A contradiction lies at the heart of liberalism, one that generations of theorists have struggled with: should a liberal society, with its definitive commitment to the value of tolerance, tolerate the intolerant? Fear of the intolerant, of those who resort to violence in their resistance to others’ ideas, is one of the main motives behind the new regime of ‘values education’ in Western societies. But can these societies impose their ethos of tolerance on citizens who would reject it, without at the same time contradicting that very ethic? I think not. But the contradiction can be avoided if children—and adults—are taught the art of discovering values for themselves. The process of doing so, of listening to and accepting or rejecting other people’s ideas, instils the respect for others that underpins tolerance and so democracy.
As is happening elsewhere in the West, there are moves in Australia to introduce ‘values education’ in schools. The wider aim is to counter a perceived lack of moral moorings among the young; the more urgent and focused aim is to discourage the kind of extremist—sometimes fundamentalist—values that can lead to antisocial or even terrorist tendencies. In Australia, the values being championed by federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson have been set out on a poster and distributed to schools. This poster advertises ‘nine values for Australian schooling’: care and compassion; doing your best; fair go; freedom; honesty and trustworthiness; integrity; respect; responsibility; and understanding, tolerance and inclusion.
On the face of it, the idea of values education sits uncomfortably with our Australian commitment to liberal democracy, because liberalism is premised on tolerance for a diversity of values across society. However, because ‘values education’ is advocating, by and large, the values of liberalism itself—revolving around a moral axis of tolerance and respect for social and cultural diversity—perhaps its apparent contradiction with liberalism can be avoided. Whether values education is the way to allay fundamentalist tendencies is another matter.
An attitude can be described as fundamentalist if it is underpinned by values or beliefs taken in a literal way and held inflexibly. Fundamentalists have not thought through their values or beliefs, or subjected them to any kind of evidential or rational test. They are, in other words, beliefs or values accepted uncritically from some text (scripture, for example), person (parent/teacher/leader) or institution (church/school/state).
So it is not the content of specific value-beliefs but the way we arrive at