After the upheavals of the last few months, education will once again be the decisive factor not only for reconstruction, but also and above all for construction itself. It is certainly comforting to note that on this point […] there is consensus on needs and convictions. Now, however new the tasks that await us, it is clear that we cannot avoid them: in the immense effort of preparing future generations that will be maintained, the IBE will continue to devote most of its work to that common good of all civilisations: the education of the child. (Piaget, Director’s Report, 1940, p. 12)

In the midst of the cataclysm of war, was it conceivable to continue believing in and brandishing the pacifist torch of “the common good of all civilizations, namely the education of the child”? This was apparently the conviction of Piaget and the Bureau in 1940. Although the Conferences were suspended between 1940 and 1945, the international surveys, the documentation work, the collection of information, the permanent exhibition and the educational correspondence with countries, even the belligerent ones, continued. Nevertheless, the IBE’s functioning and its priorities were profoundly restructured: its causes now had a humanitarian dimension, with the focus on people in captivity (Image 5.1).

Image 5.1
A photograph of a team of secretaries and trainees preparing books for war prisoners. The team is in a room, packing books.

Preparation of books for war prisoners. During the Second World War, the IBE placed its energies at the service of a humanitarian cause consistent with its functions: the Service of Intellectual Assistance to Prisoners of War. A team of eight secretaries and seventeen trainees worked for the service, among them Rosine Maunoir, secretary of the IBE (in the centre). (© IBE)

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Preserving Its Mission of Educational and Intellectual Mutual Aid

From the autumn of 1939 and for the duration of the hostilities, after consultation with the governments affiliated to the IBE, the powers of the Council and the Executive Committee were entrusted to a Management Committee made up of representatives of the non-belligerent countries affiliated to the IBE. The chair was Adrien Lachenal, then Head of the Department of Public Education of the Canton of Geneva, and the vice-chairmanship was entrusted to the delegates of Belgium (until 1940) and Colombia.Footnote 1 The composition of this IBE management committee thus led to an “improbable meeting”, since it was initially chaired by Switzerland and included delegates from Argentina, Belgium, Egypt, Spain, Ecuador, Colombia, France, Hungary, Iran, Italy, Portugal and Romania. Belgium and France would no longer participate, as soon as they fell under the yoke of the Reich, nor would Italy as soon as it entered the war, while Hungary, Romania and Iran remained. On the other hand, the office of the Management Committee organised successive meetings with a delegation from Germany, Belgium and France (1940) and then from Great Britain (1941) to work out the collaboration of their respective countries in the new intellectual assistance service set up by the IBE for people in captivity.

Indeed, refusing to “abdicate before the destructive scourge of war”,Footnote 2 on the initiative of this Management Committee, the IBE set up a Service of Intellectual Aid for Prisoners of War.Footnote 3 The mission of this service was to collect books and distribute these to prisoners in order to “provide them with spiritual comfort”, to keep them “in touch with the world” through culture and to allow them to use their “forced leisure time” to train and improve their skills. With the exponential growth in the number of prisoners, the number of requests exploded, confirming the IBE’s belief in the virtues of the circulation of knowledge, in this case books. From 1940 onwards, more than 200 volumes were distributed per day; by the end of the war, more than 600,000 volumes had been circulated.Footnote 4 The IBE posed as a liaison organisation between prisoners from all countries and also between the belligerent governments, including their German, French, Italian and English partners. Although it was well aware of the impossibility of convening its annual ICPEs, the Management Committee endeavoured to preserve its links with the member states, which systematically received the minutes of the Management Committee. Although it did not continue to canvass for membership, none of the governments resigned and the IBE even obtained the membership of Finland in 1945, followed shortly afterwards by Austria (1946). The Committee made every effort to ensure that all activities likely to be undertaken by the IBE were maintained, especially as the Swiss Federal Council made a more substantial contribution to its funding.

Stamps were issued by the IBE, in collaboration with the postal services, bearing images of great Swiss pedagogues (Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Father Grégoire Girard).Footnote 5 As with the LoN and the ILO, they were used as postage for the IBE’s own mail-outs, thus providing propaganda and, thanks to the interests of philatelists, they also provided a valuable financial boost.

The Permanent Exhibition of Public Education was expanded and its visitors became more diverse (educators, schoolchildren, families, diplomats). Destroyed by an accidental fire in March 1944, its reconstruction allowed the concept to be modernised. The children’s literature section also continued its work, seemingly unperturbed. What is also striking is the consistency of the international surveys conducted and even published. Nine of these were initiated during the hostilities, selected to alleviate the distresses and disasters identified.Footnote 6 The first ones were published during the war, the next five appeared on the agenda of the International Conferences,Footnote 7 which once again set the pace for the work of the IBE and its partners after the war. In 1946, thirty governments were represented, and about a hundred participated in the surveys on which the Conference was based.

Getting Recognition for the IBE’s Pioneering Work

Why did the 1946 meeting exceptionally take place in April, during the Easter period? Some answers can be found in the very rich correspondence exchanged during the war between the members of the Secretariat, particularly between Rosselló and Butts. The letter the former sent to the latter in May 1945 testifies to the IBE’s aspiration to demonstrate its ability to survive, act, react, and even stand out on the international scene, against all odds:

We have survived the War, we will survive the Peace. […] We were fortunate that this meeting was the first to be held on the continent after the guns fell silent. The 9th Conference was also one of the last to be held in Geneva before the outbreak of hostilities.Footnote 8

It was therefore a matter of proving as quickly as possible that the IBE was capable of playing a central role on the international scene, by positioning itself as a precursor of the international conferences envisaged to rebuild the world, on the still smouldering ashes of the war. Nevertheless, the very survival of the institution was at stake.

Since 1943, the IBE had taken on the mission of conceiving what it then called “post-war educational and spiritual reconstruction”, also taking the pulse of the initiatives of other international organisations. In addition to the problems dealt with in the surveys, the management committee was concerned with the training of executives who could make up for the educational shortcomings of children with incomplete schooling, training monitors for abandoned youth, making up for the shortage of educators, ensuring the reconstruction of the decimated pedagogical and scientific libraries, designing the major educational reforms to be piloted and drawing up an education charter.

Although he did not pursue his comparative world studies to the same extent,Footnote 9 Rosselló wrote his doctoral thesis, defended in Lausanne in 1943, on The Precursors of the International Bureau of Education. An unseen aspect of the history of education and international institutions. The thesis of his dissertation—still upheld in the letters he addressed to Butts and Bovet Footnote 10—among others—was in fact the core of his commitment throughout the war, addressing the great powers that were already emerging to build this new “World Education Authority”: “Let us avoid ‘reinventing America’ and take advantage of the experiences of the precursors; rather than wasting energy competing with each other, let us coordinate educational approaches and projects in a healthy emulation; this presupposes building on what has been tried and tested before and elsewhere and on what already exists”, by which he means the IBE in Geneva, which Rosselló presents as “the highest international educational body that has ever met” (Image 5.2).Footnote 11

Image 5.2
A photograph of Marie Butts, Jean Piage, and a diplomat standing and talking.

Marie Butts (1870–1953), IBE’s secretary general from 1925 to 1947, flanked by Jean Piaget, director, and a diplomat. In London during the Second World War, she was the IBE’s ambassador for the preparation of the future UNESCO. She was one of the first women to be awarded the Doctorate Honoris Causa of the University of Geneva, in 1948. (© IBE)

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