For the first time in history, a day school is being proposed for the children of two opposing governments. Each of ten schools could catalyze a solution in their respective conflict. In five of these conflicts, seats of de jure or de facto governments lie so close to their counterpart that each side’s leaders could feasibly send their children to the same day school. In the remaining five, unanimously seen as intra-state conflicts, instability has split the government and the capital city into two or more factions, who presumably have families there with children who need to be schooled. The likeliest place for this schooling strategy to succeed is in Nicosia, Cyprus.
The Cypriot School
Cooperative learning drives The Cypriot School, an envisioned nursery through secondary school straddling the Green Line in Nicosia and guarded by the UN peacekeepers already there. It would be designed to be the best schooling option in the city and of minimal cost to the students’ families. The start-up and annual operating costs would be very high compared to other schools, but if viewed as a prototype for similar schools in costly quagmires conflicts like Iraq, Afghanistan, Jerusalem and the West Bank, Korea, Kashmir, the Golan Heights, and Lebanon, this might be a very cost-effective investment for the international community.
The Cypriot School would accept only two-year-olds each year as its new students, two-thirds of whom shown to be the most politically influential for their age group, and the remaining third through a public lottery. The teachers and administrators would be Cypriot, and the curriculum would be negotiated by the two sides’ educational ministries. David and Roger Johnsons' cooperative school would be the model for the school's organizational culture, so deadlocked issues between the two ministries would be resolved through Decision Controversy.
The Cypriot School would rely on cooperative learning frequently enough for students to see that it behooves them academically to identify more with their shared Cypriotness than with their exclusive Greek or Turkish ethnicity - perhaps for 35-40 percent of their lessons. History lessons on sensitive Cypriot topics would rely on the Johnsons' Academic Controversy method. All classes would be taught in English except for language classes. Classes for the two native languages would have to be ethnically homogeneous since many Greek Cypriots do not see the fluency of Turkish as a worthwhile goal for their children.
Input would also be sought from prospective parents, who hopefully would want their children to have healthy interactions daily with Cypriots from the other community. Some Turkish Cypriot children currently cross the line each day to go to a renowned school on the southern side, but numerous factors make that a less-than-ideal alternative. The ultimate factor for parents would be the quality of The Cypriot School relative to other options in North and South Nicosia. Therefore, best practices of existing schools in Cyprus and those abroad would be incorporated into the blueprint. Only by offering the highest rate of learning and security can a school such as this attract enough politically influential families to tip the scale.
How would the school catalyze the solution?
Possibility One – Cognitive dissonance
Parents will want their child to excel academically, which will require trusting and cooperating with classmates of the other ethnicity, but the parents’ distrust of these other Cypriots will impede the child’s chances. Thus, the parents will experience cognitive dissonance. Naturally wanting the best for their child, they will gradually trust the other Cypriots and inadvertently pass their dissonance onto the more hardened family members, such as their own parents. These older individuals might then feel torn between their own distrust of the other side and not wanting to have friction with their grandchildren and adult children, who have perhaps started saying positive things about the other group.
A variable of the strength of the dissonance here might be the frequency of interactions between generations. With each additional branch along the family tree, the dissonance would weaken more, but once it hits the family member in the government, it might merge with a colleague’s mild dissonance that originated with a student in that colleague's family. If the school could systematically enroll its targeted group of two-year-olds each year, a gradually growing sense of the inevitable, fueled by these colleagues’ attitudinal shifts, would make even the most hardened leaders more willing to be cooperative and creative with their counterparts. This process would be imperceptible like the speed of ivy climbing the two sides of a wall.
For elucidation, here is an analogy using isolated rainfall, dams, and the impact on a dying fruit tree.
Possibility Two – The Alumni
Attending the school would not guarantee future employment in government, but workers in a certain industry in 40 years are most likely to be related to the current ones, hence the need to enroll the current politicians’ children. Alumni of this school would likely identify foremost with their shared Cypriotness, and with that leading to more trust, cooperation, and creativity, the brainstorming during future top-level negotiations would bear relatively more fruit. Assuming the Cyprus solution exists, it remains elusive so far because officials have grown up identifying more with their divisive ethnic groups - those on Cyprus or in the Greek or Turkish fatherlands - than with all those who are Cypriot. Neither side's populace would have to fear an unbalanced deal since the proposed solution would still have to pass an island-wide referendum.
What Has Been Tried in Cyprus Already?
The Cyprus problem has been infamously unsolvable, but no proposals yet have had a formal school as their crux or participants younger than teenagers. I was recently at a University of Denver conference for the conflict, which was attended by many scholars who had conducted resolution workshops on the island. Hardly anyone there knew about cooperative learning, which confirmed my belief of the crevasse between scholars focused on international conflict resolution and those specializing in cooperative learning and in-school conflict resolution programs.
Conclusion
The Cypriot School is not the political, economic, or military solution to Cyprus’s problems. There are clearly other things that need to be done. However, Greek and Turkish Cypriots need to learn together in the same room at the youngest age possible in order for each person to value more their shared Cypriotness than their exclusive ethnicities. While it is natural to identify first with Cypriots of one’s own ethnicity, there is arguably no value in identifying with those in Greece or Turkey before identifying with Cypriots of the other ethnicity.
Having a bi-zonal state with a weak central government means nothing if students grow up in “separate but equal” schools. A few schools in South Nicosia include Turkish Cypriots, but they do not have equal representation of both the two ethnicities and the opposing history curricula. Most of these Turkish Cypriot students also happen to live on that side of Nicosia. If we want to optimize the chances not just for peace but also friendship in the lives of Greek and Turkish Cypriot children, we must educate them together in a school that literally straddles the Green Line. Greek Cypriots might say that the school legitimates the divide, but the reverse is true: It creates a corridor to unify the friendship circles of future Cypriots, particularly those who may eventually be the leaders. It is logical to think that these young Cypriots will then work together to bring down this barrier and also generate ideas for a creative political agreement that their leaders had yet to consider.
Some might also insist that Turkey remove its troops from Northern Cyprus before ground is broken for this school. I will assume two things here: 1) All else equal, 30 more years of the status quo would be worse for inter-ethnic attitudes in Cyprus than 30 years of The Cypriot School; 2) There is a strong chance that the status quo could continue for that long. If Turkey is using its concerns about a renewal in prejudice - and then hate crimes - toward Turkish Cypriots as justification for maintaining its military troop presence, would it not be wise, with all else equal, for Greek Cypriots to invest in an option that would not require a potentially unfair political agreement but that would still reduce this prejudice in their community?
The Cypriot School can be effective regardless of whether there is reunification, permanent partition, or 30 more years of the status quo. Still, there are numerous concerns that must be addressed. The cost of such a school would be astronomical. Donors would have to be found. Many parents would refuse to send their children to such a school, and their arguments must be fully heard, addressed and incorporated into the school’s design before any ground is broken. The next step may be to conduct a study examining their attitudes about such a school as this one.
If Mehmet Talat and Dimitris Christofias had young children who were cooperating with each other on group projects every day throughout their schooling experience and then telling their fathers about it at the dinner table each night, these two men would feel increasing pressure to set a good example for their own children by being even more cooperative with their counterpart, and in turn, more creative when brainstorming a solution to the Cyprus problem. While they do not have children of the same age, some of their respective colleagues do, and these two men might soon have grandchildren born in the same year.
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