School Subjects in the Service of Peace and the Individual

Abstract

Chapters 18, 19, 20, 21 and 22 analyse the IBE’s positioning with regard to what it referred to itself as “causes” on its work agenda: five sets of causes are focused on. This chapter focuses on the discussions about what to teach, how to teach it and for what purpose. School subjects were considered as a way of organising content in a complementary way, although a better balance should be developed. Active methods and group work should be privileged and contents defined in line with the child’s development as defined by psychology.

The question of what to teach, how to teach it and for what purpose formed an essential part (30%) of the topics addressed by the ICPEs.¹ This may seem like a minefield: what was taught in schools was closely related to nation-building: the school was mandated to build up the citizen, in particular so that they identify with their native or adopted territory and recognise themselves in this cultural belonging. How did the IBE deal with this issue? What content was given priority and what was left out? How did it relate to the organisation of the curriculum and the hierarchy of its constituent disciplines? How could recommendations be established that were acceptable to all in a field that the nation states had hitherto invested in and considered as belonging to their exclusive prerogatives?

School Subjects: Contrasted and Complementary

As early as 1935, the IBE Executive Committee decided to carry out investigations into the place of the “different subjects”² in the primary and secondary school curricula. The choice of subjects covered was far from trivial: mathematics, natural sciences and modern languages were discussed twice.³ In addition to these core subjects there were physical and sports education, writing, reading, handicrafts and the arts.⁴ There is a clear hierarchy in this list: mathematics and natural sciences take centre stage, as well as modern languages, the knowledge of which “can have a great influence on improving international understanding and understanding between peoples” (R 59, 1965, recital 4⁵).

This bipartite division is also apparent in the delegates’ speeches. During the 1955 Conference for example, the delegate from Austria⁶ claimed that languages, mathematics and science have to be differentiated from:

subjects which appealed, not so much to the intellect, as to feeling. […] One could not discuss the aims and methods of art teaching without bearing in mind its ties with other subjects, especially with music, literature and physical education. (p. 66)

To this list should be added manual work, linked to the visual arts, modern languages, linked to literature, and geography and history whose emotional—ideological?—weight was regularly invoked.

Surveys of school subjects followed a similar pattern: their place in the curriculum (time allocation, levels at which they were taught, separate branch with a particular name), their aims and contents, the methods used (including textbooks and other materials), the teaching staff (preparation and further training in the subjects and methods), recent or planned changes. In 1958 and 1960, two sessions of the ICPEs were devoted to primary and secondary school curricula as a whole: they synthesized, as it were, the work on the individual disciplines.

This overview shows that some subjects were never placed on the agenda of the ICPEs. While it was at the heart of the concerns of the Institut Rousseau and the first IBE, the teaching of ‘history’, as we have seen, was left to the ICIC, which was anxious to reserve this field for itself.⁷ We cannot exclude the possibility that the IBE—once established as an intergovernmental body—may have consented to this to avoid being confronted with the ideological and political burdens of this discipline.⁸

Even more surprising is the absence of “mother tongue”, which is the most important part of all school curricula around the world. It is true that writing and reading are addressed, but primarily from a technical point of view: respectively with an emphasis on visual and motor skills for writing,⁹ decoding and the ability to access the meaning of a written word or sentence for reading.¹⁰ Grammar, spelling and vocabulary were not mentioned, nor were literature and text writing.¹¹

This absence is significant, but nevertheless it was never discussed or justified. The request made during the 1954 ICPE by Belarus (p. 86), and backed by several other delegations, for it to be included in a future conference, was never followed up. It should also be noted that the use of the mother tongue—also known as the vernacular language—was regularly problematised in national reports, constituting a real concern, particularly in multilingual countries. Take the ICPEs of 1954 and 1960 as an example: the USSR claimed to teach in sixty languages; Thailand had switched to Thai, as had Ethiopia to Amharic; the Arab countries were trying to develop a “new living Arabic language” for teaching; Ghana, on the other hand, with its seven languages, taught English from primary school onwards; Liberia also advocated English, as the teaching of vernacular languages could create disagreements between “tribes”.¹² Why then should it not be a topic for discussion? Might this be explained by the IBE’s fear of meddling in nation states’ domestic policies. In fact, more than any other issue, the “mother tongue” topic had a direct link with the building of national identity. Besides, its name suggests this with a reference to the motherland.¹³ Also, there were important problems regarding domination by the languages of the colonisers, linked to the choice of the languages used for teaching and its cultural references.¹⁴

Different Methods According to the Type of Subject

The observed division of disciplines is reflected in the recommendations concerning teaching methods. Of course, a common principle emerged in the recommendations: it was advisable to use “active methods” which constituted the general pedagogical background of the IBE.¹⁵ However, the concrete approaches arising from this general principle were not similar for the two sets of subjects.

