Controversial Issues and the Rhetoric of Common Values

Lars Laird Iversen

doi:10.3390/rel11100528

Abstract

In this article, I identify a broad, international ‘rhetoric of common values’, which hinges on the poorly supported assumption that values should be promoted because the sharing of values are the basis for social cohesion in groups. Through discussing two cases, I identify, analyse and critique key features of the empirical phenomenon that I call the rhetoric of common values. The two cases are the British government response to the so-called ’Trojan Horse’ incident in 2014, and Norwegian core curricula since 1974. Previous research has critiqued the use of the term ’fundamental British values’ as being unhelpful when schools teach controversial issues. The results of my analysis provide international breadth, some historical depth and metaphorical structure to our understanding of how the rhetoric of common values is used in education policy today. The article focusses less on dilemmas faced by teachers and more on the context of choice established ‘upstream’ by education policy. I argue that it is timely and important for teachers in religious education to understand the rhetoric of common values. It is a contemporary and politically relevant way in which religion is mobilised and politicised for exclusionary forms of national identity. Avoiding the rhetoric of common values does not mean avoiding values in education policy. The rhetoric of common values identitizes values. This causes the terms ‘values’ to be mobilised in boundary work separating ‘us’ from ‘them’, thus undercutting a better role of values in education policy: to reflect upon, and make relevant in life, guidelines for future action.

Highlights

An idea has appeared and become widespread in recent decades: that shared values are the social glue of groups
This article supports the thrust of Lockley-Scott’s argument. It broadens the scope by identifying the rhetoric of common values as an international discursive trope, and it deepens the insights by investigating the intellectual history of behind the use of the rhetoric of common values in education policy and by further interrogating the metaphors that constitute it
Does the discussion of the rhetoric of common values in Norway and the UK contribute to the established debates about controversial issues and safe spaces? A few key points can be identified

Summary

Introduction

An idea has appeared and become widespread in recent decades: that shared values are the social glue of groups. Debates about controversial issues may become a multiculturalist game of respect, where perceived cultural or religious groups are entitled to ‘their’ values In this case, political discussions may become reduced to distanced ‘dialogue’ between communities that are falsely seen as essentially distinct in lasting and morally relevant ways. My only contribution to these debates would be to point out that if the promotion of associational attachments, including patriotism, happens through the means of the rhetoric of shared values, that would be fraught with dangers of group essentialisation and othering. If tolerance is promoted in school because tolerant behaviours further the legitimately desired goal of social cohesion, it is good that it is shared by many This would not be an instance of the rhetoric of shared values the way I present it here. Several scholars have pointed out how tolerance has become a marker of Dutchness and is rhetorically used by political actors to marginalise or exclude minorities that are branded intolerant (van Kessel 2016; Mepschen and Duyvendak 2012)

Previous Research

Presenting the Case Studies

Values in Norwegian Education Policy

The British Government and the Trojan Horse Affair

Discussion and Conclusions