The IBE: A Federating Platform

Abstract

In 1925, the Institut Rousseau created the IBE in Geneva as a corporate association, supported by well-known persons from science, education and politics. The Institute’s Council presented it as a platform for federating associations, leagues and groups from civil society that aspired, like the Institut, to build peace through education. The chapter shows how its builders defined the contours of the IBE and attempted to ensure its viability as an umbrella agency for “social movements.” It identifies the convictions and aspirations that drove them, the controversies and setbacks that punctuated their daily lives, as well as the resistance and competition they encountered. Budget problems and the difficulty in federating international associations forced the IBE to change its strategy.

The Institut Rousseau—with this comfortable Rockefeller grant—created the IBE in Geneva as a corporate association. The Institute’s Council presented it as a platform for federating associations, leagues and groups from civil society that aspired, like the Institut, to build peace through education. We focus here on the way in which its builders defined the contours of the IBE and attempted to ensure its viability as an umbrella agency for “social movements.”¹ We are particularly interested in identifying the convictions and aspirations that drove them, the controversies and setbacks that punctuated their daily lives, as well as the resistance and competition they encountered (Image 3.1).²

Image 3.1

The constitutive document of the IBE. By this, the Institut Rousseau defined its bodies and appointed the persons responsible for its functioning. The signatories approved the creation and became members of the steering committee; among them Albert Einstein and Jean Piaget. (© AIJJR)

A Corporate Association, Gilded with Great Names

During the winter of 1925–1926, following intense compromises outlining its concept and activities, announcements were published in the local and international press, in French and then in various other languages (English, German, Spanish, Esperanto): they proclaimed the creation of the IBE, placed it within the precursory movement in its favour, described its intentions and launched an appeal for affiliations and financial support. These texts can be considered as performative, as they outlined the concept of the Bureau and constituted both the event that was supposed to found it and to legitimise it.

The builders of the IBE boasted that they had received the patronage of the Swiss Association for the LoN and an initiative committee of fifty-three personalities, in addition to the signatures of the President of the Geneva Department of Public Education, the socialist André Oltramare, the Director of the ILO, the enterprising Albert Thomas, and the pacifist scientist Albert Einstein, member of the International Commission for Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC). An administrative commission comprising seventeen members defined the mandate and the statutes. These were adopted in 1926, before being endorsed by the General Assembly in 1927. Article 2 of the statutes states the substance:

The object of the IBE is to act as an information centre for all matters relating to education. The Bureau, which aims to promote international co-operation, maintains a completely neutral position with regard to national, political and religious questions. As an organ of information and investigation, its work is carried on in a strictly scientific and objective spirit.

Ferrière commented enthusiastically:

[The aim is to] promote the culture of humanity […] to facilitate the rapprochement of civilised peoples, […] to collect official or private documents, and […] to extract the essence of this work in order to spread it and make it bear fruit for the benefit of all.³

Directors and Secretaries—including the General Secretary, Marie Butts, who served from 1926 to 1945⁴—formed the Secretariat, performing the dual functions of “linchpin” and “thinking head” of the IBE. Pierre Bovet, who was already Director of the Institut Rousseau, assumed the same role at the IBE from 1925 to 1929, supported by two deputy directors, Adolphe Ferrière, who was in office from 1926 to 1931, and Elisabeth Rotten, both co-founders of the New Education Fellowship (NEF, created in 1921). Overworked, Rotten resigned in 1928 and was replaced by the Catalan pedagogue Pedro Rosselló, a close collaborator of the Institut Rousseau who served the institution until 1968.

