Education… Is intolerance innate or it is it learned? If intolerance is learned, can tolerance be learned too? If it is innate, has education got a role, because surely might it not be a fruitless enterprise? Or is intolerance the ultimate result of not knowing, of not learning, of ignorance, of misperception, of apprehension, of assumption, of the presumptive ego in all of us? Throw this together within an environment of social change or challenge, of ideological or economic crisis; is it not this that allows the unknown to become the enemy within?

Is tolerance actually the opposite of intolerance or merely its cousin in disguise? Is to tolerate, to accept, to embrace, to understand, or only to put up with the other – an interim reprieve, a barely acceptable compromise?

Who is so sure that education changes attitudes anyway? You start out with ignorant racists and you teach them about those they despise; their culture, their lifestyle, their history and community. If our education does not change their values, might you not find yourself left with well-informed racists, who still despise those they now know about?
Where does the responsibility for teaching values lies? And how does the learning of such values take place? How are values inculcated in the minds of the young and challenged in the attitudes of the old? Are such values a matter for textbooks? In fact, is this an educational complex or cultural context? To what extent do historical, political, geographic, economic and demographic contexts all play in the environment of intolerance and how might that environment be better understood, challenged and changed? Is education thus about combating intolerance or informing the ignorance that supports it and the anti-values that infuse it?

And how do we define education anyway? Is it bounded and defined by formality, targets and examinations, or is it more valiant, something that should touch all of society?
If so, what are the channels of dissemination to deliver a message, and how do you change people’s attitudes with it sufficiently to reduce hatred? What kind of strategies exist to set and monitor goals? How does ‘education’ work alongside policy makers, legislators, community leaders, the media and international bodies to maximise their corporate strength? How are international laws, intergovernmental statements and national commitments being applied through the educational environment? How does one address a global problem in a local way?

These are just some of the questions which underpin the three sessions we are to embark upon in this Educational Strategies track of the forum.

We are interested in the answers, but even more interested in the pitfalls, the questions, the criticisms, the dangers, the problems and the issues. Because if we begin with these, the answers will take care of themselves.

The track is divided into three sessions. The first on Teaching About the Holocaust asks a question about the teaching of history and the influence of historical precedent in combating intolerance. Teaching about the Holocaust has emerged from being entirely on the margins, to being a recognised field in its own right, witnessed not without force at the Stockholm Forum last January. Our panellists in this session will address how this has been taught to date and engage questions on its strategic importance in combating intolerance.

The second session focuses on a community in crisis, the Roma communities, of central and Eastern Europe in particular. The panellists will explain some of the background, the current context and the future for this community and will ask to what extent the educational role is an important one in supporting this aim.

The third and final session seeks to examine how a number of sectors in a variety of local, national and international contexts should use their corporate strengths, existing legislation and the development of strong cross-sector ties to enhance the environment of learning and creating cultural and social change.

On Saturday evening I was at the inaugural national Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration in London. As the founder of Britain’s first Holocaust Memorial Museum and Education Centre, I knew what it felt like ten years ago to be trying to teach, when no one was particularly minded to learn. After eighteen months of planning, the British government’s initiative to bring this important period of history to the attention of the British public had finally arrived. I sat there surrounded by the great and the good, the old and the young. The cross-sector of British society we had always planned would be there was there, and I watched as now millions of peoples learned something together. It was a challenge from the past and a challenge to the future. It may not cure the problems, it may not even instigate change, we may not have a more tolerant society today than we did last Friday, but my guess is that we have changed perceptions for a great many people, the context in which we work. We have said as a ation that the preservation of life is important, that genocide itself and the process that leads to it, must be understood and grappled with. And this is a start. It didn’t happen in the classrooms alone, but in peoples’ homes and I would hope, in their hearts. So as we begin to discuss our strategies, policies, ideologies, legislation, curricula, resources, influence and through the channels of power… bear in mind throughout, it is in peoples’
homes and hearts where intolerance starts and resides and that is the only place it can ultimately be stopped.