officials seek to set appropriate curricular content in schools that are not necessarily consonant with
familial religious beliefs, morals, and practices.
Recommendations
With these two comments as a backdrop, I offer the following recommendations in addressing
the relationship between de-segregation strategies, cultural autonomy, and integration in the quest for
social cohesion:
1. Treat education as an integrative, rather than a segregative, factor. If tolerance and
acceptance of diversity of religious beliefs and world views are not encouraged in schools and not
imbued throughout curricula, both by majority and minority population groups, then we cannot expect to
find them present throughout the rest of societies in which social cohesion is the goal.
2. Create integrated, rather than merely desegregated, school systems that are open to all
children, regardless of their religious beliefs, ethnic origins, mother tongues, and cultural world views.
Educators in these schools must emphasize democratic, pluralistic, multi-cultural principles rather than