Did these recommendations really have no binding value? In any case, they were not at all like conventions or prescriptions, as the partners were afraid of interfering with the prerogatives of nation states in educational matters.

Making Freedom a Responsibility

To begin with, already in 1934, Piaget had specified the significance of the resolutions (later known as recommendations) in a speech which would hardly age until 1968.

We are not expecting categorical resolutions from the Conference. It does not seek to imposer anything of any sort, and this is for three reasons:

  1. 1.

    Countries and their national organisations are too different;

  2. 2.

    This meeting is not a congress but a conference of responsible delegates who will commit their country and cannot vote lightly;

  3. 3.

    When one tries to impose, one provokes resistance, an essential pedagogical truth of which diplomats need no reminding.

The Resolutions of our Conference will be more of a catalogue of possible solutions […] a call for emulation, in the noble sense of this word. (ICPE, 1934, p. 30)

Through this “noble emulation”, it would be a matter of overcoming prejudices and differences to build mutual understanding and knowledge.

Let us make no mistake. There is a subtle argument for turning this freedom into a responsibility. It was in the interest of every state to have the best possible education system, which guaranteed the intellectual and economic performance of the country. Emulation between countries would be sufficient, each being stimulated to learn from the experience of others. The greatness of the cause in which they invested would also incorporate partisan interests, since it was a question of working, through education, to improve the future of humanity as a whole.

This responsibility extended to all of the IBE’s partners and bodies, and this was constantly recalled during the ICPEs as illustrated by this quote by Piaget from 1936, selected from among dozens of others of a similar nature:

One of our greatest concerns is to associate ourselves through our means of research and information with the educational progress of the member countries of the Bureau. And you will easily understand this concern since, to a certain extent, we feel morally co-responsible for the education of the school population of all these countries whose total population amounts to roughly 250 million. (p. 145)

Exercising responsibility implies the availability of accurate and objective data in order to avoid arbitrariness and to inform the decisions taken. This was why the IBE expanded and formalised the empirical material collected and why it refined and systematised its analyses using the conceptual and methodological tools of comparative pedagogy. Nevertheless, as the reports were collected from the school authorities themselves, the latter retained ample room for manoeuvre to present their reforms and the results they drew from them as they saw fit.

It should be emphasised that during the debates everyone was free to state their positions and to amend or oppose the recommendations. The process was supposed to guarantee, at all times, to each delegate, on an equal basis, without any pressure, free participation in the definition of the recommendations.

But the counterpart of this freedom was clearly stated: by their presence, their writings, their interventions and their votes on recommendations, state delegates were involved and, in so doing, committed the government they represented. The commitment would therefore be all the more demanding as it was freely given.

As early as the post-war period, Piaget and Rosselló considered these recommendations to be the most “innovative and effective” action of the Conferences:

These recommendations form a set of more than a thousand articles and constitute a sort of International Charter or Code of Public Education, a body of pedagogical doctrine whose scope cannot be underestimated.

Although they did not have the imperative character of conventions, the fact that they had been voted on by delegates from more than 70 governments gave these recommendations unquestionable moral weight. The authority they enjoyed among school authorities and educators was also due to their balanced spirit: without being utopian, and while recognising the possibilities of each particular country, they constituted an educational ideal of a universal kind that should be strived for. (Rosselló, 1959, p. 243)

It should be noted that the idea of a codeFootnote 1 as mentioned here contained the idea of regulations and the injunction, even though it was of a moral kind, was well and truly present in the proposals of the ICPE’s two leaders. The notion of a charter, which was more commonly used, reduced its prescriptive scope and this corresponded better to the spirit of the IBE: it was about disseminating “an educational ideal of a universal type”, in the hope that this ideal would be sustained by the aspirations of the peoples of the world and would be able to meet these. If the notions of utopia and ideals ran through a number of speeches, being consubstantial to the progressive convictions of the IBE they were systematically linked to the conditions of what might be possible for the school authorities.

These recommendations were essential parts of the Conferences’ modus operandi and could be considered as the product of a process of discursive distillation: based on these broad international surveys, a substantial report proposed a summary, which was discussed in the ICPE with a view to producing a brief recommendation. This recommendation was submitted to the participants for approval. It set out a number of possible ways of solving the problem addressed and could be considered as the common denominator of the countries represented and it would gradually be presented as such.Footnote 2 The whole thing was interpreted as a collective commitment to ensure that everyone on earth might have access to educational opportunities tailored to their needs, without distinction—at least in principle—of race, gender or class. The hope for the betterment of humanity, also through international understanding, was perceived in the form of quality public education (Image 12.1).

Image 12.1
A photograph of a sheet with placements of the delegates for the 1964 I C P E. The sheet has places with names of delegates and their respective signatures.

