Education, Identity, and Conflict: A Comparative Study of Northern Ireland and Cyprus

Groups experiencing intractable identity-based conflicts often find ways of reproducing the dynamics of said conflicts to younger generation via the socialization process and its agents. One such agent is institutionalized education systems which are used, either through their structure, which might be segregated and therefore conflict-sustaining, or content which might espouse conflict-supporting narratives that simultaneously present a biased view of the conflict, and demonize the ‘other’ community. Using the cases of conflict in Northern Ireland and Cyprus, this study explores the extent to which the structure and content of education respectively are either conflict mitigating or sustaining by looking into how educational reform correlates with, and is reflected in public opinion trends. Findings indicate that following structural educational reform in Northern Ireland, there was a positive trend towards reconciliatory and co-habitant attitudes in both communities in Northern Ireland although the communities did not fare equally on all indicators. In Cyprus, the Turkish Cypriot community proved to be responsive to changes in the official narrative from conflict-sustaining to conflict-mitigating consistent with what was expected. The Greek Cypriot community however, although having not experienced any reform did display a positive trend as well which was attributed to exogenous factors. The study is divided into 8 chapters: an introductory first chapter, a background of both conflicts in the second chapter; overviews of education systems in both cases within the context of reform in chapters three and four; public opinion trends in both cases in chapters five and six; the study’s hypotheses are tested in chapter seven while chapter eight provides a conclusion and summary of findings. Keywords: Cyprus, Northern Ireland, Identity-based Conflict, Education, Public Opinion.