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From Never Again

by Marian Hodgkin

Murambi, a group of school buildings about 30 kilometres from Butare, Rwanda’s second largest town, was a place of education, then of refuge, then of horror. Today it is a place of death and remembrance. Murambi was a technical school, with brick-built classrooms and a large hall. During the genocide in 1994 50-60,000 people in fear for their lives gathered in these buildings hoping for safety from genocidal militia. Only four people survived. Now the classrooms are filled with over 20,000 bodies exhumed from mass graves, laid out on trestle tables, deathblows visible, and here and there a rosary round a neck and scraps of bright cloth faded by chemicals. The school hall is empty apart from a pile of old, decaying clothes removed from the victims.

Murambi encapsulates the difficulty of Rwanda’s past. The country has a history of brutal and cyclical violence; Murambi is a testament to the most recent episode. But Murambi also reminds us that Rwanda’s violent history is itself an issue of contestation: the bodies were exhumed and preserved as evidence in order that the crime that occurred there, genocide, can never be denied. The current government in Rwanda is faced with a difficult and daunting question: how does one teach a nation’s history where not only is the scale and longevity of violence in the past overwhelming, but the history itself is contested? The government’s response has been to remove formal history from all school curricula, arguing that modern national history is too potentially divisive to be taught in a society that is emerging from decades of ethnic hatred, distrust and prejudice. Instead, the government is focusing much of its time and resources on promoting unity and reconciliation; stressing that Rwandan identity should now be based on national bonds rather than ethnic difference. There is much to unite the Rwandan people: language, culture, religion and ancestral belief. Moreover, despite the formal history teaching moratorium, this new collective identity does draw upon a historic foundation: the government emphasising those periods that are considered to demonstrate a pre-colonial Rwandan unity.

The Rwandan government has made massive strides in terms of educational reform since the genocide in the most difficult of circumstances. There is evidence to show that those directly involved – teachers, parents and students – are satisfied with the emphasis placed on merit-based opportunity and ethnic equality. The international community is also highly complimentary of the progress Rwanda has made on this issue. However, reports and studies written by international donors working in Rwanda either neglect the issue of history education or support the government’s view that in order to avoid causing instability and upsetting the fragile reconciliation process, history teaching can be indefinitely postponed. Rwandan officials and policy-makers have not solicited the views and opinion of local people regarding the teaching of history (Freedman, 2004a, 249).

This paper argues that no matter how honourable the intention, the repression of discussion of divisive and contested moments in Rwandan history, both within and outside the school curriculum, will only serve to create new dynamics of social exclusion. Reconciliation is a process which involves the rebuilding of relations; both individually and collectively (Minow, 1998, 92). It is not an activity that simply entails ‘being nicer to each other’, but a long-term project that is based on the needs and interests of both groups (Davies, 2004, 169). Long-lasting, deep and meaningful reconciliation will not occur in Rwanda without reconciliation with history. An open, democratic and participatory debate about a national history curriculum is not only necessary for reconciliation, but if conducted well could further social reconstruction and cohesion. The development of a history curriculum should not wait: it is a precondition for the building of positive peace in Rwanda.

Over 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were murdered in just three months during 1994, in a genocide orchestrated by the extremist Hutu in government and carried out by the army, trained militia and ordinary Rwandans. Schools like Murambi became places of refuge and then the venue for some of the worst massacres. The entire school system was massively affected by the genocide. Not only was much of the infrastructure destroyed but also 75 per cent of teachers in 1994 were either killed or are in jail for alleged participation in the genocide (Freedman, 2004a, 250). Moreover, 70 per cent of children reported witnessing violent injury or death during the genocide and concurrent civil war (Obura, 2003, 50). The post-genocide Rwandan government faces severe financial and human capital pressures all in a context of extreme psychosocial disruption.

After the genocide, the newly instituted Government of Rwanda not only had to react to the educational emergency prompted by the events of 1994, but to address the legacies of an education system which had been based on inequality and discrimination since its inception. Rwanda serves as a very good example of social conflict theory in action. Rather than the traditional Marxist theory of class domination, Rwanda’s pattern of oppression and discrimination was based on race and ethnicity. The emphasis on ethnic division was motivated by the desire for political power and driven by colonial ideologies and Hutu and Tutsi elite classes. From the introduction of widespread formal schooling in Rwanda by the Belgian colonialists in the 1920s, the ruling elites - Tutsi under indirect colonial rule and Hutu following independence in 1962 - privileged their ethnicity in terms of access to education and employment opportunity. Pre independence bias towards the minority Tutsi is evident from these figures of enrolment in the most prestigious educational institution in the country, Astrida (now Butare) College:

Source: Prunier, 1995, 33. *Note that there are no Twa students enrolled, an ethnic group making up 1 per cent of the national population and subject to discrimination through out the period.

