How can the triumph of Western liberalism be reconciled with the pictures of chaos, war, crime, terror, and poverty which continue to appear in the daily news? Does violence coexist, in a significant fashion, with capitalism and democracy? What role does education play in this context? In addressing these questions, this paper presents a framework which compares and contrasts different forms of violence in a systematic way, discusses how this typology can be used along various analytical dimensions, and focuses on the complex relationship between violence and education as an illustration of how the framework can be applied to analyze issues which are not commonly looked at from a violence and human rights perspective. The paper is guided by the assumption that violence is a multifaceted phenomenon associated with specific causes and responsible people or institutions. It also reflects a strong belief in the existence of universal human rights and the premise that the different forms of violence mentioned are sources of harm or suffering regardless of the type of society and culture a person lives in and individual characteristics do not matter. It finds that the possibility to enjoy an education and the quality of that educational experience bear on all forms of violence. (Contains 2 tables and 44 notes.) (BT)