Educating for Tolerance

Abstract

Early modern thought on toleration in Europe dealt with issues of religious freedom that arose out of the Reformation; and to this, the Enlightenment added the struggle for more open social and political dialogue and dissent. These developments mark the growth of attitudes and ways of life associated with tolerance that are in tension with other deep-rooted human proclivities and traditions found throughout ‘the crooked timber of humanity’.1 While societies that were heir to these developments have become more enlightened and tolerant because of them, intolerance occurs in all societies, adopting various guises in response to social and historical conditions. Under some conditions, societies fall prey to sectarian violence, while in other circumstances they may become riddled with racial hatred, or succumb to ethnic cleansing, suffer the persecution of religious minorities, or a multitude of other afflictions that feed on intolerance.