Those Hutu who did have access to schooling during the colonial period were generally educated in Kiswahili, a language considered inferior to the assimilationist Francophone education received by Tutsi. This system served to reproduce the political and social distinction between Tutsi and Hutu at an intellectual level (Mamdani, 2001, 111). Mamdani (2001) argues that this separatist education “was not simply to prepare [the Hutu] for manual labour but also to underline the political fact that educated Hutu were not destined for common citizenship” (89-90). Post independence, the Hutu-dominated Second Republic instituted an educational quota system “to overcome historical socioeconomic disequilibria in Rwandan society” (Mamdani, 2001, 139). There are few figures that document this policy, which dictated that entry to all government and assisted schools and tertiary colleges was determined by ethnic and regional quotas, but the following table provides some illustration:

Source: Obura, 2003, 44.

The ethnic quotas were based on a “theoretical national population of 90 per cent Hutu, 9 per cent Tutsi and 1 per cent Twa” (Cooksey quoted in Obura, 2003, 44). Even accepting these percentage figures, which are likely to be marginally exaggerated, the minority ethnicities are substantially under represented. Unlike other African countries (Liberia, Sierra Leone or Somalia), which degenerated into mass violence at the end of the last century, Rwanda was not a failing state: up until the late 1980s the state was a strong institution controlled by a Hutu elite. The state offered the best access to upward mobility as it not only controlled access to education, but also dominated the employment market in a country that was over 90 percent agricultural: “The state effectively was in charge of all fields of human endeavour and all sectors of the economy” (Uvin, 1998, 22).

Inequality of opportunity and access based on ethnic or regional affiliation permeated the entire education system. Perhaps even more harmful in terms of social equality and stability was the extent to which many elements of the institutional structure, teacher and pupil behaviour, textbooks and curricula promoted ethnic division and hatred. Documentation is hard to come across, but anecdotal evidence is plentiful. One government minister recalled a moment from his school days:

"The teacher asked us [the class] to stand in two lines face to face. He asked if we looked the same, we laughed because we had the same life, traveled to the same school, wore the same clothes. The teacher told us we were not the same: he compared our heights and noses. Then our class was divided: long noses on one side, flat noses on the other. We had not been aware of our ethnic identity…but after this incident we no longer played together with banana leaf footballs." (Minister of Justice and Institutional Relations Mr. J. de Dieu Mucyo , 2002)

In the majority of schools the hidden (and not so hidden) curricula in pre-1994 Rwanda were designed to segregate and alienate ethnic minorities, ensuring cultural reproduction and safeguarding the dominant position of a certain group (Feinberg & Soltis, 2004, 62-4). Given the overt and underlying structural discrimination and divisive inequality, it is perhaps surprising that the international community considered Rwanda a development success story. Before 1994 Rwanda was seen as a model of macroeconomic development. A World Bank Report from 1982 commented, “Rwanda’s approach to economic and social development could be considered successful” (Uvin, 1998, 43). Rwanda was praised for expanding primary school enrolments (an increase from 46% to 65% from 1973 to 1990) and achieving gender parity in primary schools by 1990 (Obura, 2003, 40). Rwanda was one of the most aided countries in the world, receiving much more from donors than from private investment and commercial export revenues combined. And yet, despite the presence of over 200 NGOs, bilateral and multilateral donor representatives in the country prior to 1994, none denounced the official racism and development of an increasingly divided society, “not even in the 1990s when it was clear that they were [preparing] for mass killings” (Uvin, 1998, 44). During the years leading up to the genocide donor agencies adopted what can only be described as a policy of “voluntary blindness” to the politics of injustice, exclusion and prejudice in Rwanda (Uvin, 2001, 177).

