During a conversation with one of my community contacts, I expressed these frustrations and she, herself an Afghan, said that she found this situation to be "typically Afghan".
In the end, there was a noticeable pattern in Afghans who agreed to participate.
Nearly all of them were young, ranging in age from their mid to late twenties with three exceptions. All of them were pursuing education in Canada - particularly post-secondary education - or had aspirations to go in that direction. While I was grateful for their
4 In fairness to the Afghan community, at least one potential World War II survivor refused to sign the informed consent letter or to allow me to record the interview. However, this World War II survivor was a senior who had difficulty with recent memories and who was living in a seniors' home. 52 participation and am enthusiastic about presenting their collective sense of Afghan education, I also recognize that this group represents a minority of Afghans in Canada
(and Afghans worldwide). Many more Afghans of their age group have not had the opportunity to become retrained in Canada and their stories of education, learning, survival and migration have yet to be told. Perhaps once they have been in Canada longer and have started to realize greater economic success, Afghan-Canadians will be more willing to share their oral histories. Indeed, an even greater number of Afghans has never had any access to education at all; and, although this study was always designed to be about those who had access, in the case of Afghanistan in particular, it is important to recognize that organized learning in any form is a privilege.
The research process required travel across Southern Ontario including trips to
Ottawa, Brampton, Mississauga, Etobicoke, Oakville, Hamilton, and St. Catherines in addition to local travel in Toronto. As participants were spread out over a wide area, it is hoped that this will help to give some of them extra protection in maintaining their anonymity in the short and the long run.
In spite of the challenges faced in choosing participants, which undoubtedly had some affect on the outcome of the study, those who gave their time and their stories freely were greatly appreciated. In several cases I recorded well over two hours of conversation. In others, participants put aside extremely busy schedules to find time for the interview. All of them spoke, either on the record or off, of their appreciation for the study and how important they felt it was to share their wartime experiences of survival 53 and learning. The words of encouragement many of them gave during the process suggested that there are many reasons to study people's lives and in particular to bring the voices of war-torn lives to the forefront of studies about war and conflict.
Designing the Oral History Interview
The interview protocol was designed in such a way as to gain an in depth understanding of the emergency education experience in the two contexts under examination. The initial plan was to interview each participant twice for one to two hours each time dividing the interviews into pre-migration and post-migration periods. A possible third interview as planned for a one-hour discussion of interview transcripts to encourage feedback. However, by testing out this protocol, most participants were able to go through their pre and post migration memories within one session of one to two hours.
In a few cases second interviews or meetings to discuss transcripts were also used.
Additional meetings were dependent on whether participants had time or had more memories to share later. In spite of changing the way in which the interviews took place, the actual questions and the manner in which they were asked did not change through out.
The questions are divided into two general topics: the participants' general information and educational journey in the context of the complex emergency and the participants' classroom experiences (Appendix A). Although the questions were meticulously thought out, the real goal of the interview was to allow the participant to speak freely about their experiences and to develop a rich understanding of the learner experience of education in these environments. The role of the researcher during the oral history interview is to act as a guide, or perhaps a facilitator, of memories (Thompson, 54
2000; Yow, 1994). Depending on individual participants and their willingness to speak openly and to remember, at times I had little to say during the course of the conversation.
The first topic was meant to gather general demographic information about the participants as well as to obtain information about the general context of their schooling, the stage in life they were at and the pattern of their lives during the complex emergency.
Educational experiences were discussed in general terms so as to contextualize the individual's educational history and bring issues to the surface that should be discussed in the more detailed second interview. As semi-structured interviewing styles were used, questions relating to experiences were meant to trigger memory and open dialogue between the researcher and discussant and could sometimes be quite open-ended.
Supplementary questions were spontaneous and context specific and hence not foreseen at the time of protocol design.
Using the information gathered through the first interview topic, the questions were tailor-made to highlight specific issues, obtain contextual detail and to clarify points. The goal of this interview topic was to gather detailed information about specific schooling experiences during conflict. The following topics, where relevant, were approached: good memories, school resources and opportunities, teaching methods, subjects taken and liked, extra curricular activities, politicization of learning, skills learnt, refugee schooling experiences versus other schools, how schooling during the complex emergency affected their schooling after the emergency or since they became adults.
Asked to give chronological accounts of their histories, participants began to delve into 55 topics of non-school learning without the prompting of questions. Whenever they expressed such memories, additional information was sought in order to enhance the information gathered. After a few such interviews, whenever participants did not include non-school learning, questions were asked in order to draw them out on these topics.
Working from the assumption that the basic questions in both topic areas were there to stimulate memory and encourage the building of an oral history, the questions were largely culturally unspecific and could be used as a guide for collecting oral histories from participants representing any number of different contexts. In practice, however, it was also assumed that I would adjust questions in ways that would be understandable to participants from different cultural backgrounds.
Conducting the Interviews
Quoting Roy Hay, Paul Thompson identifies two extremes of oral history interview styles, "the objective/comparative style based on a questionnaire, or at least a highly structured interview... [and] a free flowing dialogue between interviewer and respondent, with no set pattern" (Hay in Thompson, 2000, p.225). Yet Thompson goes on to conclude that the "ideal" oral history interview is likely somewhere between these two extremes (2000, pp.226-7), flexible enough to provide room for change, individuality and interacting dialogue and set enough to ensure that participants are given a particular topic around which to give evidence. The overall objective in conducting these particular oral history interviews has been to maintain Thompson's middle ground by using an earlier developed framework as a guideline or as an opening to discussion (Appendix A). In spite of a number of central issues, which came out of the process relating to researcher subjectivity, logistics, participant expectations, the language used, and recording technology, issues, the interviews generally met these methodological expectations.
In the section relating to choosing the communities of study, my insider-outsider position was mentioned. Thompson acknowledges the importance of a researcher having extensive background knowledge so as to enable a richer outcome (2000, p.223). Such a background was certainly important in the cases being studied here, yet nevertheless this knowledge could sometimes be a source of frustration created in a situation where participants assumed that this was not the case and that they could therefore selectively censor, change, or edit their experiences, let alone basic facts of history. My insider knowledge could sometimes lead to richer descriptions by enabling me to frame more specific questions. But where participants were not aware of the depth of my involvement with the contextual histories, led some to suggest alternative versions of their personal histories and even the main facts of the war history itself. Some of the most open interviews seemed to happen with participants who were fully aware of my breadth of knowledge and experience with the contexts.
In all cases participants were offered the opportunity to choose the location(s) of their interviews. In the end, interviews were conducted in a variety of places including participants' homes, fast food restaurants, cafes, and in public libraries. The Ottawa
Public Library was particularly helpful in providing me with an appropriate space for an entire day free of charge. All of the World War II interviews took place in participants' homes. This provided environments in which they felt particularly comfortable and in which there was no worry of intrusion, background noises, and other interruptions. For unknown reasons, few of the Afghans suggested their homes would be appropriate places. At home interviews, I was often treated as a guest and given drinks, food, and sometimes meals.
Such hospitality is one of the areas where cultures seem to transcend one another. Some of the World War II survivors, being retired, seemed to think nothing of encouraging me to spend an entire day with them extraneous to the interview or the protocol. This interaction gave me added insight into their lives and in their wider views of the war. In the case of my Afghan participants, their busy schedules and lives made it challenging to schedule even a few hours with some of them and so I tried to remain closely on schedule. Overall, I took my cues from the participants and made sure not to overstay my welcome.
In spite of the interview protocol and methodological suggestion that interviews occur in one-on-one private environments (Thompson, 2000, p.234), this was not always possible when conveniently located quiet rooms could not be secured. However, by placing the decision of where interviews would be conducted with the participants, the onus for comfort was placed directly with them and resulted in interviews occurring in largely familiar surroundings. As Thompson suggested might be the case (2000, p.234), having close relatives in the same room during the interview proved to be both helpful and enriching in several specific cases. Several older World War II participants had partners who wandered in and out of the room during the interview. In one case, the 58 partner eventually sat down and began to participate in the discussion after initially having refusing to participate. As she did so, I stopped the interview and ask her to sign an informed consent letter, which she had earlier refused. Given that in the four cases where this occurred, the participants had been married for many years and that in one case a participant suffering from Parkinson's disease occasionally double-checked facts with his partner, it seemed overly rigid and perhaps even a hindrance to the quality of the interview to insist that these partners stay away during the interview. Rather than to upset the order, relaxed nature, and ownership of their home surroundings for the sake of usual interview protocols, it seemed more amenable to be inclusive and to draw on Slim and
Thompson's suggestions for conducting group-based oral testimonies in community projects in cultures where individual isolation and discussion is not the norm (1995).
Several participants from both case studies presented challenges. Though they had signed the informed consent letter and knew the general nature of the study, they had specific stories and set ideas which they wanted to convey. This resulted in several participants straying from the questions or sometimes straying from their personal experience to providing unrelated stories and political opinions. Unlike a military oral history with one very specific event, battle, or moment to be described, an oral history of learning experience is broader and more difficult to focus. As such, some interviews wove between wider editorial opinions and self-analysis to oral history.
The final challenge to the interview process is perhaps the most important issue facing the research methodology. This was the challenge of language. All of the 59 participants speak English as a second language - or L2-- with varying degrees of understanding, accent, and ability to express complex ideas. Yet, even though I was prepared to do the interviews in translation and offered the opportunity to them, all participants refused assistance. Many of the more recent Afghan arrivals seemed to view the opportunity as a chance to practice their English. Others seemed to take pride in their ability to communicate in their L2. All of the World War II participants had held jobs and worked fluently in their L2; however, several of them regularly inserted LI vocabulary into the interview. In view of Paul Thompson's suggestion that three-way interviews or interviews with another person present can inhibit candor (2000, p.234), the use of the participants' L2s may have enhanced the rapport and quality of the dialogue in some circumstances. The outcome was perhaps not as expressive or detailed as they would have been in interviews conducted in their LI s. I therefore began to reflect on the importance of preserving each participant's way of speaking in the textual documentation as a way to recognize his or her engagement with the study. This consideration, as will be discussed in the section on the writing process, became one of the central factors in deciding how to present oral recordings in textual fashion.
In some cases, particularly with participants who were not strong in their L2, pressure was put on me to "fill in the blanks" or to suggest appropriate vocabulary when words could not be remembered or explained in English. Participants would either ask for words or trail off and not find the word they wanted to use. When asked specifically or through facial expression, and realizing that the issue was one of language and that the participant seemed genuinely unable to continue for lack of vocabulary, I would suggest one or two words if able. Some research methodologists may feel that this tactic compromises the position of the interviewer. However, particularly in the case of those practicing their English and the participant with Parkinson's, the move helped to keep the dialogue moving forward and helped to keep participants from becoming overly frustrated with word use. Often, the only reason I was able to guess or to suggest words was related to my direct experience of the context being discussed. And always, if the participant disagreed, he/she informed me and we sought another word together.
When oral history methodological books and articles discuss recording technology and protocols, discussion rests almost entirely on traditional tape devices
(Thompson, 2000; Perks & Thomson, 1998; Yow, 1994, pp.50-52). In spite of these experienced authors' advice, I experimented with the use of newer digital technology.
There is a vast array of devices available for digital recording including voice recorders, mini disc players, and laptop computers. In the end, largely because of a much-needed new computer for word processing, transcription, Internet communication and other tools, the decision was made to record the interviews using a 12-inch G4 Apple
Powerbook. Digital recording devices were deemed problematic given that they do not yet hold large files and recording interviews for longer than one hour could have been a challenge. A minidisc recorder would have been useful, but was incompatible with the computer hardware and the software being used for transcription. Recording directly onto the computer using Sound Studio software turned out to be relatively worry-free. The machine was noiseless and sat on tables, chairs, and sofas easily. One of the great advantages of this technology is that one can turn it on and not worry that the tape will 61 end, need flipping, or break. The files can be saved and can be converted into multiple file formats so that they can be played on different devices. The only moment which reminded me of older tape-style recording devices was during the first Afghan interview in a Second Gup coffee shop where multiple loud noises in the background forced me to pause the recording software while waiting for the distraction to stop. At the end of the distraction, I clicked on the incorrect "button" on the screen and although it seemed as if recording resumed, in fact the software remained paused and the last 40 minutes of the interview was lost. Otherwise, this technology performed better than expected and was completely unintrusive. As oral historians become more familiar with digital recording and as the supporting technology improves, the nature of recording, archiving and handling oral histories stands to change as well.
Information Management and Analysis
In keeping with oral history methodology, interviews were transcribed word-for- word and shared with each participant in order to receive feedback, check spellings, and gain additional insight (Thompson, 2000, pp.246-264; Wallot & Fortier, 1998). In accordance with Thompson's predictions, several participants began to correct their own grammar and ask that certain parts be deleted. In most cases, parts which they asked me to delete were largely unrelated to their formal and non-formal educations, but were details such as the names of neighbourhoods, schools, tribes, family members' names, and editorial political conjecture. Most of these details had little impact on the outcome or the usability of the transcript although I also had to explain to several people that some of these points were important for the demographic information and that I would not use specific names as I had promised in the letter of informed consent. Changes to the 62 transcripts do not change the oral records and participants did not appear overly cognizant of this. Unlike Valerie Yow (1994), whose oral history methodology work does not emphasize the centrality of the transcription, for Thompson the transcript is the official record of the interview. Because this dissertation is being presented in written form, the centrality of the transcript is of vital importance to the final outcome of the study. Nevertheless, during the analysis and writing process, the value of these dialogues in their oral form became clear. Text cannot replace the power of voice and intonation to give meaning to words and I often put on headphones just to listen to certain sections in choosing quotations or in order to remind myself of nuances. In future studies, in addition to having official textual transcripts for use in analysis and presentation, it would be useful to find ways to formally archive the audio component in a safe, secure location where it can be made available for public access.
Thompson argues that there are four ways in which to interpret, put together, and present oral histories: the single life-story narrative (or biography), a collection of stories, a narrative analysis, and a reconstructive cross-analysis (2000, pp.269-271). In a reconstructive cross-analysis, "the oral evidence is treated as a quarry from which to construct an argument about patterns of behaviour or events in the past. .. .This will normally require much briefer quotations, with evidence from one interview compared with that from another, and combined with evidence from other types of source material"
(2000, p.271). The goals of this study in particular seem to suggest that a reconstructive cross-analysis of the evidence would yield manageable case studies using specific quotations on different phases of education during the two cases being constructed. 63
However, unlike Thompson's predictions about the brevity of quotations in this style, a number of fairly long quotations make up the bodies of the case studies, particularly the
Afghan case. Upon reflection, Afghan participants often needed a lot of space in order to explain some issues using limited syntax and grammar which made editing difficult and was likely a function of their more limited language skills. In the final comparative synthesis, which also includes a comparison of emergency education policy with a cross- comparison of the two cases, reconstructive cross-analysis is again used as the most efficient way to show the patterns of learning inherent in the histories.
In a qualitative study of any kind, but particularly one where less than several hundred people are interviewed, the terminology "data analysis" seems fairly out of place. While the transcripts may be rich and may provide interesting insight individually, they can hardly be seen as strongly representative of the full potential range of opinions, experiences, and ideas. The limits of the collective story presented is in part due to the small size of the sample. While it is not unusual to interview up to two hundred people in an oral history study, the need for detail limited this study to a target of thirty and an outcome of twenty-seven. The Afghan case and the special group of participants involved in particular is indicative or the kind of bias that making an assumption about the breadth of represented opinion might cause.
A second consideration had to be made about analysis before considering how to work with it - my own position vis-a-vis the oral histories, the policies, and the participants themselves. What was my responsibility towards these people? What was 64 my own position within each of these conflicts? What was my position within education in emergency conflicts? How can I rationalize such positions in order to fulfill my responsibility to be true to participants' expectations? The more I reflected on these issues, the less sure I became of the answers. Initially, I considered myself to be an
"insider-outsider" to the cases being studied and that position remained central to issues of bias, presentation and analysis through out the study. Indeed, my insider-outsiderness and relative proximity to the communities played a major role in choosing the two conflicts for case study work.
My maternal family is Eastern European and experienced World War II in
Europe. I had already grown up on their stories starting with the phrases, "During The
War..." and "When I was young,..." Unlike Grace Feuerverger, who has written of her feelings of second generation Holocaust trauma and anger (2001), I had always held more of a detached curiosity towards these stories and a desire to hear them again and again.
As a child, my active imagination never tired of the same stories of how my parents came to Canada and the violence and displacement that their childhood lives entailed due to war, yet I feel none of the second generation trauma expressed by some children of
Holocaust survivors. While my proximity to Eastern Europeans facilitated contact with many of the participants, it also shut me out of the Jewish community given that I, as a non-Jew and as a "Lithuanian", represented memories of persecution for many in spite of the fact that my ancestors did not take part in this repression5. The recordings sometimes
5 Pre-World War II, Lithuania, particularly Vilnius, was a major centre of Jewish learning in Europe. However, during the war, Jewish-Lithuanians were brutally persecuted and repressed thereby increasing suspicion between the Jewish and Christian communities. The treatment of Jewish-Lithuanians was so bad that it is well known among Jews of other ethnic backgrounds. As for my own ancestors, my great- 65 included personal remembrances involving members of my extended family and how the community of survivors and refugees helped one another upon arrival in Canada beyond their educational lives. The burden for me to represent these stories truthfully and to
"analyze" them without prejudice and without compromising anonymity is therefore perhaps greater than it would be on a researcher who is not quite as close to her participants.
In actual fact, I feel equally important responsibility towards the Afghan histories
I have been entrusted with. Misinterpretation and misunderstanding of Afghan experience, need, and culture is rife in media reports, international politics, and other representations of this country and its people. The 2.5 years I spent working with Afghan refugees in Pakistan, and their acceptance, made me particularly cognizant of the importance of representing the Afghan experience authentically. Particularly because of
Afghan community suspicions in Canada, a feeling of immense responsibility developed towards representing the Afghan histories in a manner which allows them to stand as the participant would have wanted and conveys the nuances of meaning that the participants felt in presenting their words wherever possible. The loss of the voice or sound itself, by presenting a written text, particularly affected the Afghan case given that the level of
English used was generally lower than that used in the World War II case. Much feeling, idea, and experience that was conveyed seemed more implied, suggested, or left unsaid.
grandmother is known in the family for sneaking food into the ghetto in Vilnius, a story which I was forced to tell at least once during the study to address fears that I came from Nazi stock. It is also worth noting that since I am only half Lithuanian, members of the community who are not directly related to me do not always consider me to be an insider. It is for this reason, and the fact that I prefer to call myself "Canadian" that I have written my Lithuanian identity in quotation marks in this sentence. 66
In each case then, general information relating to the participants' age, gender, ethnic/national group, parents' education, family size, and level of schooling attained was extracted from the interview and put into charts so as to allow the development of a social
"picture" of the participants to emerge if one existed. Following this, each transcript was read and marked using coloured post-it tags and margin-notes to identify parts of the interviews where participants spoke of crucial ideas: pre-war education; wartime primary education, secondary education, post-secondary in country of origin; education in countries of first asylum; learning outside of formal institutions; and education in
Canada. Under each of these headings, further identification was marked for issues related to: school resources, teachers and teaching, first day of school, gaps in schooling, discrimination, the overt curriculum, and hardships. It was through this relatively inductive process that the five themes at the core of the analysis came to light: maintenance, adaptation, resilience, politicization/resistance, and identity. It was later that the relative importance of these five themes to existing literature was noticed.
Having completed the process or organizing and analyzing, however, it became difficult to choose from among the histories for quotation in the final dissertation and to decide the best way to present the case studies. Each individual story, particularly in oral form, is so powerful in itself that to separate parts and to put them with other people's experiences of the same level of schooling became especially difficult. Statements were then chosen for final presentation in the case study chapters based on their relative helpfulness in lucidly explaining a specific aspect of experience. The use of more than one experience of the same idea - such as several quotations about different experiences with corporal punishment - has been given to show the breadth of similarity in some issues, but also to present the varied detail within an issue. In other cases, where their stories did not add new information, I have simply chosen to state the number or participants who spoke similarly.
After writing the case study sections, only then was it possible to consider how to analyze the interviews for the eleventh chapter - the comparative synthesis of these participants' experiences. The analysis and writing methods used for the eleventh chapter came from comparative education, policy and political science methods and involved examining the major themes relating to learning at the level of school and learning routine and resources, the affects of war on learning, and learning for survival for commonalities and differences. Most of these ideas were developed initially on an intra- case study basis in the final chapter of each case study. Some key points, however, only made sense when discussed in inter-case comparison. As with chapters six and ten, the concluding chapters of each case study, chapter eleven is organized around the five themes central to the analysis. It is notable that in each of these three chapters, the issues are not presented in the same order or with the same pattern, emphasis, or vigour. This unusual inconsistency is resultant of the varying strength of the evidence in each case study and differing intensities of the issues in each case. In comparative work it is fairly accepted that such themes would be presented consistently across the breadth of the dissertation. However, attempts to present the analysis one way was challenging producing inconsistent results and less rich histories in the presentation. Therefore, the 68 standard comparative method of presentation was put aside instead picking up on each issue as made sense.
True to oral history methodology, the analysis for the development of case studies focuses on choosing and putting together a representative range of experiences around a specific topic and using them to build a textual image of the history involved. Neither of the case studies attempts to make judgmental statements as to the "correctness" of the participants' statements nor to analyze the policy view or curriculum view of education in these contexts. To be able to do such analysis requires adequate access to documentation of education policy and curriculum practice in the environments and situations described by the participants. As such documentation does not seem to exist in either case, there is a need to allow the histories to speak for themselves and to stand for individually as historical evidence. Choosing which experiences to share focused around addressing the five themes brought forth in chapter one: learning structures and routines, adaptation, politicization/resistance, resilience, and identity. More complex levels of analysis is allowed in the final chapters of each case study and the concluding section where comparative method is used to understand the participants' experiences on deeper levels.
The Writing Process
The writing process itself took place over the better part of a year and a half. The case studies were written first, followed by the methodology chapter, the comparative synthesis, the conclusion and the introduction. Once all of the chapters had been drafted, they were put together in a single document for the first time and edited for continuity of argument and grammatical consistency. Considerable revision was undertaken after receiving feedback from members of the committee, a thought-provoking process that forced me to focus more on the oral evidence than on the process or the theory and was a novel idea for one trained originally as a political scientist. Final stages of editing included ensuring proper APA writing style was being followed, spelling consistency, and other details of doctoral dissertation requirements. There were three overriding concerns, which had to be considered in developing the writing: the length, how best to identify participants, and how to guard participant anonymity.
The presentation of the core evidence, or the oral histories, is found in sections two and three. Each of these sections is terribly long. The reason for the length was the desire to use participants' authentic voices - or verbatim quotations - in an effort to maximize the ability of these fairly descriptive chapters to be representative of the space created in the dialogue between researcher and participant. In places where more than one participant gives similar or additional information on a single issue, several quotations were used so as to show how an event was not always isolated to one individual and to show the range of experience. Because the quotations are from verbal sources, they are sometimes long and vernacular rather than succinct and academic. Long quotations are not unusual to oral histories, and seem to take the reader into the speaker's memory.
Steps have been taken to ensure anonymity, thereby to increase safety and security to the participants, by changing the names of participants and their family members, teachers, and friends. Without grammatically altering the test, the name is occasionally substituted by the relationship to the speaker in squared brackets such as, 70
"[my brother]". In some cases names of places, schools, and other geographically identifying characteristics have also been altered or turned into similarly generic designations such as, "[the school]".
Unlike family members and place names, each participant is represented by a culturally common and gender-appropriate first name. While numbered codes were used to organize and file the transcripts and the recordings, it was felt that using codes in the text would dehumanize the participants and the meanings conveyed. Hence, popular names from the specific cultures and ethnic groups involved were brainstormed and randomly chosen for each participant. As much as possible, an attempt was made to avoid using any of the participants' real first names in the study so as to avoid confusion for any participant who might read this document.
In spite of the assignment of names to individual participants, it became clear that for some readers names would not be enough of an identifying symbol because names are not necessarily associated with nationality, ethnicity, gender, or age nor are they necessarily familiar to all who might read this. In order to avoid confusion, a device including the assigned name, nationality, gender, and age at the time of interview was developed. One such example is: (Ewa, Polish, F, 83), which means that the quotation was spoken by "Ewa" (not her real name) who is Polish, female, and was 83 years old at the time of the interview. In the case of Afghan participants, however, rather than state the nationality ("Afghan"), individual ethnic or tribal identities are used: Pashtun, Tajik,
Uzbek, and Hazara. Hence, (Mohammad, Tajik, M, 26) refers to Mohammad who is an 71
Afghan male of Tajik ethnicity and was twenty-six at the time of the interview.
Whenever a name is used in a sentence, the brackets only include the nationality or ethnicity, gender, and age of the participant. Similarly, if the nationality and name are in a sentence, then the brackets consist only of the gender and age at the time of interview.
The writing process in general was the most difficult part of the study. Not only did it require many hours of uninterrupted solitary work, but it also required sitting still, typing, and concentration for many more hours than are required of writing an academic paper of much shorter length. Moreover the internal conflict of how to enable a high level of academic discourse while simultaneously allowing the participants' descriptive words, ideas, and authentic memories to be undistorted was impossible to resolve. It can only be hoped that the participants as a whole would find that this work adequately reflects their memories, their realities, and their own concepts of learning in (complex) emergencies.
Conclusion
There exists in qualitative research in education, particularly in the field of comparative international education, considerable space for the use of a broad range of methodologies including the experimental use of critical theory-informed research methodologies. While some theorists question the utility of "comparison", others argue that comparison comes naturally to humans on many indirect and direct levels. The use of oral history methodology provides researchers with the opportunity to examine learner experience of a short period or of a specific part of the total life history narrative. A little used methodology in CIE and the study of complex emergency education, oral history allows participants' voices to emerge as partners in the research while still allowing for 72 interpretation and observation of how one set of experiences relates to another. Oral history enables emergency educationists to document their work, learn from experience, to make steps towards participatory research in emergencies, and to engage in meaningful research in a field where the barriers to deeper examination are many.
Methodologically, this study has only taken the smallest of steps towards participating in the wider call for research in and on education in complex emergencies.
In oral history work alone, more needs to be carried out - particularly the consideration of developing oral archives and how they can be stored, made available, and used by others. In terms of methodological debate, the method must be tested and tried by other emergency education and comparative researchers in order to attach real value and to further enrich the method itself. SECTION II:
THE CHILDREN OF WORLD WAR II LOOK BACK:
LEARNING FROM AND IN SCHOOLS, BOMB SHELTERS,
GHETTOS, HIDING, AND DP CAMPS
Chapter3:
Introduction:
Setting the Contexts of Learning Among the Children of World War II
The education of Eastern European and German children during and immediately after World War II is a subject on which there is little available or easily available primary or secondary source documents. Yet, this war, and the international community's response to this war, remains the historical cornerstone for the creation of what is now thought of as the United Nations and the field of "international development" or
"humanitarian assistance" for war-affected and in particular refugee children. The unavailability of a wealth of surviving documents, books, and evaluations relating to education from this time period coupled with the aging pool of potential participants makes the study of these learners' experiences both crucially important and extremely challenging. With only a few promotional pamphlets and books related to children's lives in the post-war displaced person's camps (UNESCO, 1952; Unicef, 1949; Unicef, 1949,
April; UNRRA, 1946, April; UNRRA, 1945), most of which exclude detailed discussion of their education, the focus of study became the oral histories themselves even though the depth and breadth of the memories are often clouded, distant, and sometimes inhibited by the infirmities of old age. Ultimately, these collective memories provide insight into the learning lives of a small group of European children during one of the
73 74 most politically influential wars of the last century suggesting that providing schooling and learning opportunities remained a priority for individuals, communities and families in spite of forced migration, discriminatory practices against specific groups, occupation and other ravages of war.
This section presents the outcome of oral history interviews with sixteen
Canadians of Eastern European and German heritage, who were children and/or adolescents during the 1933-1952 period and whose personal histories included formal, non-formal and informal learning within the context of World War II. As with the next section, which covers learner experiences of Afghanistan from 1979-2001, this section is divided into four chapters. This chapter sets the stage by introducing the historical context, the pre-war formal learning systems, and some details about the sixteen participants. Chapters four and five present the core [oral] history in largely chronological order without much overt analysis or synthesis. Chapter four focuses on the height of the war, 1939-1945, and is divided into memories of primary, secondary, and post-secondary learning with further divisions relating to special issues such as Jewish memories, German memories, and the affect of the war on learning. Chapter five focuses on the brief post-war period, 1945-1952, and is divided between DP camps, German memories, and Eastern Bloc memories. The Final chapter in the section provides an intra- case study analysis of the oral histories by discussing them in the context of the five thematic issues identified in chapter one. 75
Historian James Marten argues that in writing about children's historical memories of war, it is important to allow participants to define both the war years and the definition of what constitutes "war" (2002, p.7). In the context of this study, self- definition of time periods became particularly important to the World War II context, because much of the written history on this war places it under the 1939-45 period alone whereas participants had a more broad understanding of the idea. For some participants in the study, growing up in Eastern Europe and Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, the war began incrementally after Hitler's rise to power in 1933 through increasing hostilities in policies against Jews and the rise of Nazi influence in nearby countries. For participants living in countries later occupied by the Soviet Union in 1945, particularly
Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary, memories of learning during the war seemed to carry on until Josef Stalin's death in March 1953 or until their escapes to Western Europe between 1948-1952. The Lithuanian and Latvian participants in the study fled their respective countries in 1944-5 out of fear of the return of Stalin's Soviets and therefore their own memories of war and learning at that point move to Austria and Germany and their memories collectively mark the end of war in 1945. Some of these boundary markers could have had their roots in the politicization affects of classroom messages and later "reeducation" efforts as were described by Blessing (2002). Hence, for many participants World War II did not start or end with a neatly compartmentalized 1939-45 timeframe. Instead, the period of time covered in this section is 1933-1952 inclusive depending on how individual participants personally defined "the war years". A two decade affair, this perspective considerably lengthens how World War II is normally 76 viewed in history books, from a (relatively short) six year war to a protracted situation spanning a generation.
The experience of education during World War II in Eastern Europe and
Germany, as remembered by the participants, is presented by dividing the participants into three groups - Eastern Europeans, Germans, and Jews. Their memories are divided into two stages: education until June 1945 and education after June 1945. The date June
1945 was chosen because this was the date at which major violent hostilities ceased in
Europe, the allied forces occupied Germany, and the Nazi government in Germany collapsed. In short, June 1945 represents a major climax in the war no matter how one defines its start or finish. Due to the general unavailability of secondary resources describing curriculum and classroom life, older participants' memories of education before September 1939 are included as information contributing to building an understanding of the background of learning structures, expectations, and environments to supplement the general paucity of secondary information documenting the wider educational context.
Participants6
The sixteen participants involved in this case study represented a range of the
European nationalities affected by World War II: three Germans, six Lithuanians, one
Latvian, two Poles, three Hungarians, and one Czechoslovakian. Of these, 25% ~ both
Polish participants and two of the Hungarians ~ were Jewish. The remaining participants were Christians (mostly Catholic and Lutheran). In total, three of the Jewish participants
6 To protect participants' identities, this section is written without identifying participants' assigned names. 77
(the two Hungarians and one Pole) and one Lithuanian of Catholic heritage suggested that they were brought up in secular (non-practicing) or even atheist families.
Nevertheless, all of the participants expressed some semblance of national and religious identities in tandem.
The participant group was slightly unbalanced from a gender perspective with nine (56%) females and seven (44%) males. Social background and class indicators found that the majority of the participants had parents who were educated professionals.
While most of the participants' mothers were described as "housewives", one had a mother who was a concert pianist and another had a mother who was a school principal.
Two of the participants' fathers were rural farmers; one was an unemployed industrial labourer. The remaining thirteen fathers held positions which intimate higher social and economic status including one professor/lawyer/politician, two doctors, one gentleman farmer, one senior civil servant, one banker, one postmaster, and one lawyer. The remaining five fathers were businessmen mostly owning small to medium businesses of different kinds. Memories of pre-193 9 home lives often include mention of nannies, vacations, and other indications that the majority of participants came from relatively privileged backgrounds.
For Europeans of that era, the participants came from relatively smaller families.
Four of the participants were only children, of which one had had a brother who died in infancy effectively making him an only child. The rest had one or two siblings. However, one participant, the son of a rural farmer, had five brothers and one sister. 78
Prior to beginning the study, the potential participant pool was estimated to be between age 67 and 83 with the majority likely being at the younger end of the scale.
This was the age group that would have been enrolled in late primary, secondary, or post- secondary education around June 1945. It was surmised that this age group would have perhaps had more memories of that era. However, given the potential for infirmities and the small number of people who reach their eighties, there seemed reason to believe that it was more likely participants would be in their late sixties or early seventies. In actual fact, the majority of participants were in their late seventies and early eighties: six were aged 80-83, seven were aged 75-79, one was 72, and two were 68. Of all the demographic factors involved, it is participants' ages that had the greatest effect on the outcomes. The memories of the four youngest provided sources for primary level discussion resulting in a very limited image of learning in the early years. Due to the older than expected age group, the majority of experiences focused on secondary, tertiary levels of formal education and non-formal education.
Finally three different groups of participants are related to one another through a variety of familial ties. The two Hungarian-Jewish participants are in fact brother and sister. While I turned down several opportunities to interview non-Jewish siblings, because of wanting a broad spectrum of experiences and close relatives would have perhaps been too similar on some levels, finding willing Jewish participants was a challenge and in the end this sibling-group was selected. The six-year age gap between them and their gender difference resulted in interesting bifurcated histories on many 79 levels. Moreover, four of the Lithuanian participants are cousins, in some cases only distantly, and/or are the spouses of members of this cousin-group. This cousin group is directly related to me. However, each of their stories varies greatly, as for the most part these distant cousins and their spouses grew up in different towns, spent time in different displaced persons camps , were different ages and therefore provided greatly different oral histories. Nevertheless, the tie is there and their full transcripts sometimes stray into personal family memories as a result. Finally, several participants were husband and wife and were interviewed together as a couple. This often came about by interviewing participants at home where initially one person agreed to participate while the other did not. However, as is perhaps to be expected after many years of companionship and marriage, the partner remained within earshot and in several cases became involved in the conversation inserting his/her own history into the interview. Wherever this happened, the partner was asked to sign the informed consent letter and to give permission to use their part of the story. In one case, where the central participant suffers from Parkinson's disease, his partner of well over 40 years assisted him with memory prompts at his initiative. Such interjection was expected in this case and it is accepted that the constructed memory in this case was a joint effort. It is notable that when speaking about his early years, before meeting his wife, the participant did not seek her assistance with words, memories, or ideas as much as when speaking about his life after they met.
The involvement of my direct and distant relatives was undertaken after careful consideration that their identities could still be protected and that their relationship would
7 In some cases members of the cousin-group, having lost contact during the war, only found one another in Canada or through international search agencies while in post-war DP camps in Europe. 80 not compromise researcher bias in conducting the study. In actual fact interviewing this group was somewhat easier because the previous relationship meant that participants were more at ease, more willing participants, and more willing to share details of their experiences. However, the same could be said of several participants who were not related to this group yet having heard about this study through community ties were aware of my personal proximity to the community being studied.
Nevertheless, as with the Afghan case study discussed in the next section, this case study presents a relatively singular view of wartime education experiences.
Although the group is ethnically and religiously eclectic, the number of overall participants is relatively small and they seem to represent a largely privileged group of people for whom education was important, expected, and part of the overall experience of childhood.
One final note worth making about the World War II case study is that the war itself played out differently in each of the countries of origin. Therefore, participants' learning memories, while similar in many ways, were also shaped by the very different war experiences of each home state. The Baltic States - Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - were invaded in 1940 by the Soviet Union, which was then pushed out by the Germans in
1941 only to reinvade after intense fighting in 1944. Poland was invaded by Germany in
September, 1939 and pushed back by the Soviet Union during 1944-5. Czechoslovakia and Hungary did not see violent conflict on their own soil until 1943 due to the governments having alliances with the Nazi German government. Germany, as one of the 81 main aggressors in the war, was deeply embroiled in the violence and the politics through out. However, as is clear from German participants' memories, certain cities were considered more strategic than others resulting in different experiences. These different war histories made for some dissimilar memories among the participants, but nevertheless, the majority of participants shared a broad ability to continue at school until the later years of the war, forced migration to varying degrees, and post-violence challenges in schooling.
Background: Pre-War Education Curriculum
Because the participants represent experiences from six different states, it is impossible to dedicate sufficient space to describing the structures, historical development, and curricular emphases in detail in a study of this size. Moreover, the aforementioned issues on the availability of English language secondary resources further hinder the ability to describe the educational systems contextually. Therefore, this section relies largely on participants' statements to help piece together the context of the educational systems and systemic expectations of learners within each of the six pre-193 9 contexts and provides a summary of the information gathered.
On the whole, the number of years of schooling expected of children in each of the six national contexts was twelve years for those who planned to study in university in each of the countries. However, each country set up their systems differently and few of them provided twelve years of free compulsory formal schooling. Lithuania and
Hungary had four years of primary education followed by eight years of secondary schooling in the academic streams. In Lithuania, participants mentioned that they had to 82 pay small fees to attend secondary school while primary school was free of charge. All three Hungarian participants attended private schools or schools run by the religious establishment for which parents paid fees. Czechoslovakia had five years of primary followed by seven or eight years of secondary school in either the academic or the technical stream. In Czechoslovakia, a standardized exam following grade six determined which stream each learner was eligible for. Most participants started school at age six.
Hanna (Polish, F, 76) remembered that in Poland the starting age was normally seven but she began at six after her parents' advocacy. The Polish system as explained by Hanna included six years of compulsory schooling with a seventh for those who did not want to enter high school. Polish high school consisted of two streams - sciences and humanities
- for six years of studying a series of compulsory subjects with more emphasis on the major area in each stream. In all contexts, those learners in technical streams seemed to get fewer years of education than those in academic streams and only the academic streamed students were able to go on to university.
Although not part of Eastern Europe by most definitions, the German school system seemed to be one of the most stringently streamed and yet, according to participants' descriptions, was also not too dissimilar in structure from several of the other countries mentioned here. Horst (M, 78) and Brigitte (F, 78) explained the German system in which children attended four years of compulsory primary school at which time they would be streamed into either six years of middle school focused on learning trades or eight years of academic high school leading to a final exam on which university entrance was based. Ingrid (German, F, 72) was in a technical stream of sorts, which she finished after grade nine. As with some of the Eastern European countries, secondary school charged fees. Ingrid indicated that her mother and teachers put her in a technical stream because her family could not afford school fees required for secondary.
The above descriptions make the learning systems appear designed to provide only slightly more than a basic education to the entire population while pushing certain groups of learners forward to more in-depth technical or academic studies. The majority of the participants in the study were being streamed in academic directions with the exceptions of Horst (German, M, 78), Ingrid (German, F, 72), and Hatelka (Hungarian, F
77), the first two of whom were in technical streams while Hatelka's education was streaming her towards a position as an upper class housewife.
Of the other participants, Vytautas' (Lithuanian, M, 83) story of educational access and systemic structure stands out as exceptional. Living on an isolated rural farm in a small village, he began school at age eight which he felt was probably not unusual in the rural areas. In total, Vytautas spent three years in a village-based one room multi- grade primary school before his family was able to send him and his twin brother on scholarship to a residential school run by some Catholic monks 300km away. Due to beginning his education at age eight, by the time of the invasion of Lithuania by the
Soviet Union in 1940, Vytautas still had several years of secondary school unfinished although he was already eighteen at the time. It is not clear how common it was for rural children to attend such residential schools or to attend village-based primary schools in that time period in Lithuania or in other countries from which participants hail. 84
At the core of participant memories were issues related largely to the school and classroom set up, routine, and available materials. Classroom life in the pre-war years resonates with memories of fairly strictly organized schooling and many cross-cultural similarities. National anthems being sung at school assemblies were common. All of the participants reported that they sat in rows of desks with benches made for two, for example. Uniforms were common, although several participants did not remember wearing them. Students had to raise their hands to ask a question and had to stand in order to answer. Discipline was strict; homework was given daily; and teaching was often carried out through lectures, note taking, reading textbook materials, and both oral and written testing. Frequently, memories of harsh punishment including being hit or caned were mentioned. It was this atmosphere and routine that communities, teachers, and schools would seek to replicate and to maintain during the war years and afterwards. But it was also many aspects of the curricula that would come under attack directly by the
Soviets and more gently by the Nazis.
The explicit curricula were more difficult to remember and to discuss. Participants needed some prompting. Most of the older participants were unable to list the subjects they took at the primary and secondary level with much accuracy. During the course of giving their histories, however, participants spoke on and off about specific subjects.
Primary education seems to have been focused on basic literacy, numeracy, and national history and geography. Secondary education was more focused on specialized subjects including second languages (often German), complex mathematics and sciences, music, 85 and other subjects. Religious knowledge was also important and seemed to be taught largely by religious leaders (rabbis and priests) at both private and state run schools.
Except for those attending schools affiliated with a specific religion, schools had separate religious knowledge classes for learners of the Christian and Jewish faiths. Be they
Christian or Jewish, schools of a particular faith seemed more likely to integrate religion and religious teaching into the wider school routine having teachers who were religious leaders - nuns, priests, monks, and rabbis, including prayer in the school day, and including religious services in the school week. As the next two chapters show, the explicit curricula would become a highly politicized tool during the height of the war.
Due to the ages of the participants pre-war, and perhaps also the fact that most were in fairly academic streams of learning or in primary school, there was no real discussion of non-school learning pre-war. The economic privilege afforded most of their families or their age groups meant that none of the participants were working during this era. The exceptions would have been Gediminas (Lithuanian, M, 80) and Vytautas
(Lithuanian, M, 83) the former of whom tutored others in his town and the latter of whom worked on his parents' farm before being sent to boarding school.
Conclusion
The study of World War II history is a well-developed academic field, which tends to focus on the military and political history of the time. This case study attempts to examine this period of time from another angle - the learning lives of Eastern European and German children. In examining World War II from this alternative angle, the study presents the war from the perspective of civilian memories and as such may not always 86 present this time period in a fashion similar to what is presented in mainstream military and political history.
This case study presents the memories of sixteen Canadians who grew up in
Germany and Eastern Europe during the war and therefore provides a cornerstone for the directions a more comprehensive study might take. In only a few cases, particularly those living in Germany or in places that were to be bombed heavily formal schooling was interrupted, inconsistent and sometimes was the organization around which children were evacuated to rural areas. School routines, features of classroom learning, and the subjects taught during the pre-war era, developed from the memories of older participants, suggest a learning culture which was strictly organized and yet was primarily a place which the participants upheld as appropriate and part of the regular experience of childhood. The next two chapters turn to the oral histories of learning during the war period itself. They detail the experiences of these sixteen participants in school and non-school learning environments before, during, and after migration but prior to resettlement to Canada. The final chapter of this section brings together the five themes identified as central to the cases in earlier chapters through an intra-case comparison teasing out important similarities and differences for further development with the Afghan case. Chapter 4: 1939-1945: Learning at the Height of the War Traditional military and political histories of World War II tend to pen September,
193 9-June, 1945 as the war years. While this concept is fluid for a number of the participants, it cannot be denied that these central years in the time period were perhaps the most important parts of their wartime memories. For most of the participants, formal learning continued - often interrupted - yet forced migration was not a focus of many of their lives before 1944. For others, either parental political involvement led to migrations or participants' religious beliefs resulted in hiding. Nevertheless, the oral histories shared during this study highlighted the ways in which communities and governments involved in the European theatre of World War II enabled schooling of many children to continue in spite of fighting, changes in government, shortages, curricular changes, and systematic anti-Semitic policies and practices.
This chapter presents the memories of sixteen participants' oral histories of learning in a variety of formal schools in six states at the frontlines of the war in Europe during 1939-1945. In thinking about the best way to present this material, there was a rough decision to divide the information by chronological development and changing layers of learning over time. It seemed useful to focus on basic memories of the structures of primary, secondary, and post-secondary schooling in Eastern Europe and Germany both as participants grew and as the war changed. To a large extent, these areas are presented with a view to giving a rich description of how learner memories construct school life, classroom life, and the interaction between school life and the rest of life.
87 88
These chronological memories are divided between Eastern Europeans and Germans because of the different political experiences of invasion and occupation. Two sets of memory are presented separately from this structure because of their importance and because of the way they span the chronological history. The first, how the war context affected schooling, focuses on changes in the curriculum related specifically to the war context. The second details the learning memories of Jewish participants. The Jewish participants are singled out because of their unique experiences resultant from the Nazi anti-Jewish policies and practices in the 1930s culminating in the Holocaust of the 1940s.
Eastern European Memories
Primary School
Three of the participants attended primary school in part or in whole during the
1939-1945 period. Veronika (Lithuanian, F, 68) attended kindergarten in Berlin, grade one in her ancestral village in Lithuania, and then grade two and maybe three in Germany before she and her family entered a displaced persons camp in 1945 or 1946. Georgs
(Latvian, M, 68) did not attend a formally organized school in Latvia due to the chaos of the war and to the fact that he fled for Germany with his family in the spring of 1944 where he again did not attend school until his family moved to a displaced person's camp after 1945. In Hungary, meanwhile, the slightly older Zsuzsanna (F, 75) began school in
1936 and finished her primary schooling in 1940 without switching schools. Zsuzsanna's experience was different given that Hungary was not formally invaded by Germany until
1944 and the Soviets in 1945. Moreover, as a Jew, parts of her story are detailed later in this section on the Jewish experience. Perhaps because of the relative continuity in her education and/or her slightly higher age, it is Zsuzsanna who presents some of the most 89 lucid memories of her education during this period of time. Given the vastly different ethnic groups and experiences of war represented in these three participants' experience sets as well as the displacement experienced by Veronika and Georgs, it is difficult to discuss their experiences of the formal overt curriculum in a comprehensive mariner.
However, there are distinctly important and similar memories of their curriculum experiences and classroom cultures in their lives.
Zsuzsanna's basic description of her primary classroom serves as a useful starting point for discussion:
Well, we had little desks, two students to one desk. I remember the girl whom I sat beside. It was a pretty big classroom. I don't know but I would say maybe forty students, different from the way things are now. I don't know what it was but it was a German school [in Budapest, Hungary], but was pretty well disciplined. It didn't seem to be chaotic at all. They seem to be good little kids. A blackboard, a green board, in front with the teacher. He had a cane and if he wanted us to say something in unison, he would clap on his own desk and I think it's true, not just my imagination, but once when a boy was behaving very badly, he caned his bottom so that was still done. It didn't happen at all after but it did happen. I never got the cane. (Zsuzsanna, Hungarian, F, 75)
Although Zsuzsanna later suggests that this caning incident was "unique", she is was not the only participant with memories of corporal punishment in her mind. While
Veronika had difficulty remembering her classrooms and teachers in detail, she did remember the disciplinary habits of several of her teachers at various schools she attended during the war with clarity, including the one example she gives below. I remember one teacher [in a small town in Germany]. She had dark hair. I didn't understand too well as my German was very rusty still. And this one girl, I don't know what she'd done. She talked or something. So the teacher took her in front of the class and put her over her lap and whipped her with a cane and then taped down her mouth. (Veronika, Lithuanian, F, 68) As such, it seems that corporal punishment was not just isolated to Zsuzsanna's memories, but was more widespread and is carried over from pre-war experiences of older participants described in the last chapter.
