Human rights and peace education in the Lebanese civics textbooks

In 1997 the Lebanese government published its newly developed curriculum and textbooks following a long and fierce civil war, which started in 1975. The new curriculum emphasized nation building, reconciliation and citizenship. This study aims to examine how the civics textbooks in Lebanon addressed human rights and peace education, both of which are crucial in any attempt to build cohesion in a post-conflict society. Findings revealed that human rights and peace education were endorsed in the aims and objectives of the 1997 curriculum. The textbooks directly addressed some of these themes, particularly human rights and to a lesser degree peace education. The pedagogy followed in the textbooks to teach the two concepts was primarily descriptive. Despite the fact that the constructivist approach has been adopted as part of the curriculum objectives, implementation of this approach is almost absent from the civics textbooks. The study compares these results to citizenship education in two other countries in the region, Turkey and Palestine.