Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Peace Education in Action: Hakim Mohandas Amani Williams

Kids Creative's Peace Education in Action highlight for June, 2011 is Board Member and Doctoral Candidate Hakim Mohandas Amani Williams, a true practitioner of peace education. We asked him to discuss the incredible work he is doing in the field of peace education in New York City as well as his birthplace of Trinidad and Tobago. Please read on:

I grew up in one of the poorest and most violent parts of Trinidad & Tobago (TT); I was fortunate to have had a family that believed steadfastly in the potency of education. I do not however view education as a neutral sphere, but one that is politically charged, and has the potential to either socially reproduce inequities or to empower learners. Driven by the oft-cited Gandhian mantra “that we must be the change that we wish to see in the world”, I view my research as advocacy for students who have been forgotten by society, for students who attend stigmatized and under-resourced schools, and for students who are incessantly pathologized by the media and society at large. My overall research aim is dual-purposed: to flay the increasingly thick cover of de-historicized structural violence that suffocates many schools within postcolonial educational systems, and to eventually reframe the narrative of pathologized, violent youth to one of resiliency.

From late November, 2009 to June 2010, I spent 7 months at a secondary school in Trinidad & Tobago collecting data on school violence. My research centers on differentiated conceptualizations of school violence, its causes and interventions. I interviewed students (focus groups), teachers, deans, safety officers, the principal, vice principal and guidance counselor and a few national officials. The case study was based at a school that has been categorized by the Ministry of Education as a ‘high risk’ school. Many of the students hail from single parent homes and poor, violence-stricken communities. As a native of TT, I believe in utilitarian research; since school violence is a major issue on the twin island republic, I perceive my research both as a way of ‘giving back’ to my country, and as peace activism.

As regards my current research project, I am still analyzing mounds of data, with the intent to defend my dissertation by May of 2012. Research and practice ought not to be divorced, thus my insistence on keeping my feet straddling both of these worlds, for I firmly believe that research and practice should reflect a mutually symbiotic relationship. Working with Kids Creative is sufficient inspiration for me that peace education work is not only requisite in this very violent world but that it can be very capably implemented under the right conditions and visionary leadership.

About Hakim Mohandas Amani Williams

Hakim Mohandas Amani Williams is a current member of the Board of Directors of Kids Creative. He is a doctoral candidate at Columbia University, studying International Educational Development, with a focus in peace education. He obtained his Bachelor’s with honors in Psychology from St. Francis College, and two master’s degrees in International Educational Development, focusing on peace education and in Comparative and International Education, focusing on philosophy of education.

He started working in after school programs at the YMCA, and has worked on several research projects. At present, he is the research coordinator at the Advanced Consortium on Cooperation Conflict and Complexity (AC4) at the Earth Institute, Columbia University. AC4 is in its second year and aims to be a hub at Columbia that fosters interdisciplinary research and practice around conflict resolution, violence prevention, sustainable development and peacebuilding. Hakim oversees AC4’s student and faculty research grant programs.

To find out more about Hakim's work in Trinidad and Tobago or with AC4 in New York City, feel free to contact him: hakimwill@gmail.com.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Kudos to you for seeking to make a difference in the lives of the under-represented.