Teachers and teaching were remembered as being "strict" by both Zsuzsanna and
Veronika and resembled the methods and routines remembered by older participants who completed their primary education prior to the start of the War.
They went up and down the aisles and really look at what we were doing and maybe helping teaching that way. Also, to make sure that we were all doing our work. I think that discipline maybe was more strict, but of course I don't really know what a Hungarian elementary school was like because I wasn't there but it was kindly. ...But there was discipline. .. .Where we had to stand and answer with one hand, when we wanted to speak. (Zsuzsanna, Hungarian, F, 75)
I remember having to write this ridiculous assignment we had. I can still remember. Capital As one after the other and then small As. And I thought it was really finky. This was in ink - you know one of those inks that you dip in? (Makes pen with hand) And the Teacher said, "Look how messy your work is! You should be ashamed of yourself. And your mother is a teacher. Look at this boy! See how good his work is! And his mother is ONLY a. laundress!" (Veronika, Lithuanian, F, 68)
However, Zsuzsanna's statements about discipline, order, routine and expectations in her school very closely resemble statements made by Hatelka, another Hungarian participant, who attended a Hungarian school in Budapest just prior to the start of the War. 91
Taken together, it seems that teachers expected students to follow drills, to stand in order to answer questions, and largely to produce precise work.
The language of instruction in Veronika's schools was dependent on where she was living. While her family was in Germany, the language of instruction was German.
In Lithuania, however, the language of instruction was her native Lithuanian, which she also spoke at home through out. As such, in a very short period of time she was required to switch back and forth between different languages of instruction. Zsuzsanna, on the other hand, went to a German medium school in Budapest where the curriculum was largely taught in the German language. While she spoke Hungarian at home much of the time, she remembered having an Austrian nanny with whom she would speak German at an early age. As such, there was no language uniformity in the early curriculum experience of these two participants.
Unlike Veronika, who had no distinct memories of the subjects she took at these schools, Zsuzsanna was able to talk about some of the subjects she took at school:
For the first four years...actually it was not four years, it was five years and in the fifth year I had Latin already but otherwise it was geography, history, literature, arithmetic, gym, needlework. My Mom always did my needlework for me. She shouldn't have, but she did. Of course, I nagged her to do it. Drawing. That's what I remember. ... I must have liked literature or language because I remember maybe that was in grade three that some famous German storyteller was in the city and he was telling fairy tales and the teacher who asked, "who likes fairy tales?" and nobody put up their hand because that seemed too babyish for most of them. But I put my hand up and a little boy put up his hand, so we were allowed to go to this storytelling whereas the others were not allowed or invited to because 92
they didn't say they liked fairytales so I must have liked fairytales. (Zsuzsanna, Hungarian, F, 75) The notion that special activities took place, such as visitations by storytellers, serves to highlight how exceptional Zsuzsanna's school was compared to the resources at more basic government schools, particularly those which were more deeply affected by the violent conflict going on at the time. Veronika, whose schools were in the midst of conflict zones through out this period, did not have any memories of special curricular events.
Georgs (Latvian, M, 68), on the other hand, had little formal schooling prior to his arrival in the DP camp in Lubeck, Germany late in 1945. It seems that he may have had some informal lessons carried out by his mother and/or nannies even though he has no clear memories of them.
Only through the recounting from my mother, did I get the information that she would sit down with me and teach me reading. And the nannies were more sort of practical people who weren't intellectually that invested in it and my father as a medical doctor was so busy and that's always the thing having lawyers or doctors as fathers... that they spend so much time with others, that others benefit and the kids don't get as much of that. So it was my mother mostly, who's also a piano teacher, so teaching is part of her enjoyment and her skill and I think that's where I benefited in that she helped me pick up certain things and fill in the voids. But I don't remember actually as a child and as a six year old I should have remembered being sat down but maybe her style was so elegant that she never had to force me or maybe I was so compliant that the process was so smooth that it didn't stand out as an activity. (Georgs, Latvian, M, 68) 93
On the whole, Veronika, Georgs, and Zsuzsanna had difficulty remembering details of their learning during the 1939-1945 period. What information they were able to share suggests that the formal schooling structures largely resembled what elder participants experienced prior to 1939 suggesting efforts to ensure continuity in spite of the changing situation. The more stable their early years were in terms of displacement, the more likely it seems to be that the participants had strong memories. In the case of
Veronika, in particular, it is worth noting that although she had some clear memories, most of her memories of this period related directly to more important survival issues such as living arrangements, food, being split up as a family, and some of the violence she witnessed. Georgs similarly was able to recount every moment of his displacement in
1944 and arrival in Germany, but could not recount lucid details of his early life in
Latvia. It is possible that over time these participants have chosen to forget or to block out memories of their lives that they unconsciously did not regard as important compared to their basic survival. The inability to provide strong detail of their primary level experiences during the war leaves little room for analysis or drawing strong conclusions about their participation in school at this level.
Secondary School
A number of participants attended and sometimes finished secondary or high school during the war in a variety of countries and in urban and rural contexts. This included Jonas (M, 77), Vytautas (M, 83), and Gediminas (M, 80) from Lithuania;
Vaclav (M, 77) from Czechoslovakia; and Zsuzsanna (F, 75), Joszef (M, 81), and Hatelka
(F, 77) from Hungary. In addition to representing three different national systems, their stories also represent public and private systems, religious and secular schools, and urban and rural schools. In spite of these important systemic differences, the dialogue that emerges between their histories suggests similarities in curriculum experiences in school and classroom routines, materials and expectations.
The subject matter taught in the high school period was rigorously academic for all of these participants. As external political influences changed, so too did some subjects taught and the basic-atmosphere at the schools. This was particularly the case with second language subjects where students studied either German or Russian depending on the current level of influence or occupation by Germany and the USSR. In
Lithuania, in particular, language and history subjects changed with each new occupying government.
.. .So I did calculus and so on in the final year, in math, which I never used afterwards. We learned foreign languages. At the beginning we had French. Then the Russians came in for a year, we had main foreign language obviously was Russian. Then Germans came and obviously the main foreign language taught was German. You see? And of course Lithuanian literature. (Gediminas, Lithuanian, M, 80)
One subject was religion. Just what is in my, my memory. Religion was compulsory for Catholics. If you weren't Catholic, then of course Lutheran, Protestant, and a Priest would come once in a while. A Rabbi used to come sometimes for the Jewish people. And then of course we train in language. We train in literature. We train in history. Geography was world geography. I remember in grade five9,1 had to do learn where the Ohio River was and things
9 Grade five is the first year of "high school" in the Lithuanian system. 95
like that. I learned that Chicago was known for the slaughterhouse city10. This was in grade five. Then there was math, well, in elementary school, arithmetic (math), physics, chemistry, biology, in high school, another foreign language, which when Russians came11, Russian became compulsory... Then when Germans came, Russian dropped and German was beginning. ... [Our other subjects were in Lithuanian.] Then of course we had art classes, music classes, physical education, and, um, for girls it was home economics. And ah, ...in the high school also we had eleven, grades eleven to twelve, we had introduction to philosophy. We had also the Soviet smogstis, which was learning about political parties, you know, stuff like that, politics. And, ah... I think that's all I guess. (Jonas, Lithuanian, M, 77)
Vaclav (Czech, M, 79) went to a government high school in Prague during the height of the war and remembered that most of his subjects were compulsory although the demands were not as great on him since high school was not compulsory, similar to secondary school in Lithuania. As with most of the other participants in his age group,
Vaclav took predominantly academic subjects.
High school was different [from primary school] because you took foreign languages. You took German. And Latin. And you ... I was highly, more specialized. The demands, because to go to high school was not compulsory it was elective, and the demands were heavier, greater, on you. ... Later on [there was some choice in the curriculum], yes. For instance you could choose French or English. But you had to take German and Latin. Mostly [the teachers] would come in [to our classroom] but for lab in chemistry or physics we would go to the lab classroom. ... [When Czechoslovakia was made a protectorate of Nazi Germany during the war] German became predominant language. You were
10 Chicago was important to many Lithuanians because a large number had emigrated there in the 1800s to worork in the slaughterhouses. Upton SSinclaii r captured this historical moment in The Jungle (1906(2002)) 11 In Jonas' case in specific, the RussianRussi; s invaded Lithuania just as he was completing primary school. He began high school in the fall of 1940. 96
taught in Czech but you had to take several, several ah ... ah subjects in German for example. The history changed. We were not taught mediaeval history ... even very much taught history from the point of view of small nation. You were taught German history. And there was, there was a Czech who was the collaborator and was promoted to be an administrator in the school. And the emphasis was to Germanize the young population. (Vaclav, Czech, M, 79)
In Hungary, Jozsef (M, 81) also took an academic university preparatory curriculum in a special private school, which taught both the German and the Hungarian curricula. The subjects he remembers taking reflect a similar set of academic subjects mentioned by the other participants.
The school itself prepared you for the German university system and if you took the Hungarian language literature, history and geography as well in addition taught in Hungarian, all the other subjects were taught in German then it qualified you also for the Hungarian university Now, it trained us purposefully for quite demanding final graduating examinations which for us who took also the Hungarian subjects meant five written examinations lasting from 8 in the morning until 12:30 plus something like ten subjects orally which consisted of Hungarian and German, literature, Hungarian and German history, mathematics, Latin, English I took later, also at school which was an extra curricular non-obligatory subject. I could have also taken French, but I backed out of it. I felt it was too much. Physics, chemistry and biology. Now if we were examined orally only except two subjects, mathematics and physics but we were not told in advance which we would. Written we only had mathematics and one of the three sciences chosen and were especially coached in the last year. So it was quite demanding and it had a very high reputation. (Jozsef, Hungarian, M, 81)
Also in Hungary, Hatelka (F, 77) attended a private all-girls Roman Catholic school run by nuns, which taught the Hungarian curriculum unlike Jozsef and Zsuzanna's 97 school. As with Jozsef and Zsuzsanna, Hatelka's school taught core subjects in German rather than Hungarian. Unlike many of the other participants, Hatelka's program of study was not directed towards future enrollment in university. The subjects she took were therefore a mixture of academic and practical courses thought to be important for adolescent girls - primarily home economics, which was similar to other female participants' experiences12.
[My sister and I] attended what you call Language Litsayo and there we learned everything in German and we didn't learn Latin. Instead of Latin we could choose another language and I chose Italian. ... There we had geography, physics, chemistry, literature, history, math, German and whatever language you took, gymnastics. It was an all rounded education. With that degree you could not enter university because you had no Latin and Latin was a must so you had to make a choice. You go to the A class where it's Hungarian teaching and Latin or to B which they called it a Language Litsayo. We had nuns teaching us and because Sunday we had to go to church in the school; it had a beautiful chapel and this is sort of it in a nutshell. (Hatelka, Hungarian, F, 77)
As with Jonas' memories of religious education in Lithuanian schools, quoted earlier in his discussion of subject matter, Jozsef and his sister Zsuzsanna's German curriculum school had separate religious knowledge classes for children of different religions. Zsuzsanna's memories of her classes with her school's Rabbi are detailed in the section on learning and Jewish Children. In addition to religious knowledge as a subject in many secular government high schools, some participants attended religious schools, which taught a combination of the government curriculum and religious values.
12 Zsuzsanna (Hungarian, F, 75) mentions having her mother help with her sewing. Jonas (Lithuanian, M, 77) listed home economics as a subject girls in his high school were specifically required to take. 98
Zsuzsanna in Hungary and Hanna in Poland attended Jewish schools when they were forced to leave government schools as part of the Nazi's anti- Jewish policies. In
Lithuania, Vytautas (M, 83) pre-1939 school was a residential school run by Catholic monks in which religion was incorporated into the daily life and routine of the school. In
Hungary, Hatelka's (F, 77) secondary school was a school run by Roman Catholic nuns and similarly incorporated religious education in the school's daily routine including required attendance at the school chapel's Sunday service. Religion appears to have been a regular part of the curriculum in these schools regardless of whether they were private or public schools although the level of religious practice was deeper in private religious schools.
The participants' discussion of their school routine at the secondary level was often given in comparison to their primary school experiences. For some, secondary school was not as strict as their primary school; however, for others secondary school life was equally strict. As with primary school, moreover, the daily routine began early and ended in early afternoon. Homework based on reading and memorization seemed to have been given in abundance. Expectations of learner performance seemed to be quite high.
That was a beautiful, beautiful baroque palace with school with swimming pool and theatre. It had an atmosphere somehow much like what I was used to at home. There we had a uniform: navy blue skirt, pleated skirts with a pale blue oxford shirt and tie. No makeup, no jewelry. We went from eight in the morning again until one and on Saturday until twelve. (Hatelka, Hungarian, F, 77)
Well the high school wasn't so strict anymore [compared to primary school]. They addressed you in a very respectful manner. Because in our language has 99
'you' and 'you'. I mean, I guess as in French. So, if you could speak in Czech I would call you "Julia", but I would call you "we". But they didn't call us, "you" .. .they called us by our last name. So it was certain amount of formality. And high school teachers were not called a teacher but professor. So it was an amount of formality to it. ... We didn't have uniforms. Only the religious schools, they had uniforms. (Vaclav, Czech, M, 77)
We went to school we start at 8:30 I think. Yeah, it was 8:30. And we had a 20- minute lunch break. We had a five-minute break between classes, and 20 minutes was for lunch. Used to bring your own lunch. Some spent at the store buying a bun or something. And the school would end between 1 and 2 o'clock. ... But you always had some homework at home. So maybe two hours of homework at home. The same thing was also in the high school. .. .Written homework, and then some memory work, a lot of memory work, ah poetry, and, ah... we'll have to read and prepare for certain things. Because both in the elementary school and the high school, most of the testing was done orally. .. .If something was assigned say in history certain pages, you expected the following day the teacher will call you to come in front of the class and will have to explain what it was about. And, ah, so you have to be prepared every, every, every day (Jonas, Lithuanian, M, 77)
As with their primary school experiences, the participants' secondary classroom lives focused around organized hierarchical structures in which the teacher often lectured and the students took notes, memorized, stood to answer questions and generally carried out their lessons in a predictable organized manner.
Well, we went to schools, we wrote essays, we did the same things you do. Maybe not as good, maybe not as slick, but we did it so. ...Oh [the teachers] had that on lectures. They had experiments. But reduced skill, because in many instances the supplies were not available. You know? So it was better for the 100
artsy students, rather than for the science students who went into maths and so on. Though you had to take both. (Gediminas, Lithuanian, M, 80)
You were called by your family name and you had to get up and answer the nun's question. Math wasn't my favourite subject; I know that. I didn't do well in math. ... The nun would come in and the first part was she would ask questions of about twenty minutes of you or her or whomever of what she did give us as homework on the last day she taught. The second part was done giving her a presentation, whether it was history or geography or math about what we will have to work on at home. We had a lot of homework. We went home, had lunch around 3 o'clock and between 4 and 6 we did homework. ... We had hardcover books from which we had the lessons and then we had our books, which were covered, and labels in which we wrote our assignments. On that we had to respond that she should know that we had learned what she taught us. Then we were graded and we had one for excellent, second for okay, three not so good and four we failed and that's all. (Hatelka, Hungarian, F, 77)
These five memories of classroom and school life present a learning atmosphere and routine that appeared ordered in fairly strict ways. In at least one case, that of Jonas, there was evidence that at the high school level students participated in enforcing the routine and discipline themselves through a head boy system.
After each class, kids have to leave the room, go outside and get some fresh air. And two people had to open all the windows to ventilate the classroom. So the head boy used to assign who is going to do this. .. .Every so often the principal would call you to his office and start asking questions about different, different things about the classroom that was going on. If the teacher ...if the class upset the teacher one way or another, I had to go and apologize to the teacher for the whole class. And then [during] the German occupation we had to do certain work in the forest like cut trees for heating the school. And then the wood had to be brought 101
to the school all chopped up in little pieces. So as head boy I didn't have to do the physical work, I had to make sure the work was done. (Jonas, Lithuanian, M, 77)
Aside from the formal learning atmosphere, there was some semblance of an organized social life or extracurricular life extending from many participants' schools including dances, theatre outings, and sports teams. One of the interesting aspects of this life was that some participants described these activities, including social dances, as requiring compulsory attendance.
Every so often they used to bring boys and girls to the same physical education class, and the teacher used to put gramophone, record player, crank it up, put the record on, boys lined up here, girls lined up there, and you go and you dance. With the teachers we held a dance. .. .Every other Sunday there was a dance two o'clock in the afternoon. Before the dance every time different class had to prepare short maybe half an hour program. So it was up to the students themselves, might be some poetry reading, maybe somebody plays piano, plays violin, maybe a little tiny choir, sings a couple of songs, maybe a funny humorous skit or something like this. .. .And it was compulsory attendance. .. .If you stand there and don't dance, so probably some kind of old lady teacher or the big fat one that I told you then, she will get you and make you dance with her. So of course you don't want to take chances, so you do dance with girls. (Jonas, Lithuanian, M, 77)
I played the violin and I was invited to join the orchestra. ... It was [the] town orchestra. And I was, I was almost full time so they say as a musician. And all my free time I had to spend at home practicing violin. And we used to go visit other towns, give concerts, and use to play at masses, church masses. ... Just [during] the Germans. And it was fun. I really miss doing that. (Jonas, Lithuanian, M, 77) 102
We had a basketball, soccer and gymnastics and so on. The organization changed [during the war]. There was a very patriotic organization, so-called, the hawks, that was forbidden, of course. Boy Scouts was forbidden. And there was a German sponsored athletic organization, which theoretically everybody was supposed to belong. (Vaclav, Czech, M, 77)
Once we went to.. .we used to go to these afternoon theatre opera performances in a group with the school.. .that was the only sort of activity. Due to my father being with the government, he had quite a good position, we had a large amphitheatre. We went to this afternoon performance with our girlfriends and the school was also there. We were not in uniform but they all were, it was all students in the theatre and we behaved very badly, we giggled a lot. The next day the principal called us in and she said that she will call an assembly of the school and we do have to apologize to the school because we had ruined the reputation by behaving badly. So I said to [the] Sister, "we were not in uniform, how would anyone know that we belonged to this school?" So she was caught out but we still had to go through it but not in a general assembly but in our own class, we had to get up and apologize from our class so you know these were different times. (Hatelka, Hungarian, F, 77)
One participant presents an alternative secondary experience during the War.
Vytautas (Lithuanian, M, 83) was about halfway through his secondary education in 1940 when the USSR invaded Lithuania; however, he as unable to enroll in his final four years of high school as the Soviets occupied his school and used it for military purposes. As he was already 18 and as the local public high school in a nearby town would not accept him for fear of Soviet reprisal, Vytautas went to work as a clerk in the electric company for sometime. Eventually, he was able to complete high school through an adult night school. 103
Well, there was an adult high school. It was all normal procedure like other high schools except it was started at 5 o'clock in the evening right up to 10:30. So I worked and studied at the same time. So I finished first year there. They then reversed. When the Germans came over, the Russians had their own way of education. During the Russian time for that year, I didn't go to school but instead of the seven years that they had in the Lithuanian high school they had gone back to the ten years. When that finished, the Germans went back again and they went back to the old Lithuanian style of school so eight high school years and it passed from one to the other so when I started first year in the adult high school, I went from three to fifth year. I was supposed to have three more years. ... [Student- teacher interaction was] totally different, yes. They were treating us like adults. There were no restrictions. You tried not to be late and if you were late, it was up to you to find the work and catch up from friends or something like that. The professors came and left after that lesson. If you're late, you're missing that work. They knew if you are attending as an adult, you're willing to do this. As a kid you are forced to do this. More or less. You are left by parents. Here you can come and go on your own. It was very nice and everyone was very cooperative... (Vytautas, Lithuanian, M, 83)
For the majority of participants who attended secondary schools during the 1939-
45 period, there seems to have been attempts by occupying powers and indigenous leaders to preserve the pre-war school system and explicit curriculum, supplement the curriculum with the language of occupying forces, and to maintain the general routine and atmosphere of expectations, social life, and the role of the school in the community and the lives of the participants. Classroom life remained strict and ordered. However, it is a challenge to see the images that emerge in this section without considering them in the context of revelations made in the section on the war in school. The complete memories of these slightly older participants reveal that their school life was in fact 104 heavily politicized during the war, sometimes dangerous, and at times forgotten as more important concerns of survival took over. This basic description of schooling, while it seems remarkably "normal" for a war context, presents only one side of the story and becomes more complex as other variables are introduced into the history.
Post-Secondary School
It was perhaps through a combination of luck, gender, and country of origin that four of the oldest participants were able to start and to partially complete their post- secondary studies during the 1939-1945 period rather than to face recruitment to the military, persecution, and institutional closure due to lack of resources, violence, and politics. Of these four participants, three were Lithuanian - Vytautas (M, 83), Audra (F,
82), and Rimute (F, 83) — and the fourth was Hungarian - Jozsef (M, 81). Several
Lithuanian participants mentioned that during this period post-secondary institutions were often closed, particularly by the Germans due either to fighting or as a way to force young men into the military. Jozsef s different experience is detailed in the section relating to Jewish memories of learning, because much of his experience at this level of school is related directly to his unique experience as a Jewish-Hungarian. Participants largely spoke of the ways in which wider political policies, and situations impacted their abilities to attend institutions of higher learning and professional schools. This section addresses the structure, routine, and experience of post-secondary education during the
1939-45 time period from within the context of how the War affected access, quality and experience. 105
The process for gaining entrance into either university or professional training schools in Lithuania and in Hungary during the time period in question was closely related to marks received on government organized entrance examinations. However, perhaps because of the chaos of the times, some of them found other routes to gaining enrollment in these schools. As each of the participants aimed to attend a different type of post-secondary institution in different jurisdictions, their stories are unique.
So then I stayed in school until I finished it and I went to nursing school. Ah, but it was 1940 and the Russians took... walked into Lithuania. They did not consider occupiers at that time, but really they were occupiers of Lithuania. And for two years I went to nursing school in Lithuania and that's it. Then I went to work, or I was sent to work, not where I wanted to stay, actually they left me in Kaunas. Capital city. [The] Ministry of Education [decided where we would work]. Their decision was where to send us when we finished school, but also hospital had certain request for certain girls to stay there and I was a chosen one to stay there in Kaunas ~ in the capital city. (Audra, Lithuanian, F, 82)
I attended a high school and finished it in 1940. In 1940, Lithuania was occupied by Russians, and because [of my father's position] he was looked at by the communists as an "enemy". Anyway because he was too rich, I applied to the university — to the medical school, and I was refused because of my father's position. Luckily my father knew university president of other city capital of Lithuania, in Vilnius13. My father went to Vilnius and talked to the university President, and they admitted me to the medical school. So my family lived in the City of Kaunas, and I went to City of Vilnius to start going to medical school. So I stayed there in Vilnius only one year and then came back to Kaunas to join my family and studied another three years. (Rimute, Lithuanian, F, 83)
13 Vilnius and a large piece of land surrounding it was actually part of Poland during the inter-war period (1917-1939). Since 1945, Vilnius has been considered the capital of Lithuania, even during its period as a Soviet Republic. To many Lithuanians, Kaunas is thought of as the ancient capital city while Vilnius is the modern capital. The teacher's college moved from [another town to my town], because the Germans tried to grab all of [the students] and forced them into the Army so they dispersed and didn't tell anyone. I would say they unofficially opened the teacher's college in the evenings, so everyone could come then and study. ...We worked during the day and learning came in the evening. Because, first of all they didn't have the facilities. High school was taken during the daytime. They didn't want to go in to the high school because the Germans were watching the high school. So they took another, they call, ah - what do you call that special education for electricians, mechanics? Technical school. They went into the technical school. So, we took classes in technical school in the evening. (Vytautas, Lithuanian, M, 83)
Only Rimute spoke at some length about her actual experiences in medical school. The other two participants who attended post-secondary education institutions were not able to produce strong memories of the time they spent there. This may have in part been influenced by the amount of time each of them spent in training. Vytautas spent one year in teacher's college before having to flee Lithuania. Audra, on the other hand, completed her two-year nurses' training and felt strongly that it was one of the best periods of her life, but could not give details relating to the curriculum, routine, or method of teaching.
Where their memories were able to serve them well was in their living arrangements and lives. While Vytautas lived on his own in a rented room, Audra and
Rimute lived in special residences with other nursing or medical students respectively. 107
I lived in... it was old monastery was converted it for the students to live you know and for the girls only. So I lived there with shared a room with the other girl who was in medical school also and lived in that how do you call it, almost like a camp. ... It was so strange I didn't know anybody in that city and I just got acquaintance with a few students in my course. Two-thirds were Polish students and only a third were Lithuanians. I didn't know anybody there. So I wasn't very happy. (Rimute, Lithuanian, F, 83)
In the nursing school we had a very strict superintendent. She was a graduate from England... And a, at certain times I don't even remember now because I didn't think about it anymore. At certain time the second key was, the door was locked with the second key and nobody could come in or get out. ... Oh we had enough social life, we could go to theatre. If somebody went to theater we knew then you know the door would be open until certain hour and so on and it would be closed after certain hour. There was always somebody who could be opening the door because it was connected practically to hospital. ... and we had a big auditorium in the hospital itself. We had dances; we had singers invited; soloists invited, concerts there; we had dance evenings. Medical students use to come because the university was right there. (Audra, Lithuanian, F, 82) Audra in particular emphasized that her life as a nursing student was "normal" by which she meant unaffected by events related to the Russian or German occupations in that the requirements of her training did not change. The only oddity she mentions during the interview was the addition of Russian language lessons in her first year of nursing school, which corresponded with the Russian occupation.
Rimute's memories of the medical school, however, suggested that the same pressures and replacements occurred at the level of the medical school as were 108 experienced by participants attending high school at that time. In particular, the firing and deportation of certain professors by the Soviets affected her time in medical school.
When the first year in 1940 when I was in Vilnius, when the Russians were, the many professors were fired and the staff was changed everything and said to be, I don't know, it wasn't, it wasn't nothing was stable, yeah. It was one professor was there for a couple of months and then he disappeared and then somebody else came, you know it was not very nice. (Rimute, Lithuanian, F, 83)
When asked specific questions about the subjects taken, teaching methods, routines and expectations of their post-secondary schools, answers given were short.
Rimute said that the routine was, "just get up and go to classes. .. .all the classes were compulsory." Audra suggested that her nurse training was "very practical" and "normal", but would not give details as to what that meant. Even Vytautas, who was attending an unofficial school, did not feel that there was anything he specifically could answer to describe how the teaching and learning was constructed.
The War in School
Participants in Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland all suggested that during much of the war period they did not continuously experience violent conflict, extended bombing raids, or other forms of violence. Nevertheless the war affected their learning in the form of changing curricular requirements, limited changing school atmospheres or routines; teacher deportations; the forced recruitment of male youths as soldiers, civil defense, or hard labour through school raids; forced membership of boys in the Hitler Youth; and the simultaneous use of schools as organizing and mobilizing points for partisan or resistance activities. In short, the use of 109 school, particularly secondary schools, as a rallying point for the political engagement of youth in the war was a prominent aspect of life in Eastern Europe during World War II.
Jonas in particular provided a detailed description of the physical ways in which his school and school routine changed as Lithuania changed occupying powers. During the first year that the Soviets occupied Lithuania, 1940-1, an unknown number of people considered "enemies" were deported to Siberia including teachers. This had significant effects on Jonas' daily school life.
There were quite a few young teachers who were not qualified properly. Well of course not all teachers were deported. A lot of them were deported. .. .And the workload for the teachers became heavier. Say, if you were a physics teacher, but you [were] not qualified for other subjects, they give you teach both subjects. For one you qualified, plus that one which you [were not] unqualified for. (Jonas, Lithuanian, M, 77)
Of particular interest is Jonas' description of the physical changes that the
Russians imposed upon the school environment.
Crosses were removed from the classrooms. Pictures of famous Lithuanians were removed from the classroom walls. Pictures of Lenin, pictures of Stalin appeared on the walls. ... Every school had to have a red, a red corner. This [is] what you called it. It was a room, a classroom, which was turned into Communist, ah,., where everything was red, you know. Communist colour is red and it was... I don't know to describe. Ah... If you had some free time you were suppose to go to this room, which was ah, had pictures, photographs of different rulers, Communist rulers, you know, and historical figures who were approved by the Communist regime, and had books, magazines, newspapers, and, ah...it was like a brainwashing corner. (Jonas, Lithuanian, M, 77) 110
None of the other Lithuanian participants in the study mention these red rooms. As such, there was no other corroborating story given by other participants. Yet the strength of
Jonas' memories relating to the red room in his school and the importance of such a room for encouraging political learning have resulted in its inclusion here. It would be important to seek out further World War II survivors who remember these rooms in order to gain more insight into their purpose, use, and structure.
The school routines, banning of national holidays, and reporting on others were also prominent in the memories of the Russian occupation of Lithuania in 1940-1. While changes in language learning were mentioned earlier in the chapter, other changes in the routine were more severe.
Before [the Russian occupation], a school day at the beginning used to have a prayer. All students had to stand up and say certain prayer, which was specially designed for students at school. And then when the school ends, last bell, everyone stands and says a prayer again. And when Russians came, of course, prayer disappeared. And then the textbooks, say history textbooks, many pages were torn out of the textbooks. Certain pages had to be removed so teachers had their job to go through things and tear out pages and pages and pages and pages. Lithuanian holidays disappeared. Such as date of independence. It became a working day not a holiday. And if somebody didn't come to school, the following day was called to the principal's office to explain, to give a good explanation why he didn't show up yesterday for school. And somebody not from the principal but somebody from the Communist Party headquarters were the principal. And they were quite, quite tough about this. So to miss The Day of Independence to miss school was almost a crime. (Jonas, Lithuanian, M, 77) Ill
The arrival of the Germans in 1941 in Lithuania, in 1944 in Hungary, and the annexation of Czechoslovakia in 1939 brought German as a second language education, a change in the pictures on the walls of schools, the involvement of the adolescent youth in a variety of political activities. Jonas gives a thorough description of the sudden ways his high school changed upon the arrival of the Germans.
Red room went out just like that. And religion became again as a subject and German became compulsory. And a, oh yeah, Latin was by the way. I forgot to mention that in high school Latin was a compulsory subject [except under the Russians].... Independence Day was still forbidden. ... We had pictures of Hitler on the wall. ... If you didn't come to school, they didn't bother you. Not the way the Russians did. (Jonas, Lithuanian, M, 77)
One area where the Germans were particularly strong was in the area of forcibly recruiting adolescent males for either army duty, as labour, or as military support personnel. The schools in Lithuania in particular seem to have gone to great lengths to protect their male students from being forced into military service.
And ah, now when Germans were there every so often they used to make raids on school. And pick up older boys either to get them into army or send to Germany as a slave labor. So we had people within German commanders there were working for them, at the same time they were working for Lithuanians too. So they found out, they say tomorrow they plan to make, uh, a raid I guess, and so they would notify the principal, the principal would notify the janitor who always at the main, always at the main entrance in the morning. (Jonas, Lithuanian, M, 77)
If they knew anything was coming, we had some intelligence.. .1 wouldn't say spies but people who worked for Germans, they knew more or less knew every time when the Army.. .they surrounded areas as no one wanted to go to War so 112
they actually forced young people and sent them to Germany. Of course, they didn't want to go into the Army but they were Luftwaffe, the ones that protected the aircraft to protect the cities. They had to be there, working with them, minding them. They had to bring shells and clean the guns and things like that. These people were all grabbed and sent out. Never heard from them again. (Vytautas, Lithuanian, M, 83)
The violence of war also intervened in the learning lives of participants, albeit an inconsistent rather than constant interruption. Memories of allied bombing raids were vividly expressed by Veronika (Lithuanian, F, 68) during her stay in Berlin and by
Hungarian participants after the German army invaded in 1944. In the case of the
Hungarians, in particular, allied bombing forced the closure of schools. Although several other Lithuanian participants also spoke of these bombing raids, it was only in the context of experiences after leaving Lithuania and before June 1945 when the allies defeated the
Germans and DP camps were established. During that time period, most participants were not enrolled in any formal or non-formal learning programs.
I remember a lot from when I was four. .. .There was bombing going on at night, because the allies were bombing Berlin. So that we would have to get up, get dressed, and go to the shelter, but then when my brother was born we got up and got dressed but stayed in this one dining room. ... [I don't remember the raids affecting my going to kindergarten or other schools later.] I think the point was that my parents always tried to avoid where there was worse conflict. They were sort of trying to move away from it. (Veronika, Lithuanian, F, 68)
Then [the allied] bombing started with our city and I think it was during the day the Americans came and during the night the British or vice versa. Then we went 113
to the cellar and that began in 1944, April or March, no March and then school was finished because of the bombing. (Hatelka, Hungarian, F, 77)
Hatelka's first awareness of how the war affected her schooling was not through wartime violence, but was through drives organized by her school to knit socks and send letters to soldiers. As the war dragged on, she also remembered fuel shortages resulting in shorter school days.
In 1943 we started to have what they called 'coal' holidays in school because there was not enough coal to heat the school so we went to school from November to Christmas, then we had Christmas holiday and then the following year in April the school closed because of the bombing. Then in 1944, September the bombing got so heavy in Budapest that the school was damaged and the city had quite bad shots at it. We had to go down to the cellar. (Hatelka, Hungarian, F, 77)
Zsuzsanna (Hungarian, F, 75) corroborates Hatelka's comments regarding the severity of the bombing in Budapest.
People were so lucky that they were forced into the [Jewish] ghetto in the real bad times. I say "we", but I mean we in Budapest because in the country they deported everybody. But in Budapest lots or people were killed too but I read somewhere that 40% of Jews survived. So very soon after were herded into the ghetto, the Russian attack came closer and closer and the bombing of Budapest so there wasn't too much time anymore for doing school because we spent so much time in the basement to hide from the bombs. (Zsuzsanna, Hungarian, F, 75)
It was the older male participants who spoke of how school became less important for them as they instead became involved in various partisan or resistance activities in the 114 protection of their countries, homes, and families. While some of the activities were not organized around the school or by school-based groups, others mentioned political . activities as being somehow related to their school community.
We engaged in so-called underground activities, you know. When I look back at it now, some of it looks ridiculous. But it's a different thing. We took it very seriously. So we ran underground little papers with the latest news, and so on. Tried to organize ourselves and by do[ing] it, as the outgrowth of it in Lithuania, the partisan movement against the Russians continued several years. As an outgrowth of these activities, especially by the students of the high schools and universities, and so on. You see, so, that's about it. (Gediminas, Lithuanian, M, 80)
A few participants also mentioned how the occupying Germans brought the Hitler
Youth to their schools and expected the boys to participate in this organization.
Myself and a friend of mine decided we will prepare ourselves [to] pass the exams and to skip our final year of high school and go to university. Skip the final class in the high school, for the full year. And we ended up by doing it, we were prepared completely to write our exams, when a letter came from the Ministry that present regime requires a service in Hitler Youth, if you, jump over the final year of high school. If you promise to serve in Hitler Youth, then yes they will allow you to pass these exams early. So I looked at it and I said, "like hell I'm going to be Hitler Youth!" and so on. So I didn't do anything different of my event. And I didn't go. Then of course when they came to the graduating class, the final class in the high school, I didn't have to learn anything. (Gediminas, Lithuanian, M, 80)
No, [I did not have to wear a school uniform]. The German kids who had to go into Hitler Youth probably there they did but that was extra curricular. 115
... [Belonging] to the Hitler Youth for them was obligatory. (Jozsef, Hungarian, M, 81)
There are multiple ways in which the war affected schooling during World War
II. Much of the evidence gathered from Eastern European participants' oral histories suggests that changes were largely related to curriculum in the form of subjects taught and school-day rituals and routines. Participants who were male adolescents during the war, however, were clearly heavily affected through forced soldier recruitment campaigns, pressure to join the Hitler Youth, and partisan or other underground political activities undertaken in their communities to resist various occupations. While bombings and other forms of fighting affected the ability of some participants to attend school at different points in the War, many of these particular participants lived in quiet towns or small cities where military action was not a daily feature of their lives.
Learning Opportunities for Jewish Learners
The four participants who self-identified as being Jewish, two Poles and two
Hungarians, represented atypical Jewish children in that they all came from what they called "secular" or non-practicing families. Jozsef (Hungarian, M, 81) went so far as to describe his family as "atheists" during his interview. The two Polish participants were only children, while the two Hungarians were brother and sister. For reasons of luck, nationality, and opportunity, three of these participants did not lose immediate family members during the Holocaust. Ewa (Polish, F, 83) stands out as representing the more typical experience of the Holocaust as she lost nearly every member of her immediate and extended family in the Holocaust. This section does not mean to suggest that the 116 thousands of Jewish children and youth who spent long periods of time in the Nazi concentration camps or who died there shared these learning experiences. With the exception of places where the classroom experience was expressly different from other children because of their Jewish identity, this section does not cover descriptions of the overall curriculum of classroom life as, for the most part, their basic schooling lives were little different from other children's. These participants' thoughts on the basic school experience are included in the sections above. The focus in this section is specifically on how being Jewish in their experiences and memories diverged from their non-Jewish peers.
All four participants are from families where education was important, but so too was the development of their identity as Jewish Europeans, an identity which seems to have been formed as much by statements by those outside of their families that made them "different" as it was formed by religious education and positive statements made at home.
My parents were an assimilated family, totally secular. But there was always a pressure from Polish society who didn't want us in so to speak, so you didn't have to work hard at being Jewish like people do here because it came naturally, so to speak. At the same time, Polish was the language of the home and my parents were totally assimilated. ... But at the same time I had absolutely no problem with other children in the school. I was totally accepted. (Hanna, Polish, F, 76)
I think I need to tell you this, because [it is about my identity but] not in a religious sense. My father didn't believe in all this. However when I came ... when I came home, I must have been in grade 1, or 2,1 don't remember, with a kind of a document from school. You know to say who I am, and so on. So there 117
was my name, and under it was that I am Polish of Mosaic religions. .. .That means Moses. At this point my father said, "No Sweetie, you're not Polish of Mosaic religion. You are a Jew. You're Jewish, and you are a Polish citizen, and you love Poland very much. Because this is the country where we were born. But you are Jewish." (Ewa, Polish, F, 83)
Well, one was aware of one's Jewishness because there were more and more restrictions on Jews in Hungary [by 1941] anyway. At school, of course, I was aware because we had [separate] religion [classes] there. ... I was there sitting beside a girl in grade one and in grade two I sat beside another girl who was maybe from a small Hungarian aristocracy. And she had older brothers, quite a bit older then she was, and they were in the Hungarian Nazi Party at the time, which I wasn't much aware. The girl and I were quite good friends and sat together. Then she invited me for her birthday party and my father said "don't be too disappointed sweetheart if she is going to uninvite you." And I didn't know what to say, I just didn't think she would uninvite me. However, she did. She came and in a bashful, uncomfortable way she said, "you know we don't have enough chairs" and she uninvited me from her party and it was really because that family or at least their young men were in the anti-Semitic community. (Zsuzsanna, Hungarian, F, 75) However, perhaps because of their secular beliefs, the participants were primarily enrolled in either government or non-religious private schools prior to the war or the establishment of restrictive policies. These points, along with participants' individual ages during the War, seem to have played important roles in how they experienced the war as Jewish children in that the War process altered their Jewish identities, the schools they attended, and their survival mechanisms. 118
The two Polish participants - Ewa and Hanna - were forced to leave school in
1939 when Germany invaded Poland. Ewa, who was then at the end of her secondary schooling, survived these years largely in hiding, pretending to be Catholic, taking on other identities, working as a nanny, and otherwise focusing on survival. Hanna, who is seven years Ewa's junior, had completed her first three years of formal schooling in 1939 and was still of school-going age. Also forced to leave school at that time, Hanna was initially sent to a community- run Jewish school.
Well, after the war broke out and after something like four weeks, the Germans occupied Warsaw and there was no more school for Jewish children. So Jewish groups or whatever, there was some community effort to educate the children. I didn't much like going to these things because they were more passionately Jewish and I wasn't. I felt totally out of the group. (Hanna, Polish, F, 76)
When the Jewish ghetto was formed in Warsaw, Hanna found herself taking private lessons in the ghetto, which were supplemented by her father at home.
Then, of course, we were herded into the ghetto and from then on I had private lessons. .. .First of all my father was always very much interested in my education. ... I remember I did things at home with him and I also had lessons with a sister of his best friend who was a professional teacher and I went to her house with a friend or two who were taking these lessons with me. It was not organized and it was not too systematic. I also started learning foreign languages, French and English. (Hanna, Polish, F, 76) In spite of being able to remember these events, Hanna was unable to remember any great detail about the methods used, the resources available, or how she was taught during this time period. 119
Hanna and her parents remained in the ghetto for some time and when mass deportations to concentration camps began they escaped and were hidden by the Polish underground outside of Warsaw for the remainder of the German occupation of Poland.
Hanna's description of this time is of constantly changing locations and of not having any opportunity to keep up with formal learning.
Then it was really very haphazard. It must have been 1943, so from 1943 to 1944. I learned whatever scraps I could but it wasn't in any way systematic. Now, I was always a great reader and I remember very well one of the places we stayed at, this was an apartment of a Polish lady, a widow whose husband must have been a reader because he had all sorts of sets and series of books. You know the complete works of Tolstoy, this and that. After his death, the rest of his family were not readers, they were just chucked into a chest because nobody was interested in them well I had a field day there. So I read quite a lot. (Hanna, Polish, F, 76)
Unlike Poland, the Germans did not invade Hungary formally until 1944.
Therefore, the Jewish population of Hungary was relatively protected by the Hungarian government, which, although sympathetic to the Nazi cause, did not persecute its Jewish citizens as harshly as the Germans prior to 1944. However, Jozsef (M, 81) and Zsuzsanna
(F, 75) attended a private German school teaching both the German and the Hungarian curricula and as such their war memories of school begin sometime before this date. In spite of a six-year age gap between them, both remembered this school fondly.
The school did not have a strong religious affiliation, although each child had to attend regular religious knowledge classes related to their particular background similar to the experiences of non-Jewish participants in Lithuania. Of these, Zsuzsanna and
Jozsef have similar memories and vastly different opinions.
I came from also a completely agnostic non-religious family. My parents were completely non-observant. My grandparents did go twice a year to high holy [days], .. .but that was it. Once in a while when I was still small, they took me along. That was it. No other observation. So I said I wasn't familiar, ah, aware. I went to different religion classes than the rest of the class but after all the Catholics went to one; the Protestants went to another; the Jews went to a third one. ... It was a dull thing and I never...I don't understand ... the language. To struggle with the alphabet. It was really an alphabet and a language I don't speak. ... [We continued these classes until graduation,] so again in the last two years, next to us was a Jewish orphanage. The instructor could no longer enter the school, once again because of the situation. So we went over to the Jewish orphanage and here I was given the lessons. ... [We had exams, but] the whole thing was nominal. And I don't think he would have failed us. I don't think actually from grade five on there was any subject on our report card for religion or even before. (Jozsef, Hungarian, M, 81)
Then a dear little Rabbi led the class. The other children.. .1 don't even know if the Catholic and Protestant children had different religion classes too, but probably they did. But I just know that we went another away from them. ... [He] was a delightful man and there was an orphanage, a Jewish orphanage and he was the director of that and he really loved children and was.. .1 remember him much more then what we were taught except that we were taught to read Hebrew which maybe I still can a bit. (Zsuzsanna, Hungarian, F, 75)
Because the school was essentially what would be called an international German school today, a school for the children of diplomats stationed in Budapest and the local upper classes, Jozsef and Zsuzsanna experienced the war before other Jewish-Hungarian 121 children. In 1941, their principal was called to Berlin where he was ordered to expel the
Jewish students. The principal fought to allow those children already in their final year of high school to complete the schooling there, so that they would be able to take the state- run exams without disruption. Somehow, the principal was able to get the Nazi administration to agree, and Jozsef and his Jewish classmates were able to remain for their final year. Zsuzsanna, however, found herself in a Jewish high school and, like
Hanna in Poland, found that she did not fit into this school.
I had to leave the German school in 1941, as Hungarian schools did not take on any more Jewish pupils. There were those who had already taken in some. .. .The only school that would take me was the Jewish high school in Budapest so from the German school, I got to the Jewish school [where] I was somewhat of an outsider in the German school, being a Jewish kid. I was somewhat of an outsider in the Jewish school, partly because there the teachers frowned on the fact that I, .. .that my parents had enrolled me in a German school and partly because I came from a non-observant family. But in the Jewish school, I had to learn much more religious practice and education so when I say I learned to read Hebrew, of course I learned to read Hebrew in the German school, but how much I learned in the German school now, I don't know. (Zsuzsanna, Hungarian, F, 75)
After Jozsef finished high school, he aimed to attend a local university, but as things turned out his initial enrollment was hard won and brief. The situation - as he referred to discriminatory policies against Jewish Hungarians during his interview - did not make this easy for him.
In the Hungarian university system there was.. .you know the expression humarus claususl Well, it was a Latin expression for a quota for Jews, which was restricted to a percentage of the population of Jews in Hungary which was 6% except in economics where it was 12%. ... [The quota was higher for the study of 122
economics because] Hungarians were not much interested in economic life. And also continuity in economic life had to be maintained and the middle class with educational ambitions for their children were already vastly overrepresented anyway, so these inspections were really cut in half. Now during this time I was working in the family enterprise and also took further English lessons, privately. And also read, read, read. Then a rather well known German Swiss economic textbook by Wilhelm Repke was popular and I read it. I read it like a novel. I mean I had to read it once and it was in my mind. At the same time I knew that I absolutely was not interested in working down in the workshop [of our family business]. So after.. .that's when I first tried to apply to get into the 12%, I didn't make it but it was possible also to register after a further term. So in the spring term, I registered again. Also some strings were pulled. We had some connections with the Hungarian developer in the concept of the gross national product, a professor of economics, whose son later became a quite famous economist in the United States, and I got in. But by that time, things were.. .this was during the time when the formal occupation of Hungary was and you had to wear the star. ...Now by that time of course among university students, anti-Semitism was very much alive but well before finishing my first term exams, I was called up with all my age group for forced labour in the Armed Forces. (Jozsef, Hungarian, M, 81)
From 1944-1945, during the Nazis occupation of Hungary, Zsuzsanna and Jozsef were separated. Zsuzsanna and her mother were forced into a ghetto where Zsuzsanna passed the time of day by collecting the children living in the same building and
"teaching" them with whatever few books she could find in the ghetto. A teenager then, she felt this activity was something she did more to pass the time than to seriously fill the void undoubtedly felt by all the children by the loss of school in their lives. Within a year and the formal end of the war in 1945, however, Zsuzsanna was back in school completing high school. 123
Jozsef, then an able-bodied young man, and his father were deported first to a forced labour camp and then to the Bergen Belsen concentration camp. As with Hanna,
Jozsef spoke about how his ability to get lost in a book helped him to survive this difficult year, "I'm not a liberal arts person..., but I love literature. Literature in a sense helped me a lot. I read Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain the first time when we were in the concentration camp."
