tolerance

This article offers a planning of educative actions to promove tolerance in secondary school pupils. It has four main parts: a brief presentation of the old and actual problem about intolerance, the characteristics of the pedagogical speech about tolerance, the assumptions that are used to create the accion proposals and, finally, six programatics lines to articulate activities, methods and contents for the development of tolerance.

To have democratic and pluralistic societies we need some values, rights and attitudes to improve our living together. We assume the dignity of every one as human being and so that we relate our text to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But those are not enough. We need to be involved, to participate and have duties and responsibilities in our society. In this context, the school system has to take into account all these considerations to have citizens where their rights are respected and are able to have responsibilities and trained to assume those duties.

This paper reviews the furthest antecedents, in Greek classical thinking, of the two senses of the educational value «tolerance». From the old scepticism which neglects the search for truth does the permissive sense of tolerance as «everything is the same» come, which is then the line present in postmodern thinking and lifestyle.

The Socratic line, however, implies tolerance as the positive acceptance of the other, from the faith that there is a truth to which we may come closer together. As a conclusion, the need to join this second line is defended so that it will lead to a sort of education based on constructive dialogue, beyond the simple unlimited respect, which may take us away from the risks of a paralyzing «everything is ok» and which may contribute to the effective improvement of society.