Education University of Hong Kong Tai Po, Hong Kong
Linda Chisholm
Education Rights and Transformation University of Johannesburg Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa
We are very pleased to announce the ISCHE Global Histories of Education book series. The International Standing Conference for the History of Education has organized conferences in the feld since 1978. Thanks to our collaboration with Palgrave Macmillan we now offer an edited book series for the publication of innovative scholarship in the history of education.
This series seeks to engage with historical scholarship that analyzes education within a global, world, or transnational perspective. Specifcally, it seeks to examine the role of educational institutions, actors, technologies as well as pedagogical ideas that for centuries have crossed regional and national boundaries. Topics for publication may include the study of educational networks and practices that connect national and colonial domains, or those that range in time from the age of Empire to decolonization. These networks could concern the international movement of educational policies, curricula, pedagogies, or universities within and across different socio-political settings. The ‘actors’ under examination might include individuals and groups of people, but also educational apparatuses such as textbooks, built-environments, and bureaucratic paperwork situated within a global perspective. Books in the series may be single authored or edited volumes. The strong transnational dimension of the Global Histories of Education series means that many of the volumes should be based on archival research undertaken in more than one country and using documents written in multiple languages. All books in the series will be published in English, although we welcome English-language proposals for manuscripts which were initially written in other languages and which will be translated into English at the cost of the author. All submitted manuscripts will be blind peer-reviewed with editorial decisions to be made by the ISCHE series editors who themselves are appointed by the ISCHE Executive Committee to serve three to fve year terms.
Full submissions should include: (1) a proposal aligned to the Palgrave Book Proposal form (downloadable here); (2) the CV of the author(s) or editor(s); and, (3) a cover letter that explains how the proposed book fts into the overall aims and framing of the ISCHE Global Histories of Education book series. Proposals and queries should be addressed to bookseries@ische.org. Preliminary inquiries are welcome and encouraged.
Rita Hofstetter • Bernard Schneuwly
The International Bureau of Education (1925–1968)
“The Ascent From the Individual to the Universal”
Rita Hofstetter
Université Genève Genève, Switzerland
Bernard Schneuwly
Université Genève Genève, Switzerland
ISSN 2731-6408
Global Histories of Education
ISSN 2731-6416 (electronic)
ISBN 978-3-031-41307-0 ISBN 978-3-031-41308-7 (eBook)
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Foreword
This book makes the history of the International Bureau of Education more accessible. This narrative is still largely unknown to the public (especially the English-speaking), even though, under the leadership of Jean Piaget, it was the frst intergovernmental institution in the feld of education. In this respect, it was a precursor of UNESCO, with which it collaborated from 1947 on, and which it joined in 1968.
The cover image could be a symbolic representation of the IBE’s ambition: to build unity in diversity, by considering the way in which sedimented territories are arranged in relation to one another, by dealing with their convergences and divergences, their diverse materials and textures. Those who built the IBE were in fact driven by the universalist conviction that all the territories of the planet belong to the same and unique world constituted by the erratic plurality of their formats and cultural bases; a plurality—and the way in which it evolves and fts into the environments— that precisely intrigued these comparativists in education and specialists in developmental processes, including child development.
The IBE with its astonishing longevity has been the focus of our attention for the past ten years, as we were eager to understand how it evolved over the twentieth century, while the internationalisation of educational phenomena was accelerating and a new global governance was imposed in this feld. Initiated by the work of the authors of this book, the research was founded, from 2016 on, by the Swiss National Science Fund grant (N° 100011_169747), directed by Hofstetter and Droux, and carried out by the Équipe de recherche en histoire sociale de l’éducation (Érhise). This has led to numerous works to which 15 other researchers, mostly
historians, some early in their careers, others more experienced, have contributed over fve years.1 The specifc contributions of each of them enrich this volume, which is therefore indebted to the dense seminars of collective work. We will not fail to refer to them at the appropriate points. Three theses have also been completed. Boss (2022) approaches the IBE by penetrating the beating heart of the Secretariat: via prosopographical approaches, she sheds light on the profles and trajectories of its members and examines their working tools and techniques, as well as their social circles and networks of collaborations. This allows her to identify how the premises of comparative education as a new disciplinary feld were built up, step by step, through conferences, surveys and exhibitions. Brylinski (2022) focuses on the IBE as an intergovernmental agency, questioning its “utopia” of recommending peaceful education at a time of heightened nationalism. Her specifcity resides in the critical look at the (mis)alliances, consultations and negotiations that allowed the construction of this intergovernmentalism by pointing out, thanks to enlightening network analyses, the political interferences in this forum which was supposed to be preserved from them. As for Loureiro’s thesis (forthcoming), it is distinguished by the emphasis placed on the interconnections with Latin America, in order to identify the modalities, channels and contents circulating in both directions, between the international Geneva of the interwar period and South America, which was also aspiring to identify itself on the international scene. Specifc case studies, such as Brazil, also make it possible to identify how its representatives reappropriated constructed knowledge and participated in its redefnition.