On the whole, the story of learning as woven together by these four participants is one of Holocaust survival, which is not dominant in the literature or the history books.
Their stories show how some Jewish children in ghettos and in hiding were encouraged to continue trying to learn in non-formal ways and survived by attempts made to normalize their daily routine through the insertion of structured learning time. Nevertheless, the binding factor in these stories is the fact that they managed to stay outside of the concentration camps for much of the war and came from families with a strong interest in their learning activities. At the same time, even the stories of those living in Hungary, suggest an ongoing curriculum assaulting identity and leading to identity alteration in the years leading up to their ghettoization and subsequent hiding, which pegged them as being different and discriminated against on the basis of religion regardless of the strength of their convictions.
German Children's Memories
Germany during the war was in a completely different political position compared to the other states mentioned in this case study in that Germany was one of the key 124 instigating nations of the war and spent much of this time period alternating between aggressor and defender. Nevertheless, the memories of the three German participants of their schooling during the height of the war are interesting in the level of similarity and difference from the experiences of other participants. Even between the three German participants' stories there is wide variation of opinion and experience brought on perhaps by indicators of geography, gender, age, and social background. As with the other participants in the study, the extremely small sample size of participants suggests that the findings provide a rich description of a limited viewpoint of learning during the war rather than a comprehensive suggestion of the community's experience. Because the
German participants were at different stages of schooling, it is perhaps more productive in the context of this chapter to focus directly on how the war affected their schooling in terms of curriculum, structure, and involvement.
The youngest of the three German participants, Ingrid (F, 72), was just starting school in 1939. The oldest daughter of a factory worker and a housewife, she was growing up in a coastal port city that would be bombed heavily by the Allied forces during the height of the war. This had profound affects on her schooling experiences and her overall wartime experiences.
The first 6 months were very, um, smooth because you know there was no war and then in September when the War started, the first year was not too bad because, um, yes we had air raids but they were mainly at night and not too many and so the first year went very smooth. The second year started, um... when I was in grade two my dad didn't want us to be there because, um, we had shipyards and everything and mother and... especially if you had more than one or two children you were allowed to be evacuated. And my dad of course, he had to stay there. 125
And so my Mum and my three younger - my two sisters and my brother - they, were in one province because none of them went to school the little ones. And since I was in grade two, I, um, was our class was shipped inside in the middle of Germany. (Ingrid, German, F, 72)
Ingrid was in fact evacuated twice from her hometown - once for a year and the second time for about two and a half months - to two different locations. Ingrid's memories of her life as a seven and nine year old fostered out to other families and enduring school in different provinces provides insight into the differences in schooling within a single country as well as into some of the responses of countries at war to civilian educational and security challenges.
So we were all arriving there and we were in a school and the people came and we had foster parents. And the ones I was supposed to have, there was a sickness in the family, so I got somebody else. But, I must say they were very nice to me. The worst was to go to school the first year. And they spoke with... well, we all had High German in school, but they spoke a dialect. And, so, they were making fun of us because we spoke different than they did and so on. You know. And that was when I was introduced to, um, sitting according to your knowledge - your learning abilities. And of course, our group from another city we were sitting in the front at first, but it didn't take me long and I was in the back, (laughs) Because I didn't want to be in the front and I was always very good. It was a little bit different there, because, um they had ... the textbooks were not the same and .. .um well, we had a few more things, we even had sports there, which we didn't have at first. So, you know... And I can only say, it was a good experience for me. I was homesick at times, but the teachers were nice to us and you get used to your foster parents. And I was spoiled because they only had two boys and they were already teenagers and so, I was seven years old, and so I had a good life there. Better than my parents could give me at that time, you know. So, I was there for a little bit over a year and then my Mum wanted to go back because she 126
didn't want to be separated from my Dad. And so we moved back to, um, my dad went and brought us all back. (Ingrid, German, F, 72)
Then [in the next year] we went near the Polish border, [my father] had cousins living there. That was a disaster because that part of Germany sometimes they were Polish and sometimes they were German and they spoke mainly Polish at home. So when I got there, at the time I was in grade three, and they only learned the basic German. And that was what we had in Grade one and two. So we were there for ten weeks and then Mum said, "We are going home again." So, we went home again and I went to school again there and it went fine. And then my Dad died14. It was in 1942 in December. So my foster parents where I was before asked my Mum, because she had a hard time, if I wanted to come back. So I went back and had grade four there again, you know. Then all of a sudden, I wanted to be with my Mum. So I went back home. (Ingrid, German, F, 72)
The cycle of evacuation continued until the end of the war with Ingrid spending time at home with her mother and going to school whenever bombing raids permitted and being evacuated to safer areas. Her description of how school was "taught" during the last half of the war is particularly interesting as it suggests that schools must adapt rapidly to change in order to remain opened.
I went to school, but at that time the war was a little bit more severe and so on. We had to go for a shelter every night. Sometimes the teacher used to explain the work to us and so on and then we were on our own and had to do it at home alone. From then on it was mainly the basics. And then they closed all schools. I started grade five. Then what they did was send us to another part of Germany near the Dutch border. We were in the country. We went by classroom, so I went with all the people in grade five, actually five and six. So, it was a very small village. And they had two classrooms and now they had to share the two
14 Her father died of natural causes unrelated to the war. classrooms with our group - they were in one classroom and we were in the other, so there was a lot of friction. Because, you know, they were from the country and we were from the city and they always called us the city kids, and, you know! I was there for almost a year. By that time it was close to the end of the war, and everybody knew it, you know. And they wanted to keep the families together again, so I went back home, but we didn't have a lot of school then. At that time I was in grade six?... yeah, sat in grade six. So we just went and the teacher would tell us, explain to us what we had to do in arithmetic and stuff like this, and we would come home and do what we could. People who didn't like to work, they were out of luck. But, I always liked schoolwork so I was doing fine. (Ingrid, German, F, 72)
The wartime schooling experiences of Horst (German, M, 78) were unlike
Ingrid's because of his age, gender, and geographic location. 1939 was his first year of high school and although he avoided joining the Hitler Youth, his all-boys school was eventually closed and all the students and teachers were sent into the Luftwaffenhaufer — or anti-aircraft gun support system. While there was some attempt to continue to provide classes for the boys, many subjects were dropped and the methods of learning, as well as the expectations, were shortened and difficult to maintain. For Horst, then, the height of the war was primarily about defense and survival in a very real sense of the terms.
I started in high school at the end of 1938, beginning of 1939, and stayed in high school until 1944. Now the war had an impact on our school because by 1943 , we were drafted and went into the Army and that was just what they called Luftwaffenhaufer but it was anti-aircraft forces at the time. Then the teachers came out to our position there but that meant that there was some decline in the
15 This occurred a year earlier, 1942, in the area of Germany where the third German participant (Brigitte,F,78) lived. intensity of teaching. For example, I don't believe we still we had any Greek left; there was no Greek. (Horst, German, M, 78) While Horst's brother was able to take "a watered down version" of the final high school exam prior to his military draft, Horst was forced to leave school altogether without taking the exam.
As non-Jews, the anti-Semitic policies and Holocaust did not directly reach these three participants. Neither Brigitte nor Horst had any particular memories to share of being aware of them. However, Ingrid remembered it affecting her life both in how she had to behave in school and in general.
You were not allowed to express your own opinion and we had to be very careful what you said because, um, that was, at that time a no-no. If you said too much, I mean as a kid they could not really do anything to you, but if I were to say, "well my dad said so & so,..." I could have gotten him into big trouble, you know. ... My first experience was prior to school. Mum and I went to do some shopping. And we wanted to visit my grandma. That was prior to the war, actually - a year before the war started16. There was a fire and they blocked the street off. We had to wait awhile. They put a Jewish synagogue on fire. I was five years old and was very nosy. I asked my Mum, "why did they set it on fire?" And she said to me, "Be quiet. Be quiet." Later on, I learned that it was a political thing, but my Mum afterwards said to me, "don't ever ask me anything in public." I mean, when you're five years old, what do you know? I remember that as clear as can be. I didn't know why Mum didn't want me to ask. (Ingrid, German, F, 72)
The height of the war seems to have deeply affected these German children and their opportunities to access formal learning. While their in-classroom experiences of
161938. 129 method, routine, and expectations were not much different from their Eastern European counterparts in terms of strictness, homework, curriculum subjects, and daily routine, the war meant constant interruptions due to bombardment, increasing towards the 1945, school closures, shortened school days, evacuation and self-taught learning with minimal instruction. While some of these affected the Eastern European participants at different stages of the war, they did not experience these changes as constantly or consistently during 1939-45 as the German participants did.
Conclusion
Unlike today's protracted simmering conflicts in the developing world which last decades, World War II was one of the last wars in which only one specific period can be classified as being "the height" of the war. The sixteen participants whose oral histories constitute the core for this case study were able to provide a broad image of learning experiences during 1939-1945, or the height of World War II in the European theatre.
This group of memories is highlighted not as much by the inevitable gaps and shortcomings of formal schooling in war environments, but by the determination and abilities of participants to continue learning in adapted formal and non-formal environments. Among the most powerful memories are the simple descriptions of school routines and classroom curricula. Other interesting aspects of this part of the learning history include those factors directly related to the war context including: the affects of the extreme political situation on Jewish and non-Jewish children and youths, the extremes to which occupied communities went in order to protect their youths from being drafted into the Soviet or German armies, changes in school routines to adapt to frequent nighttime bombing raids and violence, changes in the curricula due to political changes 130 and occupations, and the underground activities of some adolescent boys using the school system as a rallying point serve to highlight the complex role educational institutions play during a complex conflict. These key observations will be picked up again in chapters six and eleven as they are compared first to learning in the post-June 1945 period of World
War II and then later to learning in Afghanistan. Chapter 5:
1945-1952:
Learning Immediately "Post-War"
Following the cessation of major military operations in June 1945, Eastern Europe and Germany were occupied by a coalition of allies - Britain, the United States, and the
Soviet Union - and divided into zones of occupation. Participants from Baltic States had fled their homes in 1944 for the most part and found themselves either in displaced person camps (DP camps) in the Western part of Germany in American or British zones or in American occupied Austria. All three German participants were also in the
American or British zones. Hatelka from Hungary also found herself in Austria. Initially, the remaining participants from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary stayed in their home countries, which were in the Soviet zone during this time period. Hence, participants' oral histories significantly bifurcate after June 1945. First there are the memories of those living in the American and British zones, which seem roughly similar in terms of structures, community-based schooling, access to tertiary learning, and living conditions for the displaced contrasted with the experiences of German nationals living in the same zones whose schools continued to lack resources and support. The second set of memories centres around those in the Soviet zone, a zone in which hostility and repression became a political norm slowly reaching a crescendo in the early 1950s (Amis,
2002). Participants who spent some time in the "Eastern Zone", those parts occupied by the Soviet Union, experienced the rapid sovietization of their indigenous learning systems which lead several to consider leaving. Ultimately memories of learning in this era reflect largely happy experiences, which, while not without challenges, seem to have provided
131 132 participants, their families, and their communities with a focal point around which they established a semblance of normalcy in an otherwise disparate post-war period.
This chapter is therefore divided into two sections: memories of learning in the
British and American zones and memories of learning in the Soviet zone. The former section is further divided between Eastern European displaced persons (DPs) and
Germans. Unlike refugees of more recent protracted emergencies, most of these participants spent three years or less in the DP camps. Therefore, memories of learning in the DP camps are not as rich or as in depth as the memories of forced migrants who spend a decade or more in a refugee camp or host-country urban area.
Learning in the British and American Zones
For participants' living in the "Western zone" of Europe, those parts occupied by the United States and Britain, the organization of learning came under the auspices of the
UNRRA - the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration17. Perhaps the earliest of United Nations' emergency or humanitarian agencies, UNRRA practice in formal education within the DP camps became the model for refugee camps and UN policy (UNHCR, 2002), which remains in place today. As such, participants' descriptions of their learning lives in this section are critical for anyone who wants to examine refugee education policy and practice.
17 For further information on the background to the UNRRA see: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId= 10005685 and http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1943/431109a.html 133
Primary and Secondary Learning in the DP Camps of Germany
Four of the participants attended primary or secondary education in different DP camps spread throughout Germany: Veronika (F, 68), Jonas (M, 77), Vytautas (M, 83)
(all Lithuanians), and Georgs (M, 68), who is Latvian. Veronika and Georgs completed primary and then began secondary school while Jonas and Vytautas completed their secondary education.
In terms of the basic set up of formal schooling, Veronika explains the system well.
We were in northern Germany, so we were in the British sector. And they registered all refugees who wanted to participate. So we packed up and went to a city called Liibeck. There in the camps, which were in a former military barracks, 1 8 various schools were set up. And they were set up according to nationalities . So, I went to the Lithuanian school. They had grade school and high school. You have to realize that among the refugees there were very many educated people: farmers, labourers, people in the education profession and so on, so there was no problem getting teachers. Now all of these camps were under the UN charter and all the people who worked as teachers and doctors and whatever, were paid by the UN. Ok? And certainly our schools were set up according to the, um, syllabus that they had in Lithuania. And of course we all took English, because it was everyone's intention to leave Germany and relocated (sic.) to somewhere in North America. (Veronika, Lithuanian, F, 68)
Veronika's information about the basic system is informed in part through the experiences of her parents who were teachers in the system. However, statements made
18 In fact, Veronika and Georgs both spent time in the Liibeck DP camp but being of different nationality it is unlikely that they have ever met. Certainly, the way the researcher came across the two of them suggests that they do not know one another. 134
by other participants and by several Internet sources19 support her description of the
structure of learning in the DP camps. Georgs' statements about the structure of the
Latvian school within the Liibeck camp are particularly instructive.
The camp was for the Baltic refugees, people from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia but it was organized in a way where each nationality had its own school program and so on, administration and its own group of mixing together yet in the big playground, the kids from all three Baltic countries would intermingle but when it came to school, it was purely a Latvian school so that was my school experience. Again I can't even remember which grade I went into but from about 1946 to 1948,1 was in one school setting. (Georgs, Latvian, M, 68)
In spite of attending separate schools in the same DP camp, Georgs' and
Veronika's memories of their classroom lives were similar and reminiscent of the routine
and life of classrooms described earlier in the study.
The classroom was a large hall and I remember certainly the typical school desks with a slightly tilted wooden top and these rod iron sides and you could put your stuff underneath on a shelf and an ink well, which in those days we used ink and blotter and so on. I remember my desk and I remember some of my classmates there.. .it was a bit like a country school in Canada where you have two or three grades in the same general large room. The room was very adequate and I remember the blackboard. Oh yes, I remember the school supplies because these were given, little notebooks where you wrote your school assignments in and stuff and all the pencils and this was just sort of wonderful to have these supplies which we hadn't had previously because in the German school , there were no supplies available so there was nothing to write on etc. in the chaotic years but
19 http://www.dp-camp-wildflecken.de/schools-in-dp-camps.htm & http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/dp/camp 1 .htm 20 Although he did not have detailed memories of it, Georgs attended a German school briefly, "for about a year", upon arriving in Germany from Latvia during the final year of the war and before his family moved to the DP Camp. 135
here they were imported by UNRRA. UNRRA was the one's that supplied us with stuff and for school it supplied all the paper and the pencils and so on and as a kid I remember being thrilled about having things that I could use and the availability of that and even remember stealing a couple of books, these little booklets to bring home to show to my sister. (Georgs, Latvian, M, 68)
Veronika remembered that, in spite of UNRRA supplies, her school lacked proper textbooks, so teachers were required to use whatever books they had brought with them in order to engage in the Lithuanian curriculum. As a result, many of her classes were taught through the dictation method described earlier by Ingrid (German, F, 72), which required learners to take dictation of the text and then learn the lessons on their own and respond to questions the next day. For Veronika in particular this was a challenge because her parents had also enrolled her in multiple private lessons after school hours in
German, ballet, and piano in addition to the Girl Guides/Brownies.
I had a lot of homework from my high school for starters . And then I remember coming home, when we still lived outside of the Messen Kazerne, and after the war they were saving electricity and they would turn it off from seven to ten at night and I was always doing some homework by candlelight. I had one of these lantern things. And it was cold as there wasn't much heating. We had to wear our coats to keep warm. (Veronika, Lithuanian, F, 68) Veronika's memories in this regard suggest that in spite of the support of UNRRA, the teaching methods remained limited by the lack of textbook resources and the general school experience reflected the experiences she had grown accustomed to during the war itself.
21 During her time in Ltibeck, Veronika began high school since the Lithuanian school system had been four years of primary and so she would have begun high school around age ten. While Veronika had little to say about her teachers per se, perhaps because she liked them or perhaps because she seemed to be related to a number of them and was therefore too close to them, Georgs related a story about one of his which shows the rebelliousness of children could not be dampened by a lack of resources and war experiences.
99 We all remembered one incident where we had a particularly disliked male teacher who was very rigid and one of the braver kids in our class, a boy from the back, crawled under all the desks and tied the teacher's legs to the table which was a memorable event; everybody remembers that. Fortunately, [the teacher] didn't topple but he was tied to the desk quite firmly and very angry and very embarrassed and I guess it gratified us, his embarrassment. The whole class was punished, because obviously he didn't go into the witch-hunt, which would have been impossible because we were a very solid group of mutineers. And I think we had to spend several hours after school just sitting and doing homework and then even the idea of doing some community work.. .we had to pick up all the garbage in the camp for a week or so. So that was serious punishment. (Georgs, Latvian, M,68)
One of the more unique opportunities that the DP camp life allowed younger children was the opportunity to participate in community events including Christmas and
Easter pageants, the Girl Guides and Boy Scouts. These activities, which were particularly remembered by Veronika, and of which she shared some photos, involved teachers and other camp leaders in their organization and implementation. These events provided the community with an opportunity to celebrate important events, occupy the
The "We" the referred to here are his classmates and discussion they had when they held a reunion in adulthood. 137 children's time during holidays, teach other skills, and to distribute special aid like toys, clothes, and treats like chocolate in a more interesting way.
Jonas and Vytautas also lived in DP camps, but in another part of Germany from where Veronika and Georgs lived. Their experiences of education in the DP camps relates largely to high school, from which both participants graduated during their time in the camps. As with the primary schools, the secondary schools also sought to teach the
Lithuanian curriculum supplemented by English classes, which was not part of the pre-' war curriculum. Unlike secondary school in Lithuania, these schools did not have a fee system. This provided an opportunity for many more people to attend high school.
Vytautas' school was particularly interesting because it seemed to be partially residential so that Lithuanians could be brought from smaller camps and taught in one larger school.
One building was assigned at a particular camp... Before it was a prisoner jail and the prisoners were more or less pushed in their own department. They were like one large establishment I would say and in that particular, one separate building which had a dormitory at the same time like when I was [attending the residential High School] they had dormitories where students lived and there were first and second stories which were for those attending classes. So I remember I lived not in that particular building but I lived with my brother separately at the camp and attended classes there. The ones who lived there, there were restrictions. They had to be home by 10 o'clock, couldn't go out without letting them know where they were going and it was organized like that almost with supervision because some of the children came over, like students for high school, came over from other camps and the parents entrusted them so they had to be more or less supervised 138
and looked after so the parents could be assured the students are not running around. (Vytautas, Lithuanian, M, 83)
Jonas remembered the formal subject matter to be the same as what he had in
Lithuania, with the exception of English and some limited French.
[The curriculum] was the same as it was in Lithuania in 1939. English was added, yes. But the problem was it was difficult to find an English teacher so I had only one term of English and one term of French but they had a full two years of Latin and a full two years of German and, of course, Lithuanian language and literature. ... science, history, geography, languages as I mentioned before, sociology, chemistry. This was my worse subject, chemistry. I didn't like it. Religion, introduction to philosophy, political science. (Jonas, Lithuanian, M, 77)
Moreover, Jonas had a particular set of memories relating to textbooks and other resources that corroborates with the limitations Veronika remembered.
No, it was all theory. The problem was with books; there were hardly any textbooks so in some subjects we had German textbooks like science. But in most subjects the teacher was giving a lecture and the students had to write down as much as possible so this was a time when most of us ruined our handwriting because you are going particularly fast and it wasn't the best. The first month of high school, my class was in the garage with no windows and there was maybe two 25-Watt bulbs burning and we had no tables or chairs. There was nothing at all. The blackboard was a piece of cardboard and the teacher had a table and what the students were sitting on were gasoline cans, you know the flat ones. So we were sitting on the gasoline cans and my paper was here [on my lap] and my pencil was here and I was writing.... Every so often one of the students would lose his balance and fall over on his neighbour and they would fall down on the floor. I remember it was fun; at the time it was fun. Then we moved to another classroom, a decent classroom but no benches so we got some pews from the 139
church. There was enough for all the classes. In some classes the tables were made out of planks, which were not finished, and we were sitting on them so we used to get wood under your skin, you know? (Jonas, Lithuanian, M, 77)
In spite of being in DP camps, Jonas and Vytautas remembered having a graduation ceremony of sorts, but could not give details. The DP camp high school certificates proved to be useful in later years in Canada when both participants had their
UNRPvA certificates accepted at par enabling them to enter university in Canada rather than having to obtain Canadian high school certificates.
Finally, community activities were similarly important to the camp life of youths, perhaps as much as they were to younger children. Jonas, Vytautas, and their slightly older compatriots who were post-secondary school age remembered many organized activities including dances, concerts, and newspapers put together by the refugees for other refugees. Jonas was particularly involved in an orchestra and toured other DP camps playing.
On the whole, the learning and community-building culture in the DP camps in
Germany seems to have been rich, community-led and run with the support of UNRRA officials and resources where need be. Although resource issues existed, particularly relating to textbooks, desks, and stationery, the learners of all ages seemed to hold strong largely positive memories of their DP camp lives. However, compared with learning during the war, these resource issues and inconsistencies were not new to many of them.
On the whole, the shared memories and enthusiasm with which participants spoke of their time in Germany's DP camps suggest that these were happy times in spite of the uncertainty facing their future status.
DPs' Post-secondary Learning in Germany and Austria
Four of the participants undertook some form of post-secondary learning while
living as DPs in Germany or Austria. Jonas (Lithuanian, M, 77) and Gediminas
(Lithuanian, M, 83) both took part of a degree in Germany. Audra (Lithuanian, F, 82)
began a degree in Innsbruck, Austria. Rimute (Lithuanian, F, 83) completed a medical
degree at the university in Innsbruck, Austria. What is interesting about these memories
is the relative level of pride and enthusiasm displayed in the tone of Audra's and
Rimute's memories, similar in a general way to what one hears in the voices of any university student in a non-war situation. This set of memories focuses often on friends,
community, and fun on limited resources. Their memories are also of significance when
one considers that other participants of the same age group - Vaclav (Czech, M, 79) and
Hatelka (Hungarian, F, 77) particularly - did not participate in this system or post-
secondary learning and presented more fearful memories of their DP experiences.
Unlike DP Camp-based schooling, tuition was demanded of the DP university
students. While, Audra, Rimute, and Gediminas thought that tuition was somehow paid
for by funding they received from UNRRA or other agencies, Jonas' brief appearance in
a seminary nearby his DP camp was cut short due to an inability to pay tuition.
In a nearby town was a priests' seminary. There was a philosophical, theological school ...so it had university status. So after I graduated high school, I went there to lectures for cultural history, which was very interesting to me, and some kind 141
of law. So for about two or three months I attended and then I was given notice that it's time to pay and we had no money to pay so I had to drop it. (Jonas, Lithuanian, M, 77)
While Jonas and Gediminas continued to live in the DP Camps, there were no camps in Innsbruck so students were forced to find alternative arrangements.
Innsbruck was bombed several times during the war. .. .Innsbruck is in the Mountains, and, ah, just from the city there was a streetcar going up the mountains, just a little bit. And there was this plateau and there were a hotel. Three story hotel. And when the war was going on, actually, in that area in Innsbruck in Austria, came French troops. French Army. And at one point, they took that hotel and all ... and sort of lived there. And they ruined it. So, when the war was over, just by accident somebody find out, went to the hotel. Because it was this beautiful place. It was a nice hotel and beside it was a nice lake. It was a very pretty place. One of the students went there thinking that maybe it was five, six, seven KM from the city, so it would be cheaper to live. But the owner said, "Look, some of the windows are broken. There is no heat. There is..." Ah, it looked terrible, you know. But the owner said, "Well, if you want in this condition, LIVE!" They charged very little for that. The word spread and in Innsbruck there were about 100 Lithuanian students. I don't know how many but about 40, everybody, came to that hotel. We had a great time. (Rimute, Lithuanian, F, 83)
The participants undertook a variety of programs at these universities. Jonas
i studied cultural history; Gediminas was admitted to study medicine but switched to history; Rimute completed her medical degree; and Audra intended to study medicine and upgrade herself from a nurse to a doctor, but due to limited spaces she ended up studying philosophy. Each of the participants had something interesting to say about the 142 atmosphere and resources available to them as DPs and as students at that time which suggest overcrowded conditions, lack of learning resources and practical opportunities to train, and other qualitative concerns relating to the experience.
Because in those days, that year, I have to admit was not the very best year as far as studying was concerned, because the university was overcrowded so many refugees from all different countries also the boys from Austria which were enrolled in, in, in army, they all came back. And so there was too many students and in the final year of medicine of course you usually get some practice working a little bit in hospitals, right, but because of the too many students we really didn't get much of, of opportunity to work in the hospital, because you know small, we, we, we were divided in small groups but there were so many groups that maybe only once, once a month, or once in two we just got to hospital to look around. Well anyway I passed my exams and got my degree. Then I had nothing to do, so I thought, "oh well maybe I'll can work as an internsh, an intern", you know. But they had a law that if you weren't an Austrian citizen, you couldn't practice or couldn't do anything. So, in the meantime I got married. (Rimute, Lithuanian, F, 83)
The professors were quite old; younger ones were taken to the war you know, probably died in the war and the atmosphere was different then university here. .. .See over there they have long traditions. The way certain things got done was not done. For example, students if they disagreed with something the professor was mentioning, it depended on how strong the disagreement was. If it was a slight disagreement, they would go over it with pencils on the table. If it was a serious disagreement, they would go on the floor with their shoes and make this sound. Oral examinations were very popular not only in high schools but also in universities. You would go to a professor's office and he would have a conversation with you. That was part of the examination which here in Canada they don't have here at all. It was all written. (Jonas, Lithuanian, M, 77) 143
It's a German university. I mean there was also a Lithuanian so-called "university", quotation marks, organized and so on. And people went to study there but I said, "That's nonsense. If you are in Germany, study what the German universities teach", and so on. And so I ended up there. I studied history, but you know, as they say, that helped me eventually quite a bit. ... [My relationship with the German students was] sort of distant, up to a point. Because first of all we had our own interests and so on. We had our organizations. For instance, I belonged to the Catholic student organization, so-called Ateitininkai which is, to correlate your studies in science, religion and so on, and things of this nature. You see, so we used to organize the gatherings in very nice plush locations, like in the mountains, or somewhere and so on. And everything we added, plus we studied. And we knew secondly that there co-relations with the Germans, it didn't matter they knew most of us would emigrate. (Gediminas, Lithuanian, M, 80)
In spite of participants' apparent enthusiasm for the access they had to post- secondary opportunities, only Rimute was able to graduate from her program as resettlement and the desire for a permanent solution to their poor living conditions and uncertain status seemed to take priority in the end. Nevertheless, these memories of apparently abundant post-secondary education opportunities are important in the overall sense of learning in diaspora or refugee conditions as few of today's refugees have adequate access to tertiary learning, as the Afghan experiences in the next section show.
Concerted attempts to ensure access to all levels of education for refugees of all backgrounds seems to have been an important part of the World War II DP history.
Ateitininkai is a right wing Lithuanian Catholic youth organisation branches of which were also established in Lithuanian communities in North America. German Memories
For the three German participants, the immediate post-war years were years of ongoing hardship particularly hardship in attending school. Collectively their memories flowed from the final chaotic years of the war, where they hardly attended school, to a world of allied occupation where restarting their educational opportunities did not appear to be a high priority in all areas or all cases. As such, in the first few years following the cessation of violence, school remained sporadic and sometimes non-existent.
Horst in particular remembered, "I was drafted and taken out of school in 1944 which was the end of my schooling. So from 1944 to 1947, there was no school for anybody. Mind you there was vocational training and the middle school, since they were shorter, they could still complete." Brigitte (F, 78), who was not in either vocational or middle school at the time, was able to return to school as early as 1945. However, the younger Ingrid (F, 72) was only able to continue in school 1945-7 in a similar manner as she had been for several years before ~ attending school for a few hours to get assignments and hand in homework or take tests and then working at home on her own.
This went on until actually grade seven and eight, because when the war was over the [Canadian, then the British and finally the American] armies occupied our schools. So we had one room there again. We went in and just got the basics and went home. So you can imagine what our schooling was like. ... But [even when the armies] moved out and, you know, they gave us our school back, but at that time we never had more than two hours schooling, because it was cold and we didn't have anything to heat the school. (Ingrid, German, F, 72). 145
Unlike the DP participants, the German participants were unable to remember having supplies, resources, or other assistance given to their schools or to them personally. In the end, this forced Ingrid, who came from a relatively poor family to begin with, to leave school after completing grade eight.
I went up to grade eight. Actually, in Germany if you qualify, after Grade five you can go to middle school. You can go there until you're sixteen, but, well, I wanted to do that. I passed the test and everything, but you had to pay for it yourself and my Mum didn't have the money. So I couldn't do that, so I only went to grade eight. That was my education. That was in '47 that I graduated from grade eight. Then you couldn't find a job, so I went into a factory to work. (Ingrid, German, F, 72) Shortly thereafter, Ingrid began studying business administration in night school for two years, but after she got married she began to study English in preparation to emigrate since her husband no longer wished to live in Europe after his own wartime experiences.
Horst (M, 78) and Brigitte (F, 78), however, were shortly able to return to fairly well functioning schools and to complete their studies. Horst found the prospect of completing his formal academic education daunting and so he enrolled in a practical trade college where he could study agriculture and learn farming. Brigitte, meanwhile, enrolled in nursing school and like Audra had done earlier in Lithuania, lived in a residence for female nursing students.
In spite of the relative lack of support the schools of the German participants seem to have received from the allies - at least according to the struggles they faced with heat, electricity, and resources - around 1950 Horst eventually heard about and applied for an 146
exchange program which took him to the United States to work on a farm for a year. This
experience suggests that some assistance must have been forthcoming for the local
German population in supporting their endeavors to rebuild and to reestablish a learning
system. It was not this exchange program that led to Horst's final emigration, but it was a
step in the process. Initially, however, Horst returned to Germany following his studies in
the United States.
Learning in Soviet Occupied Countries to 1953
Of the four participants who remained in their home countries after 1945, the
opportunity to re-enter the formal education system was at the forefront of their minds.
Hanna's (Polish, F, 76) parents determined that they should remain in Poland until she
completed her secondary schooling. Joszef (Hungarian, M, 81) returned to his interrupted
studies in economics at the university in Budapest. Zsuzsanna (Hungarian, F, 75) finished
high school and began her post-secondary studies in psychology. Vaclav (Czech, M, 79) began studies in agricultural engineering in Prague. Yet in all four cases as the Soviet
structures became entrenched in the region, their backgrounds, war experiences, and
expectations pulled them Westward one-by-one.
Hanna's return to academic studies after four years in hiding provides important
insight into the potential for educational systems to be flexible and understanding of
learning needs post-war. 147
94 For me the war ended approximately in the fall of 1944 when we came back to Warsaw and starting with the New Year, I was enrolled in a high school. So when I went to school again, 1 had missed four years and the director of the school.. .and I have to add another thing that in Poland at that time public schools were co-ed; high schools were separated by gender. So I went to an all girl's high school and the principal of that was also a lady and she persuaded me to go into grade four which would have been chronologically where I should be and she said "if you find it too hard, we can set you back one".
Well, I remember one of the first lessons was geometry. Now it so happened that I didn't take much geometry and I know I really liked it. The homework was assigned, I sort of sat down and figured it out the best I could and it turned out when I brought it to school, because we were always quizzed on our homework the day after, that I and another girl were the only two in the class that got the answer right. She got it right the proper way as you were supposed to proceed in Euclidian geometry and I used whatever wild method I thought would give me an answer so I had great holes in my .. .and after a month or two I decided it was too tough and I asked to be put back into level three. (Hanna, Polish, F, 76)
For Joszef and Zsuzsanna return to school after June 1945 was also based on an end to their persecution as Jews and coincided with the start of the Communist era in
Hungary. For Zsuzsanna this meant going back to her Jewish high school and completing her high school diploma in an atmosphere and situation not unlike what some of the DPs were experiencing in Germany and Austria or what some other participants experienced
during the final years of the war.
Budapest was liberated I think in January 1945 and then the war was over sometime in the spring of 1945 and that fall school started again and there was of
24 This would have been facilitated by the Soviet invasion of Poland pushing the Germans back and ending the persecution of Jews in Poland. 148
course no more German school but the Jewish school was there so some children went to another school, the Hungarian school. I stayed at the Jewish school. I had my friends there; I knew the place; it was very close to where I lived. And then of course there were a lot of school holidays. There was no way to heat the school so in the winter there was no coal and there was no way to heat the school so we didn't go to school. So there was a big pause in my education because of that but we did go back. ... There were kids that I knew and friends of mine so it was all right, as I said. We had many other concerns and because of that I think we didn't focus much on the learning. (Zsuzsanna, Hungarian, F, 75)
Other than the introduction of the English language, Soviet perspectives in history, and Marxism, Zsuzsanna did not remember any significant changes in her school subjects or lifestyle until she wrote the high school exit exam, graduated in 1948 and went on to university. The start of her studies of psychology coincided with a strengthening of Soviet influence in Hungary resulting in an environment in which neither she nor her professors were free to teach or to learn in the way that they wanted.
It had its effect on my university education so the subjects that I wanted to learn and really started there, they became much more suspect of being ideology; you know things like individual psychology or political oriented psychology. My goodness, that was not what a worker's country would want and so there was the thought that these courses are going to be abolished. Also we had to go in early in the morning and shout slogans and communist. It was very much against what I felt was right or .. .it was very much against what I felt that free people in a free country should be doing but the representative of the Communist Party student organization in each year in each course who were almost spying on us and one of these young guys.. .1 still remember his name and how it happened; he came to my house and somebody let him in and I was sitting in the living room reading and the first thing he did was he came and turned the book over to see what I was 149
reading but it was not like being curious, "let me see the book, can I read it?" But, was I reading the right kind of literature or the wrong kind of literature?
Then.one of my.. .1 don't know if he was a lecturer or an assistant professor but someone who had the same interest that I had and he did some work in the summer which was the type of work I was interested in.. .1 don't know if you know about the Rosche Ink Blots. .. .These ink blots, what you see in them you can find out better about the person through that but that of course was not allowed I thought and no where could one get these ink blots so they were a great treasure and one day he came to me and said "look I have this set, do you want it? I could give them to you." And, of course, I happily accepted but I didn't clue in that that night he and his wife escaped from Hungary and it was really wonderful of him that he gave that to me and I still have those ink blots. .. .That was sort of the last straw. I thought, "I have to go too, I can't stay here anymore". (Zsuzsanna, Hungary, F, 75) Zsuzsanna left Hungary shortly thereafter going first to Austria, where she was treated as a DP even though, by definition, she was not one. Eventually, she went to Canada where she had a relative living and later helped her brother and parents emigrate.
Returning from Bergen Belsen concentration camp, Jozsef restarted his university studies in Budapest in the fall of 1945 and found himself at a university, which at the time was prepared to make concessions to help students move rapidly through the system.
In view of the fact that so many young people lost so much time because of the war, the university announced that whoever feels ready for an exam can take the exam anytime. ... We buckled down, at least, myself and my circle of friends. And my memory from that time, well it's not fair to say that it was exclusively a blur of.. .the saying used to be, you are either attending lectures or you are studying for an exam but you can't do both at the same time, unbroken.. .on and 150
on and on.. .the most accelerated way couldn't do it and still have a basic, minimum social life. Yes, I did have a girlfriend. Yes, I did go to the occasional concert, but otherwise it's a complete blur. I cannot tell now which exam I took when. It was an absolute blessing that I did this because I finished in the summer of 1948, which was the year when the Communists took over the university. (Jozsef, Hungarian, M, 81) As with Zsuzsanna's experience, the immediate post-war years provided an opportunity for Jozsef to complete his degree, but the relative freedom that allowed this was curbed after 1948 with increasing sense of repression against nationalists and those whose class background suggested they were part of the bourgeoisie, or upper class. Part of the increasing influence of the Soviet Communists in the Soviet zone - including Hungary,
Czechoslovakia and Poland ~ was to reeducate or expunge society of its "class enemies" thereby resulting in deportations, killings, and labour camps (Amis, 2002). As Jozsef and
Zsuzsanna's family owned a large well known Hungarian business, they were increasingly singled out for attention by Soviet sympathizers. This eventually led to the deportation for Jozsef to a rural village because of his class background from where he eventually escaped to Austria with his parents in the early 1950s.
In Czechoslovakia, the end of the war also allowed Vaclav (M, 77) to enter university in 1945 for a short period of time. However, like Jozsef, Vaclav also found himself increasingly persecuted by the Soviets and Soviet-sympathizing Czechs. Unlike
Jozsef, however, this occurred before Vaclav could complete his degree. Nevertheless, his brief experience at university in the Soviet zone reiterates the experiences of the other participants in terms of memories of overcrowding, resource issues, and changing notions of freedom, politics, and self within a short period of time. 151
Because the universities were closed in 1939 you see, and only people who collaborated got to go to Germany, and there were very few in Czechoslovakia. So it was too many students, and they ... the professors went through that, and I remember one particularly tough one. We were in a [large auditorium] and this chap came in and he was tough character, he taught chemistry. He said, "ladies and gentlemen, look at your neighbor. He won't be here next year." You know, they try to intimidate you. And there were verbal examinations, you know. You had most subjects the marks were verbal, and some were public. (Vaclav, Czech, M,77)
The perspective of these participants suggests a relatively negative opinion of the
increasing influence and activities of Stalin and the Soviets in the region. As all of them
escaped after being persecuted for their class backgrounds, education levels, and political
opinions, it should not be surprising that their stories are similar and that their experiences of school following 1945 suggest initial euphoria followed by increasing hardship, persecution, and fear . Of particular importance to the history of life in the classroom during this time period are the parallels with the resource issues faced by participants already in the West, and the ongoing constraints and adapted teaching and
learning styles. Nevertheless, the uniqueness of life in the Soviet zone - characterized by
increasing repression of thought, speech, and movement in and out of the classroom is of particular historical interest to the rising Cold War context.
Had the participants in this study represented other class backgrounds or economic groups, the oral history perspective given may have been slightly different. However, no such participants came forward over the course of the study. 152
Conclusion
Following the fall of the Nazi government in June 1945 and the occupation of
Germany and Eastern Europe by the allied forces, the learning lives of the participants
changed markedly. The forcibly displaced found themselves either in Germany or
Austria. In the DP camps in Germany adult community members were encouraged and
supported to start primary and secondary schools using the curricula from their home
countries. Displaced youths were given access to tertiary education in German and
Austrian universities. Everywhere in the "Western zone" the national curricula of pre-war
Europe were supplemented with English. In spite of shortages of materials, furniture,
qualified teachers, heat, electricity and buildings, participants seem to have taken up
learning with renewed vigor many of them feeling that this was one of the best periods of
their lives. German participants, on the other hand, similarly experienced shortages in
school supplies and materials and yet did not get the same level of assistance that seems
to have been given to the DPs and indeed did not have the same level of access to
education in the years immediately following the cessation of hostilities. Completely
unique, however, were the learning experiences of those who remained in the Soviet zone
during the 1948-1953 period. Although their schools similarly lacked materials, sufficient
numbers of trained teachers/professors, and buildings, participants in the Eastern bloc jumped into accelerated schooling, which often encouraged them to finish their
unfinished high school and university degrees quickly. Whereas the British and American
zones experienced less direct foreign involvement overtime, in the Soviet zone
Communist Party involvement in the running of learning institutions eventually became
disruptive in the ability of the participants to remain. Overall, post-June 1945 learning 153 seems to have been a time of opportunity for the participants as a whole as they largely attended formal schools without fear of persecution and violence for the first time in six years. Chapter 6:
Synthesis of Learning During World War II
This oral history case study on the learning lives of sixteen Eastern Europeans and
Germans who grew up in the midst of World War II has given considerable insight into the formal educational structures of the day and into the challenges of continuing one's formal education during a war. The previous two chapters sought to present the histories through the presentation of participants' memories of how learning was structured and affected by the war in different temporal phases. This final chapter of the section on
World War II summarizes key issues relating to learning during this war arising out of the transcripts by grouping them under the following categories: adaptation, resilience/tenaciousness, resistance, politicization, and identity. Each of these categories addresses the issues at the levels of the individual (learner) and the organization (school and community) where applicable. This is done by examining the information presented in chapters four and five for commonalities, which may have impact in chapter eleven which compares the two case studies. This chapter organizes and summarizes the information to highlight learning according to the major research directions addressed in this study: curriculum experiences in terms of school or learning environment routine, teaching methods, materials; the affects of war on learning; and the curriculum of survival embedded in the learning.
Maintenance of Learning Across the National Contexts
In the context of World War II, the quality and quantity of the information collected on learning and teaching routines and relationships highlights the importance of gathering oral histories at a time when participants have sharp, clear memories of events.
154 155
The further the distance between the event and the interview, the more difficulty
participants had presenting detailed memories of the school day, the subjects studied, and
in particular teachers. While there was much to draw on about these details in the Afghan
participants' experience, as will be seen in the next section, the World War II participants
were less consistent in their abilities to share details of daily life in school and teachers
making it more difficult to develop a cross-participant, generalized or collective, set of
conclusions. The fact that the World War II participants represented a wide range of
national or state education systems, while the Afghan participants' pre-migration
experience represented a singular system, also contributed to the complexity of this
theme. Nevertheless, a few observations relating to learning and teaching routines and
relationships are suggested in more than one of the World War II histories.
Maintenance of Familiar Learning Curricula
Participants were particularly unable to present too many details of their
classroom lives and routines at all levels of schooling, instead having stronger memories
of the conflict and violence of the war or how war interacted with classroom life itself.
One of the key points that participants who attended primary or secondary school in both
their home context and the DP context related to the replicability of their national
curriculum in the DP context. Although, at the time, there was no longstanding
international organization to coordinate the establishment of formal schooling in the DP
camps, the decision was made to rely on educated refugees to organize and establish
primary and secondary schools based on their native curriculum, employing DPs as
teachers, utilizing whatever books they had available, and supplementing the native
curriculum with (English) language training in preparation of resettlement. Jonas 156
(Lithuanian, M, 77), who was in his final stages of high school and had particularly lucid memories, went so far as to suggest that in his Lithuanian curriculum DP secondary school the pre-1939 formal curriculum was used so as to avoid the politically infused curriculum he experienced during the Soviet and German periods of occupation during the war itself. The exception in the notion of replicability was in post-secondary training and studies, where DP students were placed in local universities and colleges rather than establishing institutions in the DP camps.
For the most part, however, participants suggest that the daily school routine included an early start with an assembly or in-classroom singing of the national anthem, a single teacher in primary school and subject specific teachers in higher levels, classrooms where desks were set in rows of two, strict classroom routines and expectations set by teachers and discussed below, and a school day which ended in early afternoon. In post-
secondary school, the daily routine was less formal focusing on set formal curriculum, lecturing, practical training in technical schools, and a more social atmosphere.
The Roles of Teachers and Mentors in the Classroom
While World War II participants were unable to remember their teachers in strong
detail, a number of their memories provided insight into teacher practice and teacher-
student relationships at the time. The key crosscutting issue on teachers, which also has
some implications for classroom learning routines, relates to participants' memories of
strict discipline and corporal punishment across the various nationalities in this study. At
all levels of schooling discussed by the participants, learners sat at desks arranged in rows
facing the front of the room, raised hands to indicate a desire to speak, stood to answer 157 questions, were arranged in strict order by marks or name, and in their opinions had a lot of homework to do. These issues were brought out prominently in chapters four and five and will again be discussed in comparison to the Afghan context in chapter eleven and therefore will not be elaborated on more here.
A second notable outcome of the study relates to teacher's relationships with their students during times of war inside and outside of the classroom. Teachers continued to be facilitators of learning and were largely responsible for the adaptations to the learning process and routine discussed in the next two sections of this chapter. Jewish participants related how some teachers found ways to save, hide, and support persecuted friends and families. Lithuanian male participants spoke at length about how their teachers helped to warn them about possible Nazi round-ups of Lithuanian teens to fight in the army. As such, these stories indicate the complexities of learners' relationships with their teachers whose classroom conduct was most strongly remembered for being strict disciplinarians implementing a politicized formal curriculum in slightly negative tones. Outside of the school context, some teachers were involved in ensuring the survival of their students and students' families while sometimes being persecuted by authorities themselves.
Adaptation
Adaptation, or the ways in which individuals and learning environments changed in order to adjust to the uncertainties of the war context, is one theme which rises again and again while reading chapters four and five. The constant need to alter the ways in which learning could be facilitated within the war zone and in the immediate post-war years in the DP camps is one of the more noteworthy outcomes of listening to these oral 158 histories. This section summarizes key adaptive strategies used on all levels: individual, school, and community by focusing specifically on changes in school routines and learning methods. The violence of the war brought about the adaptation of school schedules, teaching and learning methods, which provide an important basis for comparison with the Afghan case study covered in the next section. The main methods used to adapt to shorter school days, school closures, and resource challenges are perhaps best described as guided self-learning, dictation/notation method, and non-formal self- learning.
