As war ends, Colombian teachers build peace schools
By Nancy Knickerbocker, BCTF
October 5, 2015
As teachers around the globe celebrate World Teachers’ Day, BCTF President Jim Iker and a panCanadian delegation are showing solidarity in the world’s most dangerous place for teachers:
Colombia.
Between 1985 and today, 1,100 teachers have been killed, according to FECODE, the union
representing 300,000 Colombian teachers from pre-school to post-secondary.
The visit comes at a crucial moment in the history of Colombia’s 50-year civil war, with a peace
accord on transitional justice signed by President Juan Manuel Santos and the leader of the
FARC, Timoleon Jimenez.
BCTF President Jim Iker gives a radio interview on Canadian solidarity for the Colombian teachers’
peace schools project.
Iker is travelling with BC Federation of Labour President Irene Lanzinger and representatives of
CoDevelopment Canada, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, and the Centrale
des Syndicats du Quebec. All three organizations are jointly funding a union project promoting
schools as “territories of peace.”
Called the Pedagogical Project for the Post-Conflict Period, the project has involved teachers in
study circles around the country gathering to reflect upon how public education can support the
process to ensure a durable peace. Their biggest challenges in building peaceful schools are in
conflict zones where students’ parents have been combatants on opposing sides.
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However, these challenges are being confronted with tremendous energy and commitment by
Colombian teachers, who emphasize their “pedagogy of hope and love,” which they say is
profoundly needed by traumatized children who have known nothing but wartime throughout
their young lives.
Iker and delegation members met with students and teachers from an elementary school in a
highly conflict zone in the southern province of Pasto.
The teachers have given their school the slogan of “a paradise in the middle of the conflict.”
Their courage, despite the assassination of two members of the school staff and the abduction of
another teacher, was inspirational and humbling for the Canadian visitors.
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NK:Unifor/cc:tfeu
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