Education and Social Cohesion

September 18, 2014
4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. EDT
Location: Berkley Center third floor conference room Map

Nations establish schools and universities to consciously create new and responsible citizens; hence education has a particularly important role in social cohesion. In some instances educational institutions play that role well and influence social cohesion in a positive way. In other cases they do not and may create barriers to social cohesion or even lay the intellectual underpinnings of social conflict and civil war.
Vanderbilt University's Stephen Heyneman discussed the mechanisms by which schools and universities influence social cohesion—sometimes in conjunction with religious institutions, sometimes in spite of them. The presentation provided examples of the social cohesion roles played by educational institutions in different regions, explained the danger to social cohesion raised by education corruption, laid out the steps by which nations may augment the social cohesion record of their educational institutions, and specified responsibilities of the international community and international agencies.

Discover similar content through these related topics and regions.

Opens in a new window