Scenography of the First Intergovernmental Parliament on Education

Abstract

Chapters 11, 12 and 13 of Part III analyse the modus operandi of the IBE and its theoretical and methodological underpinnings. This chapter gives a detailed description of the functioning of the International Conferences on Public Education, its scenography which would last, with some adjustments, from 1934 to 1968. Two main topics were discussed in these conferences which are presented and categorised: on the one hand, the educational movement all over the world; on the other hand, international surveys on crucial problems in education. An insert presents a network analysis of some debates in the International Conferences.

In 1934, Jean Piaget, IBE director, and Paul Lachenal,¹ representing the Swiss Confederation which hosted the ICPEs, both spoke with one voice to specify the issues and the modus operandi of the Conferences. Over the decades, the general principles drawn up by them were repeated over and over again, and would guide all the succeeding ICPEs, even though the terminology evolved according to the context, the partners present and the speakers.

Let us enter further into the scenography proper of these Conferences (Fig. 11.1 gives a schematic overview), in order to then tackle the two main aims that these meetings examined, which were, on the one hand, the progress made in schooling around the world, and, on the other, the most crucial pedagogical problems that needed to be resolved (Image 11.1).

Image 11.1

The second meeting of the IBE Council July 1931. It took place in the famous Alabama room where the mediation between the USA and Great Britain concerning the vessel “Alabama” was signed (1872) and where the International Red Cross was created (1864). (© IBE)

An Almost Perennial Rationale

These Conferences were designed as a “forum” where, through their delegates, the “leading school authorities” on the planet would regularly set out their “pedagogical preoccupations”, their “ambitions”, their “realisations” and sometimes also their “disillusions”. It was a question of “highlighting the scattered and often unrecognised national assets”, of encouraging “healthy emulation between countries so they could improve their school systems” and of identifying “the most important problems in common in order to try to resolve them collectively”.² The range of expressions used to describe the ICPEs and to state their aims has grown over the decades, but the spirit has remained unchanged. In this “first world parliament” or these “intergovernmental meetings on education”, also presented as “international school for adults”, “a week of regeneration of minds and souls”, it is a question of defining together, “collegially”, how “the intellectual, physical and moral lot of the child can be improved”. As those “responsible for the educational destiny of the planet”, “in charge of the future of tens of millions of young people on earth”, their duty is to work together “putting aside our worries and differences” to “jointly guarantee educational justice on earth”.³

Inaugurated in 1934,⁴ the ICPEs were held over 5 to 15 days in the summer, and they kept going continuously until 1968.⁵ Apart from the Conferences suspended during the Second World War, there are two changes to be pointed out: first, the ICPEs were organised jointly by the IBE and UNESCO as soon as their collaboration agreement was signed in 1947; second, the number of participating countries rose significantly from 1955 onwards, thanks to various independence and decolonisation movements. This would lead to adjustments being made particularly in the format of the invitations to attend and in the way exchanges were organised,⁶ without, however, directly impacting the very foundations of the scenography and even less so the modus operandi of these Conferences when they discussed pedagogy. However, we will see in the following parts that the new configuration of the world would have an impact on the way in which delegates used the ICPEs to make their voices and positions heard in the concert of nations.⁷

Here we present the general scenography of the ICPEs, as conceived during the 35 years in which Jean Piaget and Pedro Rosselló were the main conductors, assisted by meticulous secretaries, interpreters and translators, whose amateurism was gradually giving way to more technical specialisation, while the ICPEs were gaining in audience.

In the year preceding the opening of any ICPE, the IBE Secretariat, under the aegis of the Bureau’s Executive Committee and, from 1947, of the UNESCO-IBE Joint Committee, carried out a threefold task, inviting school authorities to join in their efforts:

• Using an increasingly detailed survey grid, but whose content remained broadly the same, the IBE surveyed the authorities in charge of education systems in order to document their recent educational reforms.

