Racism, chauvinism in various guises, religious intolerance, economic greed, discrimination in every form, all have one common feature. They each reduce a human being to a single dimension, they erect a value judgement that says that if you are one of 'us' everything is permissible, but if you are one of 'them' then nothing is. This arbitrary denial of equal rights to all is totally groundless, none of the measures used in its justification stand the light of enquiry, so why does the practice still persist so pervasively in all our societies ?
If we must lay blame at any one door then many of our educational systems must take the brunt. What we teach our youngsters should reflect the values we wish them to show as adults and as members of our society. Yet in general we teach the values of the past, the religious and sexist discrimination of past moralities, the behavioural motivations of savages, an intolerance of failure, the suppression of non-conformance, the myth of an hierarchical natural order. If we do recognise the futility of these doctrines then we usually replace them with nothing, values are not taught at all in our schools, education is devalued to mere academic data, supposedly value free, but in practice still tainted with the prejudices of the past. Children care, many show far more concern for the environment and for other people than do adults, yet they are desensitised by the horrors of violence and hate forced on them daily by TV and Newspapers, both actual and fictional. This, in today's world, forms their education in the values they should employ...
Can it really be so difficult to teach love and tolerance ?