Placement of the delegates for the 1964 ICPE. The Executive Committee was in charge of adopting the proposal for managing the arrangement of the states around the tables to encourage exchanges between everyone, without causing tension: quite a delicate question. (© IBE)

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Firmer Contractualisation, Under the Patronage of UNESCO

From the post-war period, the number of government delegates attending the Conferences increased. UNESCO then endorsed the recommendations made during the ICPEs and widened their audience: thanks to its own tools and resources, the recommendations (but not the minutes of the ICPEs) were translated into ten languages, a translation that constituted both the internationalisation process and the internationalist ideal.Footnote 3 At the same time, UNESCO was pushing for the implementation of its demands and expectations, aiming for more normative and realistic principles. As early as 1949, pressure was being exerted from ICPE’s presidential rostrum by Paolo Carneiro, a delegate from Brazil and also a member of UNESCO’s executive board, whose expectations he relayed:

The words which had been spoken during the Conference must now be translated into acts. Each of the delegates must feel like they are a messenger of this assembly and take back to their country a little of the human fraternity they have experienced in these places. (p. 99)

But whose job was it to do this? Didn’t the ICPEs have to problematise the essence of the problems and therefore stick to general principles, inspired by an “ideal of progress” like those of law, peace and justice? Conversely, did they remain credible if the Conferences were indifferent to what was happening on the ground in the practices themselves, where young people were shamelessly discriminated against and illiteracy was generating a “new form of slavery”?Footnote 4

A shift was gradually taking place, moving towards a firmer contractualisation of agreements. Invited to the Conference as school leaders, the ministerial delegates were encouraged not to give up on their ideals, in other words, while the realistic dimension of the recommendations was being reinforced, in other words to “ have their feet solidly planted on the ground while at the same time scanning the horizon” (1960, p. 29).Footnote 5

By the end of the 1950s, the IBE-UNESCO Joint Committee expected countries to explain how the recommendations voted on had been taken into account. Moreover, from 1961 onwards the monographs written for the Yearbooks had to indicate the follow-up that each state had given to the recommendations voted the previous year. Subsequently, these assessments would cover recommendations adopted some ten years earlier in order to better identify possible progress.Footnote 6 In other words, the aim was to attest to the seriousness and credibility of the commitment made.

Piaget qualified this by pointing out that “in fact and in practice, an educational problem varies from one country to another in the same way as social, political and economic factors” (ICPE, 1961, p. 14). It was up to others, the IBE director pointed out, to examine in greater depth and above all to adjust the articles of the recommendations “to the social, political, economic or historical realities” of each state or group of states (ICPE, 1959, p. 31).Footnote 7

If the modus operandi of the ICPEs remained similar in the broad outlines, had the meaning and spirit of the enterprise changed in this alliance with UNESCO? It is definite that the IBE was progressively adjusting and even rallying to the responsibilities that the UN agency was taking on, with a view to translating speeches into concrete interventions on the ground. Undoubtedly, the discourse of international educational modernity is prefigured in these Conferences and in the attempt to collectively construct a succession of recommendations. Conceived as an inventory of possibilities, the articles of each of these recommendations would gradually form the basis of a new world governance of education. In 1953 moreover, the Director-General of UNESCO, Luther H. Evans, addressed his audience by stating bluntly: “he who draws up the plans is the master builder” “all together, you are the leaders of the educational movement in the world” (ICPE, 1953, p. 25.) This was repeated over and over again by the acting Director-General of UNESCO, René Maheu, who went on to head the UN agency between 1961 and 1974:

The concern to provide practical assistance to underprivileged countries, which has characterised UNESCO’s programme from the outset, like that of all the agencies of the United Nations system, has directed international co-operation towards concrete tasks outside the realm of mere academic concerns. (ICPE, 1959, p. 35)

Maheu therefore urged experts and scholarship holders “to become the bearers, one might even say missionaries, of certain ideas, tried out and accepted internationally” (p. 38) and was convinced of the need to reinforce “methodical normative action”. He therefore suggested seizing the “consensus of opinions” that were the recommendations, with a view to “codifying” them, not at all to “establish dirigisme” but “in order to show certain norms which would act as indications pointing out the progress still to be accomplished” (p. 38).Footnote 8 Just before leaving the organisation (p. 168), Piaget came round to a form of pragmatism, but not without insisting on the major role devolved to governments: by voting “more and more effective and better informed recommendations” the IBE provided “governments with a kind of capital or potential energy which they can transform into kinetic energy, into effective achievements for the greater good of schools” (Closing session, Piaget, 1968, p. 14) (Image 12.2).

Image 12.2
A photograph of a commemorative session. It has delegates seated in a room with microphones and headphones.

A commemorative session: the 25th ICPE 1962. 224 delegates from ninety states were present (many countries sent two or more delegates); fifteen international organisations were also represented. The sessions were held in the Palais Wilson. (© IBE)

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“Hypocrisy, a Tribute Paid by Vice to Virtue?”

