ABSTRACT
Educational systems have repeatedly faced demands from politicians and public alike to shape recoveries from national crises, to prevent war and, more recently, to rescue the environment from human-induced hazards. Despite regular failures to deliver these holy grails, faith in the potential of education to succeed has persisted. More palpable, however, have been the condemnations of subsequent failure. The poisoned chalice metaphor, and even more that of Scylla and Charybdis, are arguably more appropriate than that of the holy grail. Thus education has been blamed for, on the one hand, being ineffective in preventing war, and on the other for being effective promoting it.
