Recasting “Fundamental ‘British’ Values”: Education, Justice, and Preventing Violent Extremism

Stevens, David

Abstract

Societies concerned with preventing acts of violent extremism often target the ideas that are thought to motivate such acts. The state's use of educational institutions is one mechanism by which those ideas are subjected to challenge. Teaching liberal democratic values to students is one method. Here, David Stevens argues that this model is misguided. First, commitment to violent methods is not primarily driven by the attractiveness of radical ideas themselves, but by material facts and circumstances. Second, an education that ignores the teaching of various socioeconomic values, such as a commitment to a certain degree of material equality and welfare provision, is inadequate as a conception of citizenship. These criticisms are related. Citizens are owed certain resources and commitments as citizens, and grounds for dissatisfaction and violence are reduced when citizens receive the holdings to which they are entitled, and when their fellow citizens recognize and endorse this. Consequently, it is the role of education to teach directively toward the adoption of such socioeconomic values and commitments.

Citation

Stevens, D. (2023). Recasting “Fundamental ‘British’ Values”: Education, Justice, and Preventing Violent Extremism. Educational Theory, 73(3), 355-375. https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.12584

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 17, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Jul 9, 2023
• Publication Date: 2023-06
• Deposit Date: Feb 14, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 17, 2023
• Journal: Educational Theory
• Print ISSN: 0013-2004
• Electronic ISSN: 1741-5446
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 73
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 355-375
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.12584
• Keywords: violent extremism, sense of justice, moral education, John Rawls
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/7466316
• Publisher URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/edth.12584