How to apply the methods of international cooperation to education, the preserve of nations? How to ensure full political neutrality while seeking the patronage of nation states, especially in the explosive context of the 1930s? This chapter is dedicated to the fifteen years that followed the reconfiguration of the IBE as an international organisation, the third in Geneva, according to the creators of the IBE, after the LoN and the ILO. The statutory transformation was in itself fundamental. However, it would take time to implement it, especially as the process of approaching governments was proving more complex than expected.Footnote 1

Creating New Bodies, Sealing New Alliances

More stable legal foundations were given to the IBE in July 1929, on the joint initiative of Pedro Rosselló and Jean Piaget, now at the head of the IBE, supported by Albert Malche and Robert Dottrens, in whose hands the Department of Public Education and the management of primary education in the canton of GenevaFootnote 2 were placed respectively. Most of the power was entrusted to the academic Jean Piaget,Footnote 3 who replaced Bovet at the head of the IBE; he was assisted by his two Deputy Directors Rosselló and Ferrière, who were confirmed in their functions. The management was supported by the General Secretary Butts, the archivist and documentalist J.-L. Claparède (son of Édouard), and by three to five secretaries permanently attached to the IBE, to whom were added volunteers and collaborators either on an ad hoc basis or else mandated for specific tasks.Footnote 4

Piaget led the research, Rosselló the administration, Butts the information. Intriguingly, Ferrière’s name never appears in this organisation chart, even though he would continue his mandate as deputy director for another year, but rather as a globetrotter of the new education.Footnote 5 It is likely that his health problems (deafness) prevented him from taking on corporate responsibilities and that his decidedly activist profile was seen as not very credible in establishing the IBE’s intergovernmental base, especially as he was more interested in developing and disseminating his own work, particularly on the active school.

The statutes did not change the main purpose of the IBE, which was still to “serve as an information centre for all matters relating to education”. To this end, its activities consisted, as in the past, first, of centralising documentation and second, of conducting scientific research, the results of which were brought to the attention of educators, administrators and educationalists; indeed, it was now the public schools and school systems as a whole that the IBE aimed to improve. The IBE gave up its mission of coordinating and federating international associations dedicated to education after having taken note of the limits of any overarching ambition.

The new structure of the Bureau was intended to ensure that the organisation was serious and that it had credibility and therefore the potential to act. The activism of the past, based on the personal commitment of a handful of individuals, was now replaced by a multiplication of sections, offices, councils, departments, mandates, regulations (directives, resolutions) and a staff that gradually grew, diversified, broadened its expertise and acquired a more official status.Footnote 6 Among the main activities that continued to be carried out were newsletters, surveys and exhibitions.

At first, the surveys followed the earlier format and themes and then they became more formal and standardised. Whereas they had previously been addressed to associations and activist channels, from 1932 to 1933 onwards they requested official data from the ministries and related to the public education systems.Footnote 7

Two types of survey were produced, the results of which provided the basic material for the ICPEs established in 1934. The first aimed to systematically collect information on reforms recently introduced in the countries surveyed and led to the International Yearbook of Education and Teaching; the second addressed educational issues deemed crucial in order to work together during the ICPEs to resolve them.

As for the exhibitions, they grew in size; previously thematic, they became institutionalised under the name of “Exposition permanente de l’instruction publique/Permanent exhibition of public education”. As Piaget explained, they were conceived as “a working instrument, a laboratory of comparative education, or at least a perpetual living illustration of what each of our investigations achieves abstractly”. The aim, he continued, was to stimulate “ever more numerous comparative research”, in order to take another step “on the road that is ours: the progressive coordination of educational results.” (ICPE 1937, p. 25) Piaget insists on comparatism but also on the coordination of results, which presupposes a scientific concertation on how to examine these results but could also imply the prospect of agreeing on the pedagogical orientations to be favored in the field.

The IBE initially maintained strategic relationships with many independent international associations, leagues and organisations. It carefully kept the lists of correspondents and collective members in its address book. Taking advantage of the scientific networks of the Institut Rousseau it pursued even more actively its collaborations (intellectual and pedagogical exchanges, correspondence, mutual reception) with a number of researchers and scientific centres such as the Institute of Education (London), the Institut für Erziehungwissenschaft (Jena), the Zentralinstitut für Erziehung und Unterricht (Berlin), the Institute of International Education and the Teachers College (New York) and various experimental schools. While acknowledging the importance of the work of these allied scientific institutions, Piaget nevertheless prided himself on the fact that the IBE was the only one to aim for the universality of its members and to base itself on official sources, which moreover were in French, thereby appealing to Latin peoples.

