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Faith in School: Educational Policy Responses to Ethno-Religious Conflict in the Southern Philippines, 1935–1985

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2005

Jeffrey Ayala Milligan
Affiliation:
The Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Florida State University. He may be contacted at [email protected]

Abstract

The expansion of public education is often seen as an effective tool for the promotion of national identity and the mitigation of ethno-religious tensions in diverse post-colonial states. This essay questions such assumptions via an examination of successive Philippine governments' efforts to deploy educational policy as a response to chronic tensions between the nation's Christianised mainstream and a restive Muslim minority on the southern island of Mindanao. It suggests that the expansion of education to foster a cohesive national identity without careful reconsideration of the religious, cultural and political biases inherent in its content is likely to fail in achieving peaceful, cohesive relations between different ethno-religious communities in religiously diverse multicultural states.

Type
Articles
Copyright
© 2005 The National University of Singapore

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