Introduction

This revised edition of Education for Values is published at a critical time in world history. The events of 9/11 have now become embedded in the consciousness and memory both of individuals and of the national and global communities of which they are members. Responses to global terrorism have been, so far, neither consensual, consistent nor necessarily considered. While examples surface of academics in the United States being silenced both in their reactions to 9/11 and in their choice of classroom materials, politicians throughout Europe and the United States issue something equating to moral sound bites, with clear warnings that views expressed in these are not open to challenge. Post-9/11 it becomes harder to find reasoned reflection as a characteristic of public discourse on matters of communal safety and related political strategy; nor on religious and ethnic identity and public and private virtues. Therein lies the crisis for education in values. The cultural ambience in which values are developed, discussed and acquired increasingly frustrates the informed, reasoned, participatory and joined-up processes previously taken as the norm in such matters in democratic communities.