This paper studies the impact of school construction on the likelihood of conflict, drawing on a policy experiment in Indonesia. We collect novel panel data on political violence for 289 Indonesian districts in 1955-1994, and exploit exogenous variation in school construction. We find that education has a large conflict-reducing impact, and that the channels of transmission are both related to better economic perspectives, as well as increased inter-religious trust and tolerance. It is also shown that school construction results in a shift away from violent means of expression (i.e. armed conflict) towards non-violent ones (i.e. peaceful protests).