• Through an in-depth questionnaire, the Bureau made surveys regarding the position of these same bodies on the three, and then (since 1946) two, crucial educational problems placed on the agenda, which changed each year.

• The IBE encouraged and supported its ministerial partners to contribute to the Permanent Exhibition of Public Education, whose stands were national and which were progressively linked to the themes discussed at the Conferences.

In the opinion of the survey designers, all the data collected helped “to get an idea about the progress of education in the world” (ICPE, 1946, p. 7) and to contribute to this. This perspective gave rise to exchanges during the ICPE: each Conference member was thereby invited to discover the innovations initiated in other countries and the responses provided for the educational problems discussed, so they could take advantage of them in the orientation of their own school policy. The exhibitions themselves helped in this by providing visual access to some of the specificities of the exhibiting nations.

Like a ritual, the format and substance of the invitations and the opening and closing ceremonies of the Conference were also perennial. The letter of invitation and the inaugural speech were entrusted to the representatives of the inviting body, Switzerland, until 1946, then to UNESCO and the IBE together. Once the election of the president and vice presidents of the Conference was completed,⁸ it was they who led the discussions in the assembly and who wound them up.⁹ The closing ceremony always systematically included speeches and thanks expressed by the highest-ranking dignitaries present, including from the IBE board and UNESCO. There were also receptions and informal activities on the programme to allow less formal exchanges where undoubtedly certain dialogues and definitely certain negotiations were carried on in a more relaxed manner. However, unfortunately, there are no records of these.

All the documentation used for and produced during the Conference (such as minutes, recommendations, reports and analyses) were published. There were hundreds of publications (324 had been counted by 1968¹⁰) and over one hundred thousand pages contained the contents of these ICPE debates. Thus, it was stated as early as 1937 that Geneva “is tending to become a world centre for documentation, verification and dissemination of the best ideas and suggestions on educational matters” (Image 11.2). In 1939, Karadjoff, minister plenipotentiary and delegate of Bulgaria to the LoN, presented the 68 volumes produced by the end of the first six Conferences as

an invaluable, indeed inexhaustible, source of knowledge for governments and educators […] and even] in the future an intangible monument to the efforts made in all countries to educate a better youth, and hence a better world. (p. 87)

Image 11.2

The “third” ICPE 1934. It was the first international conference to which all ministers of “sovereign” states in the world were invited by the Swiss government on behalf of the IBE. Thirty-eight countries sent delegates. In the far background, Jean Piaget, Pedro Rosselló and Marie Butts, and the two presidents Paul Lachenal (Switzerland) and Marcel Nyns (Belgium). Two other women are entitled to sit in this Conference, a secretary-typist (at the far right, this must be Blanche Weber) and, in front of her and wearing a hat, Dr Fannie Fern Andrews, secretary of the American School Citizens League, part of the US delegation. (© IBE)

Adjustments for a Larger Audience

As soon as the collaboration agreement between UNESCO and the IBE was signed, the successive directors of UNESCO were invited to take part in the ICPEs. Until 1965, the replies were affirmative, except for Julian Huxley (UNESCO director from 1946 to 1948), who was replaced by a deputy director; the faithful Torres Bodet (1949–1952) and Luther Evans (1953–1958) contributed systematically to the ICPEs held in Geneva; Vittorino Veronese (1958–1961) was often replaced, for health reasons, by interim director René Maheu,¹¹ who became director general of UNESCO in 1961 until 1974, but who, from 1966 onwards, appointed the assistant director general for education to stand in for him.