For mathematics and the natural sciences, the knowledge to be learned can be constructed directly from action on reality. Piaget’s formulations were emblematic in this respect:

a truth which was merely learnt was only a half-truth, the whole truth being reasoned out, reconstructed or rediscovered by the pupil himself. It was easier for the pupil to re-invent arithmetical or geometrical rules than grammatical rules. […] Child psychology showed the wealth of logical mathematical and physical constructions reached spontaneously. (ICPE, 1950, p. 32)

This principle would only work for those disciplines whose notions, according to Piagetian theory, are constructed by abstraction from action on reality or from the properties of actions themselves; this is not possible for others. During the 1952 Conference, Piaget therefore distinguished these disciplines from those of history and languages:

It was never possible for the pupil to rediscover by himself a historical truth of the structure of language, whereas in suitably organising certain experiments and in learning to reason precisely on the facts he discovered, he could spontaneously re-establish certain scientific truths. (pp. 30–31)

For mathematics, Piaget went so far as to postulate, in 1956, a possible parallelism between the new structures described and the logic of pupils’ actions, a parallelism that should therefore be put to good use in teaching:

There has been great evolution in the structure of mathematics. As a result of the work accomplished by many mathematicians, Bourbaki in particular, mathematics has so to speak been set up on a new basis. Its basis now consists of three types of structure. […] Should secondary teaching be inspired by this recent recasting of mathematics? It certainly should. […] convergence is possible between the conciliation of the structures and the recognition of the role of operations and action. (p. 31)¹⁶

The transformation of the architecture of mathematics, as Piaget’s thesis stated, made it possible to base teaching on the spontaneous development of mathematical knowledge in the child from action and its internalisation, by implementing the active method. It is not insignificant that the delegate from the USSR, Alexis Markouchevitch, who was none other than the vice-president of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, contested this supposedly pre-established harmony:

It should also throw some light on their relationship between mathematics as science and mathematics as a school subject. As a school subject mathematics was made up of aspects of the science of mathematics, selected in the light of educational aims, mathematical principles, teaching methods, and psychology [a selection of elements of the science of mathematics, selection founded on the aims of school and adapted not only on principles related to mathematics, but also to didactics and psychology]. In this connection it was to be noted that the system put forward by N. Bourbaki did not appear to be suitable for teaching, as it led directly to abstraction and neglected applications. (p. 74)

In this debate, two conceptions of how to define school content clash: that of Piaget, who believed that this content could be deduced from the reference sciences, mathematics and child psychology, especially since, according to him, there is a correspondence between the structure of this content and the child’s thinking and development; the other believed that it is the school’s goals that govern the choice of content, as do didactic considerations as well.

Natural sciences and mathematics were also discussed in terms of their social values. Natural sciences contribute to “making him [student] love nature and her beauties” and to “protecting and conserving nature”, the recommendation stated (R 27, 1949, N°3). Delegate Kanthia Kularatnam from Ceylon exemplified this by stating:

That he had been struck by a point in the report on the introduction to natural science: the passage concerning the way in which this teaching could be used in the conservation of natural resources. It seemed to him that it was a world problem. For example, in his country where the sub-soil was extraordinarily rich, there was no feeling among the public that the mineral riches of Ceylon should be conserved. The capitalists who exploited the land thought only of acquiring wealth as rapidly as possible. (ICPE, 1949, pp. 49–50)

Mathematics, in turn, must be linked to practical life and the environment in which the child lives. J.H. Goldsmith, the UK delegate, expressed his complete agreement with the 1950 report’s conclusion: “Mathematics education must become a living thing, which must be interwoven with the life, the environment and the active interests of the child” (p. 80).

The moral viewpoint was not forgotten on this same day. Gerardo Florès, the delegate from the Philippines, supported by William John Weeden, from Australia:

Florès was anxious that the moral aspects should be emphasized, since it was not enough to know how to add and to become a banker or an owner, but it was important to be an honest banker or owner. (p. 80)

The role played by active methods was conceived differently for the other group of subjects: art, music, physical education, manual work and languages in particular. In these subjects, children do not discover and construct rules, concepts and knowledge: they already practise them. For these subjects, the starting point is the spontaneous needs of the pupils, to which are grafted techniques given from outside which enable them to develop. In 1955, the Italian delegate Carlo Leoni, head of the Fine Arts Division and also a painter, noted for example: “Children made spontaneous drawings at the kindergarten stage and then progressively did more technical and advanced work. Pupils studied the different types and techniques of the great masters” (p. 69). As Piaget stated, “There are subjects such as history, French or spelling whose content has been developed or even invented by the adult and whose transmission raises only problems of better or worse information technique” (1965, p. 44). Active methods therefore seem to have limitations that Piaget made clear. The difference in their implementation according to the binary division of disciplines was a symptom of this.