Similar to the case study of Lesotho explored in Ferguson’s oft cited work The Anti-Politics Machine (1994), development agencies in Rwanda totally overlooked the nature of the government and the workings of the state, ignoring its ethnic, class and political character. In Rwanda the development project embarked on by the aid agencies was depoliticised to such a degree that political instability and the evidence of human rights violations were simply considered to be outside their mandate. The donors were operating in an apolitical, technocratic bubble that cast Rwanda as a “development problem” that could be solved though planning, infrastructural development and research; projects designed and overseen by their international ‘experts’ (Uvin, 1998, 44-46). The development project was carried out in a separate sphere, concerned with its own internal dynamics but oblivious to the political and social trends that were fracturing the country and ultimately resulted in hundreds of thousands deaths and millions displaced.

The genocide and civil war in 1994 resulted in almost total destruction of the education system in Rwanda. However, given the history of the education system, the post-genocide government faced a massive task: not just reconstruction, but rather the first-time ever construction of an education system that would be fair, efficient and that could combat inequality. The new government, led by the predominantly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) is, in effect, the ‘winning side’ of the war that ended the genocide. However, the President Paul Kagame is clearly attempting to halt the historical cycle in which the ruling ethnic group privilege their ethnicity in all areas of public life, and particularly in terms of access to education and employment, as we have seen. The government espouses a reconciliation-based approach, establishing the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission. Political rhetoric no longer refers to Hutu, Tutsi or Twa, or the divisions and episodes of violent conflict that make up much of Rwanda’s modern history. The government preaches a message of unity, one national group – banyarwanda – sharing a common language, culture, ancestral history and land.

This approach has necessitated a radical reform of Rwandan education. Just as education can be used as tool for the promotion of divisionism and heightening of inter-group hatred, it can also be an essential component in the cultivation of peace, democracy, tolerance and the rebuilding of social relations. The government has enacted a measure that means that it is now illegal to categorise learners and teachers by Hutu, Tutsi or Twa affiliations (Obura, 2003, 88). The entire educational administration has had to be altered. Admissions procedures for secondary and tertiary institutions have been reformed and are now transparent and merit-based; examinations are also carefully administered and closely monitored. Textbooks and curricula that included biased material have been removed. Language policies within education have also been changed to accommodate the large numbers of returning exiles who had been educated in English while living in neighbouring Anglophone countries. The government has sought to improve educational opportunity and access for every Rwandan irrespective of ethnic identity.

Many assessments of the Rwandan government’s approach to education in this period of reconstruction and development are positive. Observers and those directly involved in the education system agree that the policy of inclusion and fair and equal opportunity for every Rwandan irrespective of ethnic identity, political affiliation or regional quotas is fairly implemented and successful. Due to the ban on ethnic categorisation within society there are no statistics available that document the ethnicity of those attending government schools. However, qualitative studies gathering opinion of secondary school students, teachers and parents carried out recently in Rwanda asked (though did not require) the respondents to state their ethnicity. A Tutsi student observed, “I can say that education has progressed, because ethnic discrimination no longer exists as it did long ago when a Tutsi child could not go to secondary school because his spot was given to a Hutu child. But now, this is no longer the case” (Freedman, 2004a, 255). A Hutu teacher who was involved in the scoring of exams said: “It is done in transparency, and the best students absolutely pass. There is no partiality” (Freedman, 2004a, 255).

However, educational reforms have attempted to go deeper than this admirable administrative and operational transformation. The whole ethos and philosophy of schooling has had to change. The general government policy of national unity, reconciliation and healing has been firmly instituted within the education system. From the national to the most local level, the aims of education, the learning agenda, and the hidden curriculum have been systematically reformulated. Similarities rather than differences are emphasised and the focus is on a progressive future driven by traditional values of ubumwe (unity, solidarity) and ubupfura (nobility of heart, goodness, courage and respect for the ancestors) (Obura, 2003, 87). The government is focusing much of its energy and resources on identity building: creating a new national identity that transcends the historical Hutu, Tutsi and Twa categories.

This policy has implications for curriculum content in Rwandan schools. Immediately after gaining power in 1994 the current government banned the teaching of history. In the years preceding the genocide, history became a powerful tool for creating and perpetuating ethnic division: much of the genocidal ideology invoked historical events and past conflict in order to establish legitimacy and motivate support. In 1994, Ministry of Education officials clearly recognised the difficulties and complexities of teaching history in a situation where history had been used as a weapon of propaganda so recently, and where those still involved in education, both teachers and students, have such immediate experience of the country’s violent past. However, what was a temporary measure is still in place: twelve years later history is still absent from formal school curricula. While history syllabi were written in 1997, they consist only of lists of topics to be covered, with no substantive content. New history textbooks have not been published (Obura, 2003, 99).

