Education Is a Political Issue

Abstract

The model that held the distinction between education and politics to be plausible and even indispensable had given way to the aspirations of formerly colonised countries, which had undergone an education imbued with politics under the auspices of the civilising mission of the empires, which were now confronted with their abuses. By taking their own places and speaking in these forums, the new countries demonstrated that the problems addressed and the solutions proposed were far from being as universal as the IBE and UNESCO proclaimed. This tension translated into an open conflict about the misdeeds of an alienating colonial enterprise, which was considered to violate the very dignity of man. In the case of Portugal, its former African colonies demanded its exclusion.

A close reading of all the minutes between 1934 and 1968 shows the intensification of questions relating to inequalities between countries and especially between large divisions of the world, while many newly independent states participated in the ICPEs in their own right.¹

The vocabulary used corresponds to the divisions of the time, distinguishing in a binary and hierarchical manner between developed, industrialised, rich, advanced and civilised countries and underdeveloped, developing, deprived, undeveloped, backward, dependent, less advanced and exceptionally backward countries. The Occidental–Oriental categorisations used in the 1930s were gradually replaced by those of West-East and North-South, but also by industrialised, developed versus developing countries—later called the Third World, after 1950 and even more so after 1960.² In a quest for friendliness and resilience, descriptions such as young, creative, inventive and newly independent countries come to the fore.

Loosening the Colonial Straitjacket

The demands to loosen the colonial straitjacket became much more forceful after the Bandung Conference (Indonesia, April 1955), which gave new legitimacy to the independence of Asian and African countries.³ The number of new sovereign states joining the IBE was increasing. Even though they were in the minority, critical voices with a clear political source were being heard.

In no way trivial, criticism bore on the functioning of the ICPEs themselves. The influence of the most favoured countries on everything, from the type of problems posed to the solutions put forward, was now clearly denounced.⁴ Among the most significant reactions was that of Pakistan’s education minister, Sheikh Zahiruddin, who took exception to the fact that the poorest regions were isolated from the cultural alliances and connivances of the West, while concerns in “other regions, such as Asia, the Middle East and Africa (which for historical reasons had a lot of catching up to do⁵) were different” (1957, p. 52).

Stressing the “glaring contrasts” between peoples, he was surprised that “the Conference was discussing questions of television, wireless and theatres in fine architectural surroundings, but it should also consider the erection of one-room bamboo huts, with only a blackboard as equipment in remote Asian villages”. The delegate from Pakistan therefore appealed to the universal mission proclaimed by the leading bodies of the Conference:

UNESCO and the International Bureau of Education should see that the gulf was bridged between the privileged and under-privileged countries […] if economic aid helped to correct the disequilibrium between the prosperous countries and the poorer ones, educational aid should mean that the Conference would no longer have to bring together on the same platform a world of television and a world of bamboo huts.

This intervention clearly raised the question of the role to be played by a Conference that claimed to have “a responsibility to all its participants”. For the representative of Israel,⁶ attention should be focused on “those regions where the need was greatest, that is, in Asia, Africa and Latin America, in which 200 million children of school age were without schools” (1957, p. 54).

In the same vein, the Indian delegate⁷ stated that “the thing that struck him most was that, among the family of nations, people who had recently risen to independence had an extremely urgent mission to perform in the field of education” (1960, p. 117). Taking seriously the supposed spirit of solidarity of the ICPEs, he called on his colleagues to take up the challenge collectively in 1960:

For the world cannot develop in harmony if half its population is illiterate while the other half enjoys all the advantages of education, or if half the world is poor while the other half is rich. A more satisfactory balance must be sought, in which nobody would lose anything for “who gives, receives”. The spirit of unanimity which was one of the features of the work of the Conference should serve as a lesson to all. He expressed the hope that the delegates would not lose sight of their responsibilities towards youth and towards the community as a whole and would strive to bring about a better world.