But from then on, the focus would be on intergovernmental organisations. The first mandate entrusted to the young director, Piaget, was precisely to strengthen synergies with them. Already very closely linked with the Institut Rousseau and the nascent IBE, the bonds with the ILO became closer over time: after having conducted a joint survey on the management of the occupations of children under fourteen years of age who had been released from compulsory education,Footnote 8 the ILO was able to establish a network of partners. A liaison committee was set up in 1931 to facilitate scientific collaboration, the circulation of data and a “harmonious distribution of tasks”. For its part, the ILO not only actively participated in the summer courses that the Bureau organised to publicise the LoN (1927–1932), but it was also constantly represented during the ICPEs as an observer. This was also the case with the LoN and ICIC, but relations with the latter become more delicate when they also invest the educational field.Footnote 9

In reality, it was the Paris-based Liaison Committee of the major international associations that remained the privileged forum for knowing what was going on, particularly in terms of education, behind the scenes of intergovernmental agencies and associations active in education and among young populations to promote peace.

After having relied on its base in Geneva to proclaim its legitimacy, the IBE felt excluded from what was being decided in other sites and institutions, in Paris particularly, where the IIIC was based, and also in London, where the NEF was located. This was all the more true since the states invited to become members seemed slow to do so and the Anglo-Saxon countries were reluctant to join the Bureau (Image 4.1).

Image 4.1
A photograph of a group of people of the I B E secretariat. 5 of them sit on chairs in front of a small table, while others stand behind. An open notebook is placed on the table.

Secretariat of the IBE in 1930. In the centre, Jean Piaget, beside him Marie Butts, general secretary, and Pedro Rosselló, deputy director, whose activities are extensively analysed in this book. On the left, Rachel Gampert who was secretary for more than twenty years, with important responsibilities, among others, as translator, organiser of conferences, responsible for the library and for the service for war prisoners; behind her, Blanche Weber, responsible for the section of child literature for 12 years. (© IBE)

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The First Intergovernmental Conference on Education

In 1929, the major change lay in the redefinition of the main partners of the IBE: from then on, it was governments, the first bodies interested and concerned by the evolution of education systems, which were the legitimate members,Footnote 10 and they financed, directed and controlled the IBE’s activities.Footnote 11 What approaches and means were being used to try to achieve this ambitious challenge?

First of all, it was necessary to obtain the affiliation of as many governments as possible. However, following an all-out appeal, only three states joined the enterprise in 1929 (Spain, Poland and Geneva); then three others in 1930 (Egypt, Ecuador, then Czechoslovakia), all qualified as founders in order to broaden the base of this intergovernmental structure somewhat. There were fifteen in 1939. Was it credible to claim intergovernmental legitimacy and to present oneself as the nerve centre of education globally while representing only a handful of states in the world? The strategies deployed to win the support, membership and participation of countries and bodies in charge of education systems would be tireless. By becoming an official member of the IBE, any government acquired the right to sit on the Executive Board and vote, in order to help set the main directions of the institution. Governments were required to pay an annual membership fee of CHF 10,000Footnote 12 to join the IBE. A detailed investigation of the negotiations conducted with all the countries approached shows the arrangements proposed to avoid this fee being prohibitive.Footnote 13 The challenge was to obtain the participation and, if possible, the affiliation of the largest number of states in the world; the aim was not only to gain an audience and legitimacy, but also to conquer universality, which would attest that educational cooperation on a planetary scale was possible beyond political differences. The future of humanity would thereby be pacified.

But these negotiations also led the IBE to make arrangements with regimes that were in total contradiction with its own values (Italy, Germany, Hungary, during the 1930s), arrangements that in these troubled years also reflected certain ambiguities in Switzerland’s foreign policy.Footnote 14

Faced with the difficulties of obtaining these affiliations and in order to gain a wider audience, the IBE took a series of initiatives to diversify the ways in which it collaborated with governments and, through them, with the countries they represented. In short, it set out to consolidate the national relays or centres, to collect and circulate data, and to promote the IBE and its activities; to encourage ministries to respond to the IBE’s international surveys and to provide basic information on specific educational developments in the country; to suggest that countries took part in events, exhibitions and above all in the International Conferences set up by the IBE in 1934.

Indeed, the real turning point came in the years 1932–1934 with the institutionalisation of International Conferences on Public Education (ICPEs), which were now to become the hallmark of the new IBE.Footnote 15 It was now around this “international forum” that the Bureau, as an intergovernmental body, mobilised its forces and gained transnational legitimacy.Footnote 16 During these Conferences, government delegates were invited to present and discuss the “highlights of the educational movement” in the world, based on the reports submitted by the countries participating in this process (subsequently published in the Yearbook). The ICPE s also aimed to examine and, if possible, resolve the most pressing educational problems. Two to three crucial topics were selected each year, on which the IBE conducted a preliminary survey, the results of which were then discussed during the summer conference, at the end of which recommendations supposed to solve the problems under discussion were collectively drawn up and adopted. Between 1934 and 1939, six conferences were organised, with an average of forty countries taking part. On the basis of surveys to which some fifty countries responded, eighteen topics were dealt with, resulting in as many recommendations.

