What happens when the education infrastructure of an entire population is obliterated? When access to information and communications technology (ICT) has been devastated by war? What is left to support education?
Despite the term having never been provided with a formal definition, “educide” was first used by Pluto Press in 2009 (as cited in Alousi, 2022), as a portmanteau of “education” and “genocide.” Alousi found that the term was first used to describe the calculated atrocities that took place against Iraqi academics during the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 (2022). Alousi offered the first formal definition of educide as “the mass destruction of a country or region’s educational infrastructure because of war, invasion, conflict, terrorism, or mass killings” (2022, para. 4). The world has seen educide carried out multiple times, before and since the Iraq War, and the sustained impact is significant. Zickafoose et al. found that a lack of education access in a population can prevent individuals from realising their economic and social potential, leading to community and regional stagnation (2024). By exacerbating social and economic inequalities, a lack of education results in higher rates of malnourishment and mortality of children (Zickafoose et al., 2024). Additionally, Zickafoose et al. found that a lack of education access can hinder overall societal progress and economic growth by limiting human capital development (2024).
While Alousi’s definition may conjure images of explosions, assassinations, and warfare, educide can be committed by more covert, insidious strategies. It can be achieved by subverting a population’s education system and by attenuating its cultural identity. This researcher offers an amendment to Alousi’s definition of educide.
Educide: the subversion or mass destruction of a population’s educational infrastructure because of colonisation, war, invasion, conflict, terrorism, or mass killings.
(Alousi, 2022, para. 4, modified)
History and Precedents
Canada
Canada has been publicly wrangling with its long history of calculated, state-sponsored erasure of peoples indigenous to that land. While the infamous “residential schools” were presented and funded as legitimate educational institutions, they were a mechanism used to erase the culture of and colonise Indigenous peoples from a very young age. Canada’s inaugural Prime Minister, John A. MacDonald, openly declared that Indigenous children should be removed from their families and placed into residential schools so they would acquire the behaviours and thinking of the White colonisers (MacDonald, 1879, as cited by Indigenous Corporate Training Inc., 2016). These church-run, state-funded institutions were operational from 1834 to 1998, and were little more than child labour camps (Fontaine & Craft, 2015). This system did not stop at education genocide; Indigenous peoples were subjected to 164 years of physical, biological, and cultural genocide. The effects of the atrocities committed through this system continue to ripple through modern Canada (Government of Canada, 2015).
Iraq
From 1970–1984, Iraq’s education system was considered to be among the best in the Middle East (Alousi, 2022). Education became both nationally free and compulsory in the early ’70s and post-secondary enrollment reached about 500,000 individuals. Alousi noted that by 1984, near equity in gender enrollment was achieved and the government was spending an average of $620 per student. He further detailed that the Iran-Iraq War, and subsequent economic embargoes, led to public funds being diverted to military spending. The education budget was driven to a deficit and per-student spending plummeted to just $47 (Alousi, 2022).
By April 2003, Iraq was severely destabilised, the illegal US-led invasion was underway, and the situation took a horrifying turn: in a five-year span, 410 academics were systematically assassinated and 76 more were under explicit threat (Alousi, 2022). The education system was in ruins, positioned for its Americanised reconstruction which followed. Now under US control, all university presidents were replaced by American loyalists, and the explicit plan to corporatise and domesticate higher education in Iraq was in motion (Kabel, 2014). Kabel determined that this permanently coupled the Iraqi institutions to academic dependence on American/British universities while naturalising Western ideologies to the strategic benefit of ongoing American geopolitical interests in Iraq (2014). Following the political cleansing of the education administration, curricula were overhauled, secularised, and aligned with the American constitution (Kabel, 2014).
Palestine
By 1947, the last year of being under British rule, Palestine saw five years of rapid growth in its public education sector: a 37% increase in the number of schools, new classroom construction, and over 76% of an increase in student enrollment (Badran, 2021). Badran found that due to education becoming more accessible, families were finally able to send their children to complete their schooling. As such, many students were older than what would be considered the normal age for primary and secondary school. This led to a more socially and politically engaged population, which in turn led to the formation of more cultural clubs and labour unions managed by an educated workforce (Badran). Since 1948, the year Israel was granted Statehood by the United Nations (UN), it has maintained two separate school systems: Jewish and Arab (Abu-Saad, 2018). Though perhaps appearing to support educational pluralism, these systems have been wholly inequitable, pro-colonial, and anti-indigenous (Abu-Saad). Like Canada’s philosophy, Israel’s Minister of Education declared that there would be no child in Israel who did not adopt Jewish and Zionist knowledge and values (Abu-Saad, 2018). Since 1948, several conflicts and wars have arisen from Israel’s territorial ambitions in Palestine (Narea, 2023), and the educide has intensified.
