Learning lessons from wartime education projects in South Sudan

在南苏丹自20世纪60年代以来的内战中，数百万人死于自相残杀的暴力、饥荒和逃亡。自2013年以来，也就是国家独立仅两年后，新的冲突已导致400多万人流离失所。大多数人继续与大规模失业、征兵和很少的教育选择作斗争。今天，在2005-2013年短暂和平期间建立的正规学校、建筑和教育方案再次受到战争、经济崩溃和流离失所的威胁或摧毁。南苏丹人民担心失去另一代人。南苏丹普遍存在的冲突和结构不稳定对教育政策制定者、正规部门从业人员、学者和国家活动家构成了重大挑战。推动该网络的是这样一种信念，即在1960年代以来长期不安全的情况下，新的方法需要植根于社区自身教育工作的现实。这就引出了两个关键问题：1.在过去60年的内战中，南苏丹人民是如何开展他们自己的非正式和自筹资金的教育项目的？2.战争和流离失所期间的社区教育历史如何为长期危机中的教育提供、课程和教育学提供信息？该网络集中了一个隐藏的资源来回答这些问题。经过三代人的冲突、流离失所和正式政府的瓦解，南苏丹社区在难民营和叛军控制的领土上组织了自己的教育项目和自制教科书。这些教师及其支持者往往自学成才，与遭受严重创伤的流离失所社区、战斗人员或前战斗人员一起工作，填补了教育提供方面的空白，并在偏远、交通不便、高度流动和/或暴力的环境中工作。这些男人和女人，以及他们的社区和个人档案，拥有关于在战争中管理和促进教育和智力文化的未开发的知识财富。该网络的主要目标是建立一个以这些当地专家为中心的新的学术和实践者社区。该网络将汇集来自南苏丹和乌干达邻近难民营的约30个当地组织和教师，与政策和学术界一起分享知识和思想：该网络包括南苏丹教会理事会、南苏丹妇女赋权网络、包括Issa Girls在内的主要学校成员、英国文化协会以及南苏丹和英国的学者。该网络将通过三次跨国磋商，涉及因冲突而分裂的多种族、多语言社区--视风险和紧急机会而定--该网络将绘制隐藏的社区教育史、项目和冲突和流离失所期间的教学战略。这是第一个弥合南苏丹学者、政策制定者和社区积极分子之间分歧的此类项目。合作伙伴和翻译资源的网络咨询和数据库将为课程和教育方案的开发提供新的来源和合作者；在流动和极端情况下的教育方法的新方法；为边缘化、残疾、战斗和成人学习者提供创新和社区主导的新想法；以及基于背景的、植根于当地的质量和优秀的定义。这些已揭开的社区教育激进主义历史，以及由此产生的新教育议程的可能性，将通过开放的学术、政策和媒体平台以及可访问的翻译简报分发，以便在南苏丹和国际上尽可能广泛地传播。该网络将处理当前的规划和改革议程，以及以共同的社区知识和教育历史为基础的社区重建与和解的长期途径。

In South Sudan's civil wars since the 1960s, millions have died or suffered in internecine violence, famines, and flight. Renewed conflict since 2013, only two years after national independence, has displaced over four million people. Most people continue to struggle against mass unemployment, military recruitment, and few educational options. Today, the formal schools, buildings, and education programmes established during a short peace in 2005-2013 are again threatened or destroyed by war, economic collapse, and displacement. South Sudanese people fear the loss of another generation.South Sudan's endemic conflicts and structural instability pose a major challenge to education policy-makers, formal sector practitioners, scholars, and national activists. The network is driven by the belief that a new approach needs to be rooted in the realities of the community's own educational work amidst chronic insecurity since the 1960s. This leads us to two key questions:1. How have South Sudanese people pursued their own informal and self-funded educational projects over the last sixty years of civil wars? 2. How can this history of community education during war and displacement inform education delivery, curricula, and pedagogy in chronic crisis?The network focuses a hidden resource to answer these questions. Over three generations of conflict, displacement, and collapsed formal government, South Sudanese communities have organised their own educational projects and home-made textbooks in refugee camps and rebel-held territories. These often self-taught teachers and their supporters have worked with highly traumatised, displaced communities, with combatants or ex-combatants, filling gaps in educational provision and working in remote, inaccessible, highly mobile and/or violent settings. These men and women, and their communities and personal archives, hold an unexploited wealth of knowledge about managing and promoting education and intellectual cultures in war. The main goal of the network is to built a new academic and practitioner community centred on these local experts. The network will bring together around 30 local organisations and teachers from across South Sudan and neighbouring refugee camps in Uganda with the policy and academic community, to share knowledge and ideas as peers: the network includes the South Sudan Council of Churches, the South Sudan Women's Empowerment Network, members of major schools including Issa Girls, the British Council, and academics across South Sudan and the UK.Through three transnational consultations across multi-ethnic, multi-lingual communities divided by conflict - contingent on risks and emergent opportunities - the network will draw out hidden community educational histories, projects, and strategies for teaching during conflict and displacement. This is the first project of its kind to bridge the divide between scholars, policymakers, and community activists in South Sudan.The network consultations and database of partners and translated resources will provide new sources and collaborators for curriculum and education programme development; new approaches to methods of education in mobile and extreme circumstances; new ideas for innovative and community-led provisions for marginalised, disabled, combatant, and adult learners; and contextualised, locally-rooted definitions of quality and excellence. These uncovered histories of community educational activism, and resulting possibilities for new education agendas, will be circulated through open academic, policy, and media platforms and an accessible, translated briefing to reach the widest possible audience in South Sudan and internationally. The network will address both immediate planning and reform agendas, and longer-term routes to community reconstruction and reconciliation rooted in shared community intellectual and educational histories.