Goals
The study of ancient history, archaeology, literature and art involves regular encounters with armed conflict. At present, the teaching of ancient war and peace tends to be dominated by high-level politics and an emphasis on weapons, equipment, tactics and strategy, centring around (usually male) soldiers and their (usually male) leaders. Too little attention is paid to the second-order impacts of conflict (famine, disease, sexual violence, displacement, etc), to the diversity of people impacted by it, and to the everyday experiences of ordinary individuals. Compounding this, there is even less coverage of ancient concepts of peace, ancient approaches to conflict prevention, and ancient experiences of peacebuilding and post-conflict recovery.
The need for fresh approaches to teaching ancient war and peace reaches goes well beyond the classroom. Research into the militarization of childhood underlines the role that education can play in socializing young people into visualizing armed violence as normal, natural, impressive, even desirable. Arguably, the teaching of ancient warfare has been particularly prone to this tendency – compounded, of course, by representations of ancient warfare in many popular media. On the other hand, enhanced peace literacy can significantly improve inner peace and wellbeing, interpersonal relations, and conflict resolution in different spheres of life, empowering young people to take ownership of peacebuilding in their own lives. For both reasons, it is high time that we invested more research and resources in young people’s explorations of ancient peace and peacebuilding, alongside the study of military history.
A further pressing issue is an increase in the numbers of trauma-experienced young people within our education systems, some of whom have direct experience of armed conflict. This requires more trauma-informed practice than is currently in place. Ancient warfare has long been perceived as so distant in time that contemporary traumas are often overlooked in its teaching, while the historic but profound impacts on real people’s past lives have frequently been airbrushed. When approached sensitively, however, the study of both historical episodes and creative representations of ancient war and peace offers valuable opportunities for young people to develop critical awareness of war’s impacts and of the legacy of entrenched habits of war- and peace-storytelling, which continue to inform the ways in which we approach conflict today.
An enhanced approach to teaching ancient war and peace is thus desirable for many reasons, not only to equip students of Classics to visualize ancient warfare and peacebuilding in more holistic ways but also to contribute to wider war and peace literacy, with real-world benefits. This is the goal of our forthcoming Handbook for Teaching Ancient War and Peace.
Methods
This project aims to refresh how we teach ancient war and peace by bringing together experts from multiple disciplines – Classics, History, Education Studies, Psychology, Peace and Conflict Studies – and by engaging with learners and teachers at all levels of education, both within and beyond classroom settings. Ranging across primary, secondary and tertiary education sectors, we are facilitating new research, publishing findings, designing and piloting new teaching resources, developing training materials, and contributing to policymaking.
Interdisciplinary
We are consulting with professionals responsible for designing and delivering war and peace education in different subject areas (history, politics, religious and moral education, philosophy, citizenship teaching, and wellbeing, among others) and in different settings (e.g. the museum space, tourist attractions, mediation contexts, drama classes). We are also engaging with approaches in other academic disciplines (peace studies, critical military studies, feminist and post-colonial studies, migration studies, education studies, childhood studies), to help us enhance war and peace pedagogies within Classics. In the process, we are tapping into ongoing work within Ancient History and Classical Studies to foreground diverse ancient voices and decolonise the curriculum.
Inclusive
Drawing on inclusive practices in childhood and education studies, we are actively engaging with young people (aged 9-18) to better understand their concerns and interests, so that we can co-develop new pedagogic principles and practices in dialogue with them. This connects to some wider work being conducted by the Visualising War and Peace projects on young people’s understandings of peace and conflict; and it is informed by research on the benefits of youth-led peace education. Alongside learners, we welcome input from educators of all types who have experience to share or questions to ask about ancient war and peace teaching. In order to serve the wider teaching and learning community, it is important that we regularly draw on its many different kinds of expertise – so please reach out to us if you would like to contribute to our research.
Creative
Prompted by pedagogical and psychological research into the benefits of active, immersive and transrational learning, we are particularly keen to explore creative methods – such as speculative history, useful fiction, and autoethnography – which can helpfully address the skewed nature of our surviving sources for ancient war and peace. While mindful of curriculum constraints, we encourage approaches that engage emotions and values as well as knowledge and reasoning; and we are researching new methods for bringing ancient and modern conflict into sensitive, productive dialogue in pedagogic contexts.
Ultimately, we hope that by reviewing how we teach ancient war and peace, our project will contribute to wider learning and teaching across space and time. While rooted in antiquity, our research speaks to all educational contexts in which peace and conflict get discussed.