As critics of the government point out, the absence of a history curriculum in schools does not in fact leave a vacuum. A ‘politically correct’ historical narrative has emerged, shaped by government rhetoric surrounding the National Unity and Reconciliation project. Trials, tribunals, gacaca, public addresses, commemorations and memorialisations, re-education camps and new national symbols all serve to reinforce the ‘official’ history. The extent of this ‘extra-curricula’ re-education programme became clear after reading the unpublished results of Never Again International’s National History Essay Writing Competition held in Rwanda in 2004. Never Again received over 3,000 essays from secondary and tertiary students all over the country on the following topic: ‘Based on the history of Rwanda, what can we the youth do so that genocide should never happen again?’ Expecting to read creative and individual pieces of work, it is remarkable to discover that every single essay is structured alike: they all give a narrative history of Rwanda and then list action and ideals for the youth to strive towards in order to prevent future genocide. Not only are the structures formulaic, but the historical accounts are identical. Every essay divides the history of Rwanda into pre-colonialism, colonialism and post-colonialism: ‘When the white men arrived in Rwanda, they found a land that was under the rule of the king, sharing unity and patriotism.’ (Nyirantezimana, 2004, 9). Then, “after the arrival of the white men, the situation changed - the youth were taught segregation based on ethnicity, regions and other ideologies” (Kayigema, 2004, 19). One essay explicitly provides the government rational:

The RPF set up a government of national unity so that it can help to give back the image of Rwanda that existed before the arrival of the white men, and treat the hearts of the Rwandans which were damaged during the genocide and to show all Rwandans wherever they may be the role they should play and their rights in the development of their country so that they may be proud to be called Rwandans. (Nyirantezimana, 2004, 12).

The Rwandan government is founding its reconciliation ideology on selective episodes in Rwandan history that are portrayed as moments of idyllic national unity: the ‘true’ Rwanda unadulterated by colonial or postcolonial dogma. Some of the government’s harshest critics argue that this construction of a collective memory of Rwandan national history is undoubtedly politically motivated and ideologically driven “albeit an ideology that may be intended to promote national unity rather than division” (Longman and Rutagengwa, 2004, 168). Whether the intention is honourable or not, the education of the Rwandan public undertaken by the Rwandan government in the name of national unity and reconciliation is harmful to the building of sustainable peace and a meaningful reconciliation process on two levels.

While academic historians are debating the contested points of Rwandan history, and there is a professional recognition that there will never be one definitive history of Rwanda (Obura, 105), the government’s populist message is more linear and less nuanced. Survivors, perpetrators, Hutu, Tutsi, returnees, the educated elite and illiterate farmers: there are a multiplicity of social identities and a multiplicity of understandings of the past. The “official” truth, the creation of a single narrative and interpretation, will in affect deny or repress the memories of each sub-group within Rwandan society (Freedman, 2004b, 244). The negative impact this approach may have on reconciliation in Rwanda is exacerbated by the authoritarian nature of the current government. It does not absolutely welcome freedom of expression and the democratic right to diverse opinion (Longman & Rutagengwa, 2004, 163). Historical debate should be inclusive – recognising all historical interpretations and ideological theories and allowing them to “compete in the marketplace of ideas” – only excluding those “unwilling to disarm” (Mamdani, 2001, 278-9). The national culture and accompanying history “must come to embrace, though not suffocate, the group culture” (Davies, 2004, 89). The government’s fixation on the construction of a single national history based on an image of a pre-colonial all-inclusive Rwandan society is in practice creating new dynamics of social exclusion in the present.

It is not only the content of this national history that is detrimental to peacebuilding and the process of reconciliation within Rwandan society. The pedagogy adopted thus far by the government is counter-productive. The construction of one, unchallenged history, which the population has received from above, rather than participated in creating, allows no capacity for critical thinking and independent analysis on the part of those being educated. Rwandans often argue that it was the lack of these very same skills that allowed the genocidal ideology to take such strong hold in so many parts of the country; many people did not analyse orders to exterminate all Tutsi ‘cockroaches’, they did not question the authority of those in power. They obediently picked up weapons or tools and began to kill. Any history which is not multi-faceted, analytical and inclusive of all opinion, and arrived at through challenging myths and critically deconstructing received truths, could easily mutate into an absolutist history, of the kind that motivated and perpetuated past violence.