The war was to put an abrupt end to these international forums and turned internationalist hopes into a nightmare (Image 4.2).

Image 4.2
A photograph of a letter from the Swiss Federal Policy Department to the Director of the I B E. The letter is in a foreign language with a signature at the bottom.

Letter from the Swiss Federal Policy Department to the Director of the IBE, March 1934, informing of its membership of the IBE. Indeed, the countries invited to participate in the intergovernmental conferences found it inconceivable that the host country, Switzerland, was not a member of the IBE. This was the subject of much negotiation, as Switzerland is a federal country, and most of the educational responsibilities were previously the responsibility of the cantons. (© IBE)

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Insert 4.1 Swiss Federalism, from a Threat to a “Miracle”

What was the relationship like between the IBE in Geneva and the Swiss federal authorities? From being rather distant until the end of the 1920s, they became much closer from 1930 and especially 1934, although the Confederation did not have, and never has had, a portfolio dedicated to education, which was the responsibility of the cantons.

It was thanks to the unfailing support of the Geneva authorities that the IBE first consolidated its intergovernmental base. This did not prevent the canton from being reluctant to pay its dues, especially during financial and political crises. But each time the Geneva government prevaricated, the IBE spokespersons responded that Zurich, Lausanne and Neuchâtel would be ready to host the IBE, with Geneva losing its educational pre-eminence in Switzerland. The withdrawal of Geneva’s support would also break the IBE’s momentum, said Piaget, even though the Bureau was in the process of obtaining the support of a range of other governments.

These diplomatic debates at the cantonal level raised the problem of the position of the federal authorities: how could an international institution established in Switzerland obtain the affiliation of the governments of the world, if the host country itself did not join? Conversely, how could the Swiss Federal Council authorise such an affiliation, since it was the cantons and not the Confederation that by right controlled most educational matters? This federative logic threatened to ruin the international credibility of the IBE in a first period. Especially since the IIIC and the League of Nations also dealt with educational issues. The Bureau and its associates would use this as an argument to win the support of the Federal Council step by step. They claimed that this demonstrated the real risk that another nation would build a world centre for educational documentation; after Germany, France was considering it, which would deprive Switzerland of its supremacy in the field.

Through negotiations, the Federal Council softened its stance, as it too was interested in playing a role in the “concert of nations”, provided its neutrality was not undermined: as early as 1930, Switzerland was presented as the host country of the ICPEs, eventhough it was only Geneva that was member of the IBE. Then, in March 1934, thanks to the support of the Swiss teachers’ associations and the Conference of Heads of Public Education Departments (CDIP),Footnote 17 the Federal Council not only agreed to be represented on the IBE Council, alongside the canton of Geneva, but above all to officially join the IBE.

Since Switzerland as a country did not have a portfolio strictly dedicated to public education, a ruse was proposed: the subsidy granted by Geneva was considered, statutorily, as that of Switzerland. The amalgam was made official by entrusting the opening of the July 1934 International Conference on Public Education (ICPE) (the first to be convened under this name) to the head of the Geneva Department of Public Education, Paul Lachenal, who was simultaneously given the role of first delegate of the Swiss Federal Council and president of the IBE’s Executive Committee. As such, he demonstrated that the experience of the Confederation showed that democracies could collaborate advantageously in educational matters without losing their independence (ICPE 1934, pp. 22–23). Swiss federalism tipped over from being a threat to an example: while it initially prevented the Confederation’s support for the IBE, putting the institution’s credibility at risk, this federalism was then held up as a model and presented as a “miracle”, attesting to the fact that states could and did benefit from cooperating without compromising their educational sovereignty.

During the Second World War, the Swiss Confederation was keen to play a role in the growing humanitarian services and made a substantial contribution to supporting the IBE’s Intellectual Aid Service for Prisoners of War.

From 1945 onwards, in order to consolidate the IBE in its negotiations with UNESCO, which was in the process of being founded, the Swiss federal authorities buttressed the Bureau with substantialfinancial support. Piaget now acted as Switzerland’s unofficial and later official ambassador at the constituent assemblies of the UN agency, thus rendering an important service to the political department in Bern. This support continued until 1968: in the report on the financial situation and membership fees of the member states, “Switzerland’s share of 50,000 Swiss Francs” is mentioned again and again, far exceeding the 10,000 Swiss Francs that other countries were expected to pay. It should be noted, however, that the subsidy granted to UNESCO, of which Switzerland was a member from the outset, amounted to twelve times that amount.

When the IBE was dissolved by its Council in November 1968, the representative of the Federal Council, C. Hummel, recalled the important role played by Switzerland “during the period of crisis experienced by the IBE […] and the particular responsibility that the federal authorities have always felt for this organisation, while being aware of the fact that the IBE did not belong to Switzerland but to the whole world”.Footnote 18 And it was not without pride that the Authorities of the Confederation and of the Canton of Geneva witnessed international institutions being established on its soil, and that international Geneva included an educational dimension in its mission.