From the beginning of the ICPEs, observers were invited to attend in order to officially testify to the solidarity between institutions, to pass on information in a reciprocal manner and to come to agreement over the causes to be promoted. Up until 1953, this only concerned intergovernmental bodies; the ILO did not miss a single ICPE between 1934 and 1968; the LoN was always present and was replaced by the UNO from 1947 on. Some other specialised institutions also attended, especially the WHO, and from time to time, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (linked to the World Bank) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation. Other intergovernmental organisations were invited, such as the Arab League, the Council of Europe, the Ibero-American Bureau of Education and the OECD since 1962. From 1953 onwards, NGOs representing teachers’ associations and universities participated continuously. At the same time as there was a jump in the number of invited countries, the range of NGOs increased considerably: in 1965, for example, 12 organisations were observers, as varied as the World Union of Rural Women, the International Catholic Education Office or the Commission of the Churches for International Affairs, a heterogeneity which persisted until 1968 (Fig. 11.1).

Fig. 11.1

General schema of the ICPEs’ scenography (1934–1968): global organisation and zoom on the course of the ICPEs

The regular presence of these observers testifies both to the growing audience of these ICPEs and to the multiplication of international organisations—governmental or otherwise—involved in the field of education. Some of these organisations were clearly based on an economic logic: they aimed to adjust schooling to economic imperatives. Others, on the other hand, considered themselves to be invested in causes for the public good, representing Christian, feminist and professional associations, which considered that education was part of their mission. In this respect, we can even deduce that the IBE of the 1950s and 1960s had rediscovered a facet that it had intended from the outset: to enable all “entities”, whether political, social or even trade union, to converse within the same conference hall, the good of the child transcending all possible divergences.

If the logic of the ICPEs remained essentially perennial, the massive increase in the number of participants had an effect on their progress and quality. The Joint Commission received several letters of complaint in this regard. As early as 1955, the Israeli government denounced the boring nature of some of the discussions;¹² even more radically, in 1957, while the UNESCO programme was being discussed, the American delegation considered that the subjects were too diverse and extensive, which did not allow for in-depth analysis, especially as there was a lack of real experts.¹³ In response to these criticisms, a number of changes were introduced:¹⁴ the need to give an account in the national reports on the measures taken to implement, on the ground, the recommendations voted earlier; the discussion of surveys and recommendations split in two separate sections, with the informed support of experts identified in the delegations; the formulation of written questions for the discussion of the national reports, as the oral presentation of the reports was abandoned. Almost every year, further changes would be made to improve the relevance of the ICPEs and the impact of the voted recommendations. Moreover, in his report to the Joint Committee¹⁵ the director of UNESCO’s Education Department proudly emphasised in 1961 that more and more specialists were involved in the ICPEs, which were attracting more and more interest and whose results were now having an impact on practice in the field.

The ICPEs began working exclusively in French but soon recognised English as an official working language. In view of the substantial increase in the number of delegates from the countries of the south and the east, thanks to the support of UNESCO and following sustained negotiations started by delegates demanding recognition of their language and culture: Russian and Spanish were recognised from the mid-1950s onwards, which required an increasingly dense and expert service of translators and interpreters.

As usual, changes were recorded in the guide sent to all invited countries with a detailed agenda, without formal inclusion in a statute or regulation. In fact, the IBE remained a simple association, its functioning being defined in its statutes of 1929 and by some general indications specified in the collaboration agreement between the Bureau and UNESCO. This allowed flexibility and adaptability in a small organisation where the staff were now more qualified (Image 11.3).

Image 11.3

A cabinet displaying the four main types of IBE publications: result of surveys; minutes and recommendations of the ICPEs; International Yearbook of Education; Bulletin of the IBE. (© A. Bourquin; Érhise)

Analysing the Main Features of the Education World

On the basis of the reports previously submitted by the countries participating in this process, the delegates were invited to present and discuss “the highlights of the educational movement” in the world.¹⁶ At the end of these Conferences, these national reports were subsequently published in the International Yearbook of Education along with an analysis and a comparative summary by Rosselló. Whereas 35 countries had contributed to the first Yearbook in 1933, there were 53 contributors in 1934, 63 in 1947 and 96 by 1968.¹⁷

These Yearbooks were introduced by the chief editor, Rosselló, as a kind of evolving map of education around the globe. In order to ensure that the results were comparable in time and place, the questionnaires, which were the template for the national monographs, became increasingly formatted so that they would only refer to objective data. They were sent to the same recipients—the ministers for public instruction or else to similar bodies.

