ABSTRACT
The point of departure for this chapter is that ideology is an important condition of life for people and society even though history has shown that certain ideologies can also be destructive and oppressive. Our fundamental question is thus: can we eliminate the threat element of ideologies to make them sustainable? The chapter examines whether there are any fundamental structures that can be perceived as a common or fundamental system for learning and development among people, groups and states which can be articulated in curricula and conveyed through education so that the manifested ideologies do not, or to a lesser extent than history has shown, pose a threat to our existence. Our answer lies in a didactic balance model which can be applied in educational practice in order to understand ideologies and aid teaching about ideologies in a sustainability perspective. The model is built on three pedagogical guidelines: (1) the nature of ideologies—semantic ideology-oriented structural model, (2) the insider-outsider perspective and judgement skills and (3) pedagogy for the unforeseen.
