Perspectives on Tolerance in Education Flowing from a Comparison of Religion Education in Mexico and Thailand

Bulgarian Comparative Education Society. Blvd Shipchenski prohod 69 A, 1574 Sofia, Bulgaria. e-mail: info@bces-conference.org; Web site: http://www.bces-conference.org

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6

Foreign Countries; Religious Education; Social Attitudes; Individual Differences; State Church Separation; Trust (Psychology); Religious Discrimination; Comparative Education; Conflict

Mexico; Thailand

This paper investigates religion education (RE) in Mexico and Thailand -- two countries from different parts of the world with vastly different populations and cultures. We wanted to learn whether they had tackled similar problems regarding the provision of RE in their schools, particularly with respect to the matter of tolerance in diverse societies, and in which ways the solutions they came up with agree with or differ from each other. We assumed that people are the same the world over, and that their problems regarding the provision of RE in schools and the quest for (inter)religious tolerance might, depending on the prevailing local and historical circumstances, be roughly the same. The paper presents and discusses some of the parallels, resemblances and differences with respect to RE and the issue of (inter)religious tolerance. It ends by tentatively advancing the following four stages of state-church relations that could help us understand (inter)religious tolerance in education: state-church tension and disagreement, state-church mistrust, state-church truce, and recognising the need for religious tolerance. [For complete volume, see ED567118.]

As Provided

13

2016

ED567130