Guided self-learning was described at some length by Ingrid (German, F, 72) who hails from a German coastal city which was heavily bombed during the war. However, elements of this routine were also discussed by Veronika (Lithuanian, F, 68), Vytautas
(Lithuanian, M, 83), Horst (German, M, 78), and Vaclav (Czech, M, 79). On many days these participants described going to school only for a few hours, if at all, where teachers would take in assignments, give out new homework assignments for several days, perhaps give a short oral quiz and answer questions. During this time pupils spent no more than a few hours at a time physically in school and the role of the teacher was paired down into being that of a guide with very little actual "teaching" taking place. The learning was done alone or with siblings and friends at home or in bomb-shelters. Hence the teacher acted as a facilitator and the students had to find ways to learn the majority of the material on their own. 159
The dictation/notation method was used as a way to address materials deficit issues both during and after the war. In this method, class time was spent with teachers reading (dictating) a textbook lesson or chapter word-for-word and the learners writing it down (noting) in their notebooks. Students would then take their notebooks home and try to learn the lesson by heart and do homework assignments based on it. Teachers would then orally drill or test the class at the next meeting to check learning or memorization before starting the next dictation. Dictation/notation method was cited by a variety of participants including Lithuanians, Germans, and Hungarians both during the war and in the aftermath.
It was primarily Jewish participants who lived in ghettos or in hiding in Poland and Hungary who experienced different forms of non-formal learning. Hanna (Polish, F,
76) spoke about her experiences of private tuition in the Warsaw ghetto, which were supplemented by her father also taking on a teaching role at home. Zsuzsanna
(Hungarian, F, 75) took on a role of playing tutor or teacher to younger children living in the same building as she in the Budapest ghetto but saw this more as a game rather than do anything consciously organized. While in hiding later, Hanna also spoke about reading whatever books she could find in the safe houses to devour. Joszef also used reading to help him take the focus off the difficult situations he faced during his brief stints in a forced labour camp and later a concentration camp. As the situations became more grave, it seems that learning became more informal and that the tools or skills learnt previously
- particularly literacy - became a source of mental exercise, preoccupation, and escape from the severe challenges of participants' realities. 160
Gediminas (Lithuanian, M, 80), Jonas (Lithuanian, M, 77), and Rimute
(Lithuanian, F, 83) spoke of informal learning-through-work experiences late in the war when, having left Lithuania, they worked as farm and dairy labour in Germany. As forced migrants who had landed in Germany, the Germans assigned them to places where they could do the work their own young men could not do as they were in the army.
Gediminas worked in a dairy making cheese and later worked on a dairy farm. Rimute worked on a farm helping with the harvest. Jonas worked on a farm for almost a year.
Veronika (Lithuanian, F, 68) also spoke of her parents doing farm work in Germany.
None of the these people had much training in agriculture or farming, but had to learn
"on the job". They remembered receiving instruction and advice from the farmers and farmers' families. The skills each of these participants took on during these work experiences were more for the purpose of survival.
One of the more interesting observations about these adapted school routines and learning practices was the way in which they continued to be used in the immediate post war years inside and outside of DP Camps. Ingrid (German, F, 75) spoke of how her school continued to meet for only a few hours a day and to use dictation/notation for several years while Horst (German, M, 78) spoke of how his school remained closed for at least a year after June, 1945. In the DP Camps, Jonas (Lithuanian, M, 77) and
Veronika (Lithuanian, F, 68) spoke of resource issues leading to dictation/notation of textbooks, the use of cooking oil cans for chairs, electricity cuts, fuel shortages, and other items hindering the delivery of a regular pre-war school day. These methods were also 161 used in the Soviet-occupied zone where schools were immediately reopened and where materials, fuel for heating schools, and teachers were also in short supply.
The adaptations of learning due to led to a variety of changes both in how learning took place and in what was learnt. Shortened school days and the methods used to keep learners attuned to the curriculum no doubt fostered a different sense of self and knowledge building than would have taken place with the requisite number of contact hours. One of the more interesting aspects of the basic description of the school day and learning routines are the relative normalcy portrayed in some participants' memories of school routine, classroom practice, and daily life interspersed with the adaptations for war.
Resilience/Tenaciousness
One of the more often written comments about war-affected children and youth is to marvel at their resilience, or their ability to persevere in the face of adversity (Boyden
& DeBerry, 2004; Sinclair, 2001; Singer, 2005). In spite of the tendency to use the word
"resilience" to describe this state, it would be worth considering the place of tenacity - persistence or steadfastness ~ to refer to the quality that enables these participants, their families, and communities to find ways to continue learning during an onslaught of social and systemic destruction. The World War II participants and their learning histories once again seem to bring out the young's ability to keep on trying in spite of difficult circumstances. However, also interesting is the resilience of schools and communities - or adults be they parents, teachers, administrators, or others - to maintain learning 162 environments and to motivate children to stay in school in spite of the chaos of war and violence.
The role(s) played by adults in facilitating access to learning during the war is particularly worth noting. At the level of parents, this includes Hanna's memories of
Jewish parents and adults organizing and taking part in "teaching" children in the
Warsaw ghetto and while she was in hiding; Veronika's memories of her parents finding ways to enroll her in school in spite of their frequent migrations during the war; Rimute's father's efforts to get her into medical school in Polish occupied Lithuania when the
Soviets excluded her due to her social class background. Teachers, meanwhile, played multiple roles in facilitating ongoing learning and survival including helping to save
Jewish children from concentration camps, according to Veronika teaching in exchange for gifts in kind rather than salaries, and evacuating themselves with their entire classes and acting as a guardian away from home as in the case of Ingrid. Communities were also complicit by taking in evacuated children as Ingrid's foster family did, allowing children in hiding to read their books as Hanna did, and allowing educated DPs, including those without formal training, to work as teachers in DP camp schools of which Veronika spoke. Finally, the willingness of adults to adapt their understandings of "learning" and
"schooling" in order to maintain learning environments - the methods discussed under the previous section - are emblematic of human tenaciousness to maintain learning opportunities in these challenging circumstances. 163
The resilience of the learners themselves is self-evident in their oral histories, both as presented in chapters four and five and in the raw, unanalyzed transcripts and recordings. Continuing to pursue their formal studies in spite of the many interruptions, adaptations, migrations, and violence to the learning system speaks strongly of the role that learning plays in their lives. Also of note is the way in which participants often described their learning environments without trauma even going so far as to suggest that the study was not interesting because schooling during the war was "normal", even when the collective transcripts show readers that there were many unique features to it.
Politicization and Resistance
There are two distinct ways in which politicization appears in these oral histories.
First, the use of formal learning to gather support among learners for certain political views of the day by making overt and often more subtle changes to the curriculum in schools. The second is the fostering of resistance or counter-politicization to official politicization that is seen in numerous actions and reactions taken by learners, teachers, and communities facing occupation and anti-Jewish policies. Beyond the politics of the war, learner resistance to teacher authority is also prevalent in some of the "everyday" memories of classroom life.
Politicization and Political Resistance
Quite a bit was written in chapter 4 about changes applied to the formal curricula in the Eastern European countries, particularly Lithuania, during both the wartime Soviet and Nazi occupations of these countries. Chapter five, moreover, dealt with the changes that took place in post-June 1945 curricula as the initial victory of the allies gave way to 164 the rise of the Cold War. In addition to changes in the second language subject matter, the social studies or history curricula, and even the number of years of schooling, school routine, enrollment, expectations, and other aspects of the curricula were affected on a number of levels. In looking at all sixteen participants' memories, it seems that attempts to drop certain agendas from the curriculum of schooling served to strengthen identity and resolve in unexpected ways.
Under the Germans, obvious ways in which school curriculum changed was seen in the photos of German leaders lining walls, the introduction of German as a second language, and the Hitler Youth. However, participants also suggested that in many schools German changes were subtle and for the most part national holidays, languages, and explicit curriculum remained unchanged. The affects of German changes in two particular areas suggest ways in which the occupied were effectively marginalized by
Nazism.
First, Jewish children were restricted from participating in government schools. In countries allied with the Germans, but not occupied by them, Jewish children had their religious knowledge classes removed from the school building itself. Hence, being
Jewish was slowly removed from participation in the mainstream curriculum. However, this experience gave the Jewish community the opportunity to strengthen their sense of community and identity by teaching more of their children in Jewish schools and through the collective experience of persecution. This outcome was seen particularly in Ewa's
(Polish, F, 83) post-war militarism in Holocaust remembrance and Zsuzsanna's 165
(Hungarian, F, 75) returning to the Jewish high school in which she was forced to enroll during the war and where she had initially felt out of place due to her family's secularism.
Secondly, in most of the German occupied countries of Eastern Europe mentioned, schools became nationalistic rallying points both for resistance to the occupation and for the Germans to recruit soldiers. While in some countries schools were eventually closed down due to fighting, the growing nationalistic resistance became a source of activity for some students who could not attend school. Like Jewish identity, patriotic resistance therefore became central to the curriculum of school life in the memories of Eastern European participants.
The Soviet's changes on the curriculum were no less brutal, but unlike the Nazi changes the Soviet changes were met with fear, intimidation, and a desire to escape rather than to resist. During the Soviet occupation of Lithuania (1940-1), national holidays were banned, unsympathetic teachers and other professionals were deported, pictures of Soviet leaders were hung on school walls, pages removed from textbooks and a "red room" or a pro-Soviet propaganda room was created. After 1945, participants who remained in
Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary experienced investigations into their class backgrounds and wartime activities by Soviet cadres, which affected not only their abilities to remain in school, but also their abilities to remain in these countries. Post-
1945 curricular changes included the introduction of Russian and initially English, further changes to history and social studies, and Marxism. 166
At the same time, teachers played important community and grassroots political roles particularly in the lives of adolescent students during the height of the war. Jonas
(Lithuanian, M, 77), Gediminas (Lithuanian, M, 80), and Vytautas (Lithuanian, M. 83) spoke about how their teachers and school administrators and inspectors worked to warn them of German intentions to visit the schools and forcibly recruit adolescent males into the German army. Jozsef (Hungarian, M, 81) remembered how his German headmaster convinced his higher authorities in Berlin to allow Jozsef and his other Jewish classmates to finish their final year of school after the Germans made a policy that Jewish children could not attend German schools. Hanna (Polish, F, 76) and Zsuzsanna (Hungarian, F,
75) both recounted how teachers saved or offered to help some of their Jewish classmates. In Germany, Horst (German, M, 78) and Ingrid (German, F, 72) both encountered teachers who worked to protect youths from the violence of war and interrupted education. Ingrid (German, F, 72) was evacuated with her entire class and teacher once. Horst and his classmates were sent to man anti-aircraft artillery along with one of their teachers to both lead them and continue lessons. In the DP Camps, Veronika
(Lithuanian, F, 68) spoke about how her parents and other adults in her family who were teachers also acted as community and sometimes children's advocates fighting to make sure ill children got rations, organizing and leading scouts and guides, and giving advice to less educated refugees on all matters relating to their status. Outside of their practices as strict disciplinarians and teachers, therefore, teachers held a multiplicity of roles in the wider community. 167
Looking at the extracurricular activities organized around, through, or by the school community and school leaders, one sees reinforcement of the politicization of wartime propaganda through the exclusion of certain groups, the use of community organizing of youths to solidify certain social and religious identities. While various cultural activities, such as dances, were primarily social in nature, youth group activities were structured to socialize learners into their socio-cultural and religious groups, to encourage a nationalism or support for certain regimes or religious identities. In the post war atmosphere, social and ethnic groups were kept apart in DP camps according to participants' memories. Where they were not separated - such as DPs attending German and Austrian universities, some remembered socially developing their own groups rather than to intermingle. Nevertheless, extracurricular activities postwar took on a decidedly different (less political and more social) tone for most participants.
Learner Resistance in the Classroom
Participants generally shared stories wherein their own resistance to learning, school routines and expectations were met with strict discipline and punishment, including various forms of corporal punishment including caning, spanking, and exclusion. It was remarkable how strongly participants were able to recount these incidents of defiance given how many participants had difficulty with other details of their experiences. Several participants had memories of class-wide rebellion. Jonas
(Lithuanian, M, 77) remembered pelting a teacher's home with eggs with his classmates.
Georgs (Latvian, M, 68) remembered a classmate tying their teacher's shoelaces to the desk so that the teacher fell over when he tried to stand. Memories of individual resistance related to resisting teacher expectations by either doing sloppy work (Veronika) or by not doing one's work at all (Veronika's brother) and to talking out of turn or otherwise disrupting the class (Zsuzsanna and Veronika). This type of resistance is wholly unlike that related to the politics of the war environment and could have been part of the learning experiences of children in almost any setting.
Identity Issues
The final area that comes out in the oral histories is the rapidly changing self- identities possibly inherent to politically charged learning environments such as faced by the participants from the mid-1930s until 1952. Chapters four and five reflect different types of shifts dependent on who participants were and how they received various messages about identity. These experiences included the development of stronger nationalism, religious identity, and social identity because of persecution and constantly shifting messages from occupiers and oppressors.
Among those who were adolescent boys and who participated in partisan or resistance activities against both the Soviets and the Nazis, nationalism as Lithuanians,
Czechs, or Hungarians seemed to be particularly strong. The Soviet occupation of
Lithuania during 1940-1 in particular shaped the Lithuanian participants' national identity. The deportations and persecution of the Catholic Church seems to have strengthened their identities rather than destroyed them. This same group had mixed reactions to the imposition of German identity during the German occupation. Some participants seemed to feel that the Germans were not as offensive an occupier since religious practice and some national holidays were allowed. But others expressed strongly anti-German sentiments as much as they had expressed anti-Russian sentiments. 169
The Jewish participants similarly presented mixed views on how their anti-Jewish marginalization affected their outlook and identities as Jews. Ewa (Polish, F, 83), who lost her entire family in the Holocaust, holds a particularly strong self-identity as a Jew even though one of her memories of her father is of him clearly telling her that she is both
Polish and Jewish. Hanna (Polish, F, 76), Zsuzsanna (Hungarian, F, 75), and Jozsef
(Hungarian, M, 81) all identified their families as being secular or relatively non- religious. In spite of the negative messages their wartime experiences gave them about their religious identities and that Hanna and Zsuzsanna were forced by Nazi policies to attend Jewish schools, all three continued to present fairly secular feelings. It is clear in their transcripts that they would nevertheless identify themselves as "Jewish".
The German participants, meanwhile, were adamant that their formal curriculum was not strongly a tool of socialization into Nazi philosophy nor did they feel that their education at the time aimed at being supportive of the government. Nevertheless, they were taught a proud German history and it seemed in their interviews that each of these participants holds a fairly strong cultural identity to this day. However, that is not a cultural identity that is without some shame towards the policies and practices of the adults at the time. Ingrid (German, F, 72) was exceptional in that she suggested awareness at an early age of the discrimination against Jews. The unwillingness of the other two German participants to discuss or to answer questions related to this subject suggest possible shame, non-acceptance of or forced repression of these memories. 170
Finally, those participants who remained in the Soviet zone during the 1945-1952 period mentioned increased persecution based largely on their class backgrounds and/or wartime partisan activities. While the Soviet arrival made Jewish participants feel more secure initially, due to the end of the Holocaust, another type of persecution would soon be upon them based on class backgrounds. While most of the participants seemed to have a fairly strong awareness that they led privileged lives prior to the start of the war, none of them seemed prepared to be criticized or held back for having had successful economic and social class backgrounds. A strong desire for freedoms of person and of thought, particularly for those in post-secondary learning stages, seemed to work together to push them to flee the Soviet zone as the situation worsened.
Because of the constant onslaught of dominant occupiers changing curricula during the war, one might expect that World War II survivors will have developed a different or a confused sense of self and national identity. However, the majority participants instead expressed fairly strong senses of national pride formed largely in resistance to the occupations. Others expressed strong national pride without prejudice to the German identity, which was close to them usually because they may have had some sympathy for the German culture or been thankful for the less obstructive German occupation compared to the Soviets. Although this study was not designed expecting identity issues be brought to the fore, the reality seems to be that hidden inside the conversation of learning during this war are considerable identity acquisition comments, dilemmas and moments which beg more comprehensive study in another form of research. 171
Conclusion
The educational histories and experiences of these sixteen participants poses a history which emphasizes the unique ways in which war affects learners' opportunities and learning outcomes within a system under stress, chaos, and influenced by politics. Of particular interest to the central questions asked in analyzing the research are the outcomes in terms of curriculum experiences, the affects of the war, and the ways in which learning facilitated survival. On a macro-level, it is possible to see how each of these layers of analysis is intertwined together telling a more complete version of the history of learning during war. The basis for learning lies in the first layer wherein participants described school routines, classroom routines, teachers, resources, subjects taken, discipline, homework, and important moments in learning. This first layer is not unlike the memories one would expect to hear from a someone who went to school in a non-war environment and in particular shows how similar the wartime and immediate post-war school could be at the primary and secondary level. That this almost "normal" description of learning experiences is available draws attention to the definition and makes one think about the concept of what is being discussed as "education in (complex) emergencies".
The second layer, that of the curriculum of war, brought forth issues both at the school level, learning outside of formal institutions, and the complex interactions between authorities and schools in deciding the contents of the explicit curriculum. The focus on the institutional level was on the adaptation of formal schooling so that lessons could continue in spite of violence. These adaptations balanced between school 172 evacuations to rural areas on one end and school closures on the other. In between were measures taken to teach the whole explicit curriculum in spite of shortened days and a lack of basic resources. On a higher level, the politicization of the school community and the school itself- reflecting the conflict around them - was an important theme in the secondary and tertiary institutions. This politicization included both formal changes made by officialdom and underground political resistance organized by students and teachers alike. This layer adds the complexity to the phrase education in (complex) emergencies on one level and adds the emergency, on another.
The third layer - survival - delves into notions of resilience, skills development, and ingenuity, all of which were prevalent throughout the other two layers of learning even when survival was not explicitly stated in the oral histories. Most obvious in the stories of Jewish participants, there was an element of survival in the histories of all the participants as they learned skills such as farming, and were forced to migrate either with their families or alone. At a formal schooling level, efforts to stay in school, to re-enroll or return quickly after migration or hiding, and the continuation of formal learning in spite of barriers and violence also enhances the idea of learning for survival.
Regardless of the vast differences in educational systems, cultures, languages and war time perspectives represented in these sixteen individual stories, the collective sense of discourse which comes through in their stories relates to the educational resilience, persistence, and survival during war and persecution. Indeed the collective sense suggests that all children and youth, even those coming from dominant sides of the conflict, tend 173 to lose out in wartime through the loss of access to consistent learning, the pressures of politicization, and the political and military interventions in their lives. The vast similarities in classroom routine, resources, curricula, and expectations present a history of an education, which carried on in the face of challenges presented by the world outside of the war. In the next section, which presents the information collected in the Afghan case study, it will be interesting to examine how a different group of children with a vastly different ethnic and religious background and political situation remember their learning during a vastly different war. SECTION HI:
ONE CORNER OF THE CARPET:
LEARNING AND SURVIVING DURING CONFLICT IN AFGHANISTAN
Chapter 7:
Setting the Context of Afghan Learning
I was born and raised in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. I have experienced conflict, violence, destruction, homelessness and hopelessness. ...Despite all these problems, I always wanted to study; no matter what problems we had to deal with. (Hakimy in Bhimani, 2003, pp. 32-33)
The education of Afghan children is often represented in media images as a system in which education and learning are not valued, are of poor quality, and are in conflict with the largely secularized systems in more developed countries. Yet such images rarely focus on the experience of Afghan education for those children who have access. By collecting and examining Afghan oral histories of learning, this case study seeks to develop and present an insider's perspective of learning. What emerged in the study is a view that contradicts the media image by presenting families and communities actively seeking access to learning in spite of the ongoing war context that surrounded them.
The central focus of this section is to present and to examine the major themes arising from the memories of the eleven Afghan-Canadians . By drawing on the oral histories, a textual "image" is developed of learner experiences with formal and non- formal learning moments in both pre-migration phases and in countries of first asylum
26 This term is used somewhat loosely. Although all of the participants are legal residents of Canada, six of them have not yet become citizens, as they have not lived in the country long enough.
174 (Iran and Pakistan). Drawing on these memories, themes relating to school routine, teaching and learning methods, and the impact of war on learning form from within the text. Ultimately, the learning experiences of this particular group of Afghans appears to show the resilience, flexibility, and determination both of the learners themselves and of their communities, schools, and families.
As with section two, this section consists of four chapters: the first sets the context and outlines details of the participants; the second (chapter eight) presents pre- migration education inside Afghanistan; the third (chapter nine) focuses on education in countries of first asylum; and the fourth (chapter ten) presents an inter-case analysis based on similar categories examined in chapter six. What emerges from the transcripts is a rich description of the learning lives of a group of multi-ethnic Afghan-Canadians prior to their emigration to Canada. This image of education, while far from complete, can be used as a starting point for examining the learning lives of war-affected Afghan children and youths alone and in comparative context.
The Participants
The eleven Afghan-Canadians who participated in this study represented a cross- section of Afghanistan in many ways. Ethnically they represented most of Afghanistan's major ethnic groups including the Pashtuns (5 participants), Tajiks (2), Hazara (2), and
Uzbek (2). Participants also represented a cross-section of Afghanistan's religions with the majority being Sunni Muslims, the Uzbek being a Shiite and the two Hazaras being
Ismaili Shiites. Both of Afghanistan's official language groups are represented in the 176 participants. The Pashtun participants all spoke Pashto as a first language while the others spoke Dari.
As was discussed in chapter two, the participants on the whole reflected a privileged segment of both Afghan and Afghan-Canadian society. Eight participants were in their twenties - ranging from 22-29 years old. As such they were born either just before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 or during the Soviet period. This group's childhood memories are clearly focused around a life in which war and conflict are central to their context. Of the remaining three participants, two were aged 33 and one was aged 40. The two 33 year-old participants were nearly school age in 1979 and therefore their schooling histories were also largely situated in the context of war and emergency. The eldest participant, who was 15 when the Soviets invaded, was able to remember his life before war and conflict started.
A second way in which this group of participants stands out from Afghan society as a whole is that their fathers were working in well-paid, socially successful roles either in business, government, medicine or military, though some were not highly educated. As with many of their peers, however, few of them mentioned having literate, schooled, or professional mothers. Only two of the mothers seem to have worked in the labour force at all - both Hazara - one in people's homes and the other in a government ministry prior to
1979. The mothers, however, were undoubtedly fully occupied in their work at home since most of the participants reported having between five and seven siblings with one exceptional family having fourteen children. In short, most of the participants came from 177 economically or socially privileged backgrounds although many of them also spoke of having family or close relatives who were much less educated and much poorer than they were.
There are other ways in which the participants are distinguished from other
Afghans. While the majority of the Afghan population is rural, all but two of the participants were born in Kabul. Three participants living in Kabul for much of the Soviet and mujahideen eras spoke of having family ties to the village and of spending time in the village to avoid violence in Kabul, which is not unusual for Kabulis. All but one of the participants spent time in either Iran or Pakistan, but none of them spent significant amounts of time living in UNHCR-organized refugee villages/camps. Instead, participants lived in Iranian and Pakistani cities, notably Peshawar and Rawalpindi in
Pakistan and Tehran in Iran. In the countries of first asylum, the participants and where relevant their families faced economic challenges of varying degrees, yet many of them acknowledged feeling privileged compared to other refugees. These characteristics are perhaps indicative of the social class and tribal statures from which the participants hail.
One final distinguishing characteristic common to all of the participants relates to their lives in Canada. While half of them had been in Canada for less than two years during the interview process and only one of them had been in Canada for longer than a decade, the participants are currently enrolled in and attending either adult high school or university in southern Ontario. Although all of them speak of gaps in their learning and of having to combine learning with economic activities, the opportunity to study appears to 178 be extremely important to almost all of them in spite of the fact that they come from a country and a culture largely known in the popular media for its failure to support an education system. In the process of seeking participants for the study, it became clear that many Afghan-Canadians in the community are not attending school in Canada but are working full time to support their families. Several participants in the study mentioned an awareness of this difference as well.
In spite of the story of learning which these eleven oral histories weave together, it cannot be emphasized enough that what follows is the history of a very special group of
Afghans. Afghanistan remains a country where access to education remains a daily struggle - a wish, but not a reality - for many girls and boys. It is perhaps best to think of what follows as a look at the educational histories of a small group of those who have been able to persist and to thrive, or to be an example of the strides made in learning in
Afghanistan in spite of the war.
Evidence that strides have been made lie in Unicef s statistical statements regarding literacy. According to Unicef, in 1980 Afghanistan's adult literacy rates were
30% for males and 6% for females rising to 46% for males and 16% for females in the late 1990s (2001, p. 90). What is interesting about these rates is not how low they are, but that they show positive change in spite of the time period covering a large portion of the violent period. Assuming the accuracy of these statistics, such improvement suggests that real progress in learning took place during this era in spite of the many challenges. 179
Largely because of the socio-economic privilege represented by these participants, this case study represents only one corner of the whole carpet of Afghan education - a corner that was often isolated from and only indirectly touched by the policies and practices of international aid agencies and the United Nations. Since Afghan education, and Afghan lives in general, remain under-examined in academia, the presentation of one set of experiences provides important insight and acts as a swatch of the carpet, giving an idea of the overall pattern, colours, and quality but leaving much left unsaid and unknown.
The Structure of Formal Education In Afghanistan
In order to contextualize the participants' experience of education, one has to first understand the structure of the Afghan education system before 1979 as well as some of the structural and curricular changes that took place after 1979.
The "modern" education system in Afghanistan is thought by some to have begun in Kabul in 1904 with the establishment of Habibia High School, which then grew into a parallel program of public and private schools. Since then the system has been centralized around the Ministry of Education and its provincial counterparts that coordinate "the curriculum, the related or required textbooks, the hiring and firing of teachers and all the education personnel" (Dr. Amin, personal communication). The Afghan system included
27 Due to the unavailability of secondary sources on this matter, the structure of Afghan education as it is explored here comes from my personal interaction with the Afghan education system and in particular from a series of email dialogues with Dr. Aminullah Amin, PhD., a former Deputy Minister of Education (Nov. 1978- Jan 1979), Professor of Education at Kabul University (1978-1992) and at the time of writing the Manager, Education of the Save the Children Federation's Balochistan Program. I am grateful for his assistance with this and for the many years that he has tutored me in Afghan education. 180 six years of primary education, three of middle school, and three of high school.
Constitutionally, only primary education was free and compulsory with children entering the system at least at the age of seven although exceptions were made in the rural areas up to age ten for both girls and boys whose physical distance from a school may have prevented them from attending earlier. Only during the period of President Mohammad
Daud from 1973-1978 did this system change briefly making compulsory free education from grades 1-8 and tuition-based secondary education from grades 9-12. Since 1978 and the communist putsch, the pre-university Afghan system has been set at 6-3-3.
Outside of the formal "secular" or "modern" system, the longstanding madrassa or Islamic religious school system continued. Madrassas came to Afghanistan around the time of Islam in the Seventh Century of the Common Era (CE). Initially the madrassas taught both Islam and subjects such as astronomy, mathematics, and philosophy; however, by the 20th Century CE these subjects gave way to a focus solely on the study of Islam. In the rural areas in particular, these schools were, and still are, run by villagers in their local mosques. For many Afghan children, particularly boys, the madrassa remains the sole source of education. Although girls have access to village madrassas in other parts of the Muslim world, they are generally excluded from the system in
Afghanistan . In the towns and urban areas, some madrassas have become larger almost to the point at which some might be called "institutions". If accessibility permits, some families sent their sons to both formal public schools and madrassas.
Indeed, unlike other parts of the Muslim world where mosques have segregated sections for male and female worship, women in Afghanistan and much of Pakistan do not go to mosques. It is therefore not surprising that girls should be excluded from madrassa education. 181
To build up the quality of the public and private Afghan system, collaborative ties were developed with education faculties and ministries in the more developed world.
These collaborations were particularly active during the 1960s and 1970s and in part may have paved the way for the politicization of the education system after 1979. These ties included scholarship programs to provide Afghans with high quality foreign credentials and thereby bring well-educated Afghans and international scholars to teach in
Afghanistan's universities. It also allowed for support in developing the university entrance exam system - which still bears a French-derived name, a technical education system of colleges supported by the German government, and other faculty or university- wide associations with specific countries, universities, and schools of thought.
After 1979, the education system - particularly the formal curriculum - quickly became politicized around the conflict. First the Soviet invasion imposed an end to ties with non-Soviet faculties and programs at the technical and university level. Second, the
Soviet education structure became central to advice being given at the Ministry level. The reaction to the development of a completely secular (non-religious) Soviet-influenced curriculum was caught up in the American support for the development of the mujahideen, resulting in the development of the alternative curriculum materials for use in mujahideen-coxtixoMzd areas including Pakistan's refugee schools (Kolhatkar &
Ingalls, 2006, pp.211-213). The initial set of mujahideen-sponsored materials came to be known as the UNO books - UNO standing for University of Nebraska at Omaha, the
American university which provided technical support to the mujahideen in the development process. The UNO books overtly politicized learners against the Soviets and 182 encouraged a pro-war culture with stories in which Afghans kill Russians, math lessons in which grenades and guns are counted, and several books per grade covering religious subject matter to counter the Soviet system in which religion was not taught at the school level. It was only at the insistence of the UNHCR that the content of the UNO texts were softened for use in the refugee villages in Pakistan (Sinclair, 2001). While the introduction of alternative curriculum is contrary to UNHCR education policy (2002), there was no stronger protest than that. The introduction of the UNO material resulted in a unique generational and educational division between what Afghan children remaining in Afghanistan were taught before 1992 and what refugee children were taught.
After 1992, when the mujahideen came to power inside Afghanistan, the UNO curriculum replaced the Soviet-supported curriculum until the arrival of the Taliban in
1997. During the Taliban era (1997-2001), many schools were closed or were only allowed to use a strictly Islamic curriculum as was found in the country's madrassas.
Agencies supporting Pakistan-based refugee education created child-centred, non- politically oriented textbooks during the 1990s and early 2000s (Rugh, 1998). Notable among these were the GTZ books for the primary grades created by the German government's aid and donor agency GTZ. The BBC created storybooks which aimed to make child-focused Afghan tales available in book form. Meanwhile in Iran, Afghan children in refugee camps were given access to the Iranian state formal curriculum at the primary level. The division of the formal curriculum between different refugee and political groups during the 1980s and 1990s continues to challenge dialogues of what constitutes Afghan education today. The burgeoning population of refugees living outside 183 of UN-sponsored camps in Pakistan and Iran also began to assert their own ideas about learning and appropriate education for their children by the mid-1990s further dividing the learning system into a series of confusing and poorly coordinated systems. In the late
1990s, the refugee program in Pakistan tried to coordinate its disparate parts through an inter-agency initiative to develop Basic Competencies - or minimum curricular standards for literacy and numeracy subjects primary level at each grade level - in an effort to bring continuity to a refugee education system with at least three major sets of textbooks in circulation (Rugh, 1998). The overthrow of the Taliban in late 2001, however, changed the situation completely and began a process of curriculum revision at the ministry level in Kabul with the support of some American educational institutions.
During the changes to and politicization of Afghan education, children, or perhaps it is better to say "some children", remained in school. But what was it like to be on the receiving end of this system in constant flux and crisis? This overview of the division of the Afghan formal education after 1978 leaves the question for researchers to understand
- what and how can children learn in a system so divided, disrupted, and disparate? The participants' oral histories suggest that learning, and excelling at learning, was possible despite of the many challenges.
Conclusion
The overall context for reading and thinking about the learning memories of
Afghans presented in the next two chapters centres around two strands of thinking: details about the participants' backgrounds and details about the development of and the curriculum policies of the Afghan education system. Both strands are equally important 184 to understanding the oral history of learning that is presented in the next two chapters.
The personal backgrounds of the participants show them to be primarily from similar socio-economic and age groups born largely in Kabul, yet representing a multiplicity of
Afghanistan's ethnic and religious groups. The rise of the secular education system over the course of the twentieth century in Afghanistan's urban centres and its subsequent politicization after the 1970s presents itself as the context for some the struggles, school routines, and school materials which lie at the core of the learner experiences described.
This introduction to the case study tries to root the reader in the complexities of the
Afghan learning context after 1979 and serves as the basic reference point for later analysis between the pre-migration and diaspora experiences. Chapter 8:
Learning in Conflict Ridden Afghanistan:
1978-c. 2001
Unlike many Afghan children and youth, the majority of the participants in this study did not face familial pressure against enrolling in secular learning systems. Rather, their stories show considerable evidence of support for learning resulting in near continuous access to formal learning. Given the participants' ages, most of them experienced primary level during the Communist era (1978-1992) and middle or high school during the mujahideen or Islamic government (1992-1997). The two thirty-three year old participants experienced primary and middle school under the Communists and upper secondary and some university during the mujahideen. Two of the male participants continued to live and study in Afghanistan right up until their emigration to
Canada and so their experiences of upper secondary and post-secondary education took place in the context of the Taliban (1997-2001) and the Northern Alliance/Post-Taliban
(2001- present) governments. The continuously changing governments are mentioned whenever certain events were directly related to a government change; however, for the most part the oral histories of learning are constructed in such a way as to focus on school life rather than on political life. The main finding suggests that learning in Afghanistan and in countries of first asylum remained a constant in spite of interruptions and growing politicization of the formal curriculum.
Primary Education School Routines
Participants' memories of the primary education system do not reflect the stringent expectations and administrative set-ups described in the previous section.
185 186
Rather, these memories give some detail to a critical list of issues facing access and quality in Afghan education including systemic variations between private and public, rural and urban, male and female, religious and secular. Enrollment, access, teacher availability and cultural relativity have remained constant themes in dialogues about barriers to participation at the community, local, and aid agency levels (Pont, 2001;
Rugh, 1998; Dicum, 2005). The primary school experiences described by participants who went to school inside Afghanistan after 1979 exclusively took place in Kabul during the 1980s.
Given the participants' ages, the majority of them should have had part or all of their elementary school experiences during the war. However, four of the participants in the main age group (22-29) did not attend school in Afghanistan at all or, if they did, it was for a short period of time after which they fled the country. This chapter's section on primary school experiences in Afghanistan therefore addresses the memories of five participants.
In general, children were expected to begin at age seven and to study at the primary level for six years, but the age requirement was not always stringently enforced even in the urban areas. The participants were no exception to this during the 1980s.
Um, I think I was six or seven when I started school. I was six, yeah. And then they wouldn't let me in because I was too small. And then my brother helped me stand on his feet, so he would raise me and I would look bigger. So I started when I was seven, or six. (Aziza, F, Hazara, 24) 187
I remember I was small and when I went with my parents, they didn't accept me because I was small and there is a limit, like age, like particular age for children to go, like six years old. Maybe I was 5 or 5 lA. I was interested very much to go to school. .. .So they accept me. One of my sisters was older and she was with me. (Gul, F, Tajik, 33) These memories are interesting in that both participants are female - normally the group which has less access to education -- and both were born and growing up in Kabul at the time of their first enrollment in school. It was also not unusual for participants to state that, like Gul, either they or another sibling entered school early but were in the company of a slightly older sibling. Fatana (Hazara, F, 22) and Jalil (Pashtun, M, 29) also remembered older siblings walking them to school and back home at an early age.
The first day, or at least their early days, attending school was at the forefront of some participants' memories. For most, the experience of starting school was universally exciting, happy, and enthusiastic.
... It was a great competition in my family members with my sisters and my older brother and my cousins. They would, they would go to school, so they would tell me about their school and what was going on. So it was always fascinated me. So I was waiting for that day eventually that day came and I went to school and the school was somewhere near by the place where we were living. (Rehman, M, Pashtun, 33)
Um, I think after registration I went to... we went to the class. .. .But there was a lot of kids and it was kind of scary, 'cause there were so many kids and I was kind of small, but it was exciting to start school. (Aziza, F, Hazara, 24) 188
Only one participant, Abdul, expressed a vividly unenthusiastic start to his formal schooling and, as will become clear later in the chapter, remained somewhat unimpressed with the experience throughout the ten years he attended school.
Actually, when I was in that age, I didn't like to go to school. .. .When I in grade one... I should take one family with me over there to stay with me, you know? I don't know why I scared. Scared from the other students. .. .My mother and sister, always behind [me] and when they gone I cry. But when I got in grade two or three that was OK. (Abdul, M, Uzbek, 25) To some this act of kindness - allowing a frightened child's mother to stay in class indefinitely - may be surprising given the strict order and discipline described by him and by other participants later in the chapter. To others, particularly insiders in the Afghan culture, this would not have been unusual in the Afghan context of the day. Above all, the first enrollment in school remained part of the memories of most of these five participants albeit strongest in those who had a specific reason (happy or sad) to remember the advent of school.
For these five participants who spent their primary school years in part or in whole in Kabul, the school buildings, classroom settings, available resources, and daily routines appear strikingly similar in description even though it seems that none of the participants attended the same school. The typical school architecture in Afghanistan, even now, is to have a large courtyard surrounded by low buildings. Each classroom opens out onto the courtyard. In Kabul, schools in wealthier neighbourhoods would have had desks and chairs, blackboards, windows, and some basic resources such as posters, globes, and books. Pre-1978, rural schools and poor urban schools would have been made of mud brick and would have lacked desks and chairs, heat, and electricity. Over the war 189 years, wealthier urban schools often had to adapt to circumstances similar to what the rural schools face.
The class was the ordinary classrooms, with desk for three and like benches for three. It was the ordinary class with a blackboard with a chalk. ... We have a playground just for playing volleyball, but not a football ground. It was a dusty grounds not grounds with lawns or with some concrete or something else, just the dust. When the students were going to play the dust was very disturbed. (Mohammad, M, Pashtun, 26)
Okay, it was like a building, a big one, but it was not like a you know, doesn't have a lot of stories and stuff. It's like one flat level. You go inside the school. Basically they're very huge. Like in sense of land. They're very huge and, and, they go there. There's like office. Yea. There was office, like a principal and stuff. And then there's like, you know townhouses, but not like 3 levels. Only one level. It was like that, but each classroom huge. .. .They were um nice, but the way they were set was different. We had like chairs. I don't totally remember, but, the teacher would had a like long large table and then she would sit. There was a plan for it. It was kind of dark in the classrooms. Um, so, it was pretty much the same, ... (Fatana, F, Hazara, 22)
We had blackboards and we had desks. A lot of times, I think, we had problems. We didn't have enough desks and chairs. But yeah I remember having them. .. .1 think there came a time when all the desks and chairs were looted. But that was after the mujahideen. Then we used to take a mat or something with us, everyday, and then we put it on the ground and sat on it. That was when I was in grade 8. (Aziza, F, Hazara, 24)
Although not prominent in the participant's physical descriptions of their primary schools, their descriptions of daily routine reveal that their schools generally had a large 190 central courtyard in which a daily assembly took place before classes. Moreover, each participant appears to have experienced similar classroom routines. Most of the participants attended school in the first part of the day, except for Mohammad who attended an afternoon shift primary school.
We had assemblies in the morning and then every class would line up and they would read something. First we had our national anthem and then after that we had a few other things. And then they check our cleanliness, so our nails and if our clothes were clean. And for the guys, I think they had to have a certain length of hair - it couldn't be long. I hardly remember all these rules. ... We went to classes and then the teacher came in and took attendance. Until grade 5 or maybe 4, we had one teacher. So every subject was taught by the same teacher. And after that, oh, I can't remember maybe grade 3 and then after that we had different teachers, but teachers would come to the classes. We didn't go to different classes as they do here. (Aziza, F, Hazara, 24)
[For breakfast I usually had] tea and just bread. We didn't have a lot. I didn't like milk at all, so I would just have black tea. That was my thing. Or sometimes it depended. I don't totally remember but I hear it from my mom now, she says that we weren't a very rich family and stuff. So she would just make the tea and bread, and sometimes some cheese. Just stuff here and there. So I would have breakfast and then I would get ready. For the first year I think, or first few days, or something, my sister would drop me at school. But then later on I had a friend who lived close by, so we would go together. .. .It was around 20 minutes walk.... and then we would go and we would line up in front'of the school. We weren't allowed to go in before time. So everyone would line up. They used to check our bags and stuff. .. .so we wouldn't take anything. And they used to check our bags and then we would go inside, and then there was an assembly inside. Outside in the yard we would have an assembly. .. .We had national anthem. That I don't remember at all! The one that I remember is not in the Dari or Persian language, it's in the Pashtun. It was that one. I didn't know the meaning; we would just sing 191 it. So yeah, we would sing that, and um, I think that if there were some announcements of anything they would tell us. When we were lined up, we would line up with our own classmates and our class teacher would be with us. So after this assembly every class goes into their classroom. And then attendance and the classes would start. And I think everyone had the same break time. I don't know, like half an hour or an hour. So the bell would ring and everyone would run outside, and then the bell would ring again and everyone would go inside back. So that's how basically how it was. And as I said I can't really remember what they taught or how they taught it. But I do remember my report cards and stuff. We would have all our subjects listed before the marks and stuff. They would sign it for us, and give it for us. .. .It was kind of a postcard. Like a birthday card and stuff. So it would fold. We would have all the marks and subjects listed there. We actually had it, um; we had like one final exam at the end of the year. (Fatana, F, Hazara, 22)
I wake up at that time and go to school after lunch. When I woke up I'm just do my homework or readings until lunchtime. Then, I have my lunch and get preparing for school. The school was near our house, maybe five minutes walking. ...I was in school probably one o'clock up until four. It continued up until grade 7 for me. (Mohammad, M, Pashtun, 26)
I just remember that it was very clean. And we had a very strict schedule like every morning we would sing the national anthem and it was a new one. We had skirts as uniforms, which made me and my sister feel a bit shy because we weren't allowed to wear skirts and suddenly we had to wear skirts. It was kind of cute. Um, what do I remember? I remember the hallways. I remember teachers who would dress like my Dad, wearing pants and ties. You know it was very professional. Um, everyone used to have fun. .. .1 remember sitting on the floor. I remember being asked to stand up and count to 50 and that was my biggest accomplishment in life. I remember sitting with boys. Boys and girls were 192
together. And we talked. We had fun. That's pretty much it. (Aryana, F, Pashtun, 25)
However, the two participants who grew up outside Kabul attended village schools synonymous with the images of rural education in Afghanistan described in the first chapter of this case study. Moreover, two of the female participants spent some time in their ancestral villages where they did not attend school, but recount important experiences of village life for Afghan girls. Of these four, Ali's primary experience took place before the war began and resonates closely with statements made earlier about the rural education system taking place in village-run mosque-associated madrassas and later in residential government schools in bigger towns.
We went to a mosque to go to school, because there was still no school building there. 33 years after my first day of school or so, we still do not have a school building. .. .now there's, um, a few tents. I went there last year, but when we went to school we used to sit on the stone. ... We had a small blackboard, but we didn't use that a lot. ... Sometimes he wrote on the paper and then we would gather around there and see. ... When we finished grade 3, we moved. Well, just I moved. I moved to the centre of the district, because we didn't have middle school. (Ali, M, Uzbek, 40)
Sawar's village school in Nangahar province, however, was entrenched in the context of the conflict going on around him and his memories suggest an experience that can perhaps be described as more basic than Ali's in Ghazni province more than a decade earlier.
Until 6th class, we studied... we didn't have classroom and we didn't have building for education for our school. And we studied outside like shadow trees, 193
under shadow trees . In the mosque sometime was raining then we studied in the mosque. In their education and their books was not regular like education like not for the government regular books. It was just it belonged to the teacher what they liked for the student until 6th. And then, was a little organized by government of Afghanistan .... At that time they make a building for our school. At that time we have teachers in... Oh, just one thing, there wasn't at that time the girls' school. It was just gentleman's school. We was... I was in this school and my other brother also. My relative in the village people come to this school, but when the building is maked then the ... there wasn't chair. There wasn't table. There wasn't books. We should buy it by ourselves books and sometimes who doesn't have the books they should write the notes of the teacher lecture. It was very bad. We are sitting on the floor and the teacher teach us. (Sawar, M, Pashtun, 22)
Aryana's brief village period around 1979-80 did not include schooling; however, her memories of this period are particularly interesting because female education in
Afghan villages was, and remains, a particular challenge.
I think there was one experience where we went to a local school and I remember my uncle telling me that my Mum had gone to that school. And it had been bombed at that time and it was just like mud and sort of flattened out. You could still see, like, the chalkboard, like, a little bit of it and stuff. He told me that my Mum had gone to that school when she was little. Up until grade 2 or 3? But it was sort of a family secret, because they didn't want people to know she had gone to school. It was kind of embarrassing. Going to school has different meanings for • ^7 girls down there . It's like, if your daughter goes to school, she must be doing bad things, or be a bad person. So, it was sort of a family secret. But I remember
29 Here Sawar means that the class took place under the shade of some trees in the village. 30 Given Sawar's age, this would have been done by the Islamic government. 3' Aryana was in her ancestral village around 1979-1981. The bombing she mentions here was likely related to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. 32 By "down there" Aryana means to refer to the village. It is also not unusual in my experience for a large percentage Pashtun girls to go to school up until the end of grade 3. In the refugee schools I managed, girls' enrollment dropped sharply after grade 3. 194
passing through it and I thought, "Wow! Like, my Mum's school." And I had a fascination with that building. But I personally didn't go to school there. I know during that time none of the kids did. I think before me they had, but suddenly we were all home and there was 6 or 7 families living in that unit and they all had kids and we had nothing to do. None of us went to school. (Aryana, F, Pashtun, 25)
As with Aryana, Aziza also spent some time escaping the violence of Kabul in her ancestral village . Unlike the free, permissive life described by Aryana, Aziza's memories of this time period are largely of assisting with farming and child rearing in spite of her age, which she recalls being around eleven or twelve at the time.
A few times we had to move to the village, which was away from Kabul in the centre of Afghanistan in Bamiyan. Because of all the bad stuff happening and then we were scared, so my father sent us to the village for some time, for a few months. And once I was there, living with my aunt and her family for 15 months, I think when I was about 11 or 12 years old. .. .1 used to read. There were a few books that my uncle had and I was so interested to read. There was stories and all those things. I was interested to read that I didn't even want to eat when it was time to eat, so I would just keep... but usually we helped with farming and stuff. ... It's really rough to work in farming and stuff. .. .Usually I would take lunch to my uncle when they were working on the mountains or hills or whatever. So I would walk for half and hour or 45 minutes carrying the food and the tea. Yeah, it was kind of up the hill. So, it was like hard and sometimes I'd ride a donkey. It was funny. It was good, but usually I didn't get to do that because they would take it in the morning to take their stuff. And then I would take care of my nephew34 so my uncle and aunt could go and work. ... I wasn't too much worried about the
Unlike Aryana, Aziza was in the village during the civil war, which erupted following the 1992 take over of Kabul by the mujahideen. 34 It is likely she means her cousin or the son of her aunt and uncle here. 195
school, but I missed my family so much that whenever I got their letters I was crying. (Aziza, F, Hazara, 24)
With the exception of those who lived in the rural areas, the participants' primary education experiences in Afghanistan were largely structured, highly disciplined encounters with a classroom life. Schools and classrooms were well equipped during this time with furniture, uniforms, books, chalkboards and chalk. For most of the participants, these years of primary education were relatively peaceful ones spent in Kabul, while the insurgent war against the Soviets and the communist government raged in the rural areas.
In the rural areas, on the other hand, primary education took place in more basic buildings or in the local mosque with more basic materials, if it took place at all. The same strict discipline was maintained in rural schools as in Kabuli schools in spite of the shortages.
