Tolerance is a personal quality that implies the ability to accept the opinions, beliefs and feelings of others, understanding that the differences of points of view are natural, inherent to the human condition, and cannot give rise to aggressions of any kind. Tolerance is a central element for human coexistence and the functioning of civilized societies, indispensable for life in democracy under a constitutional system.
The concept of tolerance is installed within the framework of two different aspects. On one side, the virtue of tolerance is forged during childhood and adolescence as part of a more complex belief and value system, and implies the fact of listening and making the effort to understand the thought of the other, and fundamentally, to accept it as something as valid as ours. Parents and teachers have a fundamental role in this regard. The school must be an area of plurality and teachers have a major responsibility that commits them to work on the practice of tolerance day by day, through pedagogical proposals and of course by example.
At the same time, tolerance is an element that runs through society when it comes to decisions that are taken collectively by constitutional bodies corresponding (legislators, for example). The current democratic societies in general take tolerance as one of their main flags, under the basic concept that ‘individual rights of one person end where those of others begin', Seeking with this slogan to make healthy coexistence possible.
From other perspectives it is interpreted that this does not fully ensure tolerance, since sometimes the parties interested in a certain dilemma are not in a position of symmetry. For example, there are societies that accept the voluntary interruption of pregnancy and others that condemn it, considering this practice a crime: in this case the right of a woman to decide about her own body and the right to life clash, and it is quite difficult to place oneself on a level of tolerance in the face of such great ethical challenges.
The following examples illustrate situations that show tolerance behaviors:
- At school, for people who have a slower learning rate
- With those who profess other religions
- Towards those who have a different economic position
- With those who have a different political ideology
- Upon receipt of a negative comment.
- Towards the difference in sexual preferences.
- Faced with the problems of others, even if they seem insignificant.
- With people who have a different ethnic origin.
- Towards people who did not have the best educational training.
- With a work team, even being the boss and the person in charge.
- With disabled people.
- A government will be tolerant if it allows freedom of the press and opinion.
- A state will be tolerant if it allows freedom of worship.
- A State will be tolerant if it allows the functioning of civil societies in defense of specific interests (for example, ecological ones).
- In public offices or in shops for the elderly, whose times often do not coincide with those of young and active people.
- A State will be tolerant if it accepts the right of persons of the same sex to enter into civil marriage.
- Mothers and fathers towards their adolescent children, who often adopt confrontational positions.
- At the time, the abolition of slavery was a very clear form of tolerance
- The United Nations is an example of the levels of tolerance reached in the world
- The administration of Justice will be tolerant if it takes the trouble to listen to the parties before issuing it.
