The Role of the Education System in Countering and Preventing Extremism and Terrorism in Youth Environments

Abstract

Nowadays, the increase of adolescent and youth extremism and terrorism is associated with the next change in the civilizational mentality of humanity. Over the past two or three centuries, this has been universally moving from a religious to a scientific worldview. Starting from the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and reformation of the Church, the ethnic groups, and people of Europe, and then of all the other continents, began gradually, but steadily, to switch from the norms and rules prescribed by the Holy Traditions of paganism and the Holy Scriptures of monotheism to independent rule-making and living according to legislative systems which are the result of their intellectual activity. The mentality of many ethnic groups and people, on the one hand, still cannot move away from religious ideas and beliefs, on the other hand, it is forced to change due to the forced transition to new norms and rules of life. Those acts that in the scriptures and traditions referred to the most serious sins and to “lawlessness,” in the modern world, among an impressive part of ethnic groups and people are no longer such (for example, gay marriage). In the conditions of the most powerful migration and integration processes, it is the education systems of all countries of the world that have to form a fundamentally new mentality, which must be connected with the scientific worldview, with its typical tolerance to the most diverse opinions and positions, to the lifestyle and thinking of other people, with pluralism of views, concepts, and theories. The current surge in extremism and terrorism among adolescents and young people is associated with low legal awareness and legal nihilism, the authors argue, as well as with the loss of value orientations of modern societies. It is the education systems that should form value orientation, legal awareness, and legal obedience skills for adolescents and young people.