Freedom from repression: some thoughts on totalitarianism for religious, spiritual and citizenship/human rights education

Abstract

The article attempts to outline the beginning of a wider interdisciplinary exploration of the relationship between a number of fields that appear initially incongruent and unconnected, but which, on closer examination, are integrally related. Taking totalitarianism as a conceptual core, the article begins by defining some of the historical and political parameters of both moderate liberalism, broadly understood, and the extremes of totalitarian repression and control. The article applies and develops this analysis to religious, spiritual and human rights education.

While remaining at the level of a philosophical prompt for discussion and further elaboration and curriculum application pedagogically, the article closes by using the literary form of the novel as an example of how totalitarianism has been both portrayed and resisted, and as an implicit warning about the dangers of over‐politicizing either religion or spirituality.

Keywords:

• citizenship
• children’s spirituality
• human rights education
• religion
• politics
• totalitarianism

Notes

1. The four critical contexts constitute a core historical‐pedagogical analysis that have been developed as ideas over the past few years, originally delivered in germinal form at a presentation given at a United Nations Scientific, Educational and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)‐funded event of the Oslo Coalition for Freedom of Religion or Belief, at the Nobel Institute, Oslo, Norway. These critical contexts also informed a working consultation on UNESCO Guidelines on Intercultural Education, UNESCO Headquarters, Paris (Published November 2006, Paris). The four critical contexts were presented (November 2006) for a UNESCO‐funded International Symposium on Intercultural Understanding and Human Rights Education, at the UNESCO Asia‐Pacific Centre of Education for International Understanding, Seoul National University, Republic of Korea, and subsequently published in the Journal of Religious Education, in autumn 2006, as ‘Between Tolerance and Dissent: Religious, Citizenship and Human Rights Education’ (Journal of Religious Education 54.3, 54–62).