International scientifc seminars organised by the authors and by Érhise have provided the opportunity to discuss specifc methodological,
1 Joëlle Droux, Cécile Boss, Émeline Brylinski, Aurélie De Mestral, and Michel Christian, Anouk Darme-Xu, Blaise Extermann, Marie-Élise Hunyadi, Irina Leopoldoff, Valérie Lussi Borer, Clarice Loureiro, Frédéric Mole, Anne Monnier, Viviane Rouiller and Sylviane Tinembart.
theoretical and empirical issues with particularly qualifed experts,2 to whom we extend our warmest thanks. Many colleagues, through their own investigations and writings, their critical reviews and discussions, their translations and invitations, are present on these pages. This is evidenced by the many venues where we have been invited to present our work: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels, Budapest, Cadiz, Dublin, Freiburg, Geneva, Groningen, Lausanne, Lisbon, London, Lyon, Moscow, Paris, Porto, Rome, St. Petersburg, Uppsala, Warsaw, Zurich, and Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Washington, as well as Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, San Luis de Potosí, Quito and, more briefy, Bombay, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Hue.
We have also had the opportunity to submit the frst results of our investigations to critical discussion in numerous formalised scientifc networks, both in Switzerland (Swiss Historical Society, Swiss Society for Research in Education) and at the international level such as the conferences of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), the European Network in Universal and Global History (ENIUGH), the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) and the International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE).
Our investigations took advantage of the wealth of heritage preserved in a variety of sites and institutions, libraries and archival collections, frst and foremost the Archives Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau (AIJJR), the Jean Piaget Foundation (AJP), the League of Nations (LoN) and the United Nations (UN) and of course those of the IBE’s own Documentation and Archives Centre, whose non-published documents for the period in
2 Abdeljalil Akkari and Thibaut Lauwerier (University of Geneva), Iván Bajomi (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest), Jeremy Burman (Groningen University), Léonora DugonjicRodwin (Uppsala University, IDHES, École normale supérieure-Paris Saclay), Joyce Goodman (University of Winchester), Martin M. Grandjean (University of Lausanne), Alix Heiniger (University of Fribourg), Daniel Laqua (Northumbria University, Newcastle), Claire Lemercier (CNRS—Centre for the sociology of organisations, Paris), Damiano Matasci (Universities of Lausanne and Geneva), Antonio Nóvoa (University of Lisbon), Emmanuelle Picard (École normale supérieure, Lyon), André Robert (University of Lyon 2 Lumière), Marc Ratcliff and his team (Camille Jaccard, Ariane Noël) (University of Geneva), Rebecca Rogers (University of Paris Descartes), Gita Steiner-Khamsi (Norrag and Columbia University), Françoise Thébaud (University of Avignon) and Sylvain Wagnon (University of Montpellier).
question have now been digitalised. It is thanks to the generous welcome and support of the people in charge of these various archives that we have been able to carry out our work, for which we thank them. Our gratitude goes to the experts (Sébastien-Akira Alix and Christian Ydesen who have carefully commented on the whole manuscript and have helped to improve its clarity and relevance). The fnal production of the book benefted from the specifc complementary contributions of Viviane Rouiller.
Our deepest gratitude goes to Moya Jones who translated the text with unwavering expertise and readiness. Translating with such subtlety presupposes the ability, which is incomparable here, to make the problematic and the style of the authors one’s own. This requirement has important advantages: it reveals forms of language that conceal paucities of thought, helping us to make our analyses clearer without compromising the complexity of the subject; it involves reviewing a text in detail in order to get a deep understanding of its general coherence, thereby highlighting inconsistencies; it contributes to the process of the circulation and internationalisation of the subject, which is particularly important when it comes to unearthing the little-known work of our predecessors.
