The International Bureau of Education (1925-1968)

Front matter

are L

Eo n The International Bureau

"The Ascent From the Individual tothe Universal”

Foreword

This book makes the history of the International Bureau of Education more accessible. This narrative is still largely unknown to the public (especially the English-speaking), even though, under the leadership of Jean Piaget, it was the first intergovernmental institution in the field of education. In this respect, it was a precursor of UNESCO, with which it collaborated from 1947 on, and which it joined in 1968.

The cover image could be a symbolic representation of the IBE’s ambition: to build unity in diversity, by considering the way in which sedimented territories are arranged in relation to one another, by dealing with their convergences and divergences, their diverse materials and textures. Those who built the IBE were in fact driven by the universalist conviction that all the territories of the planet belong to the same and unique world constituted by the erratic plurality of their formats and cultural bases; a plurality—and the way in which it evolves and fits into the environments— that precisely intrigued these comparativists in education and specialists in developmental processes, including child development.

The IBE with its astonishing longevity has been the focus of our attention for the past ten years, as we were eager to understand how it evolved over the twentieth century, while the internationalisation of educational phenomena was accelerating and a new global governance was imposed in this field. Initiated by the work of the authors of this book, the research was founded, from 2016 on, by the Swiss National Science Fund grant (N° 100011_169747), directed by Hofstetter and Droux, and carried out by the Equipe de recherche en histoire sociale de Péducation (Érhise). This has led to numerous works to which 15 other researchers, mostly vi FOREWORD historians, some early in their careers, others more experienced, have contributed over five years.! The specific contributions of each of them enrich this volume, which is therefore indebted to the dense seminars of collective work. We will not fail to refer to them at the appropriate points. Three theses have also been completed. Boss (2022) approaches the IBE by penetrating the beating heart of the Secretariat: via prosopographical approaches, she sheds light on the profiles and trajectories of its members and examines their working tools and techniques, as well as their social circles and networks of collaborations. This allows her to identify how the premises of comparative education as a new disciplinary field were built up, step by step, through conferences, surveys and exhibitions. Brylinski (2022) focuses on the IBE as an intergovernmental agency, questioning its “utopia” of recommending peaceful education at a time of heightened nationalism. Her specificity resides in the critical look at the (mis)alliances, consultations and negotiations that allowed the construction of this intergovernmentalism by pointing out, thanks to enlightening network analyses, the political interferences in this forum which was supposed to be preserved from them. As for Loureiro’s thesis (forthcoming), it is distinguished by the emphasis placed on the interconnections with Latin America, in order to identify the modalities, channels and contents circulating in both directions, between the international Geneva of the interwar period and South America, which was also aspiring to identify itself on the international scene. Specific case studies, such as Brazil, also make it possible to identify how its representatives reappropriated constructed knowledge and participated in its redefinition.

International scientific seminars organised by the authors and by Erhise have provided the opportunity to discuss specific methodological,

Joëlle Droux, Cécile Boss, Emeline Brylinski, Aurélie De Mestral, and Michel Christian, Anouk Darme-Xu, Blaise Extermann, Marie-Élise Hunyadi, Irina Leopoldoff, Valérie Lussi Borer, Clarice Loureiro, Frédéric Mole, Anne Monnier, Viviane Rouiller and Sylviane Tinembart.

FOREWORD vii theoretical and empirical issues with particularly qualified experts,” to whom we extend our warmest thanks. Many colleagues, through their own investigations and writings, their critical reviews and discussions, their translations and invitations, are present on these pages. This is evidenced by the many venues where we have been invited to present our work: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels, Budapest, Cadiz, Dublin, Freiburg, Geneva, Groningen, Lausanne, Lisbon, London, Lyon, Moscow, Paris, Porto, Rome, St. Petersburg, Uppsala, Warsaw, Zurich, and Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Washington, as well as Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, San Luis de Potosi, Quito and, more briefly, Bombay, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Hue.

We have also had the opportunity to submit the first results of our investigations to critical discussion in numerous formalised scientific networks, both in Switzerland (Swiss Historical Society, Swiss Society for Research in Education) and at the international level such as the conferences of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), the European Network in Universal and Global History (ENIUGH), the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) and the International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE).

Our investigations took advantage of the wealth of heritage preserved in a variety of sites and institutions, libraries and archival collections, first and foremost the Archives Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau (AJR), the Jean Piaget Foundation (AJP), the League of Nations (LoN) and the United Nations (UN) and of course those of the IBE’s own Documentation and Archives Centre, whose non-published documents for the period in

? Abdeljalil Akkari and Thibaut Lauwerier (University of Geneva), Ivan Bajomi (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest), Jeremy Burman (Groningen University), Léonora Dugonji¢- Rodwin (Uppsala University, IDHES, Ecole normale supérieure-Paris Saclay), Joyce Goodman (University of Winchester), Martin M. Grandjean (University of Lausanne), Alix Heiniger (University of Fribourg), Daniel Laqua (Northumbria University, Newcastle), Claire Lemercier (CNRS—Centre for the sociology of organisations, Paris), Damiano Matasci (Universities of Lausanne and Geneva), Antonio Nóvoa (University of Lisbon), Emmanuelle Picard (Ecole normale supérieure, Lyon), André Robert (University of Lyon 2 Lumière), Marc Ratcliff and his team (Camille Jaccard, Ariane Noël) (University of Geneva), Rebecca Rogers (University of Paris Descartes), Gita Steiner- Khamsi (Norrag and Columbia University), Françoise Thébaud (University of Avignon) and Sylvain Wagnon (University of Montpellier).

vill FOREWORD question have now been digitalised. It is thanks to the generous welcome and support of the people in charge of these various archives that we have been able to carry out our work, for which we thank them. Our gratitude goes to the experts (Sébastien-Akira Alix and Christian Ydesen who have carefully commented on the whole manuscript and have helped to improve its clarity and relevance). The final production of the book benefited from the specific complementary contributions of Viviane Rouiller.

Our deepest gratitude goes to Moya Jones who translated the text with unwavering expertise and readiness. Translating with such subtlety presupposes the ability, which is incomparable here, to make the problematic and the style of the authors one’s own. This requirement has important advantages: it reveals forms of language that conceal paucities of thought, helping us to make our analyses clearer without compromising the complexity of the subject; it involves reviewing a text in detail in order to get a deep understanding of its general coherence, thereby highlighting inconsistencies; it contributes to the process of the circulation and internationalisation of the subject, which is particularly important when it comes to unearthing the little-known work of our predecessors.

The translation and publication of this book in open access have been financed by a grant from the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) of the Swiss Confederation (2021-2022) and the iconographic credits have been generously offered by the IBE, the AIJJR and the AJP. To them as well, we express our gratitude.

Geneva, Switzerland Rita Hofstetter 15 April 2023 Bernard Schneuwly

Boss, C. (2022). Une histoire des pratiques de comparaison du Bureau international d'éducation. Contextes et trajectoires collectives (1925-1945) [Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Geneva]. https://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/ unige: 164477

Brylinski, E. (2022). Recommander Vutopie? Construction d’une coopération intergouvernementale par le Bureau international de l'éducation au milieu du 20 siècle [Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Geneva]. https://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige: 164046

Loureiro, C. (forthcoming). La coopération pédagogique promue par le Bureau international d'éducation (BIE): les interconnexions avec l'Amérique latine (1925-1952) [Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Geneva].

Contents

The IBE: A Matrix for Educational Internationalism An Increasingly Universal Orientation Universal/Universality: Conceptual Tools for an Investigation

Our Theme: The Universal and the