The delegates insisted on the general educational value of these subjects: they were concerned with the identity of the individuals, the construction of their image of the world, the broadening of their artistic culture and the development of their manual and sensory skills. The manual work discussed at the 1950 conference is an eloquent example of this, claims Torres Bodet:

I know not what barbarous folly and prejudice branded manual labour as something that dishonours man. […] It has, moreover, an extraordinary educative power which the schools are tending to utilise increasingly. Teachers seeking to train the senses of very young children have found no better means than handicrafts, and the development of project and activity methods has made this even clearer in recent years. (p. 24)

Several delegates emphasised the importance of these subjects in providing access to regional and national cultures of craft, art, folklore, literature; these disciplines would aim to develop “aesthetic taste”, as they were oriented towards what is often called culture.

Geography also plays an essential educational role:¹⁷ “We try to make the environment known by means of excursions and trips and to develop the love of the homeland”, emphasised the Romanian delegate.¹⁸ The Bulgarian Minister Plenipotentiary, E. Karadjoff, claims that “what kills is not only the gun or the dagger, but also silence and ignorance”, and that this ignorance could be combated by geography, which enabled people from different nations to get to know one other (p. 66). In the considerations of the recommendation concerning geography, an attempt was made to articulate the more national and international visions: “while fostering love of one’s country, engendering feelings of esteem for all other peoples and so increasing understanding and collaboration between nations”, a compromise quite in line with the values defended by the IBE¹⁹ (R 18, 1939, recital 2).

However, there was one area where the principle of active methods was unavoidable, and that was in reading.²⁰ The report presented in 1949 by Ruth E. McMurry, a delegate from the United States, supported by several other delegations and Piaget himself, defended the global and analytical approach to teaching reading, which would start from the needs of the child so as not to start with the pure abstraction represented by the letter. The Colombian Nieto Caballero added that

the sentence method had given extraordinarily good results in Colombia. Learning to read had become a pleasure since this method had been used. This method was perhaps slower, but it was better to teach children to observe rather than to teach them to read too soon. (p. 71)

When they did not plainly defend the synthetic method, representatives from Luxembourg, Czechoslovakia, the United Kingdom and Italy invoked differences in language, tradition and training to argue in favour of openness, without opposing these clear-cut positions head-on.²¹ No doubt in order to avoid any controversy, they stated that the question of method should not be given too much importance, and that the teachers should be left to their own discretion in this matter.

The recommendation concerning the matter was a skilful compromise which both defended the position of the global approach, in line with active methods, and immediately relativised it, thus masking fundamental differences of opinion:

Recognising […] that b) methods based on psychology (the so-called sentence or “global” methods), conform more to the mental capacity of a child, and enable the teaching of reading to be correlated to a greater degree with general class activities, but call for a fuller training of the teacher. […] Believing that the choice of reading methods is influenced among other things by the structure of language and by the school organisation of each country, etc. (R 28, 1949, recital 2)

This consideration, although very explicit, corresponded well to the fundamental credo of the IBE and more particularly to Piaget’s conceptions but did not, however, lead to any precise position concerning the active method, which was rare. As a compromise solution, the ICPE recommended that school authorities were concerned to “improve the relevant teaching methods through research and experiment” and a little further on that “methods of teaching children to read incorporate the findings of educational theory” (R 28, 1949, N°1 and 4).

Content and Development of the Child

The credos of active methods were matched by the idea that, when defining subject content, the stages of development highlighted by psychology should be taken into account. In mathematics, the indications provided for the construction of the curriculum are deduced from developmental psychology: “That even in the nursery-infant school, a child be given opportunity, through his own activities, to discover the elementary relationships (that the part is contained by the whole, order, similarity, etc.) of number and space” (R 31, 1950, N°2). “In visual arts, the various stages of the mental growth of the young child and of the adolescent, as well as their interests, should be taken into account when drawing up the art syllabus and teaching methods” (R 41, 1955, N°10). This principle applied more generally to the design of study plans:

In drawing up syllabuses for successive grades, children’s capacity to understand and assimilate at various stages of growth should be taken into account in order to ensure that they receive a well organised intellectual education proceeding at a normal pace. (R 46, 1958, N°5)

And one should not forget the critical intervention made by Piaget during the 1948 ICPE on geography as he feared that if the report

were read hastily, it might give the impression that competent, intelligent and honest geography teaching would of itself embrace international understanding. With regard to such an understanding [it] should be borne in mind, the egocentricity of a child which makes him believe that his own country was the centre of the world. (p. 36)

Seemingly pulling all the IBE and its ICPEs in his wake, Piaget considered the programmes and not just the subject itself—“with competent, intelligent and honest […] teaching” from the teacher who mastered the content of their subject—but also by taking into account the development of the child and the adolescent. The Copernican reversal²² was imposed as a way of thinking: “The advances made in educational psychology and experimental teaching suggest the possibility of methods progressively better adapted to the latent capacity of the child”²³ (R 23, 1948, N°4). This approach was raised to the level of a general principle, globally accepted and recognised, including for secondary education. The logic of the school programmes was subject to a developmental thinking powerfully nourished by psychological research.