There were no direct responses to these speeches, undoubtedly because of the modus operandi in force in the ICPEs, which had its limitations: how could there be in-depth dialogue on such important issues between more than 200 people, at that time representing 78 states, with such a meticulously planned agenda?⁸ It is unfortunate that the official minutes so rarely provide any clues, however small, as to the atmosphere in the Chamber, which was sometimes heavy, sometimes convivial; we can imagine how much discord would have prompted commentary behind-the-scenes; correspondence exchanges sometimes provide traces of this, particularly in the tense context of the early 1960s.⁹

Similar calls against divisions and discrimination in the field of education were now regularly heard: the ICPEs were thus witnesses to the power relations that were played out between developed/prosperous countries and underdeveloped/poor countries; between dominant countries and those that were subjugated; between countries that were leaders from the scientific point of view and those in which there was lamentable illiteracy.

The fact that such positions were expressed—obvious denunciations—proves the impossibility of eradicating all political interference, which is inevitably embodied in the socio-economic issues that permeate the entire field of education. A favourable reading of the working methods of the ICPEs could prompt the retort that if such conclusions could be voiced, then that is proof that the Conferences played their role, allowing all to express their point of view in a respectful reciprocity, to confront in solidarity the most crucial problems, arising in the world in all their diversity. On the contrary: a euphemising of power relations was not only expected but even demanded of the delegates, which could also be interpreted as a requirement to muzzle denunciations and to drive conflicts elsewhere, to avoid disrupting the Conference, which was a very real threat, as we shall see (Image 17.1).

Image 17.1

Extract from the provisional minutes of the 1964 ICPE. The African Delegation appeals to the other delegates to exclude colonial Portugal from the conference referring to its cruel subjection of African peoples, the ongoing struggle for liberation and UNESCO’s anticolonial principles. (© IBE)

Nothing Could Restrain the “Irreversible Determination” of the African Continent

The North–South tensions of the 1960s, crystallised around colonialism—and expressed in many international organisations, including UNESCO¹⁰—were to rebound drastically on the IBE’s activities and exchange networks: was it really possible to distinguish technical and political issues and to pretend that scientific objectivity guaranteed impartiality, or even that it was attainable in the field of education?

Convened as usual by the UNESCO-IBE Joint Committee, the July 1963 ICPE was attended by ninety-seven states and chaired by Bedrettin Tuncel, former Minister of Education of Turkey and member of the Executive Board of UNESCO. Following a proposal by the official delegate of Nigeria,¹¹ a draft resolution from the African states was read out by the ICPE President. The resolution explicitly demanded the “exclusion […] of Portugal, whose colonialist policy violates dignity” and offends “human and children’s rights and the sacred principles of education” (p. 73). The authors contended that “it is impossible for African states and obviously difficult for all countries that have respect for human dignity” to sit alongside a country that “keeps African populations thirsting for culture and dignity permanently under a regime of subjection, ignorance and destruction”. The conclusion expressed the hope that Portugal, once “humanised”, could resume its place “at the side of genuine educators with a heightened sense of the status of man” (pp. 72–73).

On one side of this argument were those who felt that this protest, which invested great seriousness in issues which were above all educational,¹² should be on the agenda (in order: Nigeria, Algeria, Mali, Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Sierra Leone, the United Arab Republic and Uganda), particularly as no case history excluded it (Mali). On the other side, were those who opposed this for formal and judicial reasons (Spain, Portugal); they considered that the ICPE could not interfere with the mandates of the joint UNESCO-IBE commission. This position was echoed by a request for clarification of the respective competences of the organisations (United States, France, Australia, Argentina).¹³ Was the protest political or not? This would be the object of, (or the pretext for?) the dispute, since politics was supposed to be strictly excluded from the assembly. Interpretations differed here too: for the former, it was including Portugal that constituted political interference, while the latter believed that it was the protest itself that was a danger signal for the Conference. Against the proposal of the ICPE bureau, a clear majority of the ICPE delegates decided to place the issue on its work agenda. The bureau’s position was rejected by forty votes—thanks to the alliance between the African continent and the Eastern countries—against twenty-one in favour and sixteen abstentions (ICPE, 1963, p. 55). The plenary sessions on 3rd and 4th of July were therefore entirely devoted to the discussion of this protest.

