Our analysis of the contribution of education to growth recognizes its dual role of building human capital and promoting a common culture. It indicates that when different cultural groups separately determine the cultural orientation of their school curricula this may result in excessive polarization and sub-optimal growth. The optimal trajectory involves a gradual, reciprocal convergence of school curricula towards the middle, but may be difficult to implement in a political context in which curricula are determined by legislative bargaining. Coercive centralization then results in overly rapid homogenization and may not be superior to a decentralized school system.
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Gradstein et al. (2002) studied this question.
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