Secondary Education:
School Routines Breaking Down
Five of the participants attended part or all of upper middle and high school in
Afghanistan. With the exception of the three participants over thirty years of age, most of the secondary years were during the Islamic Government (1992-97) and the Taliban
(1997-2001) under conditions of civil war, constant interruptions, changing curriculum, and general upheaval. Teachers were rarely paid during this time resulting in the development of private tuition centres where students would pay teachers and professors to prepare them for exams or to teach subjects outside of school hours. Teacher absenteeism from their regular positions out of economic necessity became an increasing issue during this time and, particularly in the case of Abdul, resulted in discouragement.
It could even be argued that learning became more and more "non-formal" or "semi- formal" after 1992. Perhaps as a result of the civil war situation, learners' memories of their formal secondary schooling in Afghanistan is not as detailed or as sharp as their memories of the more stable primary years. In spite of the context in which these participants undertook their middle and secondary level schooling, persistence, adaptation, as well as personal dedication motivated most of the learners to continue to pursue a formal education.
I finished grade six and then I started grade seven. And at that time when I started grade seven the... uh not the Russians, but the government that was supported by the Russians was removed or collapsed by the mujahideen. .. .After that we didn't go to school maybe for five months. After five months the place was very so dangerous and they're arresting the people that who are living there, living in this place, before the mujahideen collapse this government. ...After five months, five or six months. I went back to school to give my documents. I change, I wanted to change schools. When I go the schools was burned. .. .No documents and everything and that school was burn. That school was just walls and the roof was made of woods and everything was gone. But finally I find a, .. .1 find the chief, the principal, of this school and she was a woman and she told me we moved your school to the central courts, they say "downtown". "We move your school there and you can come there." And when I told her I want to would like to change school, but she didn't let me. ...She didn't give me my documents and she wasn't agreeing with me. .. .1 insist a lot but she didn't let me. Finally I decided not to leave this school. .. .The government system, everything was change. This time was a government ruled by the mujahideen. And we have no books. I have just one notebook for 18 subjects. English, Math, Geography,
When the Russians withdrew in 1989, they left an Afghan communist government in power in Kabul. 197
History, for everything. And teacher were also busy for finding money or to feed their children, like this. ...The teacher for nothing was just maybe 15 or 16 thousand I think like this Afghani. If you match it with US dollars or something at that time very little, about three dollar or four dollars per months. It's very little and the teacher for their life, they were working. Just they come once or twice a week for teaching for ten minutes or more than ten minutes. .. .1 went to school and the teacher came and we don't have books they give us the notes like quotations. Every, for example, History. He says history from like his mind so, and we are write it. Write it down and for ten minutes or twenty minutes, then, he must go just to get money. And then the other teacher came. Maybe you, every day we have five subjects or more than five. And after that the other teacher came and than he knows it like that. At that time we finish, finish the five subjects in one or two hours and then we all left the school, left the school until tomorrow. The teacher and the students go. And that time we don't have the chairs, some glass and we don't have the roof. .. .We sit just on the grounds. On the grounds it was too dusty. .. .No, desks, no chairs, no boards like a blackboards nothing. Just the walls and even we don't have the roof. Rainy days, when it rains cames we must stand beside the walls or something just like that. ... [But] because I know the condition, the situation. It didn't makes me disappointed from the education. (Mohammad, M, Pashtun, 26)
.. .On that time you know we got a friend over there and you know actually we didn't thinking about the study on that time. You know; we have a fun and sometimes we just run away from the school from the teacher you know, because did there was not to study there was not study. ... The teacher did not spend the time to study very well, because my father told me at that before that time the teacher was very strict and they study very well and the teacher was very hard. But in my time, I don't [like] teacher, because some teacher they didn't have like good education to you know start that teaching and after when they didn't do diploma they just start teaching .. .and they didn't have any experience. Some teacher they didn't, when you ask them about something, they didn't know about 198
that you know? .. .We went because you know our family told like that, but something more is good because you know like, but then my family didn't know we just you know we're on our way from the school and come home (Abdul, M, Uzbek, 25)
We missed one year of school and we didn't learn anything and we are going to move to a different class now, so we don't know a lot of things that we should have known, so it's going to affect even the higher grade. ... A lot of things we were supposed to know. We had new books and we didn't know the basics. It was also note taking and no chairs. It was really stressful. A lot of the time we didn't even have teachers. We had supplement teachers and they wouldn't teach the same subject. So, whenever they came they would just say, "Do something. Do your homework." .. .1 think it wasn't too bad, but it was bad in a way that we didn't understand. We just memorized the answers and a lot of times, for me especially, it's really hard to memorize if I don't understand. I think it wasn't too well, but it was OK. We passed. (Aziza, F, Hazara, 24)
Due to the financial situations of many of the participants' families, they could not afford to attend tuition centres where students could pay fees to obtain detailed instruction or university entrance exam preparation during this time. The use of tuition centres seems to have been quite regular in Kabul36, but Sawar also mentions one of his teachers as giving extra help outside of regular school hours in his village.
Grade 7 to Grade 11 was in the village was a very good teacher. He was very merciful with us. .. .He help us. He studied in the house to us. Everywhere he
36 It would be wrong to suggest that the sole reason for tuition centres is related to the war conditions since they are also regionally prevalent in India, Pakistan, Iran and other neighbouring countries, which are not embroiled in ongoing war and conflict. Their existence is described by my colleagues from the region as being "cultural practice" which helps poorly paid teachers and professor make ends meet. In the case of Afghanistan and in the view of these eleven participants, however, private tuition centres seem to be linked solely to the war factor. 199
make classes out of the school time. .. .If who can pay, if who doesn't have, didn't. (Sawar, M, Pashtun, 22)
Mohammad and Gul mention attending tuition centres in Kabul, and, given their regional prevalence, their memories require some consideration.
I took a, a private courses. My father, my family all told me at the time, "You should take private courses." We paid. The teacher, they teach us. .. .Teachers from the school even some teachers from the university, they teaching private courses that the school subject especially math, biology, and chemistry, was teach. All of them They make like a centre. They took like maybe two like shops, outdoors. Like one shops they made brought some chairs, different kinds of chairs, no desks. And they make a blackboard, piece of chalk and teach us like this. But no desks. No, the classroom, just they made the shops. .. .It was better [than my regular school] because we paid the teachers and the teacher, a little, they teach us. Because they need the money. We also need the teaching. ... It was not registered and the government, or Ministry of Education, or the Ministry of Training. But it helps us with the school lessons or with the things that we were missing. Like the lessons we were missing at the school. It was like just compensate. We were just compensating lessons. At that time I was studying math. It was difficult for me. And chemistry. I took these things. On grade nine, I mean grade ten, the school introduced us high school and at that time the government was also changed. The mujahideen was collapsed. (Mohammad, M, Tajik, 26)
I interested to be a doctor in the future and at that time I tried myself and I studied very hard and also there was some courses, like special courses for preparation of exam to go to university, so I followed them, like Osman, Osman's course and also Zafir. They were intelligent mathematicians peoples. So I followed these courses... (Gul, Tajik, 33) Gul and Mohammad seemed to appreciate their tuition centre experiences over their classrooms which, at the time, were often places characterized by absent teachers, absent materials, absent assistance, or negative learning caused by a combination of unpaid teachers and resource unavailability. The Afghan system during the mujahideen era is described by most participants as a system under extreme stress in which school routines, classroom routines, and learning practices were breaking down. The memories are rife with tuition centres, promotion without classroom attendance, promotion exams taking the place of real learning opportunities, shortened school days, closed schools and limited contact time with teachers in the classroom. These realities of the context suggest that the systemic breakdown described in the first section profoundly affected teaching and learning during the 1990s.
Classroom Life in Primary and Secondary Schools
Although the participants, by virtue of being learners rather than curriculum studies researchers, think of "curriculum" as the symbols of textbooks, skills to be learnt, goals, exams, and diplomas, the notion of curriculum drawn on here, as through out the dissertation, rests on Elliot Eisner's conception of the curriculum being both the 'what' and 'how' of learning (1979). While in the case study of World War II, discussion of the curriculum was embedded in memories of school and classroom routine, most of the
Afghan participants presented memories of their school subjects and classroom experiences without separating their primary and secondary levels of schooling. As such, it was difficult to separate the two levels of schooling in the explicit curriculum for 201 presenting here37. The reasons behind this may have been due to continuity in the context, the fact that secondary curriculum and classroom praxis was a more recent memory and therefore easier to bring to the surface, that the emphasis of the memories was more on the politicization of the curriculum as the leading authorities changed, or that because most of the participants had one central interview it seemed habitual to respond to questions about secondary by referring to the primary experience already detailed. For participants who spent much of their schooling in Afghanistan, the issue closest to the surface was the changes in the explicit curriculum, which took place after the rise of the
Islamic government in 1992 and again after the rise of the Taliban in 1997. Meanwhile, the curriculum of classroom praxis was continuously strict and respectful, but as resource materials became an increasing challenge, teachers began to dispense with "teaching" in favour of dictating entire textbooks to the class who in turn would write the text in their notebooks for memorization at home.
Learners' memories of the subject matter taught were largely presented in a rush, or a list. While the curriculum in Kabul was in the Dari language, the participants also took Pashto as a second language from mid-primary school and English in the higher grades. Subjects included literature, history, mathematics, and the sciences. At the secondary level there were 16 subjects taught, all of which were required (Dr. Amin, personal communication). When schools re-opened after a year's hiatus during the
Islamic Government, participants noted that they suddenly had more religious subjects
37 The 2.5 years that I managed Afghan refugee programs in Pakistan put me in a position whereby I have a fairly good knowledge of the subjects and the progression of subjects as they existed in 1999-2002, however, I decided that it was not necessary to present that knowledge here because this case study is from the point of view of the learner and not the manager. 202 than during the Communist period. During the Taliban, participants noted that girls did not go to school at all, that religious subjects were central to the explicit curriculum, and that science subjects were no longer taught in most cases.
More prominent memories than the subject matter, however, were learner's experiences of the routine of classroom life, which seem to be steeped in a strict routine whether in primary or secondary school. Intertwined with memories of classroom life was the teacher. In the final chapter of this section, participants' opinions of their
"favourite" and "least favourite" teachers over their learning lifetimes will be discussed.
Some of the participants' more salient memories of these experiences seem to say much more than a general description can provide. Key excerpts follow:
We study just subjects in Dari. Maybe about 12 subjects, math, biology, chemistry ... these things in Dari. And one we study in Pashto just like it was a second language. ...We studied English at the 7th grade up to 12th grade. ...No Russian. We had some school during that time. They specially teach Russian, but Russian as a second language. Not all the subjects was in Russian. .. .Teachers were good. They just teach. They do not care about the politicians or something else, politics. They just came and teach us. They were busy on just teaching us. .. .They have some books that the government prepare for them. They teach us regarding, according these books. ...At first the teacher for example, English if he said English, first the teacher himself read the sentences or is doing the exercise then he told to every student you must do this, you must do this number sentences you must do this exercise in front of the class. Like this every subject. And they gave us homework to do. For example: if we have chemistry or history homework just the teacher was going to explain the one page and the next page was the student's 203
homework and the next day the teacher was going to pass the students. (Mohammad, M, Tajik, 26)
-30 We would note . We would note mostly. We would note, yeah. We would try or try understanding it yeah, but unfortunately one of the reasons those countries are remaining less educated or not very well educated or they don't have, most of them don't have a lot of knowledge or general knowledge is probably because of yeah, again because of this issue of when we communication so the students couldn't dare, I mean there were students asking questions but involvement was so that you have to listen. You can't interrupt the teacher all the time by asking different questions. But the environment was made so; otherwise some teachers liked questions. They would say any question or anything, but yeah, but you couldn't say very comfortable as you do here... (Rehman, M, Pashtun, 33)
[In art classes,] I think they used to draw like an apple on the board and we would just draw it. Or something like that. I think so. They were not like professional drawers, or even if they were they can't teach us like that. So we would basically just have fun in drawing class, right? ...Well, [classroom discipline] was different. They had sticks, and no one could talk. If they talked, they could hit you. So it was a pin drop silence basically. Especially while she was explaining something or she was writing something on the board. So we would be quiet. ...[On] the first day [of school] you go and sit somewhere; that's your space for the rest of the year. Basically. So you would just find your own spot and make it your own. (Fatana, F, Hazara, 22)
We had books, obviously. Some of them didn't but... usually we had books. When our teachers came after the attendance and everything, then they would ask about the previous lessons. Then usually they would have tests - quizzing - they
Whenever Rehman and other participants mention "note", they generally mean "take dictation" or "take notes". would call different people and then ask about previous lessons. And then mark them, which wasn't too pleasant, because you know we were not always prepared for that. ... [If you were called upon,] you always had to stand up. Yeah, it was really different from here. So, when you had to talk, you had to stand up. ... [And we stayed standing] until you were told to sit down. And when you were being quizzed, when you were being asked, usually you had to go in front of the class, which was not pleasant for a lot people. When you have to do it here, it's often not very pleasant for presentations or something. But there, you have to do it for every single test that you do - the oral test that you do.... we had [written] midterms, a few midterms, and then I think the year was divided into 4 sections. And then we had the first section and second and third and then we had the finals. And then the worst thing, if you... if you failed in one course or maybe two courses, then you would have to repeat the whole year. You couldn't just repeat that subject. There were a few people that got failed a few years and they were still in the same class, which was really sad. I really didn't like it. (Aziza, F, Hazara, 24)
.. .No that teacher is not friendly and we couldn't learn from them. Just because they know that when they teach something when you don't know about that, they going to punch you and you know two, three time they punch me like that. And they are always very strict, very strict teachers. And I don't like, you know, .. .For that you know I hate that school and that aid because when you have a bad situation in school, you never wants to go back over there. Gets children but when they punch us but this, I don't know one of them to say don't tell your family OK if you want to tell your family if somebody come from your family we going to have a hard time me you know something like that . .. .You know we have to test over there but on the test is easy for us because actually we didn't
39 Sawar also recounts an experience in high school during the Taliban where he complains to the district education officer about his teachers failing to work because they have not been paid which results in harsh treatment in class and eventually forces him to change schools. Abdul's experience in this regard prior to the Taliban cannot simply be explained as being due to his general unhappiness with schooling from grade one onward. study, but we just pass the test, pass the test and teacher help us, sometime help us and sometimes we give a to money for them you know that's common in Afghanistan and Middle East. I never seen in Canada like that but over there it was like that. (Abdul, M, Pashtun, 25)
In thinking about this set of memories on classroom life, it is important to think about their progression from those who seemed to respect and "like" the school system and the curriculum of the Afghan classroom, to those who had difficulty with some aspects of it and, circumventing Afghan cultural norms, boldly mentioned these issues.
As the war became more intense during the 1990s, the ways in which formal learning adapted to the increasingly precarious situation is also of note for later discussion. In particular the use of dictation/notation, shortened school days, self-study, and private tuition centres should be examined further if possible. Another aspect of these memories relates to the different tone, words, and perspectives which participants used to discuss the same classroom culture. These differences of opinion show how perspective and experience are as individual as any human opinion and how difficult it can be to draw a definitive conclusion or analysis of social structures. The curriculum of Afghan classroom life reflected cultural norms of discipline, order, and hierarchical power common to the social structure of Afghan tribalism.
Post-secondary Education
By the time participants were ready to be engaged in post-secondary education, the majority of them were no longer living in Afghanistan. Of the four who attended
Kabul University, Gul and Rehman did so during the Islamic Government period (1992-
1997) and Mohammad and Sawar did so during the Taliban period (1997-2001). Gul's 206 and Rehman's memories are full of the violence and closures common to,the civil war era in the mid-1990s and echoed in the recollections of the same time period by younger participants. Mohammad's and Sawar's memories, on the other hand, are filled with the human rights' hardships of the Taliban, the lack of resources due to sanctions and governmental poverty, and their personal struggles to obtain a university education at a period of time when sanctions, politics, and ideas threatened the university with closure.
In spite of the contrasting timeframes and differences caused by that, the four sets of experiences are similar in the descriptions of how resource limitations were handled at the classroom level.
Regardless of the government in power, university entrance required students to take an exam called the konkoor imtihan40. One's score on this countrywide exam determines both the university and the faculty one will study in; therefore, students are not free to choose between subjects like medicine, engineering, literature, education, or law. Rather, the choice is made for them through their exam results. Sawar, Mohammad, and Gul gave interesting accounts of their experiences with the exam.
When I finished [high] school in 1998. ...Then I didn't go to university for 1 year. At that time, I also get preparation for the matriculation exam41 for the university.
40 There was considerable confusion as to the spelling of the Afghan university entrance exam. Dr. Amin (personal communication) told me that he remembers being told that it was a French word - "Concours" or "Conqueror". The term "concours" in French can refer to a scholarly examination and therefore there may indeed be a relationship. Several Afghan participants were consulted and they agreed that the correct transliteration of the term would be konkoor imtihan - konkoor being the name of the exam in Dari and Persian and imtihan being an Arabic word meaning "exam". The French pronunciation of concours and the Afghan pronunciation of konkoor are the same. Konkoor may also be the word used for the Iranian university entrance exam (http://freethoughts.org/archives/000765.php). 41 From the context of his discussion, Mohammad seems to be referring to the konkoor imtihan when he uses die term "matriculation exam". It is unclear why he chooses this term, because regionally the matriculation exam or matric is the grade 10 school-leaving exam given to students in Pakistan yet Mohammad never lived there. Like Gul, Mohammad would have studied for the exam at a private tuition centre specializing in exam preparation. 207
I studied English, math, and chemistry, geometry courses to get prepared for that, university. I pass the one year, after one year in 1999.1 pass the exams for the faculty of law and I start the faculty of law in 1999. That was the Taliban regime year. (Mohammad, M, Pashtun, 26)
So I followed these [private tuition] courses and after that when I finished I passed test, we called konkoor test, we called that, or the general test for entrance into university. After we pass that test... we just write down the test and after one month or two months, we received our results. And it that came to every parts of school. So when I went to school... one hour, really I remember, I was busy around my house when work house with my mother; I helped him. At that time one of my cousin came and said " Oh you know you, your grade is very high and you came, you like, success ... succeeded in the Faculty of Medicine. You will be the student and your numbers like that." So I didn't believe it, because it was on that time you know Afghanistan was very, it was like completely peaceful and other provinces on the border of Afghanistan was war, but in Kabul it was completely good. ...So I went to my school in the afternoon, summer, and saw my name on the lists so it make me very happy and because the fact I just cried and outside came and informed all my friends and they were all very happy. (Gul, F, Tajik, 33)
... You can't take the major you want. .. .There is like step by step. If you have 230 point, then you can't (sic.) go to medicine. If you have 200 you can go to Engineering... no, not 200... 208 you have go engineering. But I make, 24042 points and it was equal to the literature points. .. .All the konkoor examination.... But you can't take the major, which you want. Your point chose the major for you. ...it was just like 30 questions for medicine, 30 from physics, 30 from... just like this. We had 330. ...We have just 3 hours. ...The reason I couldn't take enough score was that we were sitting from 8am and they were speaking and there
42 These numbers may not be correct. It was difficult to hear on the recording and the pariticpant did not comment on them when asked to upon going through his transcript. 208
was some water on the floor and until 2, they were speaking about Afghanistan, the people who make peace before. Like history of Afghanistan. And then, at 2... oh no... at 12:30 we started the examination. From 8 'til 12:30 we were sitting on the ground and I was confused. We didn't have energy. And then the examination started until 4:30. ...Um... 3:30 until 3:30 But I was confused because I didn't, I wasn't careful about the question. I was very confused. I got very headache. ... I wasn't happy [to do Literature]. ...I like Engineering. But at that time I changed my mind, .. .and I don't want to take another examination for konkoor examination. .. .the low score is "education". It's not.. .but they didn't fail you. The low score is education score, which is 130 or 190. Like [to be] a high school teacher. (Sawar, M, Pashtun, 22)
University student life for these participants seemed similar for the most part in spite of the historical differences separating the four participants' enrollments. During the
Islamic Government, classes were more likely to be interrupted by demonstrations, and sometimes civil war-related violence, at the university itself. The campus eventually was closed down for a period of time in the mid-1990s. The second great disruption to their studies, as Gul explains below, was in the unavailability of resources from textbooks to medical equipment.
.. .But after the second year, the problem started, we went, and for three months the university was closed and then for another two months and than back and forth, back and forth. .. .Well in '93, end of '93, when Rabbani was the President little bit, the situation was a little bit calm and probably the reason was that most of Kabul was occupied by this group so it was relatively calm. I came back. We43 came back, and we studied. Kept studying. The university was opened, but there was the resources were entirely lost and there wasn't anything else we could use. For example there's no cafeteria. Before there used to be food; there used to be
"We" refers to Rehman and one of his brothers. 209 free food; there used to be very good furniture, good rooms. Well, still lack of a lot of things but at least it was, I mean, we could do, we could survive but after the '93 there wasn't anything, there was no food, there was no service, .. .and the teachers there and the teachers were gone. We didn't have a lot of teachers, one teacher would replace another, so but I did it in the third year and we covered and then the fourth year '94 was also not bad. We had some one or two months off, because of some demonstrations, some protests, and also some problems. For example, if I would hear, once I heard that they came up and they took some students; even once myself they came to our room, searched all the room they thought belonged to someone so they could search the room, smashed everything, went back. So the same thing happened with some students. Those things would terrify us and would cause us to disappear for a while and then return when the situation is calm. But eventually in the late 1994,1 was able to, we went to a test, exam. Exams started for those who were who were admitted in 1994. And we passed the exam and I received only a transcript, I believe, a transcript and nothing else. And then later on I received a piece of paper from them. (Rehman, M, Pashtun, 33)
.. .Teachers were at first tried to bring their best to prepare their things. But at that time I am very lucky because I practice on patients. Like, we had laboratory and sometimes we did microbiology, everything biology and laboratory. After me, you know, there wasn't anything. After me, the other students couldn't do that and they didn't get a chance to work with the body. In first year, we had body and I made dissection. Dissection they teach us. ... You know there was a lot of us looking for books on the weekends, however, we didn't have our, I say for yoti, but the teachers and the library tried their best to find and also students they also pass from the other students, to find the books. You know in one group we are for example sewing things. So everybody has books, however our library didn't, but we find ourselves. For example myself, for our tray, .. .oh, for our class it was different, we can't ask from boys to bring some things like that at first. But after we used to talk with boys. I ask from my neighbourhood, because I knew he was 210
in the faculty. I ask my brother to go with me and ask him he has and he said, "Yes. I have, so I will bring for you." So he brought for me the hammer, or some bones, and these things. At last I have these things. (Gul, F, Tajik, 33)
For some time during GuPs time at Kabul University's Faculty of Medicine, she and other female students were sent to the hospitals to do work and to attend lectures, because it was deemed safer than the university campus. This gave her the opportunity to do a lot of practical work that many medical students do not get in the early years of their studies. The stress of trying to maintain a proper medical faculty during these later years of the Islamic Government eventually resulted in Gul's faculty relocating to Pakistan, an experience that will be discussed in the next chapter.
In spite of the exodus of faculty from the mid-1990s onwards and the anti- education policies of the time, the University continued to be open during much of the
Taliban era (1997-2001). During the Taliban, the greatest issues facing the remaining learners seem to have been lack of available resources and support for teaching and learning coupled with the Talibanization of the explicit curriculum. As with the secondary schools, professors taught mostly by dictating books to the students and then giving a short lecture if there was time. Moreover, the professors were also regularly absent due to holding other jobs in order to make money for basic survival. Mohammad's experience of studying law both during the Taliban and immediately after provides insight into the changes that took place over the 1997-2002 or 2003 time period. 211
When I went to the university it was just by the name. That's "university". No materials, no books. ...It's a little modern [building].... We just have glasses44, the books, the chairs - ordinary chairs, but we have but no materials like modern books or computers or something else. .. .For the first and second year we have blackboards and we use the chalk. When the Taliban regime collapsed, very small things change in our class. The blackboard change to white materials,.. .whiteboard, and we use the markers and they put one very small air condition. This thing change.... Iran, our neighbour country donate about 10,000 volumes of books, but they are not so good books and I couldn't use them. The University also use this notation system. The teacher notes after that they explain or lectures. You just write this things. Also on the exam we just read the notes that the teacher gave us. We read these things.
... During Taliban We have some subject. Some political subject. .. .We should read these things. But during the Taliban regime our teacher said, "I couldn't teach you these things, because it has bad sides and good sides. I must tell you the two sides. If I tell you the good sides of this political ideology, I will put my life in danger..." For that reason, we didn't study this subject for one semester. ... You just ask the teachers, according to... or regarding the Government, or the politics. We ask the teachers some questions regarding to the politics or something else the teacher say we have a proverb in our language, "we have the wall and the wall have the rats". It means that if you ask me these questions and I answer you, maybe the Taliban or the people who ruling the regime have some agents or despise you and they will give this information. ...
... When the Taliban collapsed, I passed exams for second year, for second year of the university. I was in the third semester and I studied until the eighth semester. I passed exams for third semester and the Taliban collapsed. Before the Taliban collapsed we were going to the university, but when the incident of this 9/11 of September happened and the Americans going to attack to Afghanistan and the
He used this word to refer to windows throughout the interview. 212
Taliban closed the university and said to the students, " you not come. We will notice you. Or we will call you." So we didn't go to the university. After fourteen days from the day America start attack Afghanistan, the Taliban after fourteen days, I think, collapsed. After fourteen days we went back to the university and at that time it was winter. If the university was closed for that time, because of winter the university would be closed. The teachers says we should come by March. .. .the university start in Afghanistan at March 21st45. But the teacher told me, teachers told us, we should come before March for get the preparing for the exams for the 4 semester. .. .And we went. And we just pass the exams for the , 4th semester. We had just another fifteen days lessons preparing for that. .. .1 went to class three and that new government. New change. At that time, it was getting very a little better. Better. During the Taliban, I forget, we had eight subjects there. Subject from the university and five subject religious subject. And we must turn turban and have beard. When I go to university during Taliban regime. And I must... the university start in the morning at 8 o'clock but the Taliban told us we should come at 6 o'clock, we studied religious things, 5 subjects religious up to 8. And from 8 we start, we start university, the faculty lessons, up to 1 o'clock But when the Taliban collapsed, the lesson was changed; it was a little better. We have some teacher that they were living in abroad, for example in European Country, American Country. We have two or three teachers they come from United States, Australia and they came and teach us. (Mohammad, M, Tajik, 26)
The interesting facet of Mohammad's memories of university during and after the
Taliban era is how much the final situation resonates with an earlier era - the 1960s/70s, with a series of alliances with foreign faculties, scholarship programs, and when professors were Afghans with foreign credentials. Over the 1978-2001 period, however
45 This is the usual school year across Afghanistan is from the end of March to the end of December, partly because there is no heating or electricity making it too difficult to study during the coldest months. March 21s1, the spring equinox, is known as "nauroz" in Iran and Afghanistan. A non-religious holiday, Afghans sometimes refer to nauroz as "The Afghan new year". Unlike some agricultural cultures, the start of the planting season is more important here than the harvest. Under the Taliban, the holiday was banned, as it has no recourse under Islam, (http://www.dawn.com/2004/03/21/intl4.htm & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauroz ) 213 there has been much change in the wider context, the available resources, and perhaps personal expectations in a post-Taliban Afghanistan. As much of the rest of the world has grown economically and technologically, Afghanistan has been destroyed a little bit more with each passing year and change in government. There is a notable mixture of pessimism and optimism in Mohammad's assessment of the changes after 2001 - the whiteboard and markers, the computers which no one could use and which they did not have sufficient electricity for, the donated library books where were outdated or linguistically irrelevant, and the continued use of notation methods. The optimism, however, is admittedly an improvement over the barely functioning university from the early 1990s onwards.
The challenges facing the participants in their post-secondary experiences seem decidedly more politicized than the challenges facing younger participants earlier in the educational process. While the lack of materials and resources and the use of make-up final exams to compensate for missed semesters are endemic, the involvement of students in political movements and demonstrations is altogether different from what participants describe of their earlier schooling experiences. It is clear from these four accounts that from the mid-1990s onwards, the quality of university education being received was severely affected by the war and politics of intervention surrounding the campus. Yet in spite of these upheavals, students continued to adapt and to try to find ways to learn in such a restrictive system. 214
War and Violence in School
The pervasiveness of war and violence in Afghanistan since 1979 is such that school routines and atmosphere have not been spared. However, with the exception of post-secondary memories, many of the participants only spoke of the ways war came to their educational institutions when specifically prompted to do so. This brings to mind the words of Mohammad (Tajik, M, 26) when he said; "Afghan peoples get use to the war. If there weren't the war, it just jokes, if there weren't the wars, their life would be boring."
If war and peace were absent from overt classroom life, it was never far from the wider curriculum of the moment. Nearly all of the participants spoke offhandedly of school closures, especially during the 1990s, but they also slipped in memories of school and tuition centre burnings, bombings, and other forms of violence that spilled over into their educational worlds. Some of the more poignant memories are given below to highlight that the schooling environment throughout the 1978-2001 period was not always a sanctuary for children living in a stressful environment and that in spite of the
"normality" of war in their lives, the situation was anything but "normal".
I remember, when you ask me. I saw lots of these things. For example, many times I were on the way to the schools I saw many incidents, rocket crashings, but beside this I go to school. When I walk to the schools, for 10 minutes, 20 minutes the rocket crashing became nearer, nearer around the school then I took my bicycle and escaped from the school. (Mohammad, M, Tajik, 26)
One day, maybe grade 8 or 9, one truck gone in our front of our school and here was bomb under the ground46. The blasting, you know? Our, that time we have glasses and all of the glasses broken and all of the kids very scared. And some of
'He seems to be referring to a landmine. 215 the parts of the car come onto our school, but nobody died. That's good. But scare. Very scare that was. ... It's a kind of... here is an association like they are looking for the bomb under the ground. They put red stone on the top of these things, which is not cleared. .. .At that time there wasn't a regular playground or something like that. .. .Our parents don't allow us to play because of the bombs. (Sawar, M, Pashtun, 22)
Actually, after [the Russian invasion] I didn't have continuous education. We went to school and we left. But our school was destroyed by a bomb, bombardment. ... I don't know if at that time it was the Russians or whoever. .. .It was after the people tried to distance themselves from the government, a few weeks later there was a bombardment by the government. ... We left school maybe 10 or 15 days before that, because the war started and we left school. People fought for 10 to 15 days, O.K., and then the bombing came. (Ali, M, Uzbek, 40)
... One incident I never forgot, it was very tragedy for me. I went to the private courses. I was standing just looking for the time. Our course, I think, started from four up to five. We are one or two shops, as I mentioned before, .. .We are waiting for the class. That time became like short and I entered the class. I was standing the wall and the one rocket crash beside this course. Um.. .Windows, glasses, become through in front of me. And I remember at that time there was a girl, and she was our classmate, she became like this and I saw her like the glass were .. .Hurt her. And beside the course, there were nine girls sitting, studying [for] matriculation exams. They were very younger girls and the rocket crashed among them. .. .1 saw many of these things but I don't forget this one. (Mohammad, M, Pashtun, 26)
But there was always... whenever something happened, we didn't go to school for some time. Or, when there was... they usually announced that this area is 216
going to be attacked, or something. Or there is a war or something. So, don't come to school for one or two months. I remember in grade 7 or something, we didn't go to school at all for one year and then when we came at the end of the year they just gave us fifteen or twenty questions with answers and then they told us to study and come back for the exams. And then they would ask those questions. So that was one year that just went by like that. .. .1 think that was the year we spent in the village. (Aziza, F, Hazara, 24)
.. .One morning we got up we heard from the school the school was bombed and really some one came and burn the schools, so from that time .. .1 know, we didn't care, but it affects too much our mind you know. So we afraid from that time. We like our school, because when there was any big buildings government lend some good and very large building for the students. .. .And the government went and paid for the students, so they burned one part of the back of the school. Bad memory of my childhood. But we didn't build, because you know since I know myself I am a child I have heard about the war. It was like an old subject for me. (Gul, F, Tajik, 33)
These are only a sample of some of the crucial war-in-school memories mentioned by the participants in the course of giving their oral histories. For most of the participants, except those who left Afghanistan at a very young age, the realities of violent war were intertwined closely with their educational experiences, access, and quality of the learning experience. It is no wonder that the participants who spent much of their education in Afghanistan took pride in telling me, unprompted, their academic standing. While most of the participants said that they came first, or within the top four students, the mere completion of their courses is particularly impressive in these unstable circumstances. Nevertheless, in spite of the participants' success in terms of completion and academic standing several of them - Mohammad, Aziza, and Abdul - called into 217 question the quality of education they received given the numerous interruptions, the notation system, the resource challenges and the changes in curriculum.
Conclusion
The memories of these eleven Afghans of schooling in Afghanistan prior to displacement focuses heavily on disruptions due to the violence of war and the politicization of the education system due to conflict, particularly a rising sense of ethnic and tribal conflict. Such memories reflect the more popular images of learning in
Afghanistan seen in the world media. Regardless of the conflict, these eleven children and adolescents remained in school weathering the storm of changing national anthems, dress codes, textbooks, and resource availability. But underneath these disruptions, the routine of school appears to have had many similar characteristics across the board.
Morning assemblies, morning-only class schedules, corporal punishment, uniforms, strict routines, memorization, rote learning, lecture style classes at all levels, and formal examinations seem to be prominent and ongoing parts of the ongoing Afghan learning experience whenever the level of violence permitted. In spite of the extreme challenges facing education in Afghanistan during the 1978-2001 era, at least the participants had access to an Afghan curriculum, something which they would not necessarily have access to once they became refugees. From the early days of the war onwards, participants began to migrate - alone or with their families - to safer countries where the violence was not as intense. The roles which learning played in relevant countries of first asylum -
Iran and Pakistan - are presented in the next chapter. Chapter 9:
Afghan Learning in Refugee Contexts.
Unlike the participants involved in the case study on World War II and unlike the lives of many displaced Afghans, displacement did not bring organized refugee camp schools47 to the lives of these eleven Afghans. Although refugee villages exist in abundance in the border areas of Iran and Pakistan, by and large the participants did not reside in them and therefore did not have recourse to attend their schools. Instead, the memories of the nine participants who spent time in Iran or Pakistan involve experiences of the state school system, private Iranian/Pakistani schools, privately run uncertified
Afghan schools, uncertified home schooling with private tutors, apprenticeship and organized non-formal schooling or training. In addition to these school or school-like learning spaces, learning skills through various work experiences became integral to the overall learning experience of urban refugee youth. This chapter presents the participants' complex, yet rich, descriptions of schooling and of non-formal learning in countries of first asylum.
School-based Education in the Refugee Context
All of the participants except one spent at least part of their youth living in one of the two main countries of first asylum accepting Afghan refugees - Pakistan and Iran.
Decisions made about learning access in these two countries has been vastly different and based on wider political decisions taken in relation to the status of the refugees in these two countries. However, of the ten participants who spent time in Pakistan or Iran, only
47 In Iran these schools are run using the Iranian state primary curriculum whereas in Pakistan the primary schools use an Afghan curriculum while the secondary schools run by the Pakistani government use the Pakistani state curriculum and others run by international NGOs use an Afghan curriculum (personal experience).
218 219
Sawar lived in organized UNHCR-run refugee village and his memories of this time period are brief as he was only there for about a year during grade one or two before returning to Afghanistan. Hence, the collective sense of memories represented in this history focuses on those who lived/live in Pakistan's and Iran's cities. In this chapter the words "school" and "formal education" need to be taken more loosely given that many of the school-type situations attended and described were not state-certified accredited institutions in purpose-built buildings. Instead, there were many "schools" modeled after the traditional Afghan system described in the last two chapters which relied on limited material supplies, were housed in rented buildings built originally as single family dwellings, and which lacked trained teachers and ministerial accreditation and monitoring. Other school-like structures, including private tuition centres, also became central learning environments and are included in this definition of "school".
Pakistan
Seven of the participants spent more than a few years studying in Pakistan, five of whom participated at least part of the time in the Pakistani state education system through private, registered Pakistani schools. Three of the participants spent time in the Afghan private system. Five of the participants lived in or near the border city of Peshawar, capital of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). One participant spent her entire
Pakistani sojourn in Rawalpindi. The seventh spent about a year in Rawalpindi and the rest of her time in Peshawar.
In the Pakistan context, refugee camps have long been referred to as "refugee villages" by locals, the assistance community, and the refugees themselves. 220
Since the 1980s, the international assistance community and the provincial governments of NWFP and Balochistan have been involved in running a comprehensive educational program in the refugee villages. This involvement included running primary and secondary schools and non-formal literacy programs, supporting limited scholarships for Afghans to attend post-secondary institutions in Pakistan, and curricular processes to improve the quality of existing programs in the face of systemic challenges in
Afghanistan. Although not thoroughly researched and documented, some aspects of this system have been studied and mentioned in various efforts (Pont, 2001; Dicum, 2005;
Sinclair, 2001; Rugh, 1998 & 2000). In spite of some attempts within the assistance community to involve the Afghan private system in this process and to improve the resources and quality of that system in particular49, for the most part these learning spaces are not included in the wider process of supporting education for Afghans in Pakistan. As they did not live in the refugee villages, the learning experiences described by most participants therefore lie outside of the assistance community's efforts for supporting
Afghan education. The exception among the participants is Rehman, who attended the
International Rescue Committee's English language training program in Peshawar at one point in his educational history.
The Afghan private system. The Afghan private system in Pakistan consists of a haphazard collection of schools started by educated Afghans to provide economic sustenance to those who own
49 These attempts mostly took place from 1999-2002 and to my knowledge included resource support and capacity building in the Quetta City Schools' Project of Save the Children US, the involvement of headmasters of Afghan-NGO run schools in the curriculum standards effort known as the Basic Competencies, and resource and teacher training support for Afghan-run private schools in Peshawar in 2002. Given funding constraints faced by most of the international implementing agencies since 2002, assistance for such programs has decreased. and work in them and to provide education to Afghan children and youth living in
Pakistan's cities who cannot otherwise access schooling. These schools may either be privately run by their headmaster/mistress, or may be supported by a local Afghan
NGO50. Most such schools use one of the many sets of textbooks described in chapter seven and teach a formal Afghan curriculum related to the values, language, and ideals of an affiliated political group or ethnic group which sends its children to related schools.
Therefore, multiple sets of textbooks reflect multiple learning goals, expectations, learning styles, and notions of appropriate curriculum within the Afghan context. During the latter part of the Islamic Government and the Taliban era, this fledgling private system also included a post-secondary institution of sorts consisting mostly of members of the Faculty of Medicine from Kabul University.
Only Gul (Tajik, F, 33) and Aryana (Pashtun, F, 25) attended Afghan private schools in Pakistan. Aryana's memories of the primary level schools she attended were brief, often jumbled together between private Afghan schools and Pakistani curriculum schools, and focused on her inability to make friends, do her homework, and weather the harsh discipline methods she faced daily. On the other hand, Gul attended the above- mentioned medical school in exile during the Islamic Government and Taliban eras and reveals a fairly unique experience in her memories.
While some Afghan NGOs are registered by the Pakistani government and have permission to work in Pakistan, many of them are not. Nevertheless, they are allowed to operate quietly. 222
In spite of the challenges Gul speaks of in describing her time at this institution in exile, it also afforded her opportunities - particularly to work at the hospital level in a specialty not usually undertaken by female doctors in Afghanistan.
So I continued my education ...[at a private university in] Peshawar. And after that because of the, some of the teachers, professors, they all came together [from Afghanistan] and they make like small community for to study for people there. Because the most problem for the people when they came to Pakistan was the education of their children because there should be a lot of money for people who wanted to have educated children. Because we didn't have like any high school or formal document to come to Pakistan. .. .So I went there and it was good for a while, I was there. .. .But when I was in third class in Kabul I went, I came here and I passed again an exam, an evaluation exam, and again I was in the third class, I continued here. Then I continued for two and after the Islamic Government, the Taliban came in. You know, the situation became worse. Worst, I think. ... But when we moved to Pakistan, our faculty doesn't have enough. Even they try to have enough. They ask, also beg, from the hospitals to allow their students to go there, because Pakistan, they didn't allow students to practice there, so there was some refugee... some special like hospital for Afghani people... We work at a job because it Arabic hospital. .. .That's why newest people say if ever I went to this hospital, I first like very good professor, like — how I say it? — specialist - like, ENT ~ Ear, nose and throat. (Gul, Tajik, 33)
Gul's narrative of her final years of medical training in Pakistan suggest the challenges university-aged students had in completing their studies in the Afghan private system. The lack of resources and the difficulties in accessing hospital training opportunities were especially poignant parts of her memories. Unlike the private Afghan primary and secondary schools, the eventual partnership built with the private Arabic hospital in Peshawar provided the learners with some practical opportunities to learn and 223 to build their capacities in the medical field. However, Gul never had the opportunity to discover whether her credentials would be recognized in Afghanistan or Pakistan due to her emigration to Canada.
Afghans in the Pakistani system. Although the majority of Afghans living in Pakistan do not/did not have access to the Pakistani school system, either public or private, four of the seven participants who migrated to Pakistan attended private schools registered to use the Pakistani curriculum.
The ways in which participants gained access varied, but were largely linked to issues of social and economic status. Aziza (F, 24) and Fatana (F, 22), both Hazaras, attended schools set up by the Ismaili religious community in Pakistan. Aryana (Pashtun, F, 25) spent approximately five years in Peshawar during which she estimates that she attended four or five schools. In addition to several private Afghan schools, which she described as grim under-funded and under-resourced places of learning, Aryana's schools included several which were part of the Pakistani private system or were schools for the children of Pakistani military officers. Jalil (Pashtun, M, 29) attended a private Pakistani school in
Peshawar from kindergarten through twelve due to his family's wealth and connections but also because of his age providing easier access.
Of these four participants, only Aryana did not complete her high school education in Pakistan due to her emigration to Canada in the late 1980s, around age eleven. Aziza and Fatana arrived in Pakistan at different points in the 1990s and had to repeat several grades, because they could not speak Urdu. Jalil arrived in Peshawar 224 shortly after the Soviet invasion when he was very young and had an easier time starting at an Urdu-medium school.
Through their collective memories, the image that emerges of the Afghan experience in the Pakistani curriculum is bifurcated between those who accessed the system through Pakistan's Ismaili community and those who did not. An examination of their memories suggests that while the Pakistani classroom system was not drastically different from the Afghan classroom, Jalil and Aryana experienced racism and an identity crisis as to whether or not they were Afghan or Pakistani in the school environment that did not seem to affect Aziza and Fatana, who went to schools exclusively for Ismaili
Afghans.
For Jalil and Aryana, the school and classroom system they experienced in
Peshawar was strictly with rote learning, memorization, high expectations, corporal punishment, uniforms and little time for creativity. Of their school environments, Jalil and Aryana gave descriptions distinctly similar to the routines mentioned in the last chapter for Afghan schools in Kabul.
We might have sung the national anthem. I don't remember doing it, but I'm pretty sure we did. 'Cause later on in a different school we had to stand outside and we had to do the Pakistani national anthem. Actually, they were very strict. They would check your nails to make sure they are clean and beat you up if you move... if your socks are different or dirty or... they would beat you up (Aryana, F, Pashtun, 25) 225
We used to go to school and then, start our day with, ah; they call it tarama- the national anthem. So, we all used to stand in rows and say the national anthem of Pakistan. (Jalil, M, Pashtun, 29)
However, their impressions of classrooms and of learning the Pakistani curriculum were quite different. Aryana was unhappy largely because of the strictness of classroom routine, the high expectations, and her home life being discouraging of girls' education.
...When we first immediately started school, probably grade 1,1 didn't like it. I didn't like the hitting. I didn't like any of it. I think it was not until grade 3. ... Actually, my Dad got a very good job in a different part of Peshawar. He was making very good money. .. .And we went to a private school - an army school - and every single kid was rich. ... It was a very nice school. Teachers still hit, but... Oh. I remember playing games there and I remember it was more... the setting was more Western, too. It was very newly built. I didn't like it because it was too different and I constantly thought if those other friends of mine were near, what would they think? Because it was a total opposite of what I was going to just a few months ago.... I [once got hit] for cheating. And the boy who told on me had a crush on me. It was in grade 3. .. .1 had written the answers on a sheet in the book and for tests we would sit outside the classroom in rows and I remember going back. Because, we didn't get studying done at home. My Mum's sort of didn't have much appreciation for education and during this time, urn, neither did my Dad sort of... Like there were a lot of male family members interfering with my Dad's choice to send us to school, so there was zero time for homework at home. So, I remember I was a bright child and I hadn't studied, but I wish I had, so I cheated. And, you know, this boy told on me and the teacher found out. I had to hold my hands out and she hit me very very hard. Since then I haven't cheated. (Aryana, F, Pashtun, 25) Jalil, on the other hand, enjoyed his primary and secondary school years until grade ten in spite of the corporal punishment threat. After tenth grade he had to attend a different school, FSc51 or upper secondary, where the environment was less inviting.
We had two languages - Urdu and English. .. .1 think from in grade one we had English where they teach us like alphabets, basic alphabets, and connecting the alphabets together. And we had Urdu and we had math, basic math. We had science. We had Islamiyat, which is like the religious subject. And that's pretty much it in the primary. .. .Then the science becomes like biology, chemistry, and physics. So, they're split up. And then we had social studies. Sometimes they used to call it Pakistan Studies and sometimes social studies, but even in social studies they used to teach us Pakistan studies. The history of Pakistan from 1857, or before that, until 1947. .. .They used to hit us too much, even in Pakistani schools they hit the children if they don't know something or don't do their homework. They had very long and big sticks in their hands, even the female teachers. They were really harsh. ... [They hit us on] hands or back. Sometimes when they get angry they just move their hand and hit you. (Jalil, M, Pashtun, 29)
All four of the participants discussed the use of rote learning and memorization methods over varied hands-on methods including in the sciences where one might have expected simple experiments especially in later grades. The schools they attended seem to have had limited resources: lack of science equipment, libraries, computers, books, posters, and stationery supplies. Aryana recounts a particularly poignant memory in which a piece of equipment in one of classrooms sat unused behind a glass case:
51 FSC or FSc stands for "Fellow of Science". The FSc is the same of the certificate or degree given to students who complete upper secondary school'— grades eleven and twelve. In the Pakistani system, students interested in going to university must take this level after completing their basic education (grades one to ten) and passing the standardized "matric" or matriculation exam. Grades eleven and twelve are also known as "college" and are distinguished from university. To complete FSc, students must also sit for standardized exams, which determine one's eligibility for university. 227
And I remember sitting in this one classroom. .. .it was sort of like a science classroom. I don't know what it was, but I remember there was like a glass and in it they used to have.... It could have been a microscope, but as a child I didn't know what it was. But, it was never used. It was there and it was very old and... I don't know what function it had, but I remember staring at it. And it was always there and it had little sprinkles of sugar around it. Strange that I remember that. But we didn't use in any of the classrooms... I don't think we ever used anything that sort of stuck in my memory that was different from, you know, reciting, reading out loud to us, or... we never did short stories. We didn't do experiments. (Aryana, Pashtun, 25)
Aryana's and JaliPs schooling experiences contrast sharply with those of Aziza and Fatana, who speak favourably of their schools, the atmosphere, and the treatment received. The contrast can only be explained as being located in the community-based supportive atmosphere of the Ismaili jamat khana . Although their schools were slightly different in size and organization and although the teaching and learning methods they describe do not appear to be radically different from those described by others, both
Aziza's and Fatana's sense of belonging, strength, and joy in their learning environments is apparent in their voices and word choices.
