Responding to radicalisation through education

Abstract

Over the past decades, many targeted policy strategies for countering violent extremism (CVE) have shown all kinds of weaknesses and side effects, especially for already marginalised citizens. Awareness of these serious downsides led to a whole branch of more generic social strategies aimed at prevention of violent extremism (PVE). Yet, tackling or preventing radicalisation in education (PVE-E) is one of the most notable and promising fruits of this branch. However, even 20 years after the 9/11 attacks, research in this field is still scarce, available findings are limited, and assumptions are fraught with many complexities. This chapter offers an overview of current formal and non-formal educational practices for tackling radicalisation, and argues schools can only contribute to this agenda if it is organised through a pedagogical lens, and in the end suggests a reset to help make PVE-E more educative than the current goals of PVE suggest.