Pedagogies of Ruin Educational Erasure, Scholasticide, and the Right to Knowledge in Gaza Roshmi Paul

Pedagogies of Ruin: Educational Erasure, Scholasticide, and the Right to Knowledge in Gaza

This paper looks at the systematic destruction of Gaza's education system through the concept of scholasticide, suggesting that attacking schools, universities, libraries, and other educational communities is more than just collateral damage; it is a purposeful attempt to erase the intellectual and cultural future of a group of people. Using a variety of sources including recent research, humanitarian reports, and interviews with displaced students and teachers, this study places Gaza's education collapse in the larger context of human rights, epistemic violence, and global inequality in access to knowledge. Through a close examination of the targeting of classrooms, archives, teachers, and students, the article investigates both the material and symbolic ways that educational erasure acts as a tactic used to break down intergenerational transfer of knowledge, erase collective memory, and destroy national identity. "Pedagogies of Ruin" is a term used to describe how some schools have changed from places for learning into places associated with displacement, trauma, and survival. In Gaza, education is a place of both resilience and destruction with things like tent classrooms made from leftover materials, parents trying to teach their children without proper educational materials, and ongoing interruptions in the ability to learn being examples of how people are resisting against enforced epistemic annihilation. This article will also examine the implications of this destruction as they relate to international humanitarian and human rights laws, as well as the right to education (which is guaranteed by numerous global legal systems).The current study asserts that the destruction of the education system in Gaza is a regional humanitarian crisis and represents a significant test of global obligations to educational justice. Rebuilding schools will not recover all that has been lost; it will require international accountability for educational rights and the acknowledgement of the role of knowledge in building human dignity and ensuring survival as a community.

Keywords :- Scholasticide,Educational Erasure,Right to Education,Epistemic Violence,Gaza Conflict,Human Rights Knowledge