Teaching silence in the schoolroom: whither national history in Sierra Leone and El Salvador?

This article addresses the divergent cultures of silence and memorialisation about the civil wars in Sierra Leone and El Salvador, and examines the role that sites of remembering and forgetting play in crafting post-war citizens. In the formal education sector the ministries of education in each country have taken different approaches to teaching the history of the war, with Sierra Leone emphasising forgetting and El Salvador geared towards remembering war history. In both countries nongovernmental actors, particularly peace museums, are filling the memory gap. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in each country, the article documents how the culture of silence that pervades Sierra Leone enables a progress-driven ‘looking forward’ without teaching the past, while El Salvador is working on weaving a culture of memorialisation into its democratisation process. The article argues that knowledge about civil war history can raise young people’s awareness of the consequences of violence and promote civic engagement in its deterrence.