Global Security, Religion and Education Development: a Crisis for the Field of Comparative Education?

Building common ground on shared values should be a high priority for a diverse and devout society in an era of religious conflict. Otherwise we might fall into the equally false and far more dangerous illusion that we agree on nothing at all – and perhaps we tend to assume that education helps to do this, which is not necessarily the case. There is a greater concern that education is not just failing to step up effectively to the task of contesting undifferentiated and negative views of religions, but that it might not always be a force for good at all. It may in some cases help reinforce difference and create the conditions for conflict.
The relationship, therefore, between religious difference, security and the assumed supportive role of education is far from a simple one.