Politics obviously interfered with all the debates here, since the educational issue was central to the confrontations relating to colonialism, to the power relations between the governing nations and the occupied territories, within the Cold War and to the socio-economic confrontations of the 1960s. Cameroon, through the voice of its delegate Josué Tetang, Secretary of State for Education, went so far as to deem that:

UNESCO, in inviting the governments to take part in the Conference, has implicitly exercised a political choice and that it would be artificial to dissociate politics from culture under the present circumstance. He questioned the value of education given in a colonialist context, which contradicted all the principles enunciated in the International Conferences of Public Education which had taken place since 1934. (ICPE, 1963, p. 58)

Opponents of Portugal’s “colonialist policy” used the Assembly to demonstrate the absurdity of a watered-down vision of colonial issues, which muzzled the debate on relations of domination, particularly between races, ethnic groups and classes, thereby flouting human rights. Believing that they were safeguarding “professional ethics”, these critics of Portugal took refuge behind the charters of the United Nations and UNESCO to place themselves on the side of law, justice and dignity and to implicitly relegate their opponents to the side of Portugal. The latter defended themselves against this charge and all of them, even the most powerful empires, unanimously condemned colonialist abuses and violence while firmly adhering to their formal arguments.

Nothing could restrain the “irreversible determination” (p. 56) of the African continent claimed the Mali delegation:¹⁴ the exclusion of the Republic of South Africa from the Executive Council of UNESCO was mentioned in its favour; as was the fact that Portugal was not a member of the organisation.¹⁵ Through the voice of Abdoulaye Diallo, Director of Cabinet at the Ministry of National Education, member of the Niger delegation, the peoples of Africa again expressed their disappointment with UNESCO, having invested in it “the highest hopes for a more human world, based on children’s rights and non-discrimination in education” (p. 57), while Portugal in Africa denied all its principles. Strengthened by this community of suffering, there was a succession of vehement and vibrant pleas in favour of the peoples of Africa, who had been oppressed for too long. Only the delegations from Austria, Australia, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Argentina and Italy sought to counter these criticisms, which were powerful in themselves and in the alliances they created. These delegations claimed to be trying to save the ICPE without ever taking sides with Portugal, which still claimed to offer all “its” overseas peoples the same rights and opportunities.

The Formalist Position Challenged in the Name of Human Dignity

Just before the vote, the representatives of the authorities who had convened the ICPE took a stand. Director Maheu declared that UNESCO had no business pronouncing on the policy of a country, Portugal, which was not a member of the UN agency: was he not thus dissociating himself from the ICPE? In addition to his legalistic clarifications however, Maheu firmly reiterated the condemnation of colonialism and the unconditional support of UN agencies for the processes of emancipation and independence. The speeches of Piaget and Chavanne, who represented Switzerland, the host country of the Conference and the seat of the IBE, suggested that the very survival of the ICPEs and therefore of the IBE, was at stake in this debate. The president made a final appeal to the assembly’s farsightedness, believing that the existence of the IBE was at stake, but he also pointed out that the invitations had been sent out before the Addis Ababa conference, which showed that it was aware of the change in direction the meeting was taking (pp. 70–72).¹⁶

Despite this, the African delegations succeeded in having their resolution adopted by roll call on 4 July 1963: forty votes in favour, twenty-three against with seventeen abstentions. The countries that voted in favour of the resolution represented the African continent, the Middle East, India and the communist regimes of the USSR and its allies. Opposition came from Western European countries, North America and Australia, with a few Latin American votes (El Salvador, Colombia), Japan, Thailand and Turkey. The abstentions came mainly from Asian countries, which in a way formed a third group of countries, with some Latin American votes. Seventeen countries were absent from the vote, five of which were African.¹⁷

The result of the vote clearly disavowed the ICPE’s overarching institutions: two-thirds of the voters supported the protests of the African delegations. However, it is important to take into consideration the substantial proportion of abstentions (17.5%) and the proportion of delegates who left the room before having to vote (16.5%): a third of the delegations thus showed their distance or even distrust of the direction taken by the talks, or testified to their powerlessness and inability to take a position. But the choice to withdraw could also signal disapproval of the instrumentalisation of the Conference, by clearly opposing the ICPE’s voting on matters which lay outside its competence. It remains to be seen whether the abstentions and absences could also be understood as a form of disinterest, or even cowardice, in order not to offend any sensitivities and to preserve other interests (socio-economic and political) deemed to be prevalent in these sensitive diplomatic negotiations. The ICPE continued its work, in an apparently serene spirit (on the surface at least), adopting the recommendations on the agenda as usual, without returning to contentious issues. However, the Director of UNESCO announced an internal ruling to clarify the procedure for inviting countries and the internal functioning of the ICPE.

