The IBE Axiom: “Rising from the Individual to the Universal”

Abstract

As seen in preceding chapters, the links to the educational reformist movements became less official and more blurred. The IBE’s leaders however were neither disowning their educational orientations nor abandoning their pacifist mission. The IBE was oriented towards guaranteeing access to education for all, and developing the knowledge and methods that could be universalised to achieve this. This was underpinned by a powerful psychological theory with a universal aim and rooted in nature that must be respected to enable the child to overcome egocentrism to attain the universal. But contrary to some UNESCO wishes, the universal aim was not to establish a world culture but working to reconcile local, national and even patriotic points of view while promoting a global citizenship, and striving against any cultural hegemony.

With links to the educational reformist movements becoming less official and more blurred, did this mean that the IBE’s leaders were disavowing their orientations? Can we deduce that the IBE was abandoning its pacifist mission by differentiating itself somewhat from the liberal internationalism that permeated the diplomatic life of the LoN’s organisations? By castigating intergovernmental rivalries and threats of cultural hegemony between empires, were the leaders of the IBE abandoning any intergovernmental mission and any guiding educational policies?

By examining here the evolution of the IBE’s activities from the mid-1930s to the late 1960s, we shall attempt to identify the spirit in which they were undertaken. We find the same dynamic as that highlighted above. It was with regard to the context, in light of its main partners or supposed competitors, that the IBE’s managers positioned themselves in order to establish the legitimacy and power of their enterprise, without betraying its founding principles.

Universalisable Knowledge and Teaching Methods

The themes of the surveys, begun after 1932 and mainly linked to the ICPEs, reflect a fundamental reorientation. From 1933 onwards, they focused almost exclusively on public sector schools, the infrastructure, curriculum and content of primary and secondary schools, as well as the status, profile and training of the teachers who worked in them.¹ Can we conclude from this that the reformist convictions of IBE staff were being eroded? That a clear pedagogical neutrality was now favoured? In reality, the IBE adjusted above all to the expectations of the new and main partners it had now chosen: the selection of themes and the way in which they were approached took into account the concerns and constraints of the governments and ministries responsible for public education and embraced all the crucial issues of official school systems. The IBE was presenting itself as a global platform for educational internationalism, taking on the mission of universalising access to education, a condition for real social justice. Later on, it worked symbiotically with UNESCO’s appeal for the right to education (Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), and Piaget was even appointed by UNESCO to be its official interpreter and ambassador.²

Careful analysis of the orientations of the questionnaires in the international surveys, as well as the comparative syntheses and the debates and recommendations which followed on from them, allows us to state that the principles of the new education and its ideals of peace and world understanding largely persisted through the decades. Nor should it be forgotten that reformist circles, even the most ardent and long-standing opponents of the state school, now saw the possibility of propagating their principles and methods within the official network. The IBE, in this respect, became a real catalyst for stimulating and expanding this process on a global scale (Hofstetter & Mole, 2018). This dissemination was certainly accompanied by a form of dilution, which is also reflected in the rhetoric of the IBE itself. Rather than calling for a Copernican reversal, for a universalisable educational revolution, the post-war period onwards saw the prevalence of notions like pedagogical movement, literacy campaign, a boom in schooling, reconstruction and then modernisation of education, march towards modernity, renovation of education systems and pedagogical innovation.³

The knowledge built up and the methods tried and tested in the reformist movements were still favoured, and through them the spirit of the new education. Among the key words that were repeated like a refrain were the incentives to consider the interests and needs of young people, to arouse their curiosity and activity, and to anchor teaching material in the concrete and the real; it was a question of encouraging experimentation and manipulation, in order to develop the potential and autonomy of pupils, so that they learn to learn and sharpen their critical faculties, thus initiating them into their responsibilities as citizens.

With regard to the curriculum,⁴ overwork is decried, while the variety of content, the importance of observation and experimentation, as well as manual and artistic activities, which were dear to the new education, were emphasised. It was recommended that the content of school subjects should be oriented towards the potentialities and interests of the child, and, by differentiating them, should scrupulously respect the stages highlighted by developmental psychology, namely “the very laws of natural development”.⁵

How was this psychopedagogy presented to the IBE’s partners and relayed or even reappropriated by them? (Image 10.1).

Image 10.1

A collection of children’s literature books. The IBE organised several surveys on children’s literature (Marie Butts was herself an author). The last one was financed by the Rockefeller Foundation in Latin America during World War II. (© IBE)

Command Nature by Obeying It: From Egocentrism to Solidarity

The reference to nature has several dimensions that relate to the defining principles of new education, establishing nature as the supreme instance of harmonious development. It was therefore argued that the schoolchild should be brought into close contact with his or her environment, with nature itself, in a discourse that sometimes even had an avant-garde ecological tone. The introduction to the natural sciences, in particular, was supposed to be done with “respect for natural resources, which if wasted, make population growth a paradoxical danger”, was the plea by Bodet, the UNESCO director, at the 1949 ICPE co-organised by UNESCO and the IBE. He concluded: “We command nature only when we obey her” (1949, p. 23), an expression emblematic of the principles of the new education, which the UNESCO director took almost verbatim from the earlier writings of Bovet, Claparède, Ferrière and Piaget.

