So I have an idea that I have read about in a few places and sort of relate to. i am still playing around with it so do some commenting and help me out here. the idea is that education fosters acceptance (of all kinds, racial, sexual, ethnic, gender, etc.) here is what I remember about my uneducated years.

The first is of more blind tolerance than I think ever exists except when you are young. I want food, I want to play, etc and who ever will feed me or play with me works because that is what I want to do. Does not matter! Just gimme a sandwich and lets play legos.

Now I also remember elementary school where girls had cooties, liked pink and yellow, and played with dolls. Boys, in these days, had cooties (XY cooties, duh!), liked blue and red (green was neutral territory), and fought on the playground. In these days it was strange for me to want to go play jump rope with some girls. In fact, it was more socially appropriate for me to hold one's hand and to 'like' someone, in the kind of way that my mother has often asked about.
So, something happened between these two eras. I think I know what it is too. In the first, when we are really young, we don't really have a developed psyche. In fact, most of us haven't really developed yet. Correct me if I'm wrong but our frontal lobes scarcely even exist do they? Any way, some years pass, and we develop a sense of self and what not. I think that the time we start noticing and caring about differences is when we develop identities. Then we say hmmm, we are different! Cool? or BAD! I think that the initial reactions are directly influenced by what we have learned. At that time, we haven't really learned much of anything except what we have seen, heard, and experienced with our parents. So, first step, our first reactions and ideas about other people, who are different in any way, come from what we learn from our parents.

Next we go to school. What we learn there is a combination of social interaction and what is taught to us. In other words, we learn from what other people have learned. If you are Asian and learned to accept everyone, but everyone else hates white people, I think that you may change your mind rather quickly, especially at this age. Maybe you won't change your mind completely, but you will at least be a closeted accepting person.
~~~~Wavy transition into the future~~~~
Then you go on to more education and the same thing happens, etc. You learn more, ideas change....you get the idea.

Now I would think, that as you go on, learning more about the cultures of the world and more about philosophies and ways of thinking and problem solving and spelling (though spelling doesn't really have a lot to do with it) you begin to see that there really aren't that many differences between people. Example: genetics. Differences between groups, for example race, are far smaller than the differences found between groups. I agree that there are differences, I am not trying to deny the fact that my skin is much pastier than many other peoples, I am just saying that there is far more similar between me and my less ghostly friends that it makes no reason for me to hate them because they do not glow in the dark with whiteness.
(try this at home: watch bill Nye's new show, specific episode on race.)

So, there it is, I proved that education is directly correlated to tolerance and acceptance using personal experiences, general knowledge, you tube, and a note from my mother. (My dog ate the note, he also got hit by a car, I can't prove that that existed)
Yes, I know that trying to base any kind of theory on my own experiences is absolutely ridiculous. What isn't ridiculous are two studies done in different areas of the world looking at different things, but both finding the same general idea.
The first is a Harvard study done on immigration in Europe (<-- pdf alert) found something really cool. "More educated respondents are significantly less racist and place greater value on cultural diversity than their counterparts." Huh. So, while this study isn't looking exactly at what I am talking about, they did find that in this case that more educated people are less racist. Neat huh?

The next study was one done by the University of Minnesota on whiteness
"Age and income have little impact on a white person’s awareness of their racial identity, the study found. But Southerners and social conservatives place more emphasis on their racial identity than other white Americans, while those with more education place less." So what does this say? It says that educated white people tend to not care as much about their whiteness. I can't technically directly apply that as a blanket theory to my idea, but it does help push me in the right direction!

In conclusion, I really do think that education is correlated to tolerance and acceptance of all differences including race, sex, ethnicity, and gender.

So, given what I have, let me know what you think. I know not everything is perfect, but its a start.

peace