The Expulsion of Portugal, a Service to “All Humanity”

Convened as was customary by both the Director of UNESCO, Maheu, and the Director of the IBE, Piaget, the 1964 ICPE included Portugal among its ninety-three delegations. This was immediately denounced by Aja Nwachuku, Minister of Education of Nigeria, who wondered “why they wanted to disturb the assembly in this way, especially the African delegations” (p. 44). It was not only Portugal and its “retrograde and colonialist policies” that was placed in the dock. The ICPE’s umbrella institutions were also sent there, for not having respected the “sovereignty of the Assembly” that had excluded Portugal and consequently not having taken into consideration the aspirations of the oppressed people and thus also having flouted Human and Children’s Rights. “To the masters of the mine who are more concerned with the minerals than with the wellbeing of the miner, the whole world has appealed for just and charitable treatment of the people under their rule: but they have not heeded” (p. 48), the African delegations insisted in their appeal. How could bodies that spoke up for fraternisation, law, justice and access to education invite Portugal, which constantly and repeatedly flouted the fundamental principles of human dignity? And the delegate from Algeria¹⁸ concluded: “The expulsion of Portugal was a service rendered not only to Africa but to the whole of mankind” (p. 50).

The negotiations continued for a week without any of the educational items on the agenda being discussed. The meetings were suspended, motions of order and compromise proposals were made. A draft resolution from the Latin American delegations¹⁹ attempted conciliation; at the suggestion of the Philippine ambassador, the “75 developing countries” group met but could not find a solution: “The controversy was an insoluble political problem”, said one of its spokesmen²⁰ (p. 67). The representative of Sierra Leone²¹ cited as evidence against Portugal an extract from an official Portuguese bulletin stating “[t]hat the aim of education was ‘to bring the natives out of a state of savagery to civilization’” (p. 62). Whereas the Pakistan delegate²² “said that his country had a past similar to that of Asian and African countries […] that education should play a vital role in shaping the modern world and that it should enable man not only to conquer space but also to be victorious over himself” (p. 65). In turn, the delegate from the United Arab Republic²³ “appealed to the conscience of the delegations present asking them to respect the basic principles of democracy” and challenged the distinction between education and politics; it proposed an alternative to the IBE motto, which postulated that as a necessary and possible distinction and held it to be it the only legitimate one:

He was astonished that some members of the Conference considered politics taboo, a way of thinking which was quite apart from and foreign to practical life, whereas politics constituted a mental activity indispensable for every reasonable human being. As a philosopher had said, man is a political animal. Cultural, economic and educational life were inseparable from any form of government. No constitution in the history of the world had been able to refuse a minimal right to primary education to its people and a decent life to every citizen. Education could, therefore, not be separated from politics because only education made it possible to penetrate the thought of youth and to inspire it with noble ideals. The problem before the Conference was, in fact, one of an educational character or, if they liked, political, but within the above definition. (p. 68)

This was the only ICPE where the claimed neutrality of the IBE was questioned in this way, the umbrella bodies of the Conferences being suspected of making politics a taboo. Not only because all educational issues had a political dimension, but also because the refusal to grant everyone the right to education and a decent life was a political position. To tolerate this in an intergovernmental conference—and under the aegis of bodies claiming to embody human rights—would be tantamount to endorsing them. The universalism advocated by the UN agencies was being mirrored back to them; de facto, this dispute called into question the right of the UN agencies alone to act as custodians of the legitimate definition and they were thus faced with their own contradictions.