But what is the objective value of the facts presented? Clearly, national reports from ministries presented educational decisions and changes in their countries in the most advantageous light. For a body that prided itself on working in a strictly scientific manner, is it not evidence of astonishing credulity that these data were taken as being objective? Not without bitterness, Rosselló retrospectively reported that they had been criticised over this issue, only to retort:

While it is true that these national reports have been criticised for being overly optimistic, it is possible that some of the exaggerations may have had a constructive aspect because of the emulation they induced between the various countries. […] And if it is true that not all the participants in the conference were educators, as many countries were represented by diplomats posted to Berne or Geneva, the contribution of these non-specialists, as parents, often gave the conference a realism that was sometimes absent from other meetings. (1969, pp. XIII–XIV)

Rosselló therefore accepted that a certain exaggeration could be seen in the government reports, where only the emulative and optimistic dimension was pointed out, suggesting that there was no competition or nationalistic tendency. Curiously, he argued for the realistic contribution of non-specialists (i.e. parents) over that of specialists, whereas Rosselló usually appealed to experts in the field of education, who had adequate training in methodology. Did parental realism compensate here for the tendency of ministerial ambassadors to present their policies too flatteringly?

Indeed, government delegates did not fail to describe their school management in the best possible light, embellishing their reforms, going beyond the effects of mere announcements, clearly out of step with actual practices.Footnote 9 The issue was regularly raised within the IBE and problematised in the ICPEs themselves. Does exaggeration and anticipation not amount to a “constructive lie?” even Piaget wondered, distinguished as he was by a rhetoric whose diplomacy did not exclude frankness, since he was not fooled by the hypocrisy underlying certain assertions:

But, as one of us said, if there are untruths, they will be constructive ones. Hypocrisy, says La Rochefoucauld, is the tribute vice pays to virtue, and it is thus unwittingly constructive; so indeed is the sometimes fallacious but often fruitful optimism of the theorist in advance of his time. (p. 28)

This act of faith, dare we say it, by Piaget on the status of theory, or rather on the power and fecundity of mental operations, is far from exceptional: it reflects the humanist, internationalist and scientific convictions that guided him throughout his term in office, striving to encourage his partners. However, we can point out here the duplicity of this diplomat of educational internationalism, who, while playing with a rhetoric that seems to amuse him and with a dominance that he undeniably appreciated, in fact contributed to underpinning certain power games, artifices, exaggerations, untruths, and even impostures that undoubtedly criss-crossed these intergovernmental arenas.

An Original Sin: The Instrumentalisation of Expertise?

When it came to taking stock, Rosselló complained that the field of education was the target of more persistent and sharp criticism than other fields and disciplines. He deplored that the administrative and official roots of the sources used for his surveys would taint these data from the outset “with an original sin” which would automatically invalidate their relevance, only to retort, in 1963 in particular, that most international surveys on production, economic life and social achievements are also based “on official data without their probative value being contested a priori!” (p. 206)

Indeed, while many of the emerging social sciences intended to consolidate themselves scientifically on the basis of statistics, they relied on administrative data, provided by the established authorities. Statistics were then conceived as tools to access an objective knowledge of social facts and problems, possibly also contributing to their resolution.Footnote 10 Quantification would make it possible to move from the individual and the singular to the collective and the general. And this was in fact the aim of comparative pedagogy, as promoted by Rosselló.

The social sciences (sociology, law, economics, political science, and also industrial science) were developing at the same time as the modern state and appeared as critical voices and expert bodies, providing knowledge capable of implementing rational, justifiable and profitable public policies, while at the same time providing nation states with instruments of control, evaluation, harmonisation and planning that helped consolidate them. The historicisation of the construction of educational sciences bears witness to this, showing that it went hand in hand with the growing function of expertise. According to their specific temporalities and modalities they too have been used, like other sciences, by the established powers to document, compile, count, classify, measure, compare, demonstrate, explain, justify, legitimise and decide, but also to evaluate, standardise and prioritise.

All these social sciences were indeed faced with a possible instrumentalisation, from the collection of data to their analysis and exploitation. Rosselló was aware of this, and insisted that the pedagogical field was blamed more for this original sin than other disciplines. The difficulty in rationalising educational phenomena (e.g. pedagogical practices) and the fact that education is one of the most sensitive social issues and has been a powerful but expensiveFootnote 11 instrument of governments since the nineteenth century for building the nation, shaping children’s mentalities, shaping teachers and social practices, and selecting elites, contributed to the suspicion regarding the scientific nature of the data and analyses of the educational sciences. Rosselló deplored the fact that this suspicion also affected comparative education, even when it was based on statistics, and even more so when it was amalgamated with international education, as was still the case in the twentieth century.