By January 17, 2024, the US-subsidised Israel military had obliterated every university in Gaza (Euro-Med Monitor, 2024). By October 2024, Israel had bombed nearly 85 percent of Gaza’s schools in just one year, destroying institutions and killing thousands of professors, teachers, staff, and students (Turse, 2024). Despite the UN’s demands that Israel end its illegal occupation, return land and assets, and make reparation to Palestine and its citizens (Mishra, 2024), the slaughter continues.
The Digital Trench
When examining the reasons for the “digital divide” (Cullen, 2001, para. 1), there has been a tendency to focus on ICT of developing countries versus that of technologically advanced countries, the haves and have-nots, digital literacy, knowledge, and access to connectivity and training. Some researchers have suggested that the digital divide is rapidly closing, which Selwyn warns is a dangerous premise that ignores the complexities between access to, and use of, ICT (2004). He further stresses that the outcomes of ICT engagement should not be ignored—that people have different experiences based on their individualised use (2004). While ICT engagement and e-learning expands education and is an effective delivery system in crisis areas (Rajab, 2018), effaced access to these systems introduces a colossal barrier and crushing setback.
If the digital divide cannot be closed due to the physical infrastructure having been intentionally disrupted by an outside force, a digital trench has been cut. If access to ICT once existed but was then impeded or destroyed, a digital trench has been created.
The presence of a digital trench might mean that a student needs to walk 30 minutes through an active war zone to access the internet, as did Shaban al Dalu, a 19-year-old who was studying software engineering in Gaza (Enokido-Lineham & Doak, 2024). Shaban was burned alive in October 2024 when the hospital in which he was a patient was again the target of an Israeli strike (Enokido-Lineham & Doak).
The existence of a digital trench might be evident through an entire population being unable to access their country’s university computer networks because those institutions have been cratered by an enemy’s bombs or gutted by a cyberattack.
Digital trench: a digital divide that exists because of intentional, targeted impediment or destruction of education infrastructure as an act of educide.
(Stephen Peasley, 2024)
The Future
The United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner has criticised Israel’s ongoing, systematic destruction of educational infrastructure in Palestine (2024). It further noted that UN-run schools providing refuge for displaced Palestinians are being bombed—even in Israel-designated safe zones—and has rhetorically questioned if there is an intentional effort to commit educide there (2024). Amidst unfettered, well-funded, documented, illegal occupations, educide, and mass destruction, one might find it difficult to sustain hope for the future.
What might the future of education look like with so many digital trenches scarring its landscape? There exists a growing threat of increasing cultural and educational hegemony. It seems plausible that open access to education is forever divided. The human limits of cultural resilience are being tested. They’ve been tested before.
Canada’s only remaining residential school closed in 1998 (Fontaine & Craft, 2015). The largest class-action settlement in Canadian history initiated in 2007, with the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (Government of Canada, 2015). In 2008, the Government of Canada formally recognised and apologised for the impact and lasting legacy of its malfunctional residential school system. In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada released its investigative findings and presented 94 calls to action for Canada to begin to reconcile the harm its residential schools system inflicted on Indigenous families and communities and (Government of Canada, 2015).
Corntassel and Kelly et al. detailed that Indigenous peoples in Canada are experiencing a significant cultural resurgence (2012, 2021). They highlighted that communities are reclaiming and restoring their languages, traditions, and knowledge systems, fostering a regrowth that once seemed insurmountable. It is impossible to predict how long the rebuilding process will truly take.
History is repeating itself with calculated devotion; the digital trench has been gouged in Palestine. In 2030, will the destruction have been subdued or will it have been completed? Will the digital trench have been backfilled by a colonised, US-subsidised palimpsest built upon the remnants of a centuries-old society? Will cultures overcome by educide be revived? It is our ethical duty to prevent the formation of digital trenches and to stop educide from happening. The human limits of cultural resilience remain an open question.
References
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