“The fact that we are weak politically […] is the strength of our objective and active neutrality”

The IBE Director and the UNESCO Deputy Director, the Colombian Gabriel Betancur-Mejia, both deplored this interference as illegal and self-destructive, instrumentalising the Conference and causing it to lose its qualities of technicality, objectivity and universality. They announced their intention to withdraw—together with their secretariat—which would suspend the work of the Conference if it did not respect its mandate. The African delegations once again succeeded in having their draft resolution voted on, reasserting tirelessly that a country that still defended colonialism could not be accepted and that the technical and the political could not be dissociated.

Before the president put the text to the vote, forty-one delegations left the room to avoid taking a position and to express their distance from or disapproval of the process, which was considered illegal. The resolution was accepted on 13 July 1964 by forty-three votes (out of ninety-one) from the same countries which had been favourable in 1963. There were seven abstentions, all from Asian countries (p. 76).

The interim president of the Conference²⁴ regretted that he was faced with “a crew which deliberately drives its ship onto the rocks”. Not being a “miracle worker”, he felt he could not act “without the cooperation of all those present”. “His powers ceased wherever intransigence occurred, whether on one side or the other” (p. 53). The expression was striking, suggesting as it did for the first time explicitly in a session, the impasse encountered in the IBE’s modus operandi, the impossibility of dissociating the political from the educational in this situation and including all the protagonists of the debate in its denunciation of intransigence.

Before suspending the session and leaving, Piaget asked himself, “Why then choose the International Conference on Public Education in order to bring about its [Portugal’s] downfall” and answered this rhetorical question,

Because its Secretariat is weak, one may suppose and that has even been stated. But, Gentlemen, the fact that we are weak politically, is the very reason hitherto of our moral strength and the strength of our objective and active neutrality. (pp. 77–78)

At the end of the ICPE, the delegations that had supported the resolutions of the African peoples addressed the Director General of UNESCO and Piaget, through the acting president of the 1964 Conference: they justified their actions and positions and denounced those of their interlocutors, the respondents from UNESCO and the IBE (represented at the time by the members of the Joint Committee). The chairman of the said committee, Daniel Gagnebin, a senior civil servant in the Swiss government’s Federal Political Department and Chairman of the Joint Committee, responded and demonstrated again and again the legality of the decisions of those bodies. UNESCO was supposed to act as a judge and it had already taken a position and would confirm its support for the ICPE organisers and, through them, for the IBE itself.

The next Conference began its work in the summer of 1965, but not without adopting statutes and regulations confirming its modus operandi and main tasks. The procedures for defining the composition of the ICPE were the most talked about, in all the institutions in fact. The IBE’s Executive Committee finally agreed to submit to the supreme power of UNESCO, granting it the right to impose its choices on countries that were not affiliated to it.²⁵ However, the question of Portugal did not go away; indeed, the country continued to pay its dues to the IBE faithfully until 1968 (for the year 1967) and to correspond with it; it even participated occasionally in its surveys. Moreover, Portugal decided to join UNESCO in 1965, which led the UN agency to undertake an investigation of its educational policy in its colonies,²⁶ and the Joint Committee decided not to invite Portugal again until the results of that were known.²⁷ Again in July 1966, at the IBE Council (not in the ICPEs), the delegates from Nigeria, Francis Archibong, and Cameroon, Gaspard Towo-Atangana, proposed a resolution to exclude Portugal as long as it applied a retrograde colonial policy. The resolution was passed with seventeen votes in favour, six abstentions and seven who did not contribute to the vote: the discussions revealed the same divisions as had the ICPEs.

The Conferences eventually managed to return to their original function and subsequently focused their work and exchanges on educational issues, approached from a technical point of view; this preserved the substance of the modus operandi devised by its two main conductors, Piaget and Rosselló, until their departure at the end of the ICPE in 1968.

Insert 17.1 Europe, a Privileged Route or a Diversion in Building “Educational Internationalism”?

How did the IBE’s geopolitical location—on the Western edge of Switzerland, itself “at the heart” of Europe—impact on its history and the way its protagonists represented it? And what sort of relationship existed between the IBE and Europe, when in the immediate post-war period Europe was remaking itself as a new political entity, and also bringing Africa into this process at the interface of what were then known as the two blocs? Did this Europe constitute a privileged route or a diversion for the development of the IBE in the second half of the twentieth century?