The Yearbooks edited by Rosselló translated the data received by the IBE into comparative tables so that each state could compare its own efforts with those in all the other countries that had participated in the study. Schooling statistics gave rise to summary tables, and also public finances set aside for education, and in this case the banks supported the effort so that the exchange rates could be adjusted in real time.

The comparison was in no way aimed at the uniformisation of systems, but on its own it was meant to serve as a kind of “emulation” so that each country could take from it what was needed to develop its education system. Marion Coulon, the Belgian delegate, summed up the spirit of this in 1953, not without some base flattery of the international city of Geneva which hosted them:

For the education authorities in the different countries, the consideration and discussion every year of the reports on educational developments were an invaluable means of stock-taking and led to more intensive endeavour, amicable emulation, and the birth of new ideas. Revered as the capital city of the nations, Geneva, through the sessions of the International Conference on Public Education held annually within its walls since 1934, had also become the capital city of the world’s education. (ICPE, 1953, p. 134)

In order to gain a wider audience, from 1947 on, the Yearbooks were translated into English. Unstintingly every year Rosselló wrote the introduction to these volumes, outlining the main educational ideas that had emerged around the world during the previous year. Comparative analyses preceded each country report and tables of comparative statistics concluded the volume.

Resolving the Crucial Education Problems of the Planet

The vocation of the ICPEs was also to scrutinise and help resolve those problems in education that were deemed to be the most pressing. Crucial themes were identified each year in which the IBE carried out a preliminary enquiry, the results of which were then discussed during the summer Conference. These problems needed to have general characteristics, which meant that the “essence”¹⁸ had to be universal in order to respond to the concerns of partner states and to be inscribed in the universalist objective that the IBE had adopted, in concertation with UNESCO from 1947.

The criteria for the selection of these themes and the manner in which they were chosen were variable: while it was claimed that any member of the IBE could propose a topic and take part in defining it, some delegates (and therefore the state represented) and IBE representatives as well as leading UNESCO committees (via a mixed UNESCO-IBE commission) had a considerable weight in these choices. Such selections were also strategic in order to legitimise the validity of these bodies, to attract countries which it was hoped would join, to honour those who were already members and publicly display the relevance and the originality of the IBE’s work. For example, the Organisation of Rural Education (1936), which transmitted the needs of particularly sought-after regions of Latin America, was placed on the agenda of the ICPEs at the same time as Argentina joined the IBE. These themes were also in tune with current social, economic and educational events, as shown by the 1934 enquiry into the question of economies imposed on public education. The IBE and its partners (including the ILO), noting with alarm the deleterious effects of the stock market crash on the budgets set aside for education; the topics of teacher training and teacher pay, which are the conditions of quality schooling, immediately followed (1935, 1938, 1939).

It was in order to solve the acute problems of the war that, in the middle of the conflict, there were enquiries into The Teaching of Hygiene, Equality of Opportunity for Secondary Education (on the ICPE’s agenda in 1946), Physical Education and The Free Provision of School Supplies (ICPE of 1947). Rebuilding the school system implied an in-depth reflexion about financing, buildings, school programmes and their content as well as the teaching methods to adopt (ICPEs of 1955, 1957, 1958, 1960). Following the explosion in schooling in the 1960s, attention was paid, in turn, to the struggle against hardship among teaching personnel (including that of teacher trainers and administrative staff) and advanced training (ICPEs of 1957, 1959, 1963, 1967), as well as to restructuring systems via education planning, to the organisation of school and professional orientation and to that of pedagogical research (ICPEs of 1962, 1963, 1966). All this was intended to contribute towards guaranteeing access to education for everyone, whatever their social background, profile or origins, and this in turn led to a greater visibility of particularly vulnerable populations.