.. .The good thing was that my uncle and my brother they were... they had taken part in organizing, establishing, a school just for the... refugees. For our people . We had a few people who taught there, but they weren't qualified teachers, but whatever they knew they taught to other kids. So we went to that school. That was our local school. I started from grade 3,1 think, because the books were in English. But we moved quickly to different grades. First I found it difficult, because all of my classmates knew more than me. They knew English better than
A jamat khana is the Ismaili Muslim term used for their mosques. While all mosques serve as a central community meeting spot in the Muslim world, the jamat khana's community life is particularly strong. 53 Aziza is referring to Ismaili Muslims of Afghan origin here. 228 me, so they could... But I had to work twice and maybe more than that to catch up. Because I was a hardworking student I caught up very quickly and I had the first position again. The next year, I think. So it was really good. I was enjoying it because I was really doing well and I was working hard. We didn't have all the subjects. We just had the science subjects, and Urdu, English, Dari, math, until grade 8 or something when we chemistry and physics and Pakistan studies. And there might have been some more that I don't remember. .. .Because we were a little bit supported by our community in Pakistan. .. .The people who were teaching were mostly our own people, like the Afghans. But there were a few people who were Pakistanis and they taught maybe Urdu and maybe math or something. ... We had a blue dress and trousers and white scarf. .. .1 think to some extent [the classroom] wasn't that much [formal as in Afghanistan], but... We kind of felt better because it was more of our own people, our own community our school. So we felt more that we are part of this. But it wasn't too formal, but we still had assemblies and we used to sing the national anthem of Pakistan and then our own. I think we had two, yeah. And then someone would read something, something interesting. And also, we had the ... what's it called? You know timetables? .. .Each day each class would have the responsibility of doing assembly. ...It was fun. ... It was just a house. A lot of classes were outside. And then it was because in Pakistan it was too hot. .. .1 think it started early at seven o'clock in the morning. And 'cause we lived kind of far, twenty minutes or something, I used to leave home at 6:30 I think. It was pretty early, I think, 7:00 or 7:30, so it was pretty early. (Aziza, F, Hazara, 24)
When I moved to Rawalpindi, I didn't go to a Pakistani school. Our Ismaili community was very helpful for us, honestly. We went there and they had in the mosque a little school for the immigrant kids and they would teach us all the ABC and all the basic stuff. And I would go there for I think 6 months or something. So I didn't know Urdu at all. My teacher was speaking Urdu only, and I would only speak Farsi. .. .1 don't know how I learnt Urdu. It just came up naturally. Like in the first few days it was really hard, I wouldn't understand a thing. But after like a 229 week I liked it. I liked going there. .. .Our mosques were a little different because we have our social activities there, too. It was pretty big and all. We had the prayer hall and upstairs. Even before the immigrants came they had night school for their own kids. At night they have religious classes there. So all the Pakistani kids would go there and have their own little prayers and start their religious classes. So when the Afghani kids went there, they started classes before the prayers, like two hours before. So they would categorize it in different classes. I think we had only three or four classes, in each class we had 10-15 kids. .. .And it was a kind of a big social hall. That's where the religious classes would happen. So we would just sit in circles. We had like white boards with the stands, where the teacher would write down stuff. That's how the religious classes would happen.
.. .And then ... yea, after a few months lots of Afghanis went to Pakistan. So there was a lot of kids. So they couldn't just digest them before the prayers, so what they did was officially made a school. But in the mosque. So, it would start in the morning now. So we had like the teachers and we had our own teachers, like the Afghani teachers. They were all educated. So at least they could teach us. And we had Pakistani teachers too. So we had maybe 10 classes, 10-15 classrooms, we had it all over the mosque. All the rooms were like kids. [Laughing.] I don't know if they did an assessment test or something, but they categorized it in different levels. It was pretty much good 'til then. .. .We did it all in English. 'Cuz Urdu we didn't know it and they wanted the curriculum of the Pakistani schools. .. .So yea, the start was good. We always wake up in the morning, same schedule and same routine. Wake up in the morning, go to school, come back in the afternoon. Because there were a lot kids they had two shifts. One in the morning shift, one in the evening and an afternoon shift. .. .we had the Pakistani style [uniform]. .. .Blue and white. Blue dress kind of thing and the scarf was white. .. .The Pakistani style pants, shalwars, that was white too. So, yea. ... [Discipline was] pretty much the same, yea. You know... "Be Quiet!" ... We had assembly. But we used to sing the Ismaili "national" anthem. The Ismaili anthem. Because it 230
was all Ismailis. .. .We would just in the assembly we would just go line up again according to our classes. And every morning one class had to sing an anthem and we would actually recite a verse from the Qur'an. So one person, we would choose. We had like leaders in the class. So we would choose one person to say the Qur'an. And then 3 more people to sing the anthem. .. .Well it was actually more fun [to go to a community school]. 'Cuz it was kind of we knew each other, and even we would see each other at night when we would go for prayers in the mosques, so it was more fun. You were more in a your own community. You know each other, you're more comfortable, as compared to in Afghanistan. It wasn't like that. (Fatana, F, Hazara, 22)
Jalil, Fatana, and Aziza took part in and passed Pakistan's Matric exam, a countrywide exam taken by students at the end of grade ten. But only Jalil went on to
FSc, or grades 11 and 12, which in Pakistan are taught in a separate school and are often called "college". Although Fatana tried to start studying at the FSc level, family finances ultimately kept her and Aziza out of this level. Jalil's FSc experience, however, was not a positive one in that he felt extremely discriminated against by his teachers and classmates based on his identity as an Afghan.
Well, I faced problems in the FSc, but not in the University. But in FSc, um, I don't like those two years that I spent over there. 'Cause even some of my friends wouldn't call me by my name, they would call me, "Hey Kabuli", "Hey Afghan". And then one of my teachers, he used to call me, "Hey Kabuli, get up and answer me this..." I didn't like to go to his class, but we had to go to that class because they give us marks for attendance. Sometimes he used to call me "Gilam Jam" or "Kabuli". "Gilam Jam" is a very bad word. Back in 1991 and 1993, there were the... When [General Dostum54] took Kabul his guerilla army, they call it "Guta
General Dostum is a Afghan of Uzbek ethnicity who was the leader of an Uzbek militia during the Mujahideen and Northern Alliance eras. (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world7afghanistan/dostum.htm) 231
Gilam Jam". In Farsi "Gilam" is a carpet and "Jam" is like to steal. So they came to Kabul and they stole many carpets. So, they were famous for "Gilam Jam". That's a very bad name. So, the Afghans who migrated in the early '90s, the Peshawaris used to call them the "Gilam Jams". So, when I went to university, the teacher Used to call me "Gilam Jam". ... I was a Pashtun. I was not a Gilam Jam. But for them every Afghan is Kabuli. Every Afghan is Gilam Jam. Every Afghan is a Farsi speaker or something like that. (Jalil, Pashtun, 29)
The primary and secondary school experiences of these four participants provide useful insight into the experience of Afghan learners in the Pakistani system - a history that is not usually spoken of or researched in the assistance field. All of the learners seemed engaged in their school lives and to accept the overt aspects of the Pakistani curriculum. Discrimination issues as Afghans - or as outsiders - seemed to grow as participants became older or as the system took steps to limit their access to higher levels of learning by demanding ID cards, limiting the number of spaces for Afghans, limiting scholarships, charging tuition, and on a personal level isolation through name calling.
However, in the terms of their primary and secondary schooling, the participants seemed largely to embrace the situation in spite of the strict discipline, classroom routines, and resource limitations, which were not dissimilar to what other participants experienced in
Afghanistan. Most interesting about this point is that these participants were attending private Pakistani schools rather than Afghan schools, suggesting that in spite of the
cultural differences of language, ethnicity, explicit curriculum and history, Pakistani and
Afghan schools may face similar operating cultures and resource constraints.
a Kilim or gilim is a type of woven rug. It does not have pile. 232
Post-secondary education.
Only Jalil (Pashtun, M, 29) was able to enroll in post-secondary education in a
Pakistani institution, which was in fact a private rather than public institution where he
studied computer science. Hence, as with Gul's experience in the private Afghan post-
secondary institution, Jalil's experience provides the only personal insight into learner experience at this level of education. As with other singular experiences of various aspects of learning, this presents an interesting narrative, but does not enable the possibility of much analysis of the experience. Particularly important parts of his history relate to his explanation of the system in NWFP for allowing Afghans into FSc colleges
(grades 11 and 12) and later into universities, a system that appears heavily stacked against Afghan participation. One bad thing was that there were some seats for Afghan refugees. Before grade 10 they don't care about your nationality. But when you go to college, they ask you for your domicile and your nationality and your Pakistani ID card. And if you don't have it, you have to go for one of these 11 seats for Afghan refugees in the province. .. .There was some tuition fee, but that was really low. It was a government school, so the fee was really low. ...There was some [scholarships for Afghans], although I didn't take any because .. .getting one was not an easy job. You had to know someone in that NGO or embassy. .. .1 was number 9 or 10 [seat]. It was pretty close! I really had to wait, because they call for each student that we have, OK, we have this seat. So, I had to wait for 9l or 10l position.
.. .After your F.Sc, they have 4 seats for Engineering for Afghans. So, one for civil engineering, one for electrical engineering, one for mechanical, and one for agriculture engineering. So there are 4 seats. And unfortunately I got the 5* position. I missed it, but I was really glad. In my mind, after studying too much physics, chemistry, and biology for 2 years I decided that engineering is not for me. So when I lost my seat, I wasn't really sad at all, because I knew I wasn't 233
going to do well at all. So then I went to do computer science [at a private university]. (Jalil, M, Pashtun, 29) JaliPs two years of undergraduate study at a new private institution gave him access to higher learning for which he would not otherwise have had the opportunity. However, he felt the institution could have been of better quality as many of the teachers were not well qualified, "later on we had fresh graduates coming in to our university and teaching us, so we had some difficulty with that." His extensive education in the Pakistani system ultimately did not lead to employment opportunities in Pakistan for Jalil, in large part because of his legal status and lack of ID card, and following graduation he found himself unemployed and unemployable.
Adult Education.
Unlike Gul, who managed to complete her medical studies in Peshawar through the relocation of her faculty, Rehman was unable to continue his university studies in
Peshawar. Eventually, he returned to Kabul and took some exams that gave him a "piece of paper like a transcript". In Peshawar, however, he enrolled in the International Rescue
Committee (IRC) supported English language training centres, where he learnt English.
He also enrolled in computer courses and eventually took a diploma at a private college, which allowed him to become a computer teacher at a private college for a short period of time. Rehman ultimately believed that his adult education training and stint teaching helped him to develop connections and skills, which eventually led him to positions with international agencies. .. .IRC, they had a lot English language courses, computer courses, technical courses, vocational trainings, and I even attended a few months vocational training in carpentry and they were even giving you money, salary during the course for you. So, the, yeah, I joined one of the IRC-supported English language 234
private school. An Afghan had initiated that we should have receive some fundings from the IRC. But later on I think they were going on their own with a private English language school. We had a fee, a certain fee for the English courses, each term. But it was very reasonable, I mean, affordable for the middle class family or... so I started doing, I, I started going through those courses; I started from the first, I think from the second level. I, I went I took the, there was an exam, I took to evaluate my English and then I went directly sent to second course, second class or they call it "levels", second level. I think there were five levels. So that was why I followed and then finished. The difference was there very much because the standard of education was different. Standard of this English was different; and the way it was designed was different. The listening, the pronunciation, the grammar, the reading ~ they were very well precisely designed. And besides the teachers were very experienced. The teachers were very well educated in English language teaching you every minute of, you know.
.. .Computer was a very very different thing that had pretty much attracted my attention especially in this school that I was studying, they had a computer section and always I would go as a teacher in, of English language, I would just visit that class and see the students learning, the teachers teaching them. I was very interested so what happened was, the same as teaching here, I started to study in computer, I started in a Pakistani computer college. Well initially I started the, some applications, software applications in an Afghan-based computer centre but later my main interest was more deep... (Rehman, M, Pashtun, 33)
As with Jalil's FSc and college experiences, Rehman is the only participant who studied at IRC schools and hence his memories provide an example of the variety of directions and experiences learning took in Pakistan for urban Afghan refugees, but is by no means an exhaustive discussion of this particular program. Iran
Three of the participants - Khaled (Tajik, M, 26), Abdul (Uzbek, M, 25), and Ali
(Uzbek, M, 40) - were refugees in Iran. Several aspects of their oral histories are similar to the situations faced by participants in Pakistan. First, their experiences are completely different from one another and therefore are representative of the range of possibilities rather than substantive from an analytical perspective. Moreover, like the participants who went to Pakistan, none of them lived in organized UNHCR refugee camps in Iran.
Third, Iranian government policy towards urban-dwelling Afghan refugees restricted
access to education. Children living in the camps are taught the Iranian government primary level curriculum rather than the largely Afghan curriculum taught in Pakistan's refugee villages. Children and adults living outside of the camps officially have access to
education only if they have official documents allowing them to be in Iran. Few Afghans
are able to produce such documents. As a result of this, each of the participants presents a
completely different oral history of learning in Iran ranging from complete exclusion to .
inclusion in the form of home education with private tutors, post-secondary education,
apprenticeship and no education.
Home education.
Khaled lived in Iran from his early childhood until his late teens. During most of this time he was excluded from the formal education system due to his lack of papers.
However, unlike many Afghans in Iran56, his father had a good job and this allowed him
to engage private tutors for his sons.
A fictional portrayal of a more "typical" Afghan life in Iran is in the Movie Bar an (Majidi, 2001) 236
My father was doing very good [in Tehran]. He earned very good money. And he give us everything we needed: car, house, and that time was very good for us. But I know people who had very hards (sic.) life in Iran. ... When I wake up ... I had a breakfast just like usual days and because ah the first time I was just playing with my twin and other boys who was around the house. And then I came again to study for like a two hours, we had teachers, and then we, the teacher when he's gone, we have break. ... When the teacher is gone then we are starting like a half hour break. And then we study again for a few hours and then we leave it, and exactly we, because we had a computer and at that time a computer was the famous you know toys for child just playing with that and just the days comes to night. .. .Every year or every 6 months the teacher is changed. Yeah my father said that if the teacher is changed, the system is changed, and you learn better. Cause the first time I was so lazy. I just I just thinking about the playing and the other people. I can confuse me myself to study, but after I came like 14 and 16, ah just jump like fast, fast, fast, fast. ... The living room was my classroom. (Khaled, M, Tajik, 26)
It is unknown how many Afghans in Iran had the kind of economic success which allowed them to hire private tutors for their children who were otherwise excluded from the state education system. Khaled's situation was clearly unique in many ways, including in the practical technical apprenticeships he later had in mechanics and food presentation which allowed him to start working and to run small businesses of his own in his late teens.
Secondary education.
Both Ali (Uzbek, M, 40) and Khaled (Tajik, M, 26) attended secondary school in
Iran in different eras, although Ali did not discuss this experience in detail during his interview. Khaled was able to attend an Iranian government secondary school for two years before a turnaround in government policy meant that he had to drop out. Although 237
excited about the prospect of interacting with his peers, making friends, and going to a
"real" school, these two years were filled with issues of identity, racism, and fear.
Khaled's description of the first few weeks of this experience are particularly instructive
in understanding how difficult it was for him to adjust to a formal school after many years of home schooling.
The first day I was so excited to go to school. I just I suppose to be 7 o'clock to school, I just wake up at ah like a 5 o'clock and prepare everything waited to school and my brother get me to school, that was very good. We went to a school. We started to school. All teachers the first time you know talking very good, because we know something more than other student because we had studied at home with other teachers and we know more than that other. And they just because we know more and just wanted to teach us more. The student also because when I am speaking Iranian nobody can understand I different because I was child. But after like, ah, two or three weeks all of them is changed and they en become different. The teachers know I am Afghanian ; the students know I'm Afghanian. If something happens in the outsides, and like they said if somebody died they said Afghanian killed this person. And even if not Afghanian, but Iranian, but it happens and it started teachers and they only somethings to you. You have to be very strong, but sometimes really I wasn't. Me and my brother was very sad about that. ... There wasn't a lot [of Afghanians in our school]. Maybe in all the school there was ten to twelve. Because many people in Iran is living there without any passport or document. When you don't have any you can't study. And the first year, it was a little good, but after that it became a little difficult for Afghanian to go to school. If you know the principal or someone like that in the school, you can enter the school. And the government know that. Just you enter it or you pay. .. .Like a bribe. And you can Study. But the Iranian
Although this term is not normally used in English to refer to people of Afghan nationality, Khaled did so throughout his interview. 238
government after that said no school for Afghanians. And I can understand why they said no school. At that time, I was in Iran; there were a lot of Afghanians who worked in construction to build like apartments and streets. And Iran needed some people to do that. If people's going to school, nobody want do that one. Why he want to kick Afghanian out of school to build apartment, streets, buildings, everything. (Khaled, M, Tajik, 26) Khaled's description of his time in school can be described as bittersweet. As challenging as it was to fit in once it became known that he was Afghan, he also had the sudden opportunity to understand how much more or qualitatively different his knowledge-base was due to his unconventional home-based education. Khaled's stories about the discriminatory treatment based on his Afghan identity are not all that different from
Jalil's FSc experience of racism and identity card issues in Pakistan. It is apparent that
Khaled's access to formal school was short and difficult teaching him about some of the negative Iranian attitudes towards Afghans that he may not have been getting living and learning solely at home.
Post-secondary education.
Ali, who is the oldest participant in this study, was forced to quit his education in
Afghanistan at age fifteen in 1979. He was out of school and moving around for a number of years until a relative who had gone to Iran managed to gain entrance to the
Iranian secondary school system. Heading for Iran, Ali used the same system, detailed below, to get permission to enroll in post-secondary studies in Iran where he eventually completed a Masters degree in law. Ali's perspective of refugee access to formal education in Iran is unique and parts of his story regarding accessibility contradict those of Khaled and Abdul, though his different understanding of the situation may have been 239 rooted in the time period in which he accessed secondary and post-secondary education in Iran, a decade earlier than Khaled.
One of the most important aspects of Ali's history is the detailed explanation he gives as to how he managed to gain access to formal education in Iran.
It was for about 3 years. In total before I started my education in Iran, it was about 4 or 5 years. .. .1 thought that I could continue my education, because Iranian people speak Farsi - the same language as me. And I went there and took the admissions exam for high school. I was admitted into grade 12. And, ah, then... I completed. I think it was, '85 I think. '84 or '85. ...It, ah, depends on the persistence of people. When I went to Iran, I knew this one person who was studying in high school. And how he got into that high school, because there was a regulation about Afghan and Iraqi refugees. If they were at the high school level, they could go to the educational office and they would get permission to take a special exam. And then if they qualified, then they could placed in a high school. I think it took me maybe more than a month to do this paperwork. .. .A few people know that there were some regulations, because there were no people coming to them to ask them of these regulations. And I had thought before that there must be some way, but how to work it out. And fortunately there was some way and my friend had gotten there the year before and he told me that yes there was some way to do it. But most people they didn't know that. On the part of Afghan people, they didn't care about education and these things that much. What they were thinking about the war and how to fight the Russians. This was the biggest issue. Probably some people wanted to get into high school and university, but there was no way to go to university at that time. When I finished my high school and I took that entry exam, I qualified academically, but I was not accepted into the university. And I went to the Board of Examination for the university and they told me that "yes, you have good qualification." But they told me that the Board was working on a select basis. You had to have lots of proof 240
and approval and lots of other things. And then I did not have the opportunity to go to university. If there weren't those barriers then I would have been accepted to medical school because of my marks. And then, I again left Iran and came back to Pakistan, and went back to Afghanistan. And then, 2 years later, a boy from my family took that same exam again and he sent me a letter that he was admitted to medical school, because of his exam 3 years ago. And so again I came back to Iran. Actually, first I sent some letters to the university. And it took maybe 2 years and finally I was admitted not to medical school because of my age. But they wrongly decided that I didn't have the requirements, because I had already applied a few years ago. But they already decided that because they fight the regulation at the wrong time. I wouldn't be part of that regulation. And I was admitted to law. (Ali, M, Uzbek, 40)
Although Ali did not give details regarding the teaching method or classroom atmosphere58 at the university he attended, his relationship with his professors and other students suggests that he was accepted and encouraged, which resulted in his academic success, particularly at the Master's level.
When I went deeper and deeper in studying law and I enjoyed law school. There were great professors and great students. Iranian students and professors were quite different from the public who were fed up with Afghan refugees. There were millions of them and they were not that much happy. But, Iranian students and professors were wonderful people. And they really encouraged me. And I was, ah, actually a good student because I graduated. And I came first in the studies. And I have all these (statues). And I got a medal, an academic medal. And I got a plaque of honour and my photo was published in the university newspaper. (Ali, M, Uzbek, 40)
Although the questions were asked, he gave completely unrelated answers. 241
As with Khaled, Ali's experience of post-secondary education in Iran is quite unique and seems that it likely represents an individual experience rooted in his persistence, academic success and optimistic personality, which comes through in the audio version of his oral history. Nevertheless, his history provides valuable evidence and description of how some Afghans managed to successfully access post-secondary education in Iran.
Learning Through Work in the Refugee Context
As they got older, most of the participants found themselves taking on paid employment and work59 as a way to contribute to the financial hardships faced by their families in countries of first asylum. Most of the participants at some point worked at different paid jobs in order to help support their families and themselves in Pakistan or
Iran60. Though unlike many working children and youths in Pakistan and Iran, who are not enrolled in formal learning or who are forced to drop out for economic reasons
(Lowicki, 2002), few of the participants in this study were forced to take on such positions before their access to formal education ended. Indeed, several participants combined study with work thereby making them quite unique for working children in the
South Asian region.
Extensive unpaid work is also done by youths in Afghanistan and Pakistan, particularly by female participants in the form of household responsibilities. Aziza (Hazara, F, 24) spent a year on doing unpaid farm and household labour on her uncle's farm. Aryana (Pashtun, F, 25) in particular spoke of the heavy number of unpaid household chores she and her older sister took on during her early years in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Coming from a family which eventually had eleven children, Aryana found herself carrying out childcare duties from a very early age while her slightly older sister carried out many household chores involving cooking and cleaning. It is not unusual for Pashtun girls in specific - or all Afghan girls - to be given heavy responsibilities at home (Pont, 2001). These responsibilities are often seen by adults as a way of teaching women's traditional work to the next generation. 60 Mohammad (Tajik, M, 26) also mentioned, but did not detail, having small paid jobs - selling things on the street — in Kabul during the 1990s. 242
Child work and child labour is a topic given serious attention in aid literature and practice on a global level, but also regionally in South Asia where the problem is particularly acute (Boyden, Ling, Myers, 1998). The perspective from which the participants present their work experiences varies greatly, but in most cases they do not do so from a position steeped in awareness of the human or child rights debates. As with many working Afghan refugee children I have encountered in the field61, their economic need and legal status circumvents their ability to address any concerns they themselves have in relation to work conditions. In reading their stories of child and youth work in a war and refugee context, it becomes apparent that in some cases their legal status as refugees, age as children and youth, and work conditions are not in keeping with international codes of conduct. On the other hand, in other cases, the participants use their education and ingenuity to start doing forms of work, which make use of their education and learning. However, the real value of these stories is to give a collective
sense of how work experiences can also be learning experiences - including appropriate
learning experiences.
Of the various work experiences shared with me, only four particular experiences
will be detailed in this section. The stories have been chosen to show the range and depth
of work done by this group of young Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran. These four
61 From 1999-2001, one of the projects I managed was a drop-in-centre for children who picked garbage and sold it for recycling in Quetta, Pakistan. The children were 100% Afghan. In the case of this group, in spite of efforts to make non-formal literacy classes flexible, absenteeism due to work was regular. It was also quite regular for boys older than eleven to be taken out of school in the refugee villages and sent off to work in the cities. These children were far from the only Afghan children and youth who were working in Pakistan, as Lowicki (2002) points out. I have also had the opportunity to observe child carpet weavers at work in Peshawar. 243
sets of memories were also chosen because of the high level of detail shared by these participants. The participants' stories that will be highlighted are Rehman's and Aziza's
in Pakistan and Khaled's and Abdul's in Iran. All of the participants spoke of their work
experiences differently, positively and negatively, but they also made it clear that these
experiences afforded them with learning opportunities, particularly practical skills'
development, that they would otherwise not have had.
The first is Rehman's work experience, which is interesting because it builds on the adult education he received in Pakistan, builds in a progression of increasing responsibility, legitimacy, and work-related success, and includes non-formal training he received from various employers. Rehman's experience, which begins in his late teens in
Peshawar, is atypical compared to the types of child work normally highlighted by
activists and aid agencies.
I became English teacher, in a year time I became computer teacher because I was studying computers and then education teacher, teacher. I was not even, I, I didn't even have, have the BA degree for Bachelor for Computer Sciences I was still at Bachelor Computer Sciences when I became a computer teacher because I had that skills of teaching in some computers but I learned through that college and then, in, in I think two years' time I found a job in United Nations. I think that was probably because of the .. .because of the networks that was established at a connection that relationships that because most of my students were working with these agencies you know. ... [While teaching computers] I would be given a lot of time. Prepare a lecture. Read one book and another book. So gradually in the other way, the best thing was my the audiences, the students were not very well, very highly educated so that they could find my, you know, because I had a lot of, you know.. .and I told him even in the first place that "bear with me, I'm not a very highly qualified teacher in computers but if you have any question, I can 244
challenge you that I could find the answers for you. If you have a question apart from the lectures, give it to me and I will have the answers for you quickly." And fortunately there was not even a minute or one time that I failed to answer a question. ...[When I was working with international agencies] most of all I learned some of the internal organizational skills and the communication skills in the organizations. It was very, very different, I didn't know about project management until when I went to these. I didn't know about project development. I didn't know about producing reports. .. .1 had a lot of opportunities to attend workshops, conferences, and meetings. I learned about minute taking. I attended workshops, lot of training workshops that were, for example organizational building, leadership, and emergency response programs. Um... I think pretty much I learned about, I, I attended meetings of different agencies coming together, discussing their opinions about situations and the effectiveness of the aid, so that was the best opportunity for me. (Rehman, M, Pashtun, 33)
The second story of interest is Aziza's work experiences in part because she asked that this aspect of her story be shared widely, because it is much more typical of the type of work done by Afghan children in Pakistan, and also because it highlights the skills individuals are sometimes forced to learn to foster their own survival. Aziza worked as a carpet weaver and later a teacher during her time in Peshawar. Her story is particularly interesting in relation to the known concerns of human rights and child rights lobby groups with carpet weaving as it the affects children's lives, health, and growth
(Sabawoon & Tariq, 28-May-2002; Lowicki, 2002, pp. 5-10; n.a., 2004). However, Aziza and her family are not necessarily "typical" of carpet weavers in Peshawar. Weaving was not a traditional skill used by her family to generate income in Afghanistan, as is the case with some weaving families. Her father was educated and she and her siblings had attended school before migration to Pakistan. Moreover, Aziza and some of her siblings continued to attend school in spite of their work as carpet weavers while the most often recorded comment by working Afghan children in Pakistan relates to their lack of access to formal schooling (personal knowledge; Lowicki, 2002; Sabawoon & Tariq, 28-May-
2002). Indeed, Aziza is aware of her own uniqueness and when she speaks of her studying for the Matric exams in Pakistan, she acknowledges that the entire Ismaili community in Peshawar was doubtful she could successfully negotiate the many obstacles in her way, which only made her more determined to succeed academically.
When I was in Pakistan, actually, I used to work as well. We used to make carpets. ... My father and my brother wouldn't be able to work outside because they wouldn't get jobs. So we had to do something else. ... There was someone who had kind of a company and he had a lot of men coming to work for him62. But because women didn't go there and to it, there were a lot of families who would bring the material from that guy and then they would make it at their homes. You would get a pattern and then you had to do it. You had a certain amount of time that you had to finish it, so you couldn't keep it too long. If you didn't make it properly they wouldn't give you all of the money or enough money - or maybe none at all. And then the other problem was that in a house, a few families had to live together. For example I think that in a house with four rooms, four families would live there. And families were big obviously. And then when you were doing the carpet, a lot of people had the carpet in their room. It had a lot of dust and all those things, so obviously the ventilation was bad and the weather was so hot63. ... It was really bad.... Coughing64. A lot of people got sick. And usually we didn't have enough fans and stuff, so it was really hard. And I used to get rashes and a lot of other people, so you couldn't even drink water. Because if you drink than the water would try to get out to, you know, the natural system of
62 This system is also described similarly by Jane Lowicki (2002). 63 The average recorded summer maximum temperatures in Peshawar are between 39-41°C with extreme humidity at 43-70%. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world/city_guides/results.shtml?tt=TT002710) 64 This has sometimes been called "carpet weavers' lung" by child labour activists. 246
the body just to make the body cooler. But if the water gets out then you will feel the rashes would... I'm not able to say it the way I should, because it's so, like, even if I try I can't feel whatever I felt at that moment because it's so different, it's so horrible, it's so bad that I don't even want to remember that time. I just want to forget it. But I want people to know about it. Because a lot of people they don't know what happens. They just say that there are people living there and they don't know what the small things that happened how much they can affect your psychology, your life. (Aziza, F, Hazara, 24)
Although Aziza did most of her studying at an Ismaili community school in
Peshawar, she eventually went to Rawalpindi to study for her Matric exams at a larger
Ismaili school. After finishing her Matric exams in Rawalpindi, Aziza found herself unable to continue studying due to her family's economic situation. From that time until her emigration to Canada, Aziza held two jobs: carpet weaving and teaching at the school
she had studied at. Her description of her work as a teacher is worth quoting because it
contrasts with her carpet weaving experiences.
I couldn't go to college because I couldn't afford it, so I started teaching English, like ESL, to other Afghans. And also teaching math, science, and writing in our community school. That was, um, that was really good. I learned so much from that.... I learnt both about myself, about students, about the psychology of the students and about different subjects. Because when you study you probably don't notice a lot of things. And when you teach, because you have the responsibility of teaching, you have to know properly before you can teach it. So that helped me learn a lot of stuff as well. And then when I came here obviously that helped me in school, but still I was, I felt that I was behind. 'Cause the system was different. The subjects and maybe the topics that we covered and then the way that we studied weren't proper. (Aziza, F, Hazara, 24) 247
For Aziza, her experiences as a teacher - in spite of the fact that she never received any formal training in teaching- clearly gave her a sense of purpose and opportunity that she did not get from carpet weaving. The profound way in which she speaks of the experience suggests that this work experience was likely more meaningful to her than carpet weaving. Like Rehman, whose life in Peshawar was completely unlike
Aziza's, teaching gave opportunities to work, to learn, and to think more deeply about some of their skills and subject knowledge.
Unlike the other three participants whose work experiences are highlighted here, working was Abdul's only access to learning and skills development while in Iran.
Abdul's education, age, and status in Iran hindered his ability to view his work as a personal or capacity building opportunity. However, as with Aziza's carpet weaving, for
Abdul himself work was primarily a matter of survival and therefore he would not have self-identified his work as a learning opportunity.
We were there and the government didn't know that we lived over there. You know, like secret. And we didn't study in Iran; we couldn't actually because we don't have anything over there. Like refugee. And we just work over there. My brother he worked in a restaurant, we worked in a restaurant together like secret. (Abdul, M, Uzbek, 25) Indeed, Abdul's work - clearing tables, serving food, and cleaning - was fairly difficult with long hours and low compensation. While these skills are essential to working in and learning the restaurant business, on a small or large scale, Abdul, who was between 16-20 at the time, did not enjoy his work. Also living in Iran, work for Khaled was closer to a skills and experience building process. True to Khaled's unconventional learning history through home schooling and self-discovery, he learnt trades and skills through apprenticeship, connections, and ingenuity.
And then ah I finished all my study at home and then when I came like 17,1 ' started working. To find experience working. I start with electronic with a man who was doing thing electronic at home for people who fixes something that is broken, you know. That was good; that was perfect experience we 5 had outside and just we started to live with people who was really live and fine good experience about life. Something good, something bad, laughing and sad things and this was perfect for us. ... After... I was 18 years old, I went to other country to find myself, who I am, what can I do for business. For like 3 years, I went to 4 different countries [where I either established or worked in the restaurant industry]. ... So I went back to Iran to live with my parents. .. .Then I came in Iran, I hadn't any job to do. I needed money to help my family. I started as a designer for table and food. I did very well at that. I learned so fast. I had a Chinese teacher. She was good. ... She made this small thing from carrots. The flower was very beautiful. Then I did the same and she said, "starting from tomorrow...!" After that, she show me how to do it, but after that I found everything I can do it. Like, from candles I can make any flower that I want to, but she didn't teach me that. I learned that by myself. (Khaled, M, Tajik, 26)
Learning skills, knowledge, and new ideas through paid work was not at the forefront of the minds of most participants in this study. Much of the evidence gathered here was in direct response to the questions, "Did you work while you were living in
Pakistan/Iran?"; "What did you learn from that experience?"; and "What happened after you finished ____ level of school?". Aziza, Khaled, Abdul, Rehman, and Jalil
Khaled's use of the pronoun "we" usually refers to his brother unless otherwise stated. 249 voluntarily integrated these experiences into their oral histories without prompting or with non-specific prompting. With the exception of Abdul, this may have been because they worked and continued more formal classroom studies or apprenticeships at the same time and therefore work memories are embedded in their memories of learning in these time periods. Aziza and Khaled were able to put at least part of their work experiences in the context of "learning" without any prompting speaking enthusiastically about what she learnt from her experiences as a teacher and what he learnt about business from running his own small business. Like many outside of the education field, the participants tended to think of learning only in formal constructs rather than to draw upon notions of
"lifelong learning", learning from experience, and learning by doing. But from my own perspective as an educationist, there was a vast amount of learning in the form of skills development and business acumen in the experiences discussed here.
The general image of the role of work in the Afghan refugee context suggests that it is largely the pursuit of personal economic survival in an environment where Afghans do not have the legal right to reside or to work (Lowicki, 2002; personal experience). To the extent that this is true, Afghans themselves may consider it unusual to note the level of professional achievement and the ways in which work also provided participants with capacity building and non-formal learning opportunities. For most, work was viewed largely as economic survival without chances for learning, advancement, or relief.
Nevertheless, most participants seem to have gained quite valuable skills and knowledge from their early work experiences in spite of the hardships involved in many of them.
Understanding the work undertaken by all of these participants from the perspective of learning is in no way meant to belittle the hardships, lack of legal status, and human rights issues involved in the wider context of child work and refugeehood in general and these participants' work in specific. Indeed it is because of these wider debates that it is rare for child advocates and researchers to consider the work of those under age eighteen as having had any valuable learning moments, but for most of the participants their individual realities of labour and the role it played in their lives transcends the academic and political debates.
Conclusion
Afghan participants' learning in countries of first asylum proved different in that they neither resided in refugee camps nor had easy access to school-based learning opportunities supported by the international community. Rather, as urban refugees, the participants present a wide variety of memories in a variety of school systems, public and private, legally certified and accredited, and illegally operating under the radar of officialdom. Systemic expectations aside, the history thus recounted suggests that learning in these circumstances took place on many levels in both school and non-school environments. In school environments, there is a sense that routine, expectations, and atmosphere were similar to learning pre-migration, a notion that will be more fully explored in the next chapter. The central place of work of different types - both exploitative and non-exploitative - in fulfilling a learning role is also apparent in the collective sense of oral history presented. Each participant's narrative is so unique that the stories are representative of the range of learning opportunities and experiences rather than substantive of the collective experience for the wider group of urban-dwelling
Afghan refugees. 251
Perhaps because of the hardships involved in accessing and in remaining enrolled
in learning opportunities, participants' memories on the whole were strongly focused on the hardships - families' economic situations, paid work, schools' lack of resources and teachers, discrimination from indigenous populations (inside and outside of learning
institutions), shifting Afghan identities and the strict discipline of classroom life. For the
older participants among the group, this focus differs from their responses relating to
learning pre-migration where, although the hardship of war and violence was discussed,
participants displayed good abilities to describe their schools, explicit curricula, and
classroom routines. To some extent, it can be argued that in Iran and Pakistan, concern
about daily violence was replaced by concern with economic survival in a situation where
urban refugees lacked legal status. The preoccupation with basic survival, perhaps
triggered by the lack of organized support and assistance from host governments and the
international community, seems to have reorganized personal priorities, as participants
got older. The younger participants, on the other hand, still provided a large amount of
information on their school environments and learning lives in spite of showing an
awareness of the precariousness of their status in Iran and Pakistan. These interesting
results will be explored with more depth in the next chapter by examining comparisons
between the pre-migration and migration learning environments and experiences. Chapter 10:
Weaving the Carpet of Learning:
Comparing Experiences Across Afghan Oral Histories
A careful reading of the transcripts on Afghanistan and of the collective history they wove as presented in chapters eight and nine suggests some common themes relating
to the Afghan learning experience after 1978. This chapter aims to bring forward key
themes as seen in comparing participants' pre-migration and migration memories with
the goal of developing a deeper understanding of Afghan learning environments and
experiences, which will be used to draw a comparison between the two case studies in
chapter eleven. In chapter six, where World War II experiences were synthesized, the
chapter examined learner experience under the following categories: maintenance,
adaptation, resilience/tenaciousness, resistance, politicization, and identity. However,
some of these categories apply differently to the Afghan experiences covered in this
section and therefore what is presented in this chapter comes in different order and with
differing emphases dependent on the nature of the Afghan experience. The reason the
five themes came out differently is not clear. Some of the possible reasons for this
include that culturally Afghans may not speak critically of people in authority, including
teachers, rebellion or resistance is therefore also suppressed, discussion of politics and
political involvement has lead to much pain during the war that it is considered taboo,
and finally there is a cultural preference for speaking cautiously with outsiders. While
there is no real evidence that the interviews suffered from these problems, these traits
tend to explain the quality of the some of the disclosures on these controversial issues.
Given that Afghanistan is an entirely different war politically, temporally, and culturally
from World War II, it should not be surprising that the five key issues played out
252 differently m this context. Essentially this chapter seeks to bring forth the major relationships between this group of Afghan memories, their curriculum experiences, and the five categories of analysis.
One of the factors that makes this intra-case study comparison particularly interesting is the fact that none of the nine participants who studied in Pakistan or Iran attended schools implemented by the international assistance community with significant amounts of international funding and in accordance with the UNHCR's education policy
(2002). In Pakistan, learners attended either private certified Pakistani schools, private and uncertified Afghan curriculum schools, public Pakistani upper secondary institutions, private Pakistani colleges, or non-formal NGO-run or private-sector training colleges or institutions. In Iran, learners attended uncertified home schools, traditional trade apprenticeships, public Iranian high schools, or public universities. Additionally, in all three states, participants engaged in paid and unpaid work, which seemed to provide equally rich and challenging learning moments. Such a wide breadth learning contexts and curricula, a number of which only affected one of the eleven participants, might lead one to assume that the histories necessarily had nothing significant to present in a comparative or collective light. While the breadth of analysis is limited to some extent, the memories as woven in chapters eight and nine are rich, dynamic, and produce a consistent image of learning environments and the learning experience in the Afghan context. 254
Maintenance A cross the National Contexts
In the Afghan experience, participants often had to adapt themselves to formal
Iranian or Pakistani schools or to other school-like environments. However, in reading the transcripts for the purpose of understanding schooling routine, culture, and daily experience, there seems to be as much similarity as difference. The basis for comparison is strong enough that it is worth summarizing the learning atmosphere, method, and roles of the teachers isolated from the powerful discussions of the politics, discrimination, and adaptation to war and violence.
One of the more interesting outcomes coming from this set of oral histories relates to the different ways in which "teaching" and "schooling" were carried out and modified in order to address the war and conflict context. Although teachers were not interviewed for this study, the participants spoke directly and often about their teachers, mentors, and their methods. As such, that which is presented here stems from the participants' (as learners) memories and impressions of teaching. Certainly, if teachers were interviewed in a study on teaching in this context, more or different details may be given.
Nevertheless, this section of the chapter will summarize the similar school routines and expectations between pre-migration and post-migration formal school environments, corporal punishment, and the roles teachers and other mentors played in the lives of participants. 255
School Routines and Expectations
In spite of the fact that participants did not live in organized refugee camps and therefore did not attend schools governed by the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) policies or schools with familiar formal curricula, the daily routines at all of the schools and expectations placed on learners seem remarkably similar in participants' memories. In both pre-migration and post-migration schools, participants remembered a school day that began early (around 8:00am) with an assembly in the school's courtyard where the national anthem would be sung and announcements made.
Classes went on until about noon or one in the afternoon. There was usually one longer recess during the morning when learners would play in the schoolyard and sometimes buy something to eat from a vendor or eat some snack brought from home. Uniforms were worn in most of the schools, except some of the Afghan private schools in Pakistan.
Most reported walking to primary school, often with an older sibling, and walking, riding the bus, or riding a bicycle to high school and university.
Difference in this basic routine could be found in the detail. In Pakistan the school uniform for girls is light blue and white whereas in Afghanistan it is black and white. The national anthem - the words, the tune and the language ~ varied depending on the government in power and the country the school was located in. Some private Afghan
schools in Pakistan had varying types of resources meaning that sometimes participants
spoke of sitting on the floor rather than at a desk, of schools missing a courtyard, and of teachers lacking qualifications whereas other times schools were well-equipped. In
Afghanistan classes before 1979 in Kabul would have primarily been taught in Dari with 256
Pashto taught as a second language. The language of instruction was also different for participants attending Pakistani schools (Urdu and/or English) and Iranian schools (Farsi rather than Dari). Finally, the textbooks, subjects, and school systems for promotion, examination, and graduation were completely different in the three countries.
In terms of learner and familial expectations, access to a complete formal school system was a challenge for those nine participants who spent time in Pakistan and Iran.
Although one of the three participants in Iran managed to attend and graduate from a public university there, only three of the six participants who spent time in Pakistan and were eligible to attend post-secondary school were able to enroll. Of them, two attended private Pakistani colleges and one attended an Afghan university in exile. Periods of time when participants were unable to attend school due to fighting, finances, or host government policies seemed to affect each of the eleven Afghan participants to different degrees. For those who experienced gaps due to violence in Afghanistan, none except
Abdul seemed discouraged by the lack of continuous enrollment. When asked if they missed school or worried about finishing during long periods of interruption or forced migration, most of the participants, particularly Ali, Aziza, and Abdul, felt that they had more important things to worry about at that time. Gul and Rehman, however, who fled
Kabul after Kabul University was closed during the civil war of the mid-1990s, seemed more worried. Rehman in particular had difficulty picking up his studies in Pakistan
since, unlike Gul's, his faculty did not open to students in Peshawar. On the whole, however, it is fair to say that learners' expectations of school were unformed at the primary level, but by secondary school and higher most of this group of participants had 257 developed an expectation of access, education, and learning seen in their individual ongoing efforts to remain enrolled and actively attending regardless of situation.
Schools, and more specifically teachers, on the other hand seem to have placed very high performance and discipline expectations on the participants. Classroom routines were again basically similar between the oral histories of pre-migration and countries of first asylum. Teachers were at the front of the room and they often lectured or read from the textbook. Learners had to raise hands to ask or answer a question and then had to stand in order to speak only sitting down again when told to do so. The teacher's arrival, as well as that of visitors, signaled the entire class to stand and greet the entrant. Each day seemed to start with a review of the previous day's work, done orally and from memory. The teacher then introduced the lesson of the day. Students, who sat in rows, were asked to read sections, or to answer questions, and then homework was assigned.
On the whole, differences in classroom expectations of learners did not arise in any significant way from the memories of this particular group of participants. One difference between the pre-migration and host country formal schools lies in the discrimination some participants experienced in Iran and Pakistan based on their ethnicity or identity as Afghans or as members of certain ethno-religious Afghan groups. This discrimination is taken up in some detail in chapter eleven and in the Afghan context later in this chapter, but is noted here in the context of classroom expectations on Afghan learners. Prior to the withdrawal of the Soviets, Afghan children in Kabul - particularly the participants - did not seem to discriminate openly against one another based on identity. This changed during the mujahideen era and again changed in Pakistan and Iran where they were additionally discriminated against as Afghans. Often the discrimination took the form of harsh treatment or name-calling by teachers and peers. Further research would be necessary to ascertain more differences.
The Roles of Teachers and Mentors
Perhaps the most powerful memories of learning at any level are memories of mentors, how mentors treated pupils, and the ways in which lessons took place.
Particularly in the primary level, the structure and routine of classroom life is central to what it means to "experience school". As respect for authority and for one's elders is central in Afghan culture, the candor with which some of the participants spoke of their teachers in Afghanistan was unexpected. On the whole, teaching in Afghanistan,
Pakistan, and Iran was largely "traditional" where learners were asked to stand to ask and answer questions, where memorization and rote learning took place regularly, and where disobedience was often met with corporal punishment in different forms. Nevertheless, many of these teachers were as dedicated as any with more privileged conditions and continued to teach their classes in spite of not being paid, constant interruptions due to conflict, and the extreme lack of resources and in-classroom support.
The multiple roles teachers and other mentors played in the learning lives of the participants was addressed by a series of questions relating to favourite and least favourite teachers, what made them this way. It was a challenge for some of the participants to speak negatively about teachers in large part due to Afghan cultural norms 259 which enforce notions of respect for one's elders - and in particular one's teachers - reinforced by the cult of corporal punishment. Nevertheless, some participants had candid things to say about their teachers and teaching methods. In giving such opinions about their teachers, it seemed that many of the participants were judging their Afghan,
Pakistani, and Iranian teachers from a perspective of one who has also been a learner in
Canadian classrooms. Others seemed to mention teachers who profoundly affected them regardless of how their subsequent Canadian learning experiences influenced them. It was difficult to ascertain the motivating factors behind participants' statements about their mentors, but it seemed important to mention these possible interactions in how they formed these ideas about what criteria makes a teacher "favoured".
On their favourite teachers, participants often chose someone who was kind to them individually, someone who was able to present the curriculum in interesting ways, or someone whose personality they liked.