Balance in the Teaching Content

The two global studies on the 1958 and 1960 curricula confirm critically the already noted dominance of languages, mathematics, natural and social sciences, with the other subjects occupying roughly one quarter of programmes.²⁴ On the other hand, there was a theme in the tendency of the reforms to increase the number of concepts to be learned, inevitably leading to overload. These observations and the need to adapt the curricula to social changes and to progress in knowledge in the educational sciences led to a concern for a better balance between intellectual training, on the one hand, and moral, physical and artistic education, on the other hand (see, e.g., ICPE, 1960, p. 127).

The construction of the subjects was not in question; what was on the agenda was the balance between disciplines. How was this achieved in practice over the forty years under scrutiny? The documents and debates show a tendency towards transforming the place of subjects by acting on their value, as defined by their compulsory or optional character, the number of hours allocated to them and the weight of examinations. This move did not take place without encountering resistance. The general aim of these possibilities of transformation is summarised in Recommendation 50 of 1960 entitled “Preparation and issuing of general secondary school curricula”; it constitutes a sort of high point of the ICPEs’ work on content and subjects:

• 2) […] it is nevertheless recommended that a proper balance should be maintained in the relative importance given in curricula and syllabuses to such things as the pupils’ intellectual, moral, social, manual, physical and aesthetic education, in order to ensure the complete and harmonious development of the individual child.

• 3) In order to achieve this balance, it is desirable to bear in mind when drawing up curricula the varied contribution which each subject can make not only to the pupil’s store of factual knowledge, but also to the development of his personality and to his attitude to the world around him. (R 50, 1960, N°5)

The various disciplines—recognised by all as organisers of school knowledge—contribute to the development of both the pupils’ mastery of knowledge and their personal development as a whole. In addition to this, the main mission of the IBE is recalled in Article 6 of Recommendation 50: “the contribution which the teaching of some subjects can make to good relations, peace and understanding between nations and races”.

An analysis of the series of content-related surveys conducted after 1960 reveals a significant shift in emphasis. There was no longer a discussion of disciplines but of overarching themes, with the various subjects contributing to each of them in “interdisciplinary activities” (R 65, 1968, N°12): health education, studying the environment, and education in international understanding. “Generally speaking, the study of the environment is much more a means, a method, than a discipline” (ICPE, 1968, p. 154). In fact, the environment, to take this example, appears to be present everywhere and nowhere in the concert of subjects: “Any subject can give rise to the study of environment, for this is in fact a constraint. It is essential if the school is to prepare the child for life” (p. 154). Conversely, as UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Education, Carlos Fleixa-Ribeiro of Brazil, pointed out:

Environment rapidly becomes for the child not a certain fact, direct, close at hand, rough and homogeneous, but as a bond woven by the interaction of complex forces, some of which, he must learn very quickly, arising from the exact and natural sciences and others from social and human ones: to undertake environmental study is to make, very early, an inter-relation of subjects, to bring home to the child the complexity of the world in which he lives. (p. 42)

Let us recall that Piaget would ardently defend the need for an interdisciplinary approach, for example, in his text on the future of education (Piaget, 1972, p. 31). On this point, as on many others, the OECD would follow the lead of the IBE in popularising the concept of interdisciplinarity.²⁵

A final and essential point is in order. A constant feature of the ICPEs’ long work on content is that curricula should not define in detail what the teacher should do in the classroom, in the subjects and more generally. The recommendations were in fact only “a guide and a concrete orientation” (R 50, 1960, N°36)²⁶ which needed to be adapted, leaving teachers, whatever their rank, “a wide scope for adapting these programmes to local and regional requirements” (R 35, 1952, N°3b). Teachers had a key role to play here and were therefore central to the IBE’s thinking. Let us take a look (Image 18.1).

Image 18.1

A double page from a Spanish school atlas, 1961. This atlas is part of the IBE’s school book collection. The question of geography was discussed in the 1939 and 1949 ICPEs, with strong stress on international comprehension and against racial prejudices, to be banned from textbooks. Obviously, the double page of the atlas proceeds otherwise. (© IBE)