Unsafe Gods: Security, Secularism and Schooling

by Lynn Davies

Overview

This is a book about risk. Security, be it national, societal or personal, is a global concern but our contemporary gods—religion, secularism and education—can all be a risky business for security.

Using insights from complexity science, the book proposes a new dynamic secularism as a viable way to accommodate diversity of supernatural belief within worldly politics. Exploring the interplay of religion and education in the context of security brings us new insights into how religions learn or are instead "frozen accidents" which hinder transitions to complex adaptive states.

Education can be complicit in the perpetuation of locked-in social divisions and identities, but finding a cross-cutting secular value system such as rights can act to forge new connectivities. Any shift to non-violent solutions to conflict requires unlearning as well as learning, as illustrated in current projects in deradicalization. The paradox of a complex security is that a degree of turbulence and uncertainty is needed. Education has to be about damage limitation but also about skills in creative questioning and adaptation to change.

The chapters cover
• Dimensions of security and insecurity
• Insights from complexity theory: diversity, self-organization, networks and information
• The contradictory role of religion in conflict and in peace-making
• Secularism: myths, types, pretences and risks
• Dynamic secularism: inclusion with critique
• Secular education and umbrella value systems
• Safe schools: physical and mental security for students and teachers
• Disengagement, desistance and debiasing: the learning and unlearning of extremist behaviors
• Learning from the Arab Spring: protest and change through education.

Unsafe Gods sets out to make a case but also to stimulate policy debate. It has relevance to national policies on multiculturalism and social cohesion as well as to counter-terror, but relevance also to school level strategies around safety, security and active citizenship will make it important reading for policy makers and also academics and educationists.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781858565255
Publisher:	Stylus Publishing, LLC
Publication date:	03/21/2014
Pages:	258
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Lynn Davies is Emeritus Professor of International Education in the Centre for International Education and Research of the School of Education at the University of Birmingham. Her central interests are in the fields of education and conflict, education and extremism and education in fragile states. Interlocking interests are in children’s rights and the impact of student voice. Current research is on mentoring those at risk of radicalization.

Table of Contents

1. Security and complexity
2. Religion and security
3. Dynamic secularism
4. Secular education: Control, values, and learning
5. Secure schools and schools for security
6. Learning and unlearning extremist behaviours
7. Positive insecurity, turbulence, and change
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

"This is a time of immense tension in the world — over religion and secularism, over security and conflict, over what counts as legitimate knowledge and ways of understanding, and over education's role in dealing with all of this. Lynn Davies has written an important book that is filled with crucial theoretical insights and very real examples that can help us find our way in these troubled times. It gives us hope for a better future."

Michael W. Apple

"This is a time of immense tension in the world -- over religion and secularism, over security and conflict, over what counts as legitimate knowledge and ways of understanding, and over education's role in dealing with all of this. Lynn Davies has written an important book that is filled with crucial theoretical insights and very real examples that can help us find our way in these troubled times. It gives us hope for a better future."

From the Publisher