Introduction

Abstract

It is not an overstatement to say that toleration is one of the most important issues for the definition of a moral and political theory with application to modern globalised societies. Toleration is a value which no politician in any liberal democratic society would dare to reject. In the UK, its value is reflected in the learning outcomes of education for citizenship isolated by the Final Report of the Advisory Group on Citizenship (which schools have a statutory responsibility to deliver): children ought to be disposed to the ‘practice of toleration’, and have the ‘ability to tolerate other view points’. In these days of feelings of heightened insecurity prompting suspicion of strangers and departures from the norm, toleration has again taken centre stage as one of the values defmitive of stable and just liberal democratic societies.