The prosopographical analysis of the eighty-two individuals who participated in the construction of the IBE and, after careful selection, joined its main bodies⁵ at the end of 1925-July 1926, points to the desire to secure allies in communities considered to be strategic: intellectual networks, diplomatic circles and associative movements. Most of them were friends of the Institut Rousseau, experts in psychopedagogy, intellectuals, notables and philanthropists who were in favour of the principle of an IBE in Geneva and supporting the internationalist, humanist, pacifist, reformist and scientific values that such a Bureau intended to embody. Women made up a sixth of the members, such as the Polish intellectual Helena Radlińska, Alice Descœudres, teacher of children with special needs, and Marie Butts, the first secretary general of the IBE. They were joined by spokespersons for feminist movements, including prominent figures on the regional, national and international scenes, such as Émilie Gourd, Emma Pieczynska, Nelly Schreiber-Favre and Camille Vidart.⁶ It can be noted that the representation of the academic world was 1/5, and, more discreetly, of other public institutions in the field of education and the pedagogical societies was 1/10.

A quarter of this group were senior civil servants, statesmen and representatives of major associations or international organisations, whose reputation crossed borders. It is significant that several delegates of governments and LoN agencies, or their wives, were involved in the executive bodies of the IBE, such as Paul Dupuy, Fernand Maurette, Maria Sokal, Arthur Sweetser and Duncan Christie Tait. In view of their commitment, we can say that they were at that time part of the core group of actors who laid the conceptual foundations of the Bureau. Through them, the IBE Secretariat was trying to take the pulse of the LoN debate and to gain support on all continents.⁷ The IBE’s publicity leaflets highlighted their responsibilities at the head of philanthropic associations, feminist leagues, cultural and denominational mutual aid and pacifist associations.⁸ The list of names on the initiative committee acted as a visiting card as if, from the outset, it were a question of attesting to the IBE’s federative vocation and to its legitimising itself through the great figures of internationalism and social movements that collectively embraced its causes.

It should also be noted that the core group of people involved in the IBE’s bodies had a clear democratic and liberal stance, sometimes with socialist tendencies, sometimes with more bourgeois and liberal ones, which inclined them to invest in social causes. They professed a so-called social Christianity, with Protestant affinities, which could be related to Quaker networks. This microcosm was distinguished by an unshakeable conviction in the transformative power of education, which was nourished by the Reformed faith and the Protestant duty to evangelise. Their internationalist mission, rooted in their pacifist and reformist convictions, in no way precluded a patriotic and national commitment, and for some even the certainty of their civilising responsibilities (Image 3.2).

Image 3.2

Participants at the 1928 IBE summer school “How to make the League of Nations known and develop the spirit of international cooperation”. At these courses, organised until 1934, women—mostly teachers—were in the majority. They were relegated to the shadows when the international conferences and its state delegates replaced these summer schools. (© IBE)

The Perilous Challenge of Federating Social Movements

While claiming to be strictly neutral and objective, the IBE participants were convinced of the mobilising power of civil society; they therefore chose as partners the individuals and groups that represented it. Individual memberships grew rapidly, but fell far short of expectations (1 million had been hoped for, but there were only 300 in 1929). “Life members” were very rare, even though it was hoped that such memberships would guarantee the existence of the Bureau (a single fee of CHF 250). In fact, it was the annual membership of collective members⁹—a minimum of 20 CHF—which were the most popular. The memberships would allow the new IBE to extend its influence and position itself as a federator. The IBE had a particular legitimacy in view of its anchorage in the Geneva of the LoN and in the Institut Rousseau, its progenitor, whose scientific expertise would guarantee the neutrality and objectivity of the Bureau.¹⁰

But the IBE was far from enjoying the recognition expected from the most influential and therefore most coveted educational federations, which were vying zealously to establish their legitimacy and assert their supremacy. The IBE’s closeness to the New Education Fellowship has already been noted, but the latter was careful not to concede any pre-eminence to the IBE, except at the scientific level. The same applied to other groups, such as the International Congress of Moral Education (ICME), the International Federation of Teachers’ Associations (IFTA) and the World Federation of Education Associations (WFEA).¹¹ The agreements did result in mutual recognition, which could be translated into reciprocal memberships, complementary organisations of tasks, alliances in the face of common challenges and co-organisation of congresses. But nobody accepted the supremacy of any other.¹²

