Post-conflict societies face a persistent pedagogical challenge: how to engage younger generations with histories of violence without reproducing fear, resentment, or ethnic polarisation. In Sri Lanka, this challenge has been addressed through a deliberate curriculum strategy that avoids direct engagement with civil war memory, based on concerns that classroom discussion of the conflict may cultivate grievance and destabilise fragile inter-ethnic relations. Consequently, peace-related values are embedded within civic and life-skills education, while the war itself remains largely absent from formal pedagogy. While this avoidance approach reflects legitimate sensitivities, it has also produced a pedagogical vacuum in which children encounter fragmented and informal narratives of the past without structured, age-appropriate educational mediation. This paper argues that Hiroshima offers a conceptually instructive, though not historically equivalent, reference point for rethinking peace education in post-conflict Sri Lanka. Drawing on qualitative field engagement in Hiroshima, including interviews with peace-education practitioners, analysis of children’s picture books, and examination of hibakusha testimonies as pedagogical narratives, the study explores how traumatic memory can be transformed into a moral and educational resource. Hiroshima’s peace-education ecosystem demonstrates how narrative-based pedagogy, particularly through child-centred literature and community storytelling, can cultivate empathy, ethical reflection, and resilience without assigning blame or reproducing antagonism. Rather than advocating the transplantation of Hiroshima’s historical narratives, the paper proposes the adaptation of its pedagogical principles to Sri Lanka’s cultural and post-war context. It contends that the absence of a coherent, child-centred narrative infrastructure limits the transformative potential of peace education and suggests pathways toward a more constructive, resilience-oriented peace pedagogy.

Authors:
Nirmali Wijegoonawardana, Hiroshima University, Japan

About the Presenter(s)
Nirmali Wijegoonawardana is a Professor at the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, and currently serves as a Japan Foundation Japanese Studies Research Fellow at Hiroshima University, Japan. Her academic work focuses on peace education.

Connect on ResearchGate
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nirmali-Wijegoonawardana-

Additional website of interest
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7308-0767

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