Table 11.1, inspired by the one produced by Rosselló himself (1961/1978), summarises all of the 65 themes tackled between 1934 and 1968.

Table 11.1 Number and percentage of surveys and recommendations discussed in the ICPEs in function of three main categories (1934–1968)

For each one of these themed surveys,¹⁹ a specific questionnaire was sent out to all the public education ministries (or similar bodies). These surveys were discussed in great detail within the IBE Secretariat and overseen by IBE executive commissions in order to find out how each authority broached the subject and, when applicable, how they approached the issue and resolved it. It was the answers to these questionnaires that formed the basis of the summary report that was qualified as a comparative study and was drawn up by the IBE research department, sometimes with the help of external experts. For the ICPE, the issue was to develop articles of recommendations likely to answer the problem. At the end of a Conference, the minutes—which required numerous negotiations to perfect the content—summarised the different positions and supplied the reports and the recommendations adopted.

These were subsequently submitted for scrutiny to the Conference participants, who discussed them, amended them and adopted them.²⁰

Insert 11.1 Showcasing and Intergovernmental Strategies for Debate

During the general discussions at the ICPEs, state delegates mobilised various strategies to get their ideas centre-stage during the debate, for this could, ultimately, influence the final drafting of the recommendation submitted to the vote. While their exchanges were compiled in a series of minutes published at the end of each Conference, techniques of network analysis make it possible to illustrate the various positions, as well as the strategies, adopted by the representatives on the educational subjects retained on the agenda. To illustrate this point, we present an analysis of the 1934 and 1951 ICPEs, both of which dealt with the question of the extension of compulsory schooling.

The main strategy observed was that of self-presentation, which accounted for 80% of interventions on educational content in 1934 (see Fig. 11.2), compared to 67% in 1951. The delegates spoke mainly to show the national model they represented. The diversity of solutions was compiled in the final recommendation. This recommendation therefore took on the appearance of a showcase of solutions and generated little dialogue on educational content.

Fig. 11.2

References to educational models during the 1934 ICPE, by state

The second strategy, mobilised rather more in 1951, was that of citation (or “mention”) to better centralise an idea or an educational model in the discussion so that the recommendation took it into account. This approach constitutes a grouping of interests demanded by a number of states. A staging of states then took shape, since delegates positioned their countries in relation to each other. This positioning— here visualised in networks—results from cooperation strategies at work in the speeches, using citations to highlight the experience of a third-party state, exploiting controversy to generate reactions, or even deploying forms of sycophancy to solicit some attention.

During the discussion on the extension of compulsory schooling (1951), the most cited educational models were those of the USAand the UK, which allowed these actors to place themselves centrally in the debate, thus conferring a form of prestige on the anglophone education systems.

The graphic representations which make it possible to visualise these citations sometimes reflect a vision that reinforced global preconceptions. Indeed, some alliances were ideological, translated by scenographic arrangements which placed states in opposition, for example Soviet and Western countries,²¹ but also Northern and Southern states, or even East and West more generally. Also, many regional alliances were forming, which can be illustrated with the positioning of Ceylon, India, Israel and Pakistan, which coordinated their interventions to form a unit in the debate (Fig. 11.3b).

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

The tensions seem minimised in all the minutes published between 1934 and 1958, only 0.7% of the interventions expressed an opposition or a disagreement. That being said, is not the absence of a reference also a sign of tension, or sidelining? Silences and absences can be a relevant indicator of political issues, sometimes more than speeches, as is the case, for example, of the People’s Republic of China, reported in this book. As such, many absences reflect geopolitical tensions and a divided world and the same can be true for the silences that tend to translate a hierarchical world. The conference therefore became permeable to these issues: this was a limit of the IBE’s undertaking. Nevertheless, analysing these behaviours allows us to have a better understanding of how knowledge is disseminated and circulated (or not), and how, therefore, recommendations are produced, by integrating which knowledge, at the expense of which other knowledge.

Émeline Brylinski