It was through the work accomplished that the IBE strove to prove that it was indispensable. From the outset, its Secretariat was engaged in a worldwide documentary monitoring, synthesising, via reviews and bibliographies, everything that was being written and experienced in the world of education. In collaboration with the Institut Rousseau of which it was still the international branch, the IBE conducted various international surveys, the results of which were discussed in an avalanche of bulletins, articles and books, translated and distributed in many parts of the world. Among its favourite themes: patriotism, Esperanto, inter-school correspondence, family-school relations, school and teaching materials, history textbooks, children’s literature, peace in schools, group work and self-government. At the same time, since 1927, the IBE set up special courses for teachers to answer the crucial question of the LoN: “How to make the League of Nations known and develop the Spirit of International Cooperation?”¹³ The Bureau organised conferences, for example on peace in Prague (1927) and on bilingualism in Luxembourg (1928). It set up exhibitions, the themes of which were supposed to provide a showcase for the diverse cultures and riches of the world’s heritage. The aim was to make everyone aware of the most crucial educational problems and to equip educationalists and school leaders to help solve them.

Strengthening synergies with the LoN and its technical bodies, the ILO and the ICIC, as well as with the Liaison Committee of the major international associations, was a priority; all the more so as these were progressively setting up committees or branches dedicated to education in which IBE members hoped to play a leading role. Attending the meetings of the Liaison Committee, which were meticulously documented in Butts’ reports, enabled the IBE to consolidate its legitimacy, to distribute its dispatches and publications, to document the key events in the life of the international associations and to find out where and with whom grants and subsidies were being negotiated.

Faced with Competition, a Strategy to Review

The official discourse that emerged from the IBE’s conferences and publications during its first three years of existence boasted of the newly acquired solidarity and the brilliant results of the activities carried out. However, there is a stark contrast between these glowing statements, which were part of a legitimisation strategy, and the alarmist observations that were made in the daily exchanges within the Secretariat and the Council. The IBE was far from easily obtaining the partnerships it aspired to, the audience it hoped to reach and the subsidies it needed to survive. And the Institut Rousseau, which was responsible for it, was itself struggling to stay afloat. As early as the first general assembly, in the summer of 1927, a finance committee was set up to avoid crisis and bankruptcy.¹⁴

The vital problem: to gain legitimacy and recognition but to safeguard political independence and freedom of action. For some, only a private organisation supported by autonomous personalities and associations could ensure this: any official patronage would tie up the IBE, or even compromise its spirit. It is feared that the ambivalence and even more so the distrust—particularly of certain “Americans”¹⁵—towards the LoN would discredit the IBE if it were to be set up under their supervision. For others, the viability of such a large-scale agency required a great deal of patronage: that of official bodies, representatives of public authorities in charge of education systems, but also of other influential bodies (such as the International Peace Bureau, the LoN and its technical bodies, including the ILO and the ICIC). A turning point was reached in the spring of 1928, following the announcement that Germany was preparing to offer the LoN an International Institute of Education, like France with the ICIC and Italy with the International Educational Cinematograpic Institute (IECI).¹⁶ Talks were held in Geneva, within the LoN’s bodies, and then even in the Swiss capital, with the highest federal authorities.¹⁷ An argument was put forward, demonstrating to the Swiss government that the IBE was already operating as a “world institution”, which would only need the recognition of the Confederation to ward off its German rival, and thus guarantee that Switzerland would play its rightful role in the “concert of nations”:

The creation by a major country of an International Institute of Education offered to the LoN would not only kill off the Geneva bureau, it would deprive Switzerland of the possibility of playing in the concert of nations the role most in keeping with its traditions. […] Several foreign governments […] would already be happy to see the International Bureau of Education in Geneva take on a more official role and are ready to give it not only moral but also material support. […] It would be regrettable if our country, because of its federal character, were to deprive itself forever of the great material and moral advantages which the existence on its soil of an IBE could not fail to provide […] especially as it seems quite natural that foreign governments should make their financial participation conditional on Switzerland’s services.¹⁸

