Tolerance Reports

Case Studies for Tolerance Education

New York, April 2000



The first meeting of working group II was organized in close cooperation with the Anti-Defamation-League (ADL). On the basis of the results of the International Network Conference in Tutzing (November 1999) the participants of working group II worked on the chapters of the planned Tolerance Report including case studies of all the network countries, evaluation tools/methods for the field of tolerance education, educational theories and the structure of a data-base exposing information about the state of (in)tolerance in different regions of the world.
Julie Flapan (ADL, USA) gave an overview over different theories and dilemmas of multicultural education in the USA. She explained the problems and challenges stemming from diversity in an immigration country. Shaiya Rothberg (ADAM, Israel) introduced themes for a subgroup working on the underlying theoretical assumptions of educational concepts within the field of tolerance education. He illustrated his project by juxtaposing the positions of Charles Taylor and J—rgen Habermas on questions of immigration, boarders, dignity and justice.

A whole session was devoted to the important issue of evaluation. Viola Georgi, Florian Wenzel (CAP) and Thomas Henschel (University of Erfurt) introduced an evaluation study carried out at the CAP based on the theory of moral development by Lawrence Kohlberg. The group critically discussed the study. Stephanie Schell-Faucon (University of Cologne) enriched the discussion with the results of a study titled "Can schools educate?" carried out by the Council of Europe. She highlighted categories relevant to the networks evaluation discussion. Angela Garabagiu (Council of Europe) added a list of categories addressing the factors of impact and conditions of tolerance education as developed by the project "Education for Democratic Citizenship" by the Council of Europe. Project designs were completed with a time and action plan in order to continue at the next meeting from July 12th to July 16th in Gütersloh, Germany. Besides project work the group had the chance not only to meet with staff from ADL exchanging experience but also to meet and discuss tolerance issues of mutual concern with the national director of ADL Abraham Foxman. On the last day, Doris Leak, an Afro-American guide from Harlem took the group through her neighborhood following the cultural heritage of the Afro-American population in New York. The conference ended with a visit to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.