Meditating on the barricades

concerns, cautions, and possibilities for peace education for political efficacy

Betty A. Reardon

pp. 1-28

in: Bryan Wright (ed), Critical peace education, Berlin, Springer, 2013

Abstract

"Meditating on the Barricades: Concerns, Cautions, and Possibilities for Peace Education for Political Efficacy," Chapter 1 of this volume opens an examination of the normalized pedagogical discourse in the field of peace education and its limiting apperception and perspective. Betty Reardon's essay is written from the perspective of a practitioner-observer of peace education concerned with the effects of various fundamentalisms on current political discourse. Asserting that this situation presents a challenge to "critical peace education," her chapter introduces some cautions regarding methodologies and political frames of current practices in the field. It assumes that one of the main purposes of "comprehensive critical peace education" is to guide learners in the development of the reasoned judgment skills integral to political efficacy in citizen action toward peace and justice, and to engagement in participation in the difficult political dialogues such action entails. Reardon advocates reflective inquiry as an approach less likely to manifest the ideological bias infecting some practice of critical pedagogy.