One no longer thinks in terms of a particular pedagogical movement opposed to the so-called traditional school. The principles of a renewal of school and pedagogy have been absorbed and naturalised becoming, as it were, a spontaneous way of thinking. This “naturalisation” in the discourse was based on child psychology, more particularly on genetic psychology and moral judgement which Piaget, in the wake of his fellow workers at the Institut Rousseau, had been studying in depth since before he took up his post as head of the IBE. In the early 1930s, he summed up this general orientation of international education with a succinct formula: “to lead the child from the individual to the universal” and “thereby transform their egocentrism into objectivity”:

The only way to do this is to “command nature by obeying it”, i.e. to use the psychology of the child. Now, by an unexpected and almost moving encounter, it turns out that this ascent from the individual to the universal corresponds to the very processes of the child’s intellectual and moral development. […] The individual is childish egocentrism, the universal is cooperation, i.e. internal solidarity. (Piaget, 1931a, p. 26; italics are ours)

In particular, Piaget’s theorisation of self-government and teamwork demonstrates that cooperation between individuals leads to mutual criticism and progressive objectivity, which gives access to a kind of “morality of thought”, rooted in solidarity.^.6

We should note that these enthusiastic words are however tempered by reflections on social evolution in which Piaget transposes his analyses of the evolution of the child onto the chaos of the world, inverting, as it were, the recapitulationist theory: it is not the child who is going through the stages of humanity again, but rather it is humanity which is not realising the highest possibilities of psychological development. “Why, internationally, are we still at the ‘primitive’ childish stage? […] The spirit of cooperation has not yet penetrated the whole of society. And why? It is because of education” (Piaget, 1932, p. 312). That is what has to be transformed in order to perfect humanity. This mission always seemed to meet with the unanimous approval of the IBE and of its international conferences, as shows the following remark by Oliveiras Guimaraes, general inspector of Private Education in Portugal:

It is incumbent on us to pass on the torch that lights the course of human destiny to those whom we will shape to continue our task. May the brighter future forming on the horizon make for the happy resolution of the dark concerns of the present time. (ICPE, 1935, p. 74)

This “youthful zeal” that was called on even in 1939, despite the world’s various anxieties and troubles, was to rally the IBE partners around the “same goal and desire”: “to prepare a better and happier youth, and thus a better humanity” (p. 88).⁷ In the immediate post-war period, the IBE’s mission of “lighting the world with the torch of education” (ICPE, 1949, p. 97) was lyrically repeated.⁸ This refrain was reiterated over and over again by the ministers who came to Geneva for the World Education Forum. Imbued with this reconciliatory psychopedagogy, they give the educator a semi-godly power: “the world can only save itself through the efforts of educators. […] thanks to them, man will become capable of forging his own destiny” (ICPE, 1953, pp. 134–135).⁹ Furthermore, in summing up the 25 years of his leadership of the IBE, Piaget concluded, “These recommendations are the glory of our IBE and no supporter of the new education, not even a psychologist, could be ashamed of them”¹⁰ (1954, pp. 27–28).

Far from being perceived as an allegiance to a militant movement, for these IBE representatives respect for the natural development of the child would thus encourage the development of the potentialities contained in each individual, and the possibilities of relating to the universal and, in fact, of gaining access to moral judgement, necessary for forming oneself into a responsible citizen (Image 10.2).

Image 10.2

IBE publication on a central theme of new education. In the first years under its new status of 1929, the IBE continued to officially promote ideas of new education as shown by the publication on self-government in school (another publication was on team work in school). It contains important contributions by Jean Piaget on educational questions he would refer to in all his later pedagogical texts. (© AIJJR)

Democracy and Conflicts of Reciprocity

International solidarity remained on the IBE’s agenda, even during the explosive 1930s, during the new global outbreak of war, in the immediate post-war period and then during the Cold War. We note, however, that the pacifist zeal was fading, partly in view of the controversies surrounding it. This was true from the turn of the 1930s. In 1934, Marie Butts set the tone by recommending more pragmatism and rationality to convince young people who, en masse, would oppose all pacifism and answer to the beat of the nationalist drum. Written in her small office at the IBE and in its name, the secretary general’s message was published in the widely read columns of the World Peace magazine:

The task that faces the educational organisations of the world today is the elaboration of a practical programme for international education. It is unsound psychology to endeavour to fight against the ardent nationalism of the young by scoldings and lecturings. Positive, dynamic, creative methods must be discovered to harness the enthusiasm of nationalistic young patriots-in-their-teens to the business of studying facts seriously and learning to think creatively according to their own individual possibilities, in order to fit themselves for elaborating new ways of managing the affairs of their country so as to secure its real prosperity and happiness. (World Peace, 1934, April)

Over the decades, the more consensual terms of solidarity, fraternity, understanding, cooperation and interdependence had taken over from the earlier dominant pacifism, which was decried as naive, idealistic, condescending and even too bourgeois in the 1920s. These notions infused the IBE’s entire pedagogy. Unwilling to be satisfied with internationalist orations alone, above all the IBE’s promoters multiplied pedagogical approaches in order to build this international spirit on the basis of real-life experience. In line with Ferrière,¹¹ Piaget became its spokesman: he rejected the supposed “remedies of a receptive nature” “in the form of lessons” and “appeals to sensitivity and imagination” in favour of sharpening the critical sense of pupils, by means of their active responsibility: “only” the technique of soliciting “the activity of the pupil” was likely to have “happy results”:

Social relations should be instituted among children, and particularly among adolescents; an appeal should be made to their activity and sense of responsibility. Thus material help to the children of war-devasted countries might be encouraged, also correspondence between pupils in different countries and, above all, clubs where children could take some part in adult society, could discuss it, criticize it, and become associated in active youth politics. (ICPE, 1949, p. 36)

The IBE’s spokespersons aimed to transform classrooms into a space where democracy was lived and constructed on a daily basis, a condition for responsible citizenship aware of the global issues. As Piaget explained, the classroom, like everything in social life, was exposed to “conflicts of reciprocity”. Learning to work together would make it possible to overcome this, thanks to the acquisition of the deep understanding of others that it presupposes:

But above all, it is only through a system of advanced educational methods [“méthodes actives” in French], laying the main stress on common inquiry (team work) and the social livres of the pupils themselves (self-government in the schools) that the study of national and international viewpoints and the difficulty of co-ordinating them can take on any real significance for the pupils […] international relations are the arena, though on a different level, in which the same conflicts are fought out and the same misunderstandings made as in social life as a whole […] once a social life is organised amongst pupils themselves it is possible to extend it to the international sphere, with international exchanges of students and event joint group studies of specific international problems. (Piaget, 1949/51, pp. 115–116)

It would even be a “conversion of the whole mind”, Piaget explained. By encouraging decentration, this education in reciprocity would provide a springboard for initiation into international collaboration, which was presented as “international civic spirit” at the last ICPE in 1968, after Piaget and Rosselló had resigned. But peace was still conceived as the primary mission of the IBE, which was itself presented as an emissary of a universal ambition as stated by Tena Artigas, delegate from Spain, professor and president of the ICPE: “Peace, – ideal and object of an almost perfect human condition – peace, heroine of all the philosophies and religions, appears to us everywhere and at all times as a universal ambition” (1968, p. 35).

If the aims of better education for a more peaceful humanity are indeed common, how is the universalist intention reflected in them?

Universal Aims: Cultural Diversities vs World Culture

Clearly, the IBE’s values were imbued with a universalist tone: it was the future of the entire planet that was the focus of its actions, aiming at “fruitful conclusions for all humanity”.¹² It was a question of promoting the quality of education for all young people, wherever they lived, whatever their background. Moreover, we have just pointed out the redemptive dimension of this education, which is both emancipating and reconciling. First, let us recall that the IBE fully recognised the principles of Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that the UN defined and adopted in 1948, establishing the “universal right to education”.

In our attempt to understand their position, we detect a possible paradox between the universal for which IBE respondents pleaded and their conviction of the intangible individuality of each person and the diversity of viewpoints and cultures. How did they negotiate what may seem to us to be a contradiction between two of the axioms they always claimed to hold?

• The postulate of the irreducible individuality of each person, also defined by their environment, which implies a pedagogical differentiation taking into account the individual specificities and grounding of each person, which echoes an always distinctive rooting, which is in fact also patriotic and national, and

• The postulate of a community of destiny of individuals as well as nations, supposedly subsuming particular, patriotic and national interests under an internationalist quintessence sometimes presented as universalist.

While wishing to establish themselves from Geneva as protagonists of events on the whole planet, how did they deal with the patriotic and national chord that also vibrated within them and that they discovered among their students, their various social circles and their governmental partners?

At all times, this dialectic between differential and universal aims—personalistic and communitarian, to use the later expression of the director general of UNESCO Torres Bodet (ICPE, 1949, p. 26)¹³—prompts reflection, and here again it led to a clarification of the IBE’s position, in consultation with its partners.