In order to deal with the budget deficit and the impossibility of acting as a federating body for international associations as well as counteracting the project of a German education institute, the prospect of a reconfiguration in an intergovernmental format had been seriously put to the test. Its relevance was no longer merely discussed, but now favoured. As early as January 1929, a finely argued report loudly proclaimed the decision to transform the IBE into an “organisation of general and public interest, whose members are drawn from governments, public institutions or institutions of public interest, and international unions”.¹⁹ States and especially their official education authorities would henceforth be the privileged partners of the reconfigured IBE (Image 3.3).

Image 3.3

The Palais Wilson. Headquarter of the League of Nations until 1937, this former hotel on the shores of Lake of Geneva got its name from Woodrow Wilson, leading architect of the LoN. The Palais was the seat of the IBE until 1984; until 1975, it was also the home of the Institut Rousseau both collaborating intensively. (© AIJJR)

Insert 3.1 The Palais Wilson

Confined to its location on the rue des Maraîchers since 1929, the IBE and the Institut Rousseau, which became the Institut universitaire des sciences de l’éducation, received an offer from the Geneva government to move into the Palais Wilson in 1937: the League of Nations had just left this building to move into the Palais des Nations, built especially for it, to the “pacific glory of the twentieth century,” within the majestic Ariana Park overlooking Lake Geneva.

This move is a form of consecration. The IBE’s move to the Palais Wilson bore witness to the unconditional support of the Swiss and Geneva authorities, who since the 1934 agreements²⁰ had endorsed the invitations that the IBE sent to the governments of the world to come to Geneva, at the time of the IBE’s assemblies, councils and, above all, International Conferences on Public Education. Thus, after having received its guests in makeshift premises, and also in the famous Reformation and Alabama rooms²¹ of the Geneva government, the IBE received government delegates and carried out its tasks between 1937 and 1985 in the buildings vacated by the secretariat of the League of Nations and its international diplomats.

The history of this building is now known. The Palace in which the IBE was located was part of Geneva’s architectural heritage. Opened in 1875, the Hôtel National, with its French neo-renaissance architecture, was intended to accommodate European high society, like other large hotels built on the shores of the lake (the Métropole, the Hôtel de Russie, the Beau-Rivage, the Hôtel de la Paix, the Hôtel d’Angleterre and the Richemond). In 1920, after some difficult years and then major restorations, the Hôtel National was selected by Sir Eric Drummond, Secretary of the League of Nations, to house the League’s staff (Marbeau, 2017; Sluga, 2013). Further restoration was necessary, transforming the rooms into offices, thesalons into meeting rooms and the service rooms into storage rooms for equipment and archives (Kuntz, 2017, p. 29). In 1924, following the death of the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, the hotel was renamed Palais Wilson to pay tribute to the man who was considered to be the initiator of the Peace Pact and the Treaty of Versailles, which led to the creation of the League of Nations.

In the Palais Wilson, the IBE rubbed shoulders for several decades with a number of other international organisations and charitable associations whose causes were dear to it and whose members were often well-known: the Institut universitaire des sciences de l’éducation, the Universal Committee of Christian Unions, the Universal Alliance for International Friendship through Churches, the International Congress of Public Health Works, the Bureau for the Protection of Migrants, the International Council of Women, the Universal Peace Convocation, the Committee for Peace and Disarmament set up by international feminist organisations, the World Jewish Congress, the Carnegie Endowment, the New Commonwealth Institute, the International Conference of Mutuality and Social Insurance, the International Service of the Society of Friends (Quakers)… to give just a sample.²² Since 1998, at the request of the Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan, the Palais Wilson has housed the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. In the meantime, the IBE moved to a futuristic building in the international organisations district, opposite the ILO, where it remained for forty years.