I think in every grade I had a favourite teacher. When I was in grade 6 [in Kabul] I had a favourite math teacher, and she, once she slapped me on the face and that was so... It was so difficult for me to take it. I don't remember what I was doing. I probably asked a question or didn't answer or something, but I didn't think that I did something bad. And then I went home and complained to my sister and then my sister wrote her a letter saying why did she slap me. And then after that she paid more attention to me. So, that became kind of my favourite teacher because she started paying attention. She would answer my questions. (Aziza, F, Hazara, 24)
I had one teacher that I liked [in Pakistan]. She was a female. She was a young female. And, the reason that I liked her was because she, sort of... my uncle had 260
recently died and she was the first person that showed sympathy to that situation, I remember. And my Mum was alone at that time and she invited me and my Mum over to her house. And I was too scared to tell my Mum, but she kept telling me, "go tell your mum to come to my house. Come to my house." So then, finally, we went to her house - me and my sister and my Mum - and she treated us so well; she gave us candy. And that's the way to do it! When she gave me candy I knew that she was an angel. She wasn't a teacher. But I just loved her. I loved her class and I did extra good in her class, and you know. She was pretty, too, and I guess that might have helped. I guess pretty people do have it easier. I loved her. I used to imitate her. I used to dress like her and I used to sit like her and just copy her. And she invited me again a couple of times to her house and would give me candy and stuff. She was just very, like, motherly towards me. I think she probably felt sorry for me, but I liked it. She made me feel very good, very happy and gave me attention. (Aryana, F, Pashtun, 25)
In fact I like all of my teachers during the schools, university. They were good, nice persons. Besides their problems they come, they came and teach us. And they says, also says their problems to us, "Beside of our problems — this is our problems -- and we came and teach you." I know they have lots of problems; everyone in Afghanistan in that situation had a problem. .. .1 respected their were nice peoples. ... But one [of my university professors] I like the best. He was very like, accurate, strict, and all the time says things that he wants or the things from his hearts he told us. And all the time he not care about the politicians, about being arrested, or anything, he just tell the truth. Even if regarding to the Government to the politicians he didn't afraid. I like him because of all the times, when I ask him a questions if he say the truth He say, "I'm a teacher. I must say the truth. I do not want to just to put secret the truth and saying lies like some politicians. ..." And I like his way of teaching. (Mohammad, M, Pashtun, 26)
During this period in Aryana's life her father was often away working. It is not uncommon in Pakistan to have female-headed households due to men being away working or fighting for long periods of time. 261
But I like one of [my home tutors in Iran] was very good. .. .He was old but he had a lot of experience. I can use it now from this experience. He knew everything about geography, any countries you know if I needed right now I'm so interesting to know more about my country, about my background. .. .1 know, but it is not enough for me, you know. I want to understand more. .. .And this man had a lot of experience about my country also. He went to Afghanistan and he lived like a ten years in Afghanistan collected like information and he wanted to write some book but I did know if he did or not. After like, a one year, he went to others city to live. I never see him again. .. .But when we was inside to study you know, he learn different, teach different, like other teacher. He playing with me about the mathematics. If he wanted to teach me something, he playing with me for something and this. You know everything like graph; he makes some graph to do mathematics. I could to learn fast, you know. With playing, I think is the best system you can learn. (Khaled, M, Tajik, 26)
Less popular teachers were often those who hit their students, had discipline methods that were extreme, did not know their subject matter, had a personality clash with the participant, or treated the participant harshly for any reason67.
In the 11th grade, to change my from... [My] high school to [a] High School [in a nearby town]. The reason is that in grade 11 in the first some of the teachers didn't teach us. They were sitting in the office and they said there is no... "The government don't pay us for six month and we couldn't". Then here was at that time was Taliban. And the Taliban make ... it's a, I can't say that. It's like education officer or something like that in [our] District. And I complain to them
f%1 So embedded is this culture of violence that I wonder whether participants found these episodes worth sharing because of or in spite of their status as Canadians? As all eleven participants are now attending some level of school or university in Canada, is it not perhaps the case that their experiences of a different learning culture lead participants to speak of these experiences? Certainly my own field experience managing Afghan refugee education programs indicates that in Afghanistan/Pakistan learners are less likely, if not completely unwilling to discuss these punishments. Reasons cannot be ascertained from the recordings and transcripts; however, it does lead one to contemplate the level of openness and the stories participants might otherwise have chosen to share if they did not have Canadian experience. 262 and I told them, "don't say my name", but when they came, the teachers understand that I complained. And they said that, "you are not OK". And at that time I couldn't tell them that I complained, because they .. .very mad. Then, they wasn't good with me. Eleventh very hard. I studied very hard not to fail in this class and I passed and then I moved to [a] high school [in town]. (Sawar, M, Pashtun, 22)
In primary school, I don't remember any favourite teacher because they hit us a lot. After grade 5, we had male teachers. I was really scared to study with male teachers because we never had a chance and we heard that they hit even more and they are really harsh and they are men. ... But it wasn't true. They were really nice. Although some of them hit very hard as well, there were some nice teachers who didn't hit at all. They didn't believe in hitting the students or little kids. There I had one favourite teacher. He was my English teacher. .. .But he used to smoke a lot. (Jalil, M, Pashtun, 29)
But, I don't like teachers. I remember that I didn't like teachers. Even at that time I knew it was not fair for her to hit me so hard. I just thought she was such a monster for doing that. I still don't like having ... I don't like authority especially when they abuse that. (Aryana, F, Pashtun, 25)
And they are always very strict, very strict teachers. And I don't like, you know, that because after that when I went to Iran and I saw that situation over there and I couldn't have a chance to study over there. I saw the people over there and the person when I came to Canada now I study. Oh, it's so different, you know? For that you know I hate that school and that aid because when you have a bad situation in school, you never wants to go back over there. (Abdul, M, Uzbek, 25) What is interesting about these memories of teachers and mentors, be they
Afghans, Pakistanis, or Iranians, is what the memories say about the teaching profession in the Afghan context as a whole. These memories highlight the important role that teachers and mentors play in setting the atmosphere and influencing the curriculum in its overt, hidden and null forms. Learners appreciate teachers differently and often for different reasons, but it is clear from these histories that the personal touch and acceptance given to a learner by his/her teacher was one of the most important factors in how these learners viewed their teachers.
Adaptation
The previous section of this chapter attempted to focus on commonalities in school routine and method between Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan in the learning lives of the eleven participants in this study. This section will bring to the fore some of crucial themes on how learning routine and method may have changed due to the war and conflict as well as to examine whether was any overlap between the pre-migration and post-migration context. Unlike most of the World War II experiences examined in the previous section, it is notable how schools inside Afghanistan had the challenge of adapting to war, violence, and resource availability while in countries of first asylum it was the participants who had to adapt to the differences in curriculum practice rather than the environment adapting to the needs of the learners.
Changes in School Routine and Teaching
As most of the participants spent a period of their education inside Afghanistan until after the mujahideen came to power in 1992, many of their memories relating to changes m school routine due to violence and politics deal directly with the 1992-1997 period of time. Insight into the changes in school routine and teaching were particularly prevalent through the memories of Mohammad (Tajik, M, 26), Sawar (Pashtun, M, 22),
Aziza (Hazara, F, 24), Gul (Tajik, F, 33), Rehman (Pashtun, M, 33), Fatana (Hazara, F,
22), and Abdul (Uzbek, M, 25). Aside from Mohammad, Abdul, and Sawar, the memories of life inside Afghanistan during the civil war were cut short in the mid-1990s by migrations to Pakistan and Iran. Nevertheless, if one revisits comments of school and war in chapters eight and nine, the commonalities of experience across the entire 1978-
2001 period come to the fore.
All of these participants spoke of forced school and university closures - sometimes for a day, a week, and at the longest a year, due to violence. Moreover,
Mohammad, Sawar and Abdul in particular explained that the ministry at this time often could not pay teachers' salaries and hence many of them took on jobs outside of their teaching work ranging from running tuition centres where students could get help if they paid a fee to manual labour jobs in construction. Schools and universities undertook several activities in order to try to ensure that learning did not stop. Mohammad, Abdul,
Gul, and Rehman all spoke of going to school or university for a few hours a day in order to get instructions or assignments and to hand in other assignments, to sit tests, and to try to keep up. Much of the learning was expected to be done by learners on their own with teachers giving minimal input that, if participants could afford it, was supplemented by other teachers and professors running tuition centres. As in chapter six, this process of teaching might best be described as one of "guided self-learning" because much more of the onus is placed on the learner than in other formal systems.
The other great calamity facing schools after 1992 in Kabul seemed to be the lack
of available materials, particularly textbooks. The lack of textbooks resulted in the
complete closure of the school system in 1992-3, according to Aziza's account. Through
out this period, and particularly during the Taliban, school supplies became harder and
harder to find. Teachers resorted to a method that Mohammad, Sawar, and several other
participants aptly called "dictation" or "notation" whereby the teacher would literally
dictate the lesson word-for-word from the textbook and the entire class would strain to
write down each word in tiny writing so as to make the most of their notebooks. Then,
participants would be expected to learn the material at home by themselves. Dictation
was also sometimes used in the tuition centres. Unlike some of the other practices used
by schools and teachers to keep learning institutions going inside Afghanistan, the
dictation method was also mentioned by participants who spent time in Pakistan's private
Afghan schools many of which were also heavily resource strapped.
At the end of the school year, regardless of closures, ministry exams and
university entrance exams seem to have continued. Aziza in particular related with great
clarity the year the mujahideen first came to Kabul (1992) and how she did not attend
school at all that year due to systemic closure because of a lack of textbooks for the new
curriculum. At the end of that year, which she spent on her uncle's farm away from the
fighting, she returned to Kabul, was given about six weeks to study, and then her entire 266 class was given the final exams for that school year and those who managed to pass were promoted. Interestingly, Mohammad and Sawar spoke of a similar situation occurring at different times. For Mohammad it was at the end of his secondary school during the early
Taliban period as well as in 2001/2 during the fall of the Taliban. For Sawar it was for his university entrance exam after the fall of the Taliban. As such, it seems that some people in the education system felt that the best solution was to test learners regardless of missed classroom time and to allow those who passed to advance regardless of the closures.
For the most part, however, these schooling routine and method adaptations were largely unique to the situation inside the war zone itself. As such, the important information that has been gleaned from the participant's memories will perhaps be of more use when it is compared to the memories of World War II participants in the next chapter.
Identity and Politicization in Afghan Learning Environments
While this study did not set out to examine the development of identity through learning participation, the politicization of learners or curriculum, the issues were raised frequently enough by participants that identity and politicization became increasingly important categories to understanding curriculum experiences in this war and conflict context. While both of these issues are examined more closely in the next chapter, particularly how they compare with World War II memories, there are several points worth discussing here in relation to pre-migration versus post-migration identity development and politicization in the Afghan case. 267
One of the crucial characteristics of the development of politicized Afghan ethno-
religious identities after 1979, and particularly after 1992, seemed to relate to attempts by political parties to engage youths in ethno-national violence. Mohammad and Aziza
spoke about how their textbooks did not portray negative images of the Soviets or of
specific ethnic groups prior to the mujahideen government in 1992. Nor were there
groups in their schools or neighbourhoods encouraging young men to discriminate
against friends and classmates of other ethno-national groups prior to 1992. However, as
Gul and Rehman discussed at length, the situation changed considerably after 1992 at
both a school and a neighbourhood level with a new curriculum and dividing control of
Kabul's neighbourhoods among ethnically-based political parties creating tensions and
new ethnic identity awarenesses.
As was discussed in Chapter Seven, the formal curriculum used by the
mujahideen government in Afghanistan was developed in Pakistan during the 1980s with the assistance and support of the education department of the University of Nebraska at
so
Omaha and USAID . This highly politicized set of books overtly includes material
which is pro-Islam and anti-Soviet/Russian. In conjunction with the politicization of
identities going on in the wider community, this set of textbooks may have had an impact
on the learning done by both this study's participants and their peers by politicizing and
altering their identities as Muslims and as Afghans. Participants provided little direct
evidence that this was the case beyond what was stated in the previous paragraph.
United States Agency for International Development. 268
Primary level curricula developed later in the 1990s by GTZ69, the BBC, and other international agencies tended to be less directly politically engaged but did not affect the participants due to their being in higher levels or in non-Afghan school settings by then.
As most of the participants in Pakistan and Iran did not attend Afghan curriculum learning institutions, or if they did it was for short periods of time, a different curriculum supporting a different national identity was presented to them. It seems that as forced migrants they experienced varying degrees of discrimination based on their outsider identities in these schools. The level of discrimination was enough that participants were constantly receiving negative, politically charged messages about their identities from teachers and classmates alike. These problems were particularly discussed by Aryana,
Jalil, and Khaled in the context of schools, and Aziza, Abdul, and Khaled in the context of discrimination by the wider community in Pakistan's and Iran's urban areas. Hence, identity development through negative discriminatory experiences in the Pakistani and the Iranian school systems likely played a role in identity development in countries of first asylum. At the same time, politicization of identity prior to migration seemed to have further affects on some of the participants during their diasporic lives, particular Aziza and Fatana - the two Hazara participants - whose ethno-religious group has been singled out for discrimination in Afghanistan and in Pakistan.
Resilience and Tenaciousness
The resilience of Afghan children and youth living in urban areas of Pakistan and
Iran is noted in a number of the small number of publications written about this group of
69 Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit 269 refugees (Lowicki, 2002; Dicum, 2005; Rugh, 1998). Among the eleven Afghan participants in this study, the qualities of resilience and tenaciousness are often evident.
Their personal adaptability to the loss of resources, the increasing emphasis of conservative Islam in the curriculum, and their acceptance of their need to undertake paid work in countries of first asylum are three examples of perseverance. Of particular importance is their collective pursuit of learning in spite of the many challenges due to systemic destruction and then their legal status as urban refugees. In spite of gaps in their learning, participants returned to school at what seemed like every opportunity. The way in which most participants also used their work experiences to build on one another and to lead to positions with greater responsibility, better treatment, and higher incomes was also suggestive of their individual abilities to take basic survival needs and build on them through ingenuity.
Family and community support in these pursuits was an equally important aspect of the tenaciousness in learning. From Aryana's father's insistence that his daughters remain enrolled in school in spite of familial and political pressure to the Ismaili community's skepticism of Aziza's abilities to pass her Matric exams, and a variety of familial and communal reactions in between, participants gained strength both from positive (encouraging) and negative (skeptical) support. Teachers, as was discussed above, also played a role in facilitating persistence in education in part by serving as an example through their continued work even when they were not being paid. At the same time, given that there is a large number of Afghans who did not get this same level of support and an even larger number who has not been able to persist in their education 270
(Lowicki, 2002; Dicum, 2005; Pont, 2001; Rugh, 1998), the achievements of these eleven
Afghans is somewhat remarkable.
Conclusion
The complex experiences of Afghans who were relatively able to maintain access to learning environments during their childhoods and youths provide an example of the varied realities of lived experiences and of how individuals remember the same time periods of history and life. These eleven histories have also woven together to present an intricate and unusual view of Afghan education since 1979 from the learner perspective.
In bringing the experiences together, the participants have provided a view of education and learning during the three main periods of the Afghan conflict as they grew and changed with the conflict around them. One of the advantages of having participants around the same age has been that the way their histories moved along from one stage of learning to another within similar stages of the conflict. This has allowed the development of a unified sense between war history and personal civilian history in the case study.
The relationships between participants' experiences and the five themes that form the analytical core of this dissertation have been summarized in this final chapter of the
Afghanistan section. In allowing the collective similarities and differences of school routine and classroom life to compete with the different issues of adaptability, resilience, and politicization, the chapter has dug behind the mere fascination of individual stories of strength, character, and resilience to look at the issues which perhaps an individual storyteller could not see in his or her own experience. 271
The education of Afghans is currently a prominent issue in recent studies and policy debates relating to the education of children and youth in protracted conflicts
(Sinclair, 2001). In examining the lived educational experiences of those with access to education during this conflict, it seems that access to education has been a constant struggle, has required systemic, communal, and individual flexibility, and has required rapid adaptability to the multiple complexities involved in gaining skills, knowledge, and
"education". The learning experiences related here show, among other things, the many ways in which resource-strapped systems can continue in the modern context including the use of dictation-notation, private tuition centres, unaccredited schools, and parental facilitation of learning at home. In this history one is left with a sense of the overwhelming importance people with ways and means placed on ensuring their children continue formal learning. Nevertheless, the limits of the system and the experience were also seen with most of the participants failing to attend university, obtain professional careers, and having to "backtrack" in Canada by attending adult high schools, the final few years of regular high school, and other bridging programs to improve language skills before due to the quality of their previous educational experiences. Ultimately, these participants' experiences of growing up in a protracted conflict with an often-makeshift education demonstrate the inadequacies of the current systems in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran for all Afghans. While interim systems might help to facilitate and continue learning, it becomes insufficient in the long term for fostering the next generation of skillfully educated people who can lead and work in professional "white collar" positions. 272
In looking forward to the next chapter and the cross-comparison between cases, the themes of sustained school routine and practice within times of conflict rise to the fore as key ideas which could provide insight into the a more generalized idea of formal education during a war or conflict. Learning through work experiences, apprenticeships, and other non-formal environments equally comes to the fore as a potential for examining learning through experience, learning as a holistic experience of the sum of growth and life, and alternative forms of learning outside of the formality of systemic governmental structures. Coupled with the affects of war and conflict on identity, curriculum politics, and access there is much in this case study that provides fertile ground for further discussion in the concluding chapters. SECTION IV:
LEARNER EXPERIENCES IN COMPARISONAND IMPLICATIONS
FOR EDUCATION IN EMERGENCIES
Chapter 11:
The Emerging Dialogue Across the Learning Experiences and Theories The preceding two sections reveal a number of dynamic experiences of learning in challenging circumstances during war and conflict pre and post migration. Building on the already presented evidence of maintenance, adaptation, resilience, politicization, resistance, and identity discussed in chapters six and ten in relation to the individual cases, this chapter examines these ideas in dialogue between the two case studies and in relation to theory presented in chapter one. The relationships between themes and ideas are teased out showing the ever-increasing complexities of how learners view their curriculum experiences particularly within the chaotic war and conflict scenario.
This final chapter seeks to bring these two sets of war experiences together in two ways: a comparative perspective under the five themes and in relation to the theory and education in emergencies literature examined in chapter one. The first half of the chapter focuses on the five themes of learning experience within the war zones and displacement locations. The second half turns to a discussion of theory and how the curriculum experiences shared in this study might affect theory building. The chapter then concludes by suggesting future areas for research and developing deeper understanding of learner experiences.
273 274
Maintaining the Familiar in Chaos
Perhaps the most poignant theme across the oral histories is found in the participants' experience of the curriculum in formalized learning environments attended during and immediately after migration. In chapters six and ten, similarities in school and classroom routines, teaching routines, and how war affected these routines was discussed in relation to each case. This section examines the ways in which familiar pre-war school routines were maintained and notes an unexpected similarity in school across temporal and cultural space while allowing for difference as well.
School Routine
The daily school routine experienced in the primary level schools of participants from both case studies suggests that for most the day began with an assembly. For all students the assembly included the singing of the national anthem and for those attending religious schools, a prayer or recitation from the relevant holy book. School wide announcements were also made during assemblies. After these gatherings students would file to their classrooms and the business of formal learning would begin. Classroom learning carried on until early afternoon at which time the school day would end and children returned home. At some point in the day there was usually a short break - up to half an hour long - during which all of the children in the school would run around in the playground/courtyard and sometimes would eat a small snack if they had one.
The secondary school routine, on the other hand, varied in that most of the learners in Eastern Europe attended schools in which they had been streamed into 275 academic or technical curricula that in turn dictated certain aspects of the routine, expectations, and subject matter. Unlike Afghanistan, moreover, Eastern European and
German participants described schools as having a greater extracurricular or social role in organising and holding dances, concerts, and other events. In Afghanistan, on the other hand, all participants who attended formal secondary institutions attended academic schools. Only Khaled studied technical skills and then did so through traditional apprenticeships in Iran that involved a partnership with a master rather than study in a formal institution. Some similarity existed in that the streaming process was based on exam performance and parental ability to pay for school fees, materials, and to afford to have an otherwise able-bodied adolescent who was not contributing economically to family well being.
For those attending academic stream high schools, participants in both case studies experienced a highly politicised curriculum and routine. Participants across the spectrum, in particular Gul and Rehman in the Afghan case and Jonas, Gediminas,
Vytautas, and Horst in the World War II case, described schools as recruiting grounds for militaries and militias and as often being closed due to violence. When they were opened, daily routines again included assemblies with the national anthem, prayers in religiously based schools, and classes that ended in the mid-afternoon. Although not exclusive, student uniforms were worn in some schools in both cases. Finally, there seemed to be a greater demand for homework and study outside of the school as part of the general routine common to both case studies. 276
Teaching Methods and Classroom Routines
Similarities in participants' memories of classroom routines and practices were also many. Learners in both case studies consistently recounted having to stand up in order to ask/answer questions in class or whenever a teacher or visitor entered the classroom. Teachers at all levels seemed to begin their day with attendance and then reviewed homework - both Afghans and World War II survivors spoke of oral quizzes or tests. The teachers would introduce new topics as they came up in their textbooks. There were drills and practice of certain skills - mathematics, penmanship, and reading at the primary level - during class time. Most of the participants spoke of their teachers giving lectures and either standing at the front of the room or moving about, checking their work.
Physical descriptions of classrooms did sometimes differ. Some Afghans did not have furniture or dedicated school-purpose buildings either because they lived in isolated rural areas or because of the refugee context in which they lived. At least one World War
II participant, Jonas (Lithuanian, M, 77), had a similar experience relating a particularly amusing story of makeshift seating in his refugee high school where the students sat on old edible oil cans in such tight rows that if one student lost his balance, the entire row would topple over like dominoes. Seating was primarily described to be in rows. World
War II participants all described sitting in desks built for two students, as did several
Afghan participants. The classrooms all seemed to have chalkboards at the front, although several Afghans spoke of how rarely they were used inside Afghanistan due to a lack of available chalk, even prior to the onset of war. Windows were common, but 277 resources such as maps, posters, and scientific equipment seemed to be more limited in the case of Afghanistan than Eastern Europe.
Seating arrangements definitely seemed to have some sense of order to them,
although the logic or pattern of that order varied. In the Afghan case, when participants
attended co-educational settings either in early grades or at private tuition centres, girls
and boys sat separately. Girls were either at the front of the room or they sat on one side
of the room. Boys sat behind the girls or on the opposite side. In Germany, Ingrid (F, 72)
described how in her hometown school students sat alphabetically, but when she was
evacuated she went to a school where the students with lower marks sat at the front and those with higher marks sat at the back. Veronika (Lithuanian, F, 68) remembered that in
the DP Camp school she sat in the front of the room beside her friend consistently, but
did not have any recollection of why that might have been. Certainly it seems that within
certain cultural boundaries - such as the Afghan expectation to separate the genders —
most teachers seemed to have fairly structured seating arrangement practices.
One area of strong memories for both groups of participants centred on corporal
punishment. The methods of punishment may have varied, but the outcome was
essentially the same - the condemnation of teachers who used violent punishment.
Afghan participants all recalled teachers using sticks - often described as long sticks -
both as pointers and as tools of punishment. Sticks were either used across the palm or on
the back/backside of the offending student(s). World War II survivors also spoke of this
disciplinarian culture although they were less likely to specifically remember the stick. 278
The World War II teachers seemed to use a variety of items from their hands on backsides to rulers on open palms. In both participant groups, the recalled reasons harsh punishment was meted out ranged from cheating on tests, to being late, to talking during class, to failing to do one's homework. Two participants also shared stories of siblings or classmates who were sent home for different reasons. Aryana (Pashtun, F, 25) had a classmate sent home because he did not have any shoes. Veronika (Lithuanian, F, 68) had a brother sent home because his homework was not done. It is particularly interesting that these two memories should come from Aryana and Veronika since both of them were also the only participants to reflect on how the strict discipline and punishments were probably crucial factors in the development of their negative feelings about adult power over children.
The sharpness of participants' memories either as witnesses to or as victims of this treatment was equally interesting, because corporal punishment was only one form of violence experienced by these participants during their war experiences. Guns, bombings, shootings, death, and other forms of war-related violence were part of their daily lives outside and less so inside of school; nevertheless, corporal punishment was such an important part of the experience of school that participants tended to share vivid memories without prompting or specific questions about the practice. Certainly it is possible that these memories were sharpened by later experiences of the Canadian school system where corporal punishment was frowned upon or banned and that interviewing people who had never experienced the Canadian system might have left these memories in the background. However, the purpose of the interview process was not to ask participants why they thought certain memories were worth sharing or remembering while others were not. Any such statements would only be speculative.
The final similar area of classroom memories was the assignment of and expectation of homework. As was suggested in the case studies, homework consisted primarily of reading, memorising, practicing mathematics, studying for tests, and doing any other assigned work. It seems to have been checked on a daily basis - frequently by oral quizzes to check memory — by teachers and learners were punished harshly for not being able to show that they had completed it.
The breadth of similarities in participant memories of the curriculum in action regardless of context or age is impressive. These strong similarities provide insight into an apparently cross-cultural design of school and schooling culture. Regardless of budget, socio-economic development, and politico-cultural expectations, schools appeared to be places where similar practices in daily routine, teacher and learner behavior and expectation took place. Certainly there were differences brought on by social, political, and economic factors between these two case studies. However, a discussion of these differences is somehow not as interesting as a discussion of the basic similarities - particularly when one wishes to consider possibilities of what a cross-case study analysis can usefully provide to researchers on education during conflict and war. What is missing from this discussion of school and classroom routine is a discussion of how the war impacted the curriculum, which is the subject of the next section of this chapter. 280
Adaptation, Resilience and Resistance
Reviewing the way in which these themes sometimes seem to cross over and intertwine together in different ways, it seemed useful to present them as one in this chapter in order to better explore their relationship in the context of this study. Such a relationship may not be replicable elsewhere, but in this context specifically they worked together to more completely describe two distinct aspects of learners' experiences: how formal schooling was affected by war and conflict and in learning in non-formal or informal environments. Hence, in this final chapter, adaptation, resilience, and resistance have been grouped together.
The Impact of War on Learning Spaces and Methods
In the oral histories presented here, experiences of adaptation and survival often combined to reveal how learning adapted to war and facilitated survival, resilience, and fueled resistence. Although three of the participants - Veronika (Lithuanian, F, 68),
Mohammad (Pashtun, M, 26), and Abdul (Tajik, M, 25) -- felt that going to school in the war context was not special or different, but was seen by them as "normal", these twenty- seven oral histories provide evidence which suggests that schools and communities living with war take strikingly similar actions as ways to address the need to maintain learning within an insecure and unstable environment. These observations were particularly important because they embody efforts taken on multiple levels that aimed at suppressing potential gaps in education. The three layers of action included individual actions, teaching adaptations, and collaborative community responses to ever-changing needs. 281
Individual actions included both actions initiated by individual learners and actions initiated by parents on behalf of their children, particularly younger children.
Most of these actions are those undertaken to maintain learning in spite of families being in hiding or children being unable to attend school due to closure. Of particular interest is the number of participants who reported having undertaken initiative to learn by themselves either consciously or unconsciously. Two of the Jewish participants, Hanna
(Poland, F, 76) and Jozsef (Hungarian, M, 81) remembered spending part of the war engaged in reading books. Hanna in particular had a long established love of reading and whenever she could, she used this skill to occupy her mind and her time during her life in hiding. Jozsef remembered somehow coming across books during his brief stay in Bergen
Belsen concentration camp and how they helped to distract him.
Other participants either informally taught or were taught by others in "games" of playing school during periods when they were confined to ghettoes, neighbourhoods, or homes due to instability, hiding, or politics. Fatana (Hazara, F, 22) remembered how one of her sisters "taught" her and some other neighbourhood children while playing a game of "school" prior to her being old enough to attend grade one and later as a way to occupy time when schools were closed due to violence. Like Fatana's sister, when confined to a ghetto in 1944, Zsuzsanna (Hungarian, F, 75) created a class for some of the younger
Jewish children living in the same building as she. A much younger Aryana (Pashtun, F,
25) used the idea of teaching as a game to show-off her knowledge of numbers and the alphabet to out-of-school children in her ancestral village early on in the war and later to play school in her neighbourhood in Peshawar. In a variation of this theme, Mohammad (Pashtun, M, 26) shared books with his sister, who had been forced to drop out of school during the Taliban era. These stories suggest that some children and particularly adolescents tried to help others' learning processes, particularly within their own families and of those who were shut out of schooling for a variety of political reasons related to the conflicts.
For at least three of participants (Fatana, Aryana and Zsuzsuanna) this informal learning was structured in the form of a game and not taken seriously, but nevertheless for the children on the receiving end of their teaching "games" likely provided informal knowledge acquisition moments. Since her sister had already taught her the entire first year curriculum, Fatana said that she felt bored later in a school. Aryana mentioned that the children to whom she "taught" the alphabet and counting followed her around repeating what she had taught them and asking for more.
The second way in which individual action helped participants to continue learning is through parental action and support. Hanna (Polish, F, 76) was taught to read by her father before the war began and later when they moved to the Warsaw ghetto he took up tutoring her. Georgs (Latvian, M, 68) spoke at length about his mother, a concert pianist and piano teacher, taking initiative to teach him some basic reading and other skills during the war because he did not have access to formal schooling. Of the Afghan participants, memories of parents taking on tutoring or teaching roles were rare perhaps because of the relatively low educational levels of many of the parents - especially mothers - and the absenteeism of some of the fathers. However, Sawar (Pashtun, M, 22), 283 the son of a village-based veterinarian, spoke not only of his father's emotional support, but of the way he helped Sawar learn and study beyond what his village teachers were capable of by sharing his own books and helping Sawar with his homework.
For others, particularly Afghans, parental emotional and financial support played a primary role in whether participants were able to continue learning or attending school.
Aryana's (Pashtun, F, 29) father played an important role in ensuring that she and her sisters remained enrolled in and attending formal school in spite of familial and communal pressure for him to withdraw his female children during the 1980s. Khalid
(Tajik, M, 26) in Iran and Jalil (Pashtun, M, 29) in Pakistan attributed their access to learning to their fathers' financial support and insistence that they learn as much as possible in spite of various difficulties related to their status in these countries. Rehman
(Pashtun, M, 33) and Aziza (Hazara, F, 24) attributed their ability to remain in school to their uneducated mothers' insistence that they and their siblings attend school. Among the World War II participants, Vytautas (Lithuanian, M, 83) attributed his parents' emotional support and approval to his ability to move from their rural isolated farm and find full time work and part-time study opportunities in a nearby large town after the
Russians took over his boarding school in 1940. Veronika (Lithuanian, F, 68) did not remember her mother getting involved in home schooling her during the war, even though her mother had been a teacher and headmistress. Rather, listening to Veronika's story one notes that her parents made significant efforts to ensure that she and her older sister had access to formal schools every time they took a break from their near constant 284
migrations. Parental insistence and facilitation of the ways and means to remain in school
in spite of the war seemed to play a pivotal role in the stories of these participants.
At the second level, that of the formal school level, actions taken to ensure a
continuation of learning included adaptations in the school routine, schedule, classroom methodologies, expectations, and individual teacher action. As with other striking
similarities, this layer is notable for the ways in which schools in both war contexts used
similar methods to adapt to the war context and seek to remain opened.
In both case studies participants, particularly in urban areas, experienced school
routine changes due to violence. Ingrid (German, F, 72) recounted at length her school
day routine during the period of the war she spent in her coastal hometown, which was
heavily bombed by the Allies. First, children went to school later than usual on those
days when raids occurred into the early morning hours. Her school day was shortened
considerably down to a few hours during which her teachers would quickly collect
assignments, go over homework, and assign the next two or three days of work which
learners were expected to get done on their own time in between bombing raids. The
assignment of several days' worth of schoolwork to be done at home compensated for the
frequent closure of schools due to daytime violence. As such, the entire praxis of learning
was altered to enable children to remain in school in spite of the heavy bombings going
one every night and occasional daytime raids. Veronika (Lithuanian, F, 68), who spent a
year in Berlin at the start of the war, remembered frequent kindergarten closures and
nighttime bombing raids. One of her specific memories was of walking home from 285 kindergarten when a daytime bombing raid was signaled and, perhaps because she was young or alone, no one urged her into the shelters so she kept walking on the empty streets until she reached her apartment building. Shortened school days and the expectation of self-learning at all ages was also reported by Brigitte (German, F, 78) and
Horst (German, M, 78).
The shortened school day and self-learning experiences are very similar to the routine experienced by Afghan participants living in Kabul during the mujahideen era in particular including Mohammad (Pashtun, M, 29), Abdul (Uzbek, M, 25), Gul (Tajik, F,
33), Rehman (Pashtun, M, 33) and Aziza (Hazara, F, 24). In particular Gul and Rehman, who were both attending Kabul University at the time, spoke of making brief intermittent visits to their faculties to find out about assignments and to deliver homework. Abdul, who had not particularly liked school in the first place, spoke about how he and his friends often skipped school because of teachers' frequent absences. This suggests that perhaps the expectation of self-learning was not methodologically useful for all students.
Aziza and Mohammad, on the other hand, recounted the exact same system of shortened school days of one or two hours where teachers would quickly take up questions and hand out assignments. While the violence was a major reason given by all of the Afghan participants, Mohammad also indicated that the economic situation of the teachers, brought on by the low rate of pay they received, inhibited teachers from spending an entire day at school due to holding down other jobs. Then in high school, Mohammad suggested that the students forgave their teachers since many of them - including 286
Mohammad, were also working to help their families and empathized with the economic dilemma.
One final area of school-level adaptation, which was related with regards to schools in the refugee scenarios as well as schools in the war zones, was the use of dictation-notation to bridge the gaps caused by textbook shortages. The term dictation as a learning method is often associated with teachers reading a passage or a list of words while the learners write them down verbatim. In this context, however, the term takes on a secondary meaning. Rather than simply dictate vocabulary words in a linguistic or reading class, the lack of textbooks, chalk, and other materials meant that often teachers spent their class time dictating the entire lesson in the textbook word-for-word. The students frantically wrote down the dictation in their own notebooks and then memorized them at home. Hence, the term "notation" ~ a term used by Mohammad (Tajik, M, 26) in his description of the technique, which paired with "dictation" adequately describes the method. The next day, the teacher would begin the class by asking content related questions and, once satisfied that the learners had memorized the lesson and done their homework, the teacher would begin to dictate the next lesson. The term itself- dictation- notation methodology - is not one that is yet formalized in academia or taught as pedagogy; however, the extensiveness of this memory across the study suggests that it is the common solution to the problem of book shortages.
All of the World War II participants who spent time in DP Camp primary and secondary schools spoke of the use of this method due to textbook shortages. Veronika 287
(Lithuanian, F, 68) in particular complained that it resulted in too much homework, but at the same time her parents also had her enrolled in numerous extra-curricular activities
including dance lessons, German language lessons and Girl Guides. German participants, particularly Ingrid (F, 72), also mentioned dictation-notation being used at the end of the
war when books were scarce.
Dictation-notation was also used in the Afghan context in the rural and the urban
areas. Although the method was mentioned as being used pre-conflict in the rural areas, it
was apparently used in both the rural and urban contexts during the early days of the
mujahideen and during the Taliban era when textbooks were difficult to obtain or during
times of complete curricula change. Mohammad (Tajik, M, 26) in particular recounted
how he wrote his dictation in small writing so that he would not use too much space on
each lesson. In Pakistan, moreover, those participants who attended private Afghan
schools also mentioned the lack of resources being solved by the use of dictation.
Dictation-notation was particularly remembered by Aryana (Pashtun, F, 29), Fatana
(Hazara, F, 22), Gul (Tajik, F, 33), and Aziza (Hazara, F, 24). Again, in spite of the
boredom which dictation methodology seemed to bring with it, particularly for Abdul,
few of the participants complained about this methodology explaining simply that it was
the only way they could continue learning given the shortage of books and other
classroom materials.
Individual teachers also took action outside of the scope of their classroom and
teaching duties to help students and their families in various capacities thereby showing ways in which teachers played a larger community support or development role. Hanna
(Polish, F, 76) spoke of her teacher and headmistress helping to hide and save the life of one of her Jewish classmates as well as helping Hanna and her family leave the ghetto and go into hiding. Zsuzsanna (Hungarian, F, 75) also spoke of how one of her teachers offered to hide a very bright classmate of hers, but the family refused and remained together out of fear of the danger. Jonas (Lithuanian, M, 78) and Vytautas (Lithuanian,
M, 83) spoke at length about their teachers and their school administrations working together to provide a warning system to keep adolescent boys from being recruited into the Nazi army. Veronika (Lithuanian, F, 68) spoke of her parents, who were teachers, organizing social events in the community, running scouts and guides summer camps, helping illiterate adults with immigration forms, advocating for ill children in the DP camp to ensure they received their rations. In the Afghan case, Aryana (Pashtun, F, 29) spoke about one of her teachers of Pakistani nationality - one of the few she liked - inviting her, her mother, and her sister to come over and have afternoon tea at her house during the time period when her father was away serving the mujahideen and her uncle had recently been killed. It appears that teachers in both conflicts put themselves at risk in order to assist their students, particularly those at danger of becoming caught up in the conflict for reasons they did not agree with. These individual acts were separated from the third layer of impacts on learning because they were primarily external to the school, were unrelated to learning, and were more likely to show individual acts of kindness than to show wider organised response to the pressures and systemic alterations of learning during a war or conflict. 289
The final layer of war affects on learning was community response. Within this layer lie two opposing ways in which learning was affected by the war: the school as politicization centre and the school as the centre of subversive communal activities to maintain learning when schooling is threatened, closed, otherwise unavailable.
World War II participants, perhaps because of the distance between them and the war they lived through, were more willing and more able than Afghan participants to describe the ways in which their schools were sometimes used as politicization centres.
This was particularly true of those who were from the Baltic region and who were secondary-school age during the height of the war (1939-45). In the case of World War
II, participants described changing explicit curricula in order to meet the bias of either the
Soviets or the Nazis. This included changing geography, history, social studies, and other arts courses. Physically schools changed with the introduction of the red room under the
Soviets, changing leaders' pictures on the walls, changing national anthems, changing teachers and administrators, and the removal of unfavourable pages in textbooks.
Afghan participants were less likely to describe such sharp contrasts. With each change of government in Afghanistan their schools seemed to close for at least half a year while the formal curriculum was discussed or a new set of textbooks introduced. The
Soviets, mujahideen, and Taliban each implemented completely different formal curricula, persecuted teachers who were openly unsympathetic, and changed the national anthems. The Soviet era (1979-1989) and the communist era in general in Afghanistan
(1978-1992) were centred around the introduction of the Soviet education system in 290 communist-controlled parts of the country, the forced enrollment of female students, and a sympathetic social studies curriculum. This was countered in Pakistan in particular by the development of the UNO curriculum through the cooperation of the mujahideen and the University of Nebraska at Omaha (Sinclair, 2001). The Taliban are well known for having closed the schools entirely and then reopening them only to male students using a strict Islamic curriculum. Only Mohammad (Tajik, M, 26) and Sawar (Pashtun, M, 22) experienced the Taliban's curriculum in Kabul University and in high school respectively. But only Mohammad, who was in the law faculty, spoke of the ways in which the Taliban curriculum completely changed his ability to ask questions and his teachers' abilities to introduce certain topics and areas of law.
Subversive activities to counter official politicization were also noted in both case studies. Gediminas (Lithuanian, M, 80) and Jonas (Lithuanian, M, 78) spoke about their underground activities in creating newspapers, staying away from school to avoid military service, and attending meetings with the partisans. Vaclav (Czech, M, 78) also spoke about his own activities in this area although his involvement was not as closely tied to his school community as the experiences of the Lithuanian participants. In the
Afghan case, Mohammad (Tajik, M, 26) spoke about a law professor who taught subjects against the wishes of the Taliban. However, perhaps because of the ongoing nature of this conflict, most Afghan participants did not share memories relating to the use of their
schools as subversive politicization centres. The use of the UNO curriculum, and later the
GTZ and other unofficial textbooks, in Pakistan's refugee schools both in the camps and in private Afghan schools in urban centres made these schools politicization centres in 291 themselves by going against the curriculum policies and practices of the Soviet and later the Taliban governments. In both case studies, therefore, war, conflict, and heightened political atmospheres particularly affected higher levels of education. Schools were used as both official and subversive politicization centres depending on the political leanings and practices of the community, including school administrators and teachers.
The second subversive way in which communal activities took place to support and maintain learning during the wars being studied here was through either unofficial or non-school based learning or activities. In the Second World War case, participants' memories included stories of parents informally teaching their children at home during bad fighting, of entire schools moving to quieter places, and of Jewish children in ghettos being gathered for informal learning opportunities. In the Afghan case, memories included teachers opening private for-profit tuition centres to provide better learning opportunities to those who could afford to pay, brothers trying to informally teach their sisters during the Taliban era, the creation of an Ismaili Afghan school in Pakistan's
Ismaili community to teach Afghan Ismaili children, and educated Afghans opening unofficial private schools including post-secondary schools in Pakistan to teach urban- dwelling Afghans. These activities, even though some of them were for-profit activities, clearly suggest that there was a community-wide interest in learning and creating learning opportunities to fill voids left by semi-functioning formal schooling. The required payment of tuition fees for some of these opportunities, however, clearly suggests that community initiative may sometimes only be available to those with the ability to pay.
While many of the participants came from socio-economic situations where payment was 292 not necessarily an issue, a number of participants spoke of having to work in order to pay such fees and at least one, Aziza, was only able to attend school in Pakistan because the
Ismaili community school did not have a tuition fee.
Learning in Non-formal and Informal Ways
While most of the learners focused on experiences of formal schooling during war and conflict, participants also spoke about ways in which non-formal learning took place through work and informal experiences of economic and personal survival outside of school, skills building, and life as forced migrants. Often these less formal experiences were bridges between one formal experience and another and were mentioned as they personally "walked" through "what happened next" during periods of migration.
Particularly in the Afghan case, less formal learning often occurred in conjunction with formal learning in the refugee context and was such an important experience to participants, that they mentioned these moments as part of the overall experience of learning in the refugee context. While some aspects of the circumstances and issues surrounding these case studies serve to differentiate the two, particularly on the issue of work and the fact that the Afghan participants were urban refugees while World War II participants all lived in camps, there are enough examples in both case studies to warrant comparing non-formal learning within the guise of adaptation, resilience, and resistance.
In particular the learning of skills for economic survival and skills for developing personal resilience are the two most important outcomes of the non-formal opportunities detailed in the case studies earlier. 293
Detailed in chapters five, six, nine, and ten, non-formal learning mostly occurred in the form of learning of skills for economic survival, namely: paid labour, unpaid farm labour, and white-collar work. The types of paid labour experienced included carpet weaving (Aziza, Hazara, F, 24), street-selling (Mohammad, Tajik, M, 26), waiting tables/other restaurant work (Abdul, Tajik, M, 25), working in stores (Ali, Uzbek, M, 40), working in a salon (Fatana, F, Hazara, 22), apprenticing mechanic and apprenticing a food designer (Khaled, Tajik, M, 26). Participants from both case studies undertook unpaid farm labour where they were again required to learn farming skills on the job.
Jonas (Lithuanian, M, 77) and Gediminas (Lithuanian, M, 80) both worked in dairies and later on farms in different parts of Germany from 1944-45. Vytautas (Lithuanian, M, 83) and Rimute (Lithuanian, F, 83) also worked on farms in Germany during this time period.
Vaclav (Czech, M, 79) worked on his family farm after his high school closed in 1943.
In the case of Afghanistan, Aziza (Hazara, F, 24) spent a year avoiding the war and violence going on in Kabul post-1992 by assisting on her uncle's farm in the ancestral village. Sawar (Pashtun, M, 22) and Ali (Uzbek, M, 40) lived in rural villages and seem to have helped out with agriculture, too. Farming gave participants the opportunity to learn skills relating to growing, harvesting, and transporting crops as well as looking after livestock.
Unpaid farm labour and other trade skills learnt seemed to attest to participants' abilities to adapt and to be resilient in the face of difficult moments and survival needs.
Even though most were not studying to acquire these skills and would not have chosen these occupations, their abilities to remember details of the skill and the work involved showed their adaptability and potential to acquire new competencies for survival.
The final type of work has been classified as "white-collar work" largely for lack of a better term. This category includes experiences such as teaching/tutoring, clerical work, running small businesses and working in INGOs. Rather like the other forms of skills development and work, experiences shared in these areas showed ingenuity, adaptation, and a willingness to take on skills and jobs.
Those who worked as teachers/tutors included Gediminas(Lithuanian, M, 80),
Aziza (Hazara, F, 24), and Rehman (Pashtun, M, 33). None of these three participants had formal training in teaching method, yet all felt themselves fairly successful at this work. Gediminas said that in all his years of tutoring he only had one failure. Aziza and
Rehman spoke about the many skills they gained - many of them personal rather than practical skills in human interaction, understanding, self-confidence and empowerment.
But for all three, the skill of teaching and the list of lessons learned from this experience is emblematic of participants' adaptability to the context and ability to learn from outside of more traditional learning institutions and methods.
Other types of "white collar" work included managing projects in international organizations (Rehman, Pashtun, M, 33), running restaurants and catering businesses
(Khaled Tajik, M, 26), and working as a clerk in the electrical company (Vytautas,
Lithuanian, M, 83). Rehman spoke of the skills he learnt in project management work 295 and communications work by attending non-formal internal trainings conducted by the organizations he worked for. Khaled spoke of the learning food making arts as an apprentice to a woman working in Tehran. Vytautas did not mention any training to learn his clerical work for the electrical company. For Vytautas, work provided him with protection from being forcibly recruited into the Nazi army thus providing him with an additional element of survival opportunity. Unlike teaching and tutoring work, these shared histories suggest that participants learned their job skills from a combination of on-the-job non-formal trainings, apprenticeships, and on-the-job experience without training.
Although the participants themselves mostly viewed this work as difficult intensive labour undertaken primarily for basic survival ~ financial and security ~ reasons, it seems that the varied opportunities also provided skills learning and to a lesser extent self-empowerment. This is not to suggest that the work was not exploitative or otherwise challenging given participants' ages. The focus of this study, however, has been to address learning within war and conflict situations rather than to pass judgment on the circumstances surrounding their learning experiences. Within that context, it is clear that many participants learned many skills through unusual and unexpected methods during the course of work they were forced to undertake to ensure their survival during war and conflict. Such learning is a testament to participant's adaptability and resilience in the face of survival needs, attesting somewhat to Postman and Weingartner's argument that the purpose of learning for survival requires the constant unlearning of knowledge which is no longer useful and acquiring knowledge and skills which suit the circumstance 296
(1976, pp. 195-6). Unlike the adaptation of formal learning to the chaotic war and migration context, non-formal experiences only suggested aspects of adaptation and resilience rather than overt resistance to authority, war, and the context of war. The near- absence of resistance, with the exception of work consciously keeping Vytautas out of the army, was perhaps because of the focus on learning for [economic] survival.