The translation and publication of this book in open access have been fnanced by a grant from the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) of the Swiss Confederation (2021–2022) and the iconographic credits have been generously offered by the IBE, the AIJJR and the AJP. To them as well, we express our gratitude.
Geneva, Switzerland 15 April 2023
Rita Hofstetter Bernard Schneuwly
reFerences
Boss, C. (2022). Une histoire des pratiques de comparaison du Bureau international d’éducation. Contextes et trajectoires collectives (1925–1945) [Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Geneva]. https://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/ unige:164477
Brylinski, É. (2022). Recommander l’utopie? Construction d’une coopération intergouvernementale par le Bureau international de l’éducation au milieu du 20e siècle [Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Geneva]. https://archiveouverte.unige.ch/unige:164046
Loureiro, C. (forthcoming). La coopération pédagogique promue par le Bureau international d’éducation (BIE): les interconnexions avec l’Amérique latine (1925–1952) [Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Geneva].
AbbreviAtions1
A-IBE Archives of the International Bureau of Education
AIJJR Archives Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau
AJP Archives Jean Piaget
CAME Conference of Allied Ministers of Education
Érhise Équipe de recherche en histoire sociale de l’éducation [Team of research on the social history of education]
IBE International Bureau of Education
ICIC International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation
ICPE International Conference on Public Education
IIIC International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation
ILO International Labour Offce
INGO International Nongovernmental Organisation
IO Intergovernmental organisation
LIEN Ligue internationale pour l’éducation nouvelle [International League for New Education]
LoN League of Nations
NEF New Education Fellowship
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OIC Organisation of Intellectual Cooperation
PEN Pour l’Ère nouvelle [For the New Era; journal of LIEN –see above]
1 Only those abbreviations that appear in more than one chapter have been included in this list.
R Recommendation
UIA Union of International Associations
UN United Nations
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientifc and Cultural Organisation
WFEA World Federation of Education Associations
List oF Figures
Fig. 8.1 Networks between Germany and other states in the section on peace education of the Bulletins from 1929 to 1932 (Note: in this presentation, we don’t differentiate the contents of the links)
Fig. 8.2 Networks between the USA and other states in the section on peace education of the Bulletins from 1929 to 1932 (Note: in this presentation, we do not differentiate the contents of the links)
Fig. 11.1 General schema of the ICPEs’ scenography (1934–1968): global organisation and zoom on the course of the ICPEs
Fig. 11.2 References to educational models during the 1934 ICPE, by state
Fig. 11.3 Graphical representation of quotes on the issue of compulsory schooling (ICPE, 1951). (a) Unimodal network (1951), extracted sub-network, based on citation links that “value the educational experience of states.” (b) Bimodal network, subnetwork selected from Ceylon, India, Iran, Israel and Pakistan tops
Fig. 14.1 Par ticipation in surveys (yearly average), national reports in the Yearbook, presence at ICPEs, membership in the IBE from 1934 to 1968
122
124
178
185
186
224
Fig. 15.1 Str ucture of revenue from 1929 to 1967 by percentage 240
Fig. 16.1 Graphic representation of the mentions, during the general discussion of the ICPE of 1955, on the fnancing of education. Source: compiled from the database “presence and interventions of states and their delegates at ICPEs (1934-1958)”, design of the network produced with Cytoscape software
Fig. 17.1 Analysis of the connotations in the discourses on Europe in ICPE. The connotations of the discourses are represented by typographical differences: “neutral”; ; ;
Image 3.2 Par ticipants at the 1928 IBE summer school “How to make the League of Nations known and develop the spirit of international cooperation”. At these courses, organised until 1934, women—mostly teachers—were in the majority. They were relegated to the shadows when the international
Image 10.2 IBE publication on a central theme of new education. In the frst years under its new status of 1929, the IBE continued to offcially promote ideas of new education as shown by the publication on self-government in school (another
Image 18.1 A double page from a Spanish school atlas, 1961. This atlas is part of the IBE’s school book collection. The question of geography was discussed in the 1939 and 1949 ICPEs, with strong stress on international comprehension and against
