Centre for Lebanese Studies (CLS)

Education for social cohesion project. This project aims to: Promote active citizenship education and behaviours by focusing on developing students’ competencies, skills and attitudes Foster a supportive, democratic, and cohesive school environment that encourages participation and empowers the whole school community Assess and monitor the impact of this approach on young people's political, civic, and social attitudes, knowledge and skills. History Education: One of the few things that the majority of Lebanese from various spectrums of life seem to agree on is the urgency to develop a common History textbook, which will somehow unite the nation and solve the problem of confessionalism. Although, education including History education can play a role in addressing some of the causes that might lead to civil war, the current approach proposed in Lebanon suffers from several gaps. The passive and indoctrination approach contradicts the concept of education in democratic countries, and has also proved to be ineffective. Hence our study sought to adopt an inquiry based approach to History Teaching learning, which emphasises a critical and analytical pedagogy. Our hypothesis is that by developing these skills, students will be more able to challenge and critique the prejudices of their sectarian groups and understand and appreciate similarities and differences amongst groups.