Abstract

VAN DER WALT, Johannes L.. Forgiveness education: The key to the dissipation of misery due to social injustice. In Skriflig (Online) [online]. 2017, vol.51, n.1, pp.1-8. ISSN 2305-0853.  https://doi.org/10.4102/ids.v51i1.2265.

Personal and global conditions have recently highlighted the importance for individuals and communities to be able to forgive other individuals and communities for a variety of transgressions. Social injustice has often been perpetrated also in educational context as can be illustrated with reference to South Africa, the Baltic and the Balkan where these countries are still struggling today with the heritages of respectively their apartheid and communist past. History abounds with such incidences. Although some people and communities are able to spontaneously and intuitively forgive those who have inflicted social injustice upon them, most of us do not possess a complete grasp of what it means to forgive, what the fruits of a forgiving attitude could be or what the results of a non-forgiving attitude might be. In view of this, it has become necessary to resort to education (e.g. in the shape of citizenship education) to teach young people (how) to forgive and thereby helping them contribute to a peaceful democratic society. The article concludes with a Scriptural view of forgiveness and forgiveness education.

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