The Rwandan government’s attempts to instil a single national history in the minds of all Rwandans is designed to foster social cohesion as well as inculcating a system of values and conventions of behaviour to bolster national unity and reconciliation. The methods employed are within the realm of what Freire (1970) called “the banking concept of education” (72). This continuation of previous habits of passive absorption rather than a critical pedagogy which encourages questioning and the challenge of continued injustices could have a detrimental effect on the chance of building sustainable, positive peace in Rwanda. Educators often frame the quest for social cohesion and the development of critical consciousness, conscientização, as dichotomous; the opposition often seen as even more pronounced in conflictual societies. However, conscientização, if encouraged sensitively, can promote solidarity: a sense of togetherness and reconciliation will best be reached through the creation of a Habermasian, shared, open space for interaction and discussion, rather than the unquestioning receipt of common lessons (Ahonen, 2001, 92).

Rwanda is again on the receiving end of vast amounts of aid. Aid accounts for 20.8% of Gross National Income (GNI), compared to 11.3% in 1990 (World Bank, 2004) but international donors rarely mention the moratorium on the teaching of history in their monitoring and evaluation. International appraisal of the Rwandan education system tends to focus on positive developments. A report published by UNESCO commented, “Rwanda has achieved remarkable progress” (Obura, 2003, 123) and the United Nations Development Program has praised Rwanda’s movement towards achievement of the Millennium Development Goals: “Rwanda has achieved impressive progress over the past nine years and has put in place crucial policies for pro-poor growth” (UNDP, 2003, 7). Net Primary Education enrolment rate increased from 65.9% in 1990 to 96.1% in 2001 and universal primary enrolment is within reach (UNDP, 2003, 15). Rwanda has also achieved gender parity in primary and secondary enrolments (UNDP, 2003, 17), while the ratio of young literate females to males has risen from 86.4% in 1990 to 96.3% in 2001 (World Bank, 2005).

The major challenges facing the Rwandan education system are seen to be iniquitous funding for schooling levels and low primary completion rates. In 2000, for example, tertiary education received over one third of the budgetary allocation of the education sector, to the detriment of primary education; in 2001 primary completion rates were only 73% (Obura, 2003, 115; UNDP, 2003, 15). The impact of genocide and years of conflict in the region are only referred to in passing in order to explain Rwanda’s ‘late start’ and impressive movement towards meeting targets, goals and demonstrating favourable budget indicators. If the issue of teaching history is alluded to, the opinion appears to be one of tacit realpolitik recognition that Rwandan society is simply too fragile to attempt any kind of historical dialogue or teaching. The government’s argument, that it is not possible to discuss Rwandan history without referring to ethnic difference and without confronting major points of contestation that tend to divide Hutu and Tutsi, and that this would destabilise the country, is accepted. When the issue is addressed, the assertion is that, while “a better understanding of history would promote social cohesion and national unity”, the curriculum should only be implemented “when the time is right” and reform should “Go slowly” (Obura, 2003, 102; 106).

The international donors and the experts they employ should not begin imposing ideas from stable western societies onto teachers emerging from years of conflict. However, the funding structures and organisational priorities of the most powerful aid agencies do, if anything, reduce the willingness and ability of the Ministry of Education in Rwanda to make reforms aimed at developing a curriculum of history. There is an assumption in the international donor community that formal education is inherently positive and harmless. The Jomtien Conference demonstrated the way in which dominant thinking in educational development at the highest levels revolves around the consensus that basic primary education should be available to all (Education For All). Aid agencies are now more aware of the political and social challenges facing Rwanda, but ‘the solution’ to these challenges is the agreed upon dominant theory: “the time for EFA is now, for the state to reach out to every child…and to demonstrate to all children that they are, each and every one, the concern of the [Rwandan] state” (Obura, 2003, 31).

EFA is of course important, and, as we have seen, the government is removing ethnic discrimination from the school system, however the aid agency practice often appears to view education as “a neutral or technical process of information dissemination” (Bush & Saltarelli, ix). As Rwanda tragically shows, education can become a tool hijacked and manipulated by political elites and positive trends in terms of overall enrolment and gender parity, as seen pre-1994, do not guarantee genuine inclusivity or development. Because of the history of conflict and prejudice in Rwandan schools, inclusive and comprehensive access to the education system for everyone is vital, but what and how children are taught is just as critical and this does not appear to be high on the development agenda.