Identity in Wartime Learning Experiences
Unlike the other four themes, issues of identity quietly and sometimes overtly surfaced in the oral histories weaving together strands of experience, political dimensions of the conflicts, heightened tensions, and the development of notions of social place, gender, and ethnicity. If identity development is an important subconscious part of learning during one's childhood and youth, it seems to have had particular importance in these two conflict contexts fueling the themes of resistance and wider social adaptation in cultures under stress. This outcome should perhaps have been anticipated as the use of schools and formal learning to manipulate identity politics as part of conflict is addressed by several authors on the subject of war, childhood, and learning (Davies, 2004; Boyden
& deBerry, 2003). In the context of this particular study, identity development presents as a similarity and a difference between the WWII and Afghan case studies. Because of the relatively interesting ways in which identity emerged in the oral histories, this final thematic section is relatively longer and discusses the distinct ways in which identity revealed itself in the participants' curriculum experiences. 297
Identity in the World War II Context
In the case of World War II, participants' stories of their learning lives do not often include statements which would indicate that the curriculum both inside and outside of school was effective in influencing the political and social cleavages of the children's notions of self and community. To some extent, the politicization of the curriculum and the violence rained down by the war seemed to be completely separate experiences in the development of identity.
In Lithuania, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia in particular, there were subtle ways in which various occupying powers used schools to influence learners' loyalty to the occupying power. While the actual actions in this regard were detailed in chapter four, it is useful to take note of some of the overt symbols of changing power which occurred at the school level: changing portraits of important political leaders, changing national anthems, promoting sympathetic teachers, deporting/killing unsympathetic teachers, closing secondary schools, and supplementing the national curriculum in ways intended to foster support for the political views of the Soviets or the Nazis as the case may have been. Curricular changes included introducing Russian or German as a second language, rewriting social science/history curricula to support the views of the occupying power, and changing the nature and role of religious education within the school system. Under the Germans in particular, the introduction of the Hitler Youth and forced recruitment of adolescent boys into air defense also seems to have been both a necessary defensive move to protect civilian lives as well as a part of the politicization process of schooling in occupied countries as well as in Germany itself. 298
There is little direct evidence that participants themselves would link changes in the curriculum of schooling with their own politicization during the war. Yet their experiences suggest that those who were adolescent males certainly were influenced in a number of ways over the course of the war. Their broadly similar descriptions suggest that the culmination of changes under occupation could have been factors involved in shaping the rise in ethnonationalism and occupation resistance activities in nationalistic underground movements. The Eastern European adolescent male experience contrasts with the German participants' experiences of the war. German males were mobilized to man local anti-aircraft positions while females were also engaged in supporting the war effort through knitting, letter writing, and labour. Viewing their actions as defensive, nationalistic and required, there was little apparent consideration of or opportunity for resistance among the German participants.
The second way in which the changing school-based curricula seems to have affected identity relates to the issues of Jewish identity in two ways: the denigration of their self-esteem through overt racism and marginalization and the simultaneous strengthening of their identities through the same conduit of isolation. While three of the four Jewish participants always had religious knowledge classes in school, which were held separately from those of their non-Jewish peers, the advent of the Nazi's anti-Jewish policies further separated them from their peers on several levels. In Hungary, Jozsef and
Zsuzsanna had to go across the street for their religious knowledge classes when their teacher, a rabbi, was banned from entering their school. Later, even though they came 299 from secular families, Zsuzsanna and Hanna were sent to Jewish high schools because they were the only ones that were allowed to accept Jewish students. Both women said that initially they could not identify with their peers in Jewish schools because of their families' secular religious views. After the war, Zsuzsanna returned to the Jewish high school as she felt comfortable there while Hanna did not.
There were specific incidents described by each of the Jewish participants that describe an overt marginalization process from and by their peers. Zsuzsanna spoke at length about having a birthday party invitation rescinded when her friend, whose brothers were active Nazis. Joszef recounted how he and his Jewish classmates sat separately from the other boys and how he was not friendly with his non-Jewish classmates by and large.
Ewa spoke of official school documents that identified her as different from her classmates through her "mosaic" religion. In addition to official discrimination, friends, classmates, and other peer-to-peer interactions seem to have played an equally important role in identity formation. From participants' memories, it seems that the marginalization of each participant took place on many levels stemming from official and unofficial conduits and ultimately serving to identify these otherwise proud Hungarians and Poles as different from the rest of the group.
Afghan Identity Development
The ways in which identity and related identity politics played out in the curriculum experiences of World War II learning environments was different from the experiences of Afghan participants on the levels of intensity, purpose and outcome. The three key areas of identity on which the Afghan participants' histories focus are changes 300 in female identities, religious identities and ethnic identities. In spite of the Western media focus on the extremism of the Taliban in this regard, the oral histories presented here suggest that for children and youth growing up in Kabul in the 1980s and early
1990s, the first big shock in notions of identity came during the mujahideen government of 1992-1997 followed closely by further assaults during the Taliban period (1997-2001).
It is worth noting that given the participants' ages, for many the preceding communist era
(1978-1992 including the 1979-1989 Soviet era) serves as their basic reference point of normality against which they compare later developments since it was during this era that all of the participants except one began formal schooling.
Of the four female participants involved in the study, only Aryana (Pashtun, F,
25) spoke seriously of family pressure against her schooling. Given that it is the girls of
Pashtun ethnic origin who are the most severely restricted from formal education (Pont,
2001; personal experience), it is perhaps not surprising that Aryana was the one who expressed such pressures as the only female participant of Pashtun origin. The pressure was so great that while she continued to attend school under her father's insistence, she was not allowed to do homework or study for tests whenever he was away. Eventually her inability to prepare resulted in Aryana resorting to cheating on tests. In Kabul, another participant, Aziza (F, Hazara, 24), mentioned that one of the ways her identity as a female changed during the mujahideen era was that her school was forced to segregate the boys and girls into separate classes. As such, it seems that the entire period of conflict, rather than the Taliban era alone as has been portrayed in the global north's media, heightened gender segregation and identity for Afghan girls. 301
Nowhere is their changing gender identity more prevalent than in their memories
of clothing and how styles of dress changed over the course of the war. The use of women's clothing to symbolize social and political changes in Afghan government was
not new with King Amanollah Shah first banning the infamous "shuttlecock" burqa in
1921 and with women's participation in Kabul in particular peaking in the 1980s when
50% of the students and 60% of the professors at Kabul University were female (Mehta
& Mamoor, 2002, p. 24). During the Communist era, women in Kabul did not cover their
heads and even wore mini skirts . Indeed, Aryana spoke at length about the "cute"
western style clothes she wore as a small child in Kabul in the 1970s including pants,
shirts, and skirts and having to give them up when they left Kabul for her ancestral village soon after the Soviet invasion. Gul, Aziza, and Fatana, who remained in Kabul until the mid-1990s, all noticed immediate changes in the way they accessed schooling
and were identified as females after the mujahideen came to Kabul in 1992. All three
reported that for the first time they were required to wear hijab - or an Afghan
chador/headscarf- whenever they left the house including as part of their school
uniforms.
By the time the Taliban came to Kabul in 1997 and imposed the burqa on Kabuli
women, Gul, Aziza, and Fatana had all moved to Pakistan. Nevertheless, moving to
Pakistan did not resolve their clothing politics. Pressure from conservative Pakistanis and
701 found this out while trying to help some female colleagues understand "would" in English by making the sentence, "I would like to wear a mini skirt, but I can't because I'm in Pakistan." Suddenly the 10 women in the class agreed vigorously and told me that they used to wear mini skirts in Kabul during the communist era while they were university students. (Added plus, they understood the meaning of "would" perfectly after that!) 302
Afghans in Pakistan seem to have further constrained movement and clothing. Taunting from men in the marketplace was a particular issue for Aziza (Hazara, F, 24) in Peshawar where she feared being kidnapped if she went out alone or to certain parts of the city.
Indeed, while in Peshawar, Gul (Tajik, F, 33) voluntarily became even more conservative in her style of head covering and began wearing an Arab style hijab that is worn tightly over the head and completely hides all hair compared to the looser Afghan chador that has the propensity to allow some hair to show. Gul was adamant that while in Peshawar training at an Arab-run private hospital she came to the understanding that this style of hijab is the one intended by Qur'anic verses or religious expectations. Interestingly, these multiple and complex uses of the Afghan chador were also expressed to Anna Pont in her ethnographic work on rural Pashtun women (2001) and yet the four participants in this study represent three of Afghanistan's ethnic groups.
The distinguishing of ethnonational or tribal differences - beyond a singular
Afghan national identity ~ to a pride centred around individual ethnic groups also came to the fore for those who stayed in Kabul until the mid-1990s. This is a refrain offered by numerous Afghans and seems to have its roots in the history of the mujahideen movement, which constituted seven main political parties loosely aligned in a cartel or council and whose development was encouraged in Pakistan's refugee villages by the
United States' Central Intelligence Agency (Rashid, 2001). These parties were developed to have allegiances to specific ethnic groups and tribes resulting in changes to allegiances and identity among their followers. 303
As told by the participants in this study, even children and adolescents were not spared from learning to put their own ethnic group above others. Gul describes how her friendships and relations with her classmates changed,
Every part of Kabul [the] Islamic Government divided like every place is ones [political group]. And before we didn't know which of our [classmates] in which religion, because we are all Muslims. But we have Shia and Sunni; but we have a lot of friends. We have like Pashtuns and also Uzbek, Hazara classmates, friends; we are close we didn't realize who is she. We were very friendly. But after the war, you know, even the cousins didn't remember all of the complaints, which they have between each other. You know? And also we realize, "ohhh! She is Pashtun and she is..." (Gul, Tajik, F, 33)
This sentiment was supported by Rehman (Pashtun, M. 33). Like Gul and most of the other participants who attended school in Kabul, his neighbourhood and school had always been ethnically diverse and he had friends from different groups, but this changed as the mujahideen divided Kabul into spheres of influence. Below he explains how one day the atmosphere at school changed.
So situation happened exactly the same in our education. [The Panshiris] joined the forces that were occupying there mainly the Shariya Mazar. So when we woke up the next morning, I saw that the boys that I was playing with everyday on the street, on the school campus and everywhere. Those boys were very well equipped and armed and they had very good uniforms. All of a sudden and the next morning even they did not know you. That, that was probably the worst part of it. (Rehman, Pashtun, M, 33)
Although they did not say so directly in their oral histories, this rising uncomfortable atmosphere in the neighbourhoods and schools in Kabul coupled with 304 further discrimination in Pakistan may have contributed to Fatana's and Aziza's cherishing their Hazara community schools in Pakistan. Indeed, Aziza clearly stated that she preferred her school in Pakistan because she felt more comfortable going to school with members of her ethno-religious community. Nevertheless, neither participant was able to identify specific incidents in their multiethnic pre-migration schools which added to their insecurity.
The final way in which identity changed during the Afghan conflict is related to religious identity and different sects of Islam. It is clear from the discussion on ethnonational identity above that religious identity was tied to ethnonational identities and changed as animosity grew between groups. Many of the participants who first attended school during the Communist era mentioned that they did not study religion in school during the pre-1992 era. Starting with the mujahideen, schooling and community social interaction were increasingly linked to religious identities. Certainly in Gul's and
Rehman's discussions of discovering their friends' differing ethnicities quoted above, both mentioned different sects of Islam as identity markers. Aziza (Hazara, F, 24), in her discussion of curricular changes after 1992, mentions the introduction of six religious subjects compared to the communist era when there was none in the government school curriculum. Mohammad (Pashtun, M, 26) reiterates the curricular change in his own discussion of this era, but compares it to the Taliban era where almost all of his subjects were religious subjects - including in the law faculty. Sawar (Pashtun, M, 22) mentions the lack of science and math during the Taliban era in deference to religious subjects. The rising importance of religious subject matter in the explicit curriculum after 1992 in the 305 memories of the participants provides insight into the role formal schooling became complicit in changing religious identities during the Afghan conflict.
In spite of the different ways in which occupation, ethnicity, religion, and gender affected the twenty-seven participants and their abilities to remain in school, it is important to note that there is some similarity in the fact that schools became embroiled in the conflict and in attempts to affect the politicization and socialization of participants.
The similar ways in which schooling and curriculum did not try to remain neutral from the war shows how learning can be caught up in the politics of the times. Among the five analytical themes that arose from the interviews, changes in identity were one of the least expected. As with three of the four themes, identity intertwined with some of the other themes affecting adaptation, politicization, and resilience in particular. Discussions of identity are complex and since this study was not designed to dig deeply into identity issues, it is therefore perhaps better to see this finding as a "bookmark" for future research into the roles schools, identity and learning play in times of conflict and war.
A Summation of the Curriculum Experiences of Education in Emergencies
At the core of the study has been an investigation into learner perspectives of their experiences in formal and non-formal learning environments during war and migration.
The overall image presented in the transcripts could not be easily predicted from the previously available literature on education in war and conflict given that the literature falls into one of three categories. It is either related closely to policy and planning for education supported by international humanitarian agencies, focused on a particular discrete aspect of learning such as gender or peace education, or excludes learner 306 perspectives. The overriding message, which comes out of this set of learner experiences, centres on the tensions inherent in the surprising normalcy of learning routines versus the changes, adaptations, and influences the war and conflict had on learning.
The consistency between memories of pre-war, wartime, and refugee maintenance of familiarity at formal schools highlights the role that schooling can play in times of upheaval by presenting a predictable link to the past and to cultural ways of acting and knowing. These routines included school hours, daily assemblies, the school-day structure, and expectations such as standing for adults entering classrooms, raising hands and standing to speak in turn, daily homework, oral testing of the previous lesson, and teaching methods.
A second way in which the stories suggested a sense of normalcy was a more personal sense that even the changes experienced due to conflict and war were somehow
"normal" to a number of participants from each case study. This sense was highlighted in comments such as, "You know, for us it was normal"; "I don't know why you want to know this. For us it was nothing special."; "In many ways, we were just like you."; and
"To us Afghans this was normal." While these types of comments were uttered by only two Afghans and three Eastern Europeans, well short of the majority of participants, the sentiment is significant in that it suggests that not only was the school routine often
"normal", the adaptations and changes due to war became "normal" conditions for many as the unpredictability and hardships of the war years dragged on. 307
In spite of the regularity and routine of learning structures and experiences expressed in the memories shared for this study, curriculum experiences were affected, albeit not necessarily negatively affected, by the war and conflict context leading to interwoven themes categorized as adaptation, resilience, politicization and resistance, and identity. In understanding these manifestations of wartime affects on curriculum experiences, it is important to acknowledge the complex ways these moments were viewed by the participants. While some of these encounters might be outwardly judged as
"negative" or "traumatic", participants own judgments of them were not sought and in light of some of their comments about normalcy should not be assumed to have been negatively experienced in totality. Nevertheless, the language of adaptation, resilience, politicization and resistance, and identity can sometimes overwhelm these cautions resulting in assumptions being made about how the curriculum was experienced. It is important to find ways to allow the authenticity of learner experiences to take precedence in experiential research. The extent to which this study has achieved the presentation of authentic experience unfettered by language and assumptions is unclear.
In spite of the ways in which learning seemed "normal" to participants, it cannot be denied that the conflict and war had profound affects on the ways in which learning was experienced and shaped the participants' growth and development. The adaptation of schools, communities, and participants to war and conflict was important in allowing learning to continue in challenging circumstances. At the school level adaptation included shortened school days and school years, self-guided learning at home and in bomb shelters, dictation-notation to relieve material shortages, the evacuation of children and schools to safer areas, and temporary school closures. For some participants, particularly those who were members of groups who were persecuted by conflict, adaptation meant finding ways to learn outside of formal school environments including in home situations, from tutors or tuition centres, and in specially designated schools, from parents and community elders, and in other unaccredited non-formal situations.
Closely related to adaptation is resilience, tenaciousness, or persistence. While resilience has been identified in much of the literature on war-affected children, in the context of this study participants' resilience appeared symbolically in their ability to continue attending school or attending non-formal learning through out their war-related experiences. Moreover, resilience was an important quality in the learning lives of specific especially persecuted groups such as Jewish Eastern Europeans and female and/or ethnic minority Afghans. In these singled out groups, politics and conflict hindered their abilities to stay in formal learning situations, but individual resilience kept participants learning alone or in community-supported groups. It was also resilience that led older participants with larger gaps in their formal education to re-enroll in formal education in refugee schools in spite of being older than average school-going age. On a non-formal level, resilience also sustained participants through out the hardships faced during work experiences and helped them to learn economically viable skills through which they could support themselves and their families.
The final two themes - politicization/resistance and identity - related much more directly to the politics of the conflict and to how curriculum and environments are 309 manipulated by the politics of war and conflict. Both of these categories manifested themselves both at the level of curriculum in the classroom and in the broader interactions of the school-as-institution with the community. In chapter one, it was discussed that Davies (2004) suggested that schools and curriculum are often embroiled directly in the negativities of conflict. In the course of this study, learner experiences of the curriculum suggested that their schools were particularly affected in these two areas - politicization/resistance and identity.
In terms of politicization/resistance, there was a noticeable interaction between formal engagement with the politics and policies of governing authorities - be they invaders/occupiers or local indigenous groups - and the use of schools and learning opportunities as points of organizing resistance. In the case of World War II's adolescent male participants, the use of schools as organizing points for resistance to occupiers was particularly strong both inside Germany, where adolescent boys manned antiaircraft guns, and Eastern Europe, where learners organized with their teachers' support to avoid military draft, produced underground papers, and undertook other political activities. In
Afghanistan, evidence of resistance was less clearly articulated in the histories. Formal resistance was seen in the creation of a mujahideen curriculum in Pakistan to resist the
Soviet inspired curriculum being used in Soviet occupied areas. Similarly, continued
Afghan female and male participation in learning in spite of pressures to the contrary solidified their resistance to the political pressures around them. In Eastern Europe and
Afghanistan, meanwhile, the use of schools and formal curricula by occupying forces to politicize students in their favour was also present in the experiences. History, geography, 310 and social studies curricula were re-written. Wall portraits of leaders, flags, national anthems, religious symbols and practices were changed to suit occupying governments' political agendas.
Identity similarly had a dichotomous relationship in schools and communities. As part of the politicization process, identity - particularly of Jewish participants and of female Afghans - seemed to be a continuously changing issue. As regimes changed, invaders came and went, and political entities changed, the rules governing certain persecuted groups seemed to change as well resulting in changes in how these groups viewed themselves and were viewed by others. Taunting, access to school, changes in clothing symbolized internalized changes in how participants viewed their own identities and roles as women, men, Afghans, Eastern Europeans, and Jews. In both case studies, identity changes during the conflicts seemed to polarize or divide participants into groups in which they developed a heightened sense of awareness of self versus the world around them.
The study has therefore added to the body of research already conducted and published relating to education in emergencies by increasing the available knowledge of the experience of learning in emergencies related to war and conflict. It has reaffirmed the role of resilience in war-affected children's lives while exploring and presenting rich information on experiences of emergency learning environments in terms of routines, methods, politicization, resistance, and identity. In conveying these experiences, the study has shown how these themes cut across the experiences of a small group of learners 311 representing a wider case and suggesting the potential for further research in order to build a richer body of knowledge.
Rooting the Outcomes in Theory and Policy Discourse
Given that this study delves into fairly new research territory, the focus has been on what Dennis Thiessen sees as the first of three levels of engagement with research on learner perspectives of the curriculum, namely the level of knowing about pupil perspectives (1997, 184). At this level, and similar to a Terkel-style oral history project, the focus should be on understanding oral histories themselves rather than applying the lessons to theory and policy. Certainly this would be a fair way to leave the study, particularly given the freshness of this research area and the small number of participants.
However, since several layers of the lessons outlined in chapters six, ten, and eleven directly relate to directions in discourse on complex emergency education theory and policy, it is worth considering the broad implications of this study on future theory and policy directions. In chapter one, the literature review showed that learner experience has not taken a prominent role in research and writing on education in emergencies in recent years. Although learner experience was not much in evidence in the literature of the field, arguments have been made that including the curriculum as experienced in policy and theory discourse would move these fields to new levels of understanding (Pollard,
Thiessen, & Filer, 1997). The level of discussion on the curriculum as experienced in war contexts in this study provides strong cues for policy makers and theorists alike.
Pupils construe and construct a curriculum world that, at times, is at odds with the priorities stated in documents and outlined in plans governing what teachers require them to do. Their perspectives offer another vantage point from which to 312
view the tensions among the intended, taught, and experienced curriculum. (Thiessen, 1997, p. 194)
The oral histories of learning presented here, unlike Dennis Thiessen's work, do not focus solely on children at the primary or elementary level. Rather, the histories focus on the continuum of learning experiences across war and migration as well as the full range of the formal, non-formal and informal curriculum up to and including learning in
(early) adulthood. Nevertheless, Thiessen's assertion that pupil perspectives construct a world sometimes "at odds with priorities stated in documents" is relevant to the outcomes of this study, in which the participants often expressed encounters in learning which fell outside of the policies and practices suggested by the literature review in chapter one. For example, contrary to the findings of the Education for All campaign that most war- affected children are not attending school or benefiting from learning of any kind, which resulted in a policy focus on issues of access, this study examined experiences of children who attended school and took up non-formal learning as much as possible during war.
While it is true that many such children and youth are unable to obtain an education, studying the experiences of those who did attend has proved to be valuable in providing an alternative view of learning structures and features of the environment during war going well beyond the discourse provided by the literature. In Chapters 9 and 10, moreover, the divergence of the refugee experience from refugee education policy and humanitarian assistance agency practice, particularly in Afghanistan, was highlighted.
Indeed, many of the teacher strategies discussed by participants - particularly shortened school hours and dictation-notation methods - veer well away from the theoretical and practical discussions of curriculum outlined in chapter one. That learners enrolled in 313 schools which taught the explicit curriculum in an unfamiliar language and did not find this problematic, contradicts the assumptions made about the language of the curriculum in refugee and emergency education policy documents. Finally, since pre-migration learning environments and urban refugee environments were often outside of the international humanitarian assistance discourse, the policy voices excluded them from the discussion. Hence, the documentation of these oral histories reveals much about curriculum experiences in protracted and complex emergencies, which is not currently taken into account in learning theory and policy discourse in education in complex emergencies.
At the level of theoretical discourse, the general lack of curriculum theory specifically about learning in war and conflict zones is a recognized issue in the theory, policy, and practical levels of discourse (Davies, 2004; Sinclair, 2001 & 2002; Tomlinson
& Benefield, 2005). In this small study, learner memories of the curriculum highlight some practical reasons why the development of a theoretical discourse specifically relating to learning in emergency and war environments might prove useful to changing the ways in which learning is experienced in war and conflict. At the school level, it is interesting that participants' memories are most strongly around issues of teacher-student relations, methods of teaching, resource availability, the politicization of school routines and of teaching, and peer relationships among learners. These memories suggest that there is much potential for discussion among educators, policy practitioners, and academic researchers about the experience of the implicit as well as the taught curricula in these environments, which would lead to a deeper overall understanding of learning in 314 emergencies. Secondly, adaptations at the teaching and community levels seemed to resonate largely from issues that might not be obvious to educators and other stakeholders outside of emergency environments, but nevertheless concerned participants. Engaging in a robust discourse on emergency learning could therefore serve to train teachers, principals, and academicians in the realities of war and provide them with a safe non-war space in which to think critically and deeply about solutions, effective learning, and what it means to learn during an emergency. Bringing this type of broadly based understanding of knowledge and skills acquisition into theoretical discourse on the curriculum of child and youth development during war and other emergencies would be essential to rounding out an understanding of the multiple ways of learning in war and conflict.
As the literature review in chapter one showed, it is possible to borrow from myriad existing theories - from complexity theory to critical pedagogy — to address specific areas of learning and childhood during war and emergencies. However, rather than trying to fit a proverbial square peg into a round hole, perhaps there is value in seeking the longer term development of an emergency-specific adaptable theoretical framework for constructing learning and teaching moments in emergencies which acknowledges that not all learning takes place in formal school systems. Such theory would have to seek to maximize what is already known about the ways in which communities and teachers seem to decentralize knowledge acquisition onto the pupils, make space for gaps and school closures, and seek innovative and unusual ways to carry- on the process of learning and advancement. The dissemination of this theory at a 315 practical level will also need to be addressed, since theory is only useful when it translates into praxis or informs action. Education is one of those fields where to write about how learning can be designed and maximized does students little good unless it can be realized and tested practically (Schwab, 1983). However, the emergency context is one which is difficult to influence through training and the introduction of ideas in no small part because often the international assistance community is unable to access learners in insecure environments. This study, however, does not develop theory as much as it establishes bookmarks for future consideration.
Of the theories discussed in previous literature on education in emergencies, there seems to be something of the complexity theory chosen by Lynn Davies (2004) in these oral histories. The complicated tension between normalcy, adaptation, and chaos are present in each individual history but also in the collective description which arose during the course of analysis. However, complexity theory serves to describe the environment rather than to suggest ways of managing curriculum or learning in a chaotic location.
Critical pedagogy, meanwhile, may have served the study well in defining the importance of examining curriculum experiences and placing learners at the core of the study; however, there seems to be little of the theory within the experiences presented. Formal and non-formal learning was rarely constructed to elicit or to respect the radical empowerment of students. Rather, formal learning seemed to have a greater need to politicize the participants, to socialize the learners into community and cultural practice, and to "teach" the expected explicit curriculum as established by the governing authority.
Non-formal learning, meanwhile, took place largely outside of organized "classrooms" in 316 daily life and focused on work skills, survival skills, and other more practical pursuits that again cannot be placed in the rubric of critical pedagogy, in spite of the apparent self- empowerment and self-worth expressed by those who had "white collar" employment. As such, the existing theoretical literature, while it heavily informed the design of the study, had a mixed and often weak presence in the participants' curriculum experiences. This hodge podge of theory within experience is one of the reasons why a specific curriculum theory-building exercise might prove helpful to those engaged in education in emergencies by focusing and giving guidance to practice. Given that the development of theory specifically related to emergency education is in early stages, it is perhaps unsurprising that existing theoretical discourse was not strongly present in the outcomes of this study. As far as theoretical discourse goes, the study ends only with a short list of directions theory-building might take in the future, rather than to have contributed directly to theory.
It has been suggested by some academic researchers that policy and theory are inextricably linked (Reimers & McGinn, 2005). Yet in the case of complex emergency education, minimal theory development with illustrative policy histories in specific areas
- refugee education and peace education in particular — suggests a diversion from the assumed relationship between research and policy. The policy formation history presented in chapter one suggested that a concerted effort to speak specifically about emergency education in academic research only began in earnest after the formation of the Interagency Network for Education in Emergencies following the Dakkar Conference on Education for All in 2000. The issues in the field remain largely agency-based and 317 focused on the management of project implementation in the short term. In examining learner perspectives, the link between policy, theory, and emergencies is not always visible. The use of learner memories is less well established in research practice although not unfathomable (Pollard, Thiessen, and Filer, 1997; Simon, 2005) and in the context of emergencies this study shows that memories can be usefully mined. In emergencies' literature specifically, there is much less discussion about learner experiences and perspectives than in other current educational policy contexts. Given the state of the theory-policy-experience dynamic, it should not be surprising that the oral histories presented in this study did not always or did not accurately reflect policy discourse.
In the policy arena, the study has shown some unexpected findings relating to some already suggested or known issues discussed at the level of policy including: the politicization of the curriculum, the development of learner self-identity in hyper-political environments, the roles and abilities of the international assistance community and governments under stress to reach many war-affected children and refugees and to meet their many learning needs across the explicit curriculum (Davies, 2004; Sinclair, 2002).
In particular participants had strong memories of the changing political tides during their formal educations including changing anthems, leaders' photos, ethnic identities, clothing requirements, school administrators and teachers. The curriculum of identity development was addressed frequently in school and community settings in both case studies affecting participants well into their post-migration lives in terms of associations with others, religious conviction, understanding of the self, and clothing choices.
Optimistic suggestions that it is possible to develop schools and other learning 318 environments which promote "positive conflict" or act as "oases of peace" within war and conflict zones (Davies, 2004; Feuerverger, 2001) are not reflected in the actions of governments, the assistance community, or communities as a whole as described in the memories of the participants. Rather, within both the pre- and post-migration zones, participants spoke of formal schools that were closely linked to and embedded in the politics of the time. For example, those Jewish participants who attended separate Jewish communities schools after being forced out of secular schools were intimately involved in the conflict and in increasing pressure to create stronger Jewish identities which would in turn increase the level of discrimination against them. Rising pressures on Afghan females to leave school on both sides of migration and in response to rising conservatism on the issue also showed how education could be linked to politics rather than being isolated from it. On the whole, the priority participants placed on learning, on reading as an escape, and on "teaching" their peers during periods of time when they were not in school themselves suggests that learning nevertheless plays an important role in war and conflict zones even when there is no concerted effort to build schools as oases from violence and conflict. As such, the participants' memories seem to be suggesting that opportunities to learn, despite being politicized and threatened by violence, are preferable to not having any chance to challenge themselves intellectually and socially during conflict and war.
Other issues brought up by the participants suggest that the ability to listen to the learner perspective in policy forums might expand the ways in which emergency education is implemented in the longer run. Due to the limitations of curriculum policy in 319 the international assistance community, issues important to some of the learners are not at the forefront of current discourse. These issues are learner needs for more access to post primary education, trade or technical education; access for urban refugees and safe(r) access inside war zones; teaching methods for effective teaching under resource and political constraints; learning opportunities outside of institutions in non-formal and work settings and how to balance that with access to school; and practical learning for survival in volatile environments. Although not currently addressed in policy discourse, all of these issues had major roles in participants' pre-and post-migration memories and could be starting places for further research on learning during war and emergencies in spite of the fact that they fall outside of policy discussion and practice. An alternative to expanding policy discourse would be to seek ways to bring learner perspective on issues important to them into existing praxis so as to ensure that the learner voice is represented in key areas of policy.
The use of learner perspective as a starting point to stimulate theoretical and policy discourse in the study of education in complex emergencies shows some promise for providing input from the most important stakeholder group - the learners themselves71. As practitioners and researchers involved in theory and policy move forward in their work, there is great potential for the contribution of past learners to fill the documentation and security gaps with their experiences and ideas. This study, as a preliminary direction, offers rich insight into the curriculum experiences in war-affected
71 It has been noted that some of the major international policy making organizations, UNESCO in particular, do not include learners (specifically child learners, but I would go so far as to include all learners) in their lists of "stakeholders" in education (Tomasevski, 2007, p.233). My inclusion of learners as stakeholders is intentional in this context, for it is the lack of learner voice in discourse - both practical and theoretical — which heavily motivated the development of this study. environments pre- and post-migration, the wide range of needs and expectations of learners in these environments which goes beyond current policy frameworks, and the importance of learning outside of formal environments as part of the survival needs in protracted emergencies.
Oral History as Emergency Education Research Method
Oral history methodology was originally chosen for this study as a way to bring learner voices into the discourse of (complex) emergency education, because of the absence of the learner voice in educational discourse in general; because it was taken as a given that participants would have kept a limited number of memories and therefore would not be able to give a complete narrative; because of security concerns; and because of the failure to preserve documentation in emergency situations leaving much knowledge lost. Writing detailed case studies would have been impossible without using oral histories because of the lack of existing archives and documentation on learning during these wars. While oral history methodology is often used in academia to bolster existing historical documentation relating to an issue, it is also used as narrative or life history evidence for assessing community needs in development programs. In this study, oral history has proven itself to be a promising method for future research on emergency education meeting the varied needs of the participants, the environments and providing rich insight.
At the same time, the design of oral history in this study was not without challenges. The failure to build in a mechanism for archiving the audio recordings in a museum or library limited the breadth of impact which the collection can have on other researchers and limited the audience of listeners. Making oral history recordings available to a wider listening audience is desirable for several reasons. First it allows archival material to be available for other researchers and interested parties. Second, oral recordings are individually powerful and can impart more on a listener through tone, pause, inflection, and emphasis.
Oral history studies can vary in size; however, methodologists suggest that it is preferable to gather as many histories as possible to act as a way of assembling as many authentic experiences of the same moment in time as possible. However, such a project requires a larger research team and most certainly requires the ability to archive the recordings for future use. Even the collecting twenty-seven oral histories required a considerable amount of time for one researcher in order to search for and find willing participants and in producing and managing the transcripts. The entire process for recording and transcribing took nearly ten months. For one person to do this work alone with hundreds of participants is unfeasible. A stronger oral history study therefore needs a larger research team complete with transcription support.
Moreover, the management of the information presented a separate challenge.
After deciding to follow Paul Thompson's model of making the transcripts the official record rather than the raw digital recordings, the work involved in managing the words was time-consuming. On paper, the transcripts are cumbersome and difficult to file, to track, and to search for specific information. The soft versions of the transcripts, however, did allow for easier searching and selecting of passages through software 322 features for finding phrases and copy/paste functionality. Creating an electronic database or key information helped and made individual transcripts more easily searchable.
Working with text formats was ultimately necessary in conducting analysis and producing the dissertation and ultimately proved useful albeit cumbersome.
In spite of statements that the size of this research group was small, the amount of information collected was large with interviews lasting from one to two hours each. So much information was collected that in the end it was necessary to omit an important aspect of the participants' stories - their learning lives post-resettlement in Canada. All of the participants were able to attend some form of organized formal schooling in Canada after arrival. While this part of their histories was also recorded, and while the stories are just as interesting and as rich as the pre-arrival histories, there was simply too much to present in a meaningful way in this dissertation. Some researchers would argue that the story of refugee-resettlement and integration is different as the refugee is no longer in danger or at war and the policy, theory, and field of study differentiates this. However, for the participants themselves, this period was the ending of their histories of learning during the war process. Some participants willingly went on to share this part of their lives without prompting even though questions about it had been planned. That this unused information exists is another reason to argue for the proper archiving of these oral histories, since it enables the entire story to be available for researchers.
Ultimately, the oral history methodology proved to be flexible, adaptable, and developed an appropriately comfortable space for the gathering of information. Although 323 chapter one and two observed that oral history has not been used extensively in comparative international education research, it nevertheless seems to have performed well by providing a set of questions around which useful oral histories could be gathered and providing fertile "ground" for comparison.
Implications for Further Research
The outcomes of this study leave much room for further development and further research using oral histories in order to develop a better understanding of education in complex emergencies through the field of CIE. In particular, the outcomes suggest that more research on these two cases in specific is needed. Given that the size of the participant population was limited to twenty-seven for this study, expanding the group size in each case study would allow a more complete image of learning in each of these wars to be developed. Other socio-economic groups from within these national groups could be included, as could other ethno-religious groups, in order to expand the range of experiences with learning. A greater number of World War II survivors with memories of primary education would also be desirable. More Afghan females in addition to Afghans from other age groups would be useful in helping to round out the experience of Afghan education. An expanded effort on the existing case studies would allow a more complete learning history to be written by including a wider variety of learner voices in the discourse. A wider study might also give insight into whether this group of learners could be considered positive deviants, or successful examples for their communities, and help to identify characteristics of successful learners in war and emergency environments. Beyond these case studies, the use of oral histories for gathering and archiving information on learner experiences of education during other emergencies is of interest for creating greater understanding of the context, learner perspective, and to affect theory and policy development. Expanding the number of wars covered would also increase the basis for comparison and test the strength of the outcomes of this study.
One way forward in future research would involve focusing on one of the five categories in which the results were analyzed — maintenance, adaptation, resilience, politicization, and identity - in order to gain more knowledge about that area.
Maintenance could delve more deeply into the continuity of learning and its affects on learners and communities in maintaining themselves during emergencies. Resilience, an area on which some work has already been done, could be expanded to look at the role formal and non-formal learning plays in fostering tenacity. Adaptation to the emergency environment is an area of future research which might offer much insight to those thinking about policies and practices. How can adaptations help inform field practice in a way which increases access to learning for more children and youth? A deeper understanding of the way politicization, resistance, and identity interact with formal and non-formal learning during emergency may be of particular importance to peace-building educators. As a stand alone subject for further research, an examination of the way(s) identity formation changes during war would provide deeper insight into how schools might address the politicalization and/or radicalization of notions of self. There are compelling arguments for learning more about each of these issues in emergency education contexts and it is therefore difficult to suggest which of the five could take 325 precedence. Moreover, a choice would depend on the experience, interests, and expertise of the researcher taking up the study.
Finally, the place of case studies, theory building, and policy-informed research needs to be fleshed out. In order to truly impact the development of an academic sense of the definition of "emergency education" beyond the simple terms currently used natural disaster emergencies must also be included at some point in time. Case studies involving natural disasters and their affects on learning and curriculum are also necessary as agencies and governments dealing with environmental crises also lack the documentation of programs and in particular learning responses. Theory building research should be prioritized by curriculum theorists and social theorists to better define the territory of emergencies and learning in emergencies. While existing literature from within the humanitarian field suggests that a robust effort is being made relating to policy-informed research, theory building continues to need development for the reasons suggested previously. However, theory, particularly a theory independent of aid policy and focused specifically on emergency learning, is likely to be a long way off given that theoretical treatise currently borrows from existing theories most of which are not specifically focused on emergency contexts.
Conclusion
This exploration of learning experiences during World War II and the recent
Afghan war has opened discourse in and between the fields of curriculum studies, comparative international education, and policy by bringing learner voices and experiences to the forefront of the discussion. In spite of the vast expectations laid out in 326 existing policy and the immensely different cultural and political histories behind each of the groups involved in this study, education and learning experiences yielded similar sets of memories relating to school routine, daily life, and teaching method adjustments made due to war and conflict. While the majority of the twenty-seven participants represented privileged groups, their stories showed that access to education is a privilege and a struggle in a war context. Overall, this study is just a beginning on a journey to developing greater research capability in and understanding of education in (complex) emergencies. It scrapes the surface through the eyes of a small group of learners and begs the reader to look more deeply. It is only through further more rigorous inquiry that understanding of emergency learning environments will be bred over the longer term. REFERENCES
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INTERVIEW PROTOCOL
Interview topic 1: General information on schooling during conflict The following questions have been developed in order to help gain key information from the participants about their lives during the war/conflict they lived through. Educational experiences will be discussed in general terms so as to contextualise the individual's educational history and bring issues to the surface which should be discussed in the more detailed second interview. As semi-structured interviewing styles will be used, questions relating to experiences are meant to trigger memory and open dialogue between the researcher and discussant. Supplementary questions will be spontaneous and context specific and hence cannot be foreseen.
*What is your full name?
* Where and when were you born?
Tell me a bit about your family life - who did you live with/how did your family live in your early years? Were your family members educated in a school? (If yes, who was educated and to what level?)
*When did the war/conflict begin?
* If before your birth/you were very young, can you remember when and how you first became aware of the war/conflict?
* While living in (name of place of birth) did you attend school? If no, why (skip to **)? If yes,... *Do you remember the school building? ... Can you describe what it was like for me? * And do you remember your teacher(s)?... what was teaching like in your school? ** When/Where/Under what circumstances did you begin going to school? *Were you attending this school when the war/conflict started? If yes, did you continue to attend this school through out the war/conflict?
*Was your family displaced during the war? If yes, tell me about where you moved and how you lived in each place.
Afghans generally do not keep track of their birthdates, do not celebrate birthdays, or use the Muslim calendar. Their estimation of these dates/ages will be taken at face value during the research, but it will not be taken as absolute fact. If any informants cannot answer age and "when" questions using dates/years, they will not be pressed further. It is also expected that some World War II survivors will have forgotten exact dates or their age during certain events. As with the Afghans, they will not be pressured to be accurate.
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*Did you go to school in any of these places?
** For each place that the informant attended school: *What do you remember about the school? The teachers? Your classmates? The subjects you took?
** If you did not go to school, was there any kind of organised teaching taking place? Did you participate? What do you remember about that?
*What happened to you/your family at the end of the war/after 2001 ?
* Where were you living at the moment the war ended? About how old were you at the time? Do you remember it? What happened?
* (Depending on the age of the informant at the end of the war). After the war ended, did you stay where you were, or did you move (again)? If yes - where?
*Did you continue/restart your education? Was it difficult to (re)integrate into the schooling system? In what ways was it challenging? Did you receive any special help with that process? What kind of help was offered and by whom was it given?
*How many years did you go to school after the war ended?
* After you completed your schooling, what did was your next step - work, technical training (apprenticeship), higher education, marriage?
*In what ways do you think your educational experiences during the war shaped your further educational experiences and your later life opportunities?
Interview Topic 2: Classroom Experiences during the Conflict/War Using the information gathered through the first interview topic, the questions will be tailor-made to highlight specific issues which might come out of the information given and to clarify points. The goal of this interview is to gather detailed information about specific schooling experiences during conflict. The following topics, where relevant, will be approached.
If a break has taken place between topic 1 & 2, the researcher will begin by reminding the participant of having given his/her informed consent and then saying, "Last time we discussed your life during the war and spoke generally about your journey with schooling
In the case of Afghanistan, the conflict/war has only ended on a theoretical sense, violence and insecurity continues in a very real sense. Most Afghans tend to differentiate their recent history in terms of "The Russians", "The Mujahedeen", "The Taliban", and "since the Taliban". The questions will have to be correctly phrased for individual Afghans to understand the context of what is being talked about. during that time and after. Now, I want to discuss some specific aspects of your schooling experiences both during the war and afterwards."
Themes: *I want you to think back to your years of learning during the conflict/war and tell me about a favourite memory of schooling/learning during this time.
*what made the memory so special?
*who was involved in the situation?
*why does this incident stick out in your mind?
*What were your "favourite" and "least favourite" classes/subjects? What made them that way? Did these subjects have any influence on the type of opportunities you sought after finishing schooling?
*Generally speaking, how did your teachers "teach"? Can you give specific examples of good and bad teaching from your experiences? Did you have any favourite teachers? What did they do which made them "favourites"? Were your teachers during the war any different from teachers/teaching you experienced in non-war contexts?
* At any point did you take part in any extra curricular activities which, looking back, were especially important to you? Can you describe them for me? What made them important?
* Looking back over your life and the kind of work/experiences you've had since the War/conflict, which subjects/classes/lessons were especially useful to you? What are some of the key lessons/skills you learnt & how did they help?
*Were there skills/ideas/experiences learnt outside of school which have had importance in shaping the work/life you led later? Which ones/why?
*In what ways, if any, did the war/conflict affect your schooling/learning?
*(Can you share some specific examples of how the politics of war/conflict came to your classroom?)
*What subjects, skills, resources, activities, extracurricular projects, if any, were you exposed to which you might not otherwise have had access to?
*If there were periods when you could not go to school, how did this affect your learning progress? What did you do while the school was closed/you did not have access? Were there other ways for you to try to learn? Can you describe them? Who set them up/ran them? Was it hard to go back to a "real" school later? Why? 337
*Did you discuss personal experiences of war at school? (Can you give some examples?)
*Did you read materials or discuss resources (e.g. books, pictures, films, guest speakers) about the war? Can you describe these materials/resources? How were they used? - Were they a regular part of a history or a literature class? Or did you have a special class which used these materials?
*What were you taught in school about the war? How did this teaching occur? (e.g. formal lessons or incidental chats/discussions or peer interactions between classes/during break). Did all or only some of the teachers encourage you to talk about the war/conflict?
*You were displaced multiple times during the war/conflict. Do you recall which of the schools taught these lessons? Did you get different lessons at different schools? Was this confusing?
*What, if anything, were you taught at home about the war? How did this this learning occur? Who taught you? Did these lessons contradict what you were learning in school? How did that effect you?
*Were there any skills learnt which improved your confidence and ability to cope with the war/conflict situation? If yes, what/how?
* Were there skills unrelated to the war/conflict situation which, looking back, were important for you to learn? If yes, which skills? In what way have they been very useful to you?
*Did you learn these skills in school or elsewhere? Please describe in which stage of schooling/learning you acquired these skills, who taught them to you, and how they were taught.
*Were there any lessons/topics in school which tried to prepare you for life after the war/conflict? What were the messages you were given about "peace" or "after the war"? Can you recall the materials used to teach this?
* (for those who were also refugees/displaced) What do you remember about your life as a refugee? If you were living in a refugee camp74, was there a school? If you did not live in a refugee camp, was there a school available? Can you describe the school for me? Did you attend the school? Do you remember who the teachers were in the school? Were these teachers different in any way from teachers you had before/during the
A large, unquantifiable, number of Afghan refugees spent little or no time in the refugee camps/villages instead migrating to Pakistan's cities or to Delhi, India. Following World War II, however, all displaced persons were directed to refugee camps in allied controlled parts of Europe before resettling them to third countries. Some undoubtedly did not follow this path but settled down in various parts of Europe. However, it is suspected that the concentration and scale of non-camp refugees in World War II is significantly different from the experience of the Afghans in Pakistan. 338 war/conflict (before you were a refugee)? Were there lessons which involved some discussion of the war/post-war experience? What happened in these classes? What materials were involved in these lessons? Can you describe them for me?
*(for those resettled to a third country) After arriving in your new country, did you enrol in school?
*If Yes:Tell me about your early days in your new school. Did you feel prepared by your former experiences? How was it different from schooling in your home country/experiences? How was it the same? How long did it take you to feel adjusted? Who helped you make the transition?
*If No: If you did not enrol in school, what did you do? Why? In what ways did skills learnt at home/in the refugee camp help you to adjust to your new situation? Which skills have been particularly important in your new country? Are there any skills you did not learn which, in hindsight, might have been useful in helping you adjust to your new country?
Interview Topic 3: Follow-up and Transcription Review. The final interview is reserved for points of clarification and to review transcripts of the first two interviews. Hence, no specific questions can be developed ahead of time. Several possible scenarios are presented for the information of the Ethical Review Board members.
Where the participant is literate: All of these interviews will begin by asking the participant if s/he has brought his/her copies of the transcripts (if not, extras will be provided). The participant will then be asked if he/she has had time to review them. The participant will either be given time to go over the transcript(s) or will be asked if s/he agrees with it/them. After allowing the participant to clarify any points arising from the transcription, the interviewer will then ask any points of clarification which she may have also arising from the transcripts.
Where the participant is illiterate/semi-literate (option 1): In this case, the participant will have been given a copy of the audio tape to listen to prior to the interview. Again, if the participant was unable to listen to the tapes prior to the meeting, the interview will be adjurned and rescheduled for a time when the participant can listen to the tapes. The interviewer will ask the participant if there were any points of clarification. Following points of clarification on the part of the participant, the interviewer will ask her questions.
Where the participant is illiterate/semi-literate (option 2): If the participant expresses an inability to listen to the tapes (given that they will be roughly 4-5 hours in length or because s/he does not have access to the means through which to listen to these tapes), the interviewer will verbally summarise the main points and then ask if the participant has any clarifications on each one.