As early as 1927, the resolutions adopted at the end of the Prague Congress “Peace through Schools”, reported by Bovet, deemed that there should be “no opposition between the attachment of each individual to his homeland and the love of each and every one of us for humanity”, but “that the patriotism of the majority of children and teachers in all countries can be elevated and purified”; the Congress endorsed the Declaration of the Committee of Understanding of the Major International Associations:

[It is a matter of] rooting the child in their natural environment [but] solidarity with their family and their country […] neither can nor should stop at national borders, for civilisation has been and remains the common work of all peoples, including those who have been hardest hit by history. (Bovet, 1927, pp. 144 and 147)¹⁴

In the early 1930s, a psychological theorisation was proposed by Piaget for whom “internationalism is essentially a psychological problem”:

The spontaneous tendencies of our mind push us […] either to set up our national egocentrism as an absolute, or to dream of an abstract and ideal humanity. These two attitudes amount to the same thing, because the second absolute is basically only the first, projected into the heavens. (Piaget, 1931b, p. 65)

The “malignant genius of nationalism” and the “hegemony of national cultures” would testify to the “emotional and intellectual poverty of man” and the “lack of universality from which human reason still suffers”. It is therefore necessary to build a “new intellectual and moral attitude, made up of understanding and cooperation, which, without leaving the relative, achieves objectivity by putting together the particular points of view themselves” (p. 92). Far from requiring the “standardisation of diverse points of view”, this implied, conversely, the “coordination of distinct perspectives”. These psychological principles were to constitute the theoretical basis of the IBE’s positioning; its axioms echoed them, as we have just mentioned: “the ascent from the individual to the universal”, “unity in diversity”.

However, international collaboration could not deny national and regional roots, which are the basis for the construction of individualities, as well as their particularities and diversities. Familiar with Swiss compromises, the delegate of the Swiss Federal Council and president of the IBE’s Executive Committee, Alfred Borel, translated this in 1958 by juxtaposing two maxims: “Education tailored to the child”, quoting Claparède and his first fellow workers at the Institut Rousseau, but, he added straight away, an education that was at the same time “tailored to the peoples” (p. 26).¹⁵ Appreciated in its formulation, the compromise was however questioned because it did not solve the equation since above all it insisted on differentiation.

What about the guarantees that everyone, in all parts of the world, would have fair opportunities to benefit from a broad education, linked to global solidarity?

A conciliation is seen in the possibility of seizing “the data of the environment while serving the cause of the national unification with the aim of reaching the stage of the mutual understanding and the bringing together of all the men and all the people” (ICPE, 1958, p. 61). From local to international via national? The issue at stake was the consolidation of national unity, which continued to dominate educational policies and was not without its own claims in respect of identity. Thus, far from rejecting the love of the homeland and the solid foundation of the national soil, both of which guarantee prosperity, it was a question of broadening horizons in order to build a world citizenship, to use expressions common in 1958. Joaquin Tena Artigas, delegate of Spain and director general of Primary Education, made, for instance, the following proposal:

A possible solution to reconcile these two opposite points of view would be the use of environmental material for teaching, while serving the cause of national unity and aiming at mutual understanding and reconciliation among all men. (p. 63)

In contrast to some of the UNESCO controversies at the time (Maurel, 2010), it was only rarely that the idea of a “world culture” was mentioned at the IBE. Convinced of the need to build global understanding, international civic-mindedness and brotherhood between peoples, the IBE did not choose the option of shaping and above all universalising a so-called world culture. There was agreement on the need to reconcile a patriotic spirit constitutive of national and regional identities (sometimes described as localism) with the promotion of a global citizenship; but at the same time, there was resistance to any cultural hegemony and a rejection of any levelling of differences and particularities. Let us be clear, however: the very process of claiming—from little Geneva, representative of the Western culture of the industrialised countries—to improve the education of the planet had a universalising, even civilising aspect.¹⁶

While the dialectic remained intrinsic to the psychopedagogical positions of the IBE’s leaders, who drew on it to refine their theories, we can see a clear evolution in their positions as they faced translating their principles into an instrument for intergovernmental negotiations on educational and cultural policies.¹⁷

Educational internationalism was gradually no longer encapsulated, one might say, in reformist aims, progressive ideologies, pacifist orations or psychopedagogical theories. In the post-war decades, it gradually materialised in the quest for universal access to education that met the cultural aspirations of peoples: the positive values were the development of the personality of each individual, social harmony, democratisation and the improvement of international cooperation, and, thanks to the school, were aiming in the long run at no more and no less than “a world reorganisation” under the aegis of solidarity, freedom and peace. For them, universality was the basic principle of any democracy, and they hoped to rally all the peoples of the world to it.