Publish at February 24 2026 Updated February 24 2026
Human rights, women's rights, the environment and, more generally, respect for others are contested as soon as they call into question the dominant or privileged positions that make them topical...
Racism, colonialism and the domination of one group over another are reflected in a number of practices that ultimately become part of structures and mentalities. They leave traces that are difficult to ignore. And yet many groups manage to do just that: the phenomenon has been aptly dubbed "Active Ignorance".
It's a desire to erase memories and traces, to minimize consequences, to distort recognized facts, to discredit individuals, or simply to fabricate false histories to conceal inconsistencies in the narrative and avoid taking responsibility for a situation from which one has inherited and from which one still benefits.
In addition to active ignorance, we can also add a little intellectual laziness, which makes the most lame arguments acceptable. When you want to ignore a problem, you have very little chance of correcting it.
Gilles Beauchamp and Sivane Hirsch's article in Formation et profession magazine, tackles the subject directly and based on real cases.
"Active ignorance has several dimensions. It includes the absence of information, but also false beliefs, the absence of concepts or the presence of inadequate concepts, oppressive social scripts, identity stereotypes and prejudices, resistance mechanisms (structural or psychological) that make it active, and so on. In short, active ignorance is a self-protecting socio-cognitive bias that manifests itself as insensitivity to social identities..."
"...when the school curriculum fails to address a nation's colonial history or does so by euphemizing injustices and violence or, worse, justifying them in order to absolve settlers and their descendants of any moral fault, it is difficult to be able to have a dialogue that leads to understanding and recognition of, for example, indigenous knowledge and claims."
"Active ignorance can undermine inclusive dialogue in many ways, and teachers must address this in order to deconstruct the mechanisms of exclusion and discrimination that operate in the school context."
Four very edifying pages to get to the point of dialogue.
Beauchamp, G. and Hirsch, S. (2025). Active ignorance in the classroom: an obstacle to inclusion [Chronicle].
Formation et profession, 33(2), 1-4. https://dx.doi.org/10.18162/fp.2025.a347
https://formation-profession.org/fr/pages/article/33/44/a347
Illustration : ShutterStock - 2312268095
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