Education for tolerance: cultural difference and family values

Abstract

Those who would defend liberal democracy in today’s changing world face a new toleration debate. While we still want to help our children grow up to see the world from other perspectives than their own, we are no longer as sure as we were that we know what toleration means or what it entails. Where education is concerned, it seems the focus is on tolerance as an attitude—encouraging people to be tolerant—but where the public debate is concerned, the focus is narrower. It becomes a question of what should be tolerated and what the law should allow or proscribe. But however interpreted, the underlying unclarity remains and it inevitably affects educational choices. Must we approve as well as permit? Must we refrain from judgement? Is tolerance something that is due to people themselves or does it include their views and opinions? And how should we respond if it should turn out to be impossible to tolerate one group or view without discriminating against another? In this paper I discuss two particular aspects of the new toleration debate, both of which involve presuppositions about personal and family life and religious and cultural identity. These are: (1) the moral and political issues prompted by the presence of newcomers in societies with different religious and cultural traditions from their own; and (2) a new and combative form of secularism within those societies.

Acknowledgement

An earlier version of this paper was presented to a plenary session of the 2009 conference of the Association for Moral Education held at Utrecht University on 4 July 2009.

Notes

1. One of Mill’s first critics was James Fitzjames Stephen, whose book Liberty, equality, fraternity was published in 1873.

2. Wolfenden, J. (1957). Devlin’s comments were first made as the Maccabaean Lecture to the British Academy in 1959 under the title ‘Morals and the criminal law’ and later published in Devlin (1965a, pp. 1–25).

3. Dnes (2002) reports that in England, over the 40 years from 1960 to 2000, first marriages fell from approximately 70 per 1000 to 30 per 1000 of the male population, while the proportion of women aged between 20 and 50 who were cohabiting trebled.

4. North Somerset Primary Care Trust cited the Nursing and Midwifery Council code and the requirement for a personal and professional commitment to equality and diversity. See Nursing and Midwifery Council (2009, November), Joint equality scheme (pp. 2–3), available online at: http://www.nmc-uk.org/aDisplayDocument.aspx?DocumentID=7283 (accessed 28 December 2009). Following media publicity, however, the nurse, Caroline Petrie, was subsequently offered reinstatement. See Gledhill (2009) ‘Victory for suspended Christian nurse’, The Times, 7 February, available online at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5675452.ece (accessed 28 December 2010).

5. Neither the foster‐carer nor the teenager can be named here as they are jointly taking legal action. Their case is being represented by Nigel Priestley, a lawyer who specialises in care disputes. See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/4559867/Christian-foster-mother-struck-off-after-Muslim-girl-converts.html (accessed 1 January 2010).

6. David Booker, a worker in a Christian hostel, was suspended for ‘seriously breaching’ its code after telling a colleague he was opposed to same‐sex marriage and homosexual clergy (‘Hostel in gay dispute’, The Times, 13 April 2009, p. 8).

7. For details of the Waltham Forest case, which did not in the end reach the courts, see ‘Parents face prosecution over ‘gay’ education class protest’, Times Online, 7 March 2009, available online at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5863871.ece (accessed 1 January 2010).

8. I make a fuller case for this in Almond, B. (2006).