Education in a time of terror: an address given at Kent State University

Abstract

This paper gives an overview of the ideas generated in a course taught by a Canadian academic to American students on the subject of teaching in the post‐9/11 period. The four major topics discussed are the technological context in which modern societies are situated, particularly the evolution from agrarian to industrial and now knowledge‐based societies, the development of the mass communications media and their role in desensitising children to issues of violence against the ‘Other’, the need for widespread reform in multicultural teacher education, and the challenges for teachers to gain a broader understanding of their own and other societies’ history and culture.

Acknowledgements

The extract from Armitage’s poem is reproduced here with the kind permission of Simon Armitage, granted in November 2007.