Education after Paris
Still in a state of shock about the Paris assaults. And still in doubt about the role education could play in fighting terrorism.
As far as I can see there are two positions. On one hand a strong believe that better education could help people to critically reflect ideologies, resist false promises and this way become less vulnerable for terrorism. However, on the other hand it is pointed out that the hard core of terrorists not seldomly has enjoyed good and even excellent education, which obviously didn't hinder them to turn their back on human values and the Western idea of rationality.
As EP president Schulz yesterday said on TV, terrorism for Western societies is very likely to become a civilsation risk just as traffic accidents or flews. If this diagnosis is only half true, the impact on our culture and education would be enormous and surely different to what we've learned in the past. How would an education look like, teaching us to live with terrorism?
Replies
norman longworth
Maybe it is that religion is stronger than education for these people and it goes back to early conditioning. At the same time there is a strong sense of resentment at the bombing of muslims by so-called infidels. I wish that there was an answer to this, but I doubt that it is more bombing. John Pilger in a recent blog pointed out that, in the early days of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, America carpet bombed Cambodian villages to eliminate them. At that there was not more than 17000 Khmer Rouge guerrillas - this became millions after the bombing with disastrous effects - the killing fields. Maybe the same thing is happening here.
8 years ago