As there are curiously few sources available for answering these questions, we have carried out a survey of all the digitised sources of the IBE between 1925 and 1968.²⁸ A keyword search of 2575 dossiers yielded the following results: “International” appears everywhere,²⁹ whereas “Europ*” features in only sixty-seven dossiers (“European” appears in forty).³⁰

Only two dossier headings include “Europe”. The first is the result of an inventory of correspondence with ministries by continent; the other refers to the Council of Europe (CE) (Strasbourg).³¹ Of the 244 pages in this file, one-third are strictly administrative, and one-third the result of duplication; only the remaining eighty pages are cross-referenced documents dealing with content. Three main points are addressed:

• 1. The two bodies invite each other to attend each other’s meetings as observers, which is done on an ad hoc basis, on common issues (such as educational and vocational guidance).

• 2. As soon as it was set up, the CE³² requested the IBE’s expertise, bibliographies and specific surveys; an agreement was even signed on 20 August 1951 in this regard.³³ Although the IBE was willing to comply during the 1950s and 1960s, Piaget refused to carry out specific investigations on Europe (or on Africa, which was included in the initial Eurafrica project; Hansen & Jonsson, 2014), but instead provided, for a fee, data from European countries collected during his international surveys. Piaget justified this by asserting that the IBE’s focus was resolutely “universal”.

• 3. On 9 May 1957, the Consultative Assembly of the Cultural Commission of the Council of Europe invited European countries that were not members of the IBE to join it.

Analysis of these sources shows that the geographical entity Europe—even when it constitutes itself as a body and takes initiatives in the broad field of training—was not a privileged interlocutor of the IBE, any more than the IBE was of Europe. As an institutional entity, going by way of Europe could even be perceived as a diversion (in terms of the IBE’s “progress” to the international level). As for the Council of Europe, it could be seen as a competitor, soon to be more recognised by its member countries than the IBE when it put educational issues on its agenda, given its financial, technical and human resources and its incentive and coercive powers.

At the same time, we re-read all the published minutes of the International Conferences on Public Education (ICPEs).³⁴ In 4600 pages (about 2,300,000 words on the whole), we found ninety-four occurrences of the term “Europe”. We examined all of them; by placing them in their enunciative contexts, and identified their connotations (neutral, negative, positive and emphatic). Figure 17.1 summarises our findings.

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”; ; ;

Let us specify the connotations identified.

• A “neutral” reference (thirty-three) relates to the mention of institutional bodies and entities or to the continent, in the same way as other continents.

• Half of the rare criticisms voiced ( eight) emanated from European individuals who recognised and contested Europe’s combative spirit and regretted its divisions; the other half came from delegates from other continents who denounced its cultural and colonial prominence.

• connotations (twenty-one) related mainly to Europe’s cultural contributions, during missions, in expertise and by fruitful exchanges, all highlighting its works and its spirit of solidarity.

• What is striking is the large proportion (thirty-two) of very almost ecstatic references: Europe shines by way of its scientific prestige, its culture, its history, the number and wealth of its languages; it constitutes a model from which the world can draw inspiration, and for some it expressed what pertains to the common and universal good. Such emphatic utterances were articulated by Europeans and by delegates from other continents.

The passages that are more difficult to classify (six) usually emanate from UNESCO representatives, who try to reflect the needs of all the people in the world, whose discourses do not avoid hierarchies, however tenuous or implicit.

The result of our analysis is first of all striking in the extremely meagre reference to Europe throughout these ICPEs. The whole illustrates the diplomacy with which one expressed oneself in this gathering, where power relations, although perceptible, were minimised, even while tensions and crises were tearing the world apart (in particular during the Cold War and the decolonisation processes). Clearly, through this in-depth investigation of the ways in which the term Europe is used in all the minutes, it is not possible to see, first of all, Eurocentrism (because the term is rarely used) but rather a hierarchy of continents, countries and cultures.³⁵