Tolerance and Education

Abstract

To some parents and teachers the idea that they should encourage their children and pupils to be tolerant may seem as obvious as the idea that they should encourage kindness and considerateness. Indeed, amongst parents and teachers of a liberal persuasion a concern to promote tolerance is likely to occupy a central place in their vision of moral education, for whatever else liberalism embraces, tolerance along with liberty are its central ideals. 1 . It may seem hardly worth adding that in a multicultural and multifaith society, tolerance takes on extra importance and becomes what has been called ‘a major aim in education’. 2 . In fact the Swann Report maintains: ‘There is now an acute need for a new dimension of tolerance’, 3 . the acute need no doubt arising from diversity and variety and the regrettable accompaniment of prejudice. After all, there is little call for tolerance in a society where differences in hues, backgrounds, attitudes and customs are at a minimum or where people share one set of values and pursue one vision of the good life. In this respect it may be worth recalling Sir Isaiah Berlin’s observation: The history of ideas… has its surprises… Among them is the discovery that some of the most familiar values of our own culture are more recent than might at first be supposed… The notion of toleration, not as a utilitarian expedient to avoid destructive strife, but as an intrinsic value; the concepts of liberty and human rights as they are discussed today… all these are elements in a great mutation in western thought and feeling that took place in the eighteenth century… 4 . These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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