Samoff (1993) argues that not only is there a remarkable consensus in research around the Jomtien Declaration, but the conjunction of funding and research means that particular approaches, methods and constructs are privileged and protected from challenge and others are dismissed as non-scientific (220). The research undertaken by powerful institutions such as the World Bank, who also hold the purse strings, emphasise the testing of hypotheses, therefore “limiting the goals for African education to objectives that could (in principle) be measured and tested” (Samoff, 1993, 191). Goals such as nurturing an inquiring and critical orientation towards the world, fostering curiosity or developing a sense of individual and collective competence, self-reliance and responsibility are generally excluded because they are difficult to quantify and therefore impossible to test. There is an “antipathy to the tentative, the uncertain, and the conditional within this setting” (Samoff, 1993, 211). Any educational strategy that aims to encourage reconciliation is bound to be not only uncertain and tentative but also be gradual with results only demonstrable in the very long-term. Rwanda is judged to have made progress, but the focus is on the conventional areas of universal primary education, literacy, physical infrastructure, teacher-pupil ratios, technology, teacher training: progress towards peace is not measured and not even mentioned. In Rwanda the powerful funding agencies must recognise their influence on national education policy and adopt a radical stance: the prioritisation of peace.

The Rwandan government would of course contest that it was prioritising peace: by promoting an ideology of national unity and reconciliation and by avoiding issues that in the past have induced or exacerbated violent conflict. No doubt the policy rationale is that reconciliation and historical debate will be sequential. First reconciliation and stability will be ‘achieved’, then difficult debates can be encouraged in a safe and secure context. This paper contends that reconciliation is an ongoing process that necessitates examination of past injustices, violence and contested events. The teaching of history and the debate that would surround the development of a curriculum should occur concurrently with the national unity and reconciliation program.

History teaching in a country like Rwanda has the opportunity to engage students in the discussion of multiple historical understandings and narratives. Rather than ‘sanitising’ textbooks, making them bland and neutral, with one ‘objective’ truth, young people can be encouraged to analyse and critique biased and partisan perspectives and learn to develop their own understanding of the past. Rather than focusing on a one-dimensional national identity, history teaching can allow an exploration of multiple perspectives and multiple identities. This is particularly crucial in the context of the Rwandan situation, because a nationalistic obsession may prove particularly deadly given the unstable and volatile nature of the Great Lakes region. Citizenship identity on various levels – local, national, regional and global – could be a valuable tool for the maintenance of peace. Ethnic identity can also be explored productively in the context of a history classroom. Ethnicity is still very important to Rwandans today, even if it is politically incorrect to talk in terms of Hutu, Tutsi and Twa. Partly because history has been experienced very differently by different groups within society “people continue to relate to society differently depending on their ethnic background” (Longman & Rutagengwa, 2004, 176). If one is using a critical pedagogy which facilitates learners to think reflexively and turn reflection into action, then one does not need to teach tolerance of difference or try and negate diversity all together. Instead, students can develop values and capacities that make intolerance of extremism and racism a freely chosen path.

This kind of teaching is clearly no easy task, even in the most developed and relatively stable countries, this approach to history teaching could be considered extraordinary. But Rwandan history is unique and extreme, and therefore the response to it needs to be equally radical in its promotion of peace. Post-conflict reconstruction and development can be an opportunity for fundamental innovation: “Paradoxically, education for reconstruction should not be a restoration of equilibrium. This is a phase transition, not just a return to some functioning, but a new way of learning and living which is to not reproduce the same causes of conflict” (Davies, 2004, 182). Such a project demands a trio of participant groups. The international community can influence dynamics, encourage innovation and provide resources, though not through their usual projects and not in easily plannable ways (Uvin, 2001, 186). The donors should engage themselves in local dialogues and work to make the voices of the general Rwandan public heard by those in power. The Rwandan government must of course be willing to embark on further reforms of its educational system and dedicate time and funds to the creation of functional curricula, with teachers who are trained in democratic and Freirian methods of teaching and equipped with textbooks and materials. Perhaps the most important participants in this project will be the Rwandan public themselves: the premise of successful educational reform is a good understanding of the aspirations and experiences of those most immediately affected by the education system (Freedman, 2004b, 228). A national dialogue about history education should involve democratic debate and the inclusion of multiple perspectives in a process of consultation that involves parents, teachers and students. An education system that actively encourages and promotes reconciliation, tolerance and democratic participation will only develop through deep and locally owned social and political dynamics (Uvin, 2001, 186). History, when faced with courage, need not be lived again. The international development community, the Rwandan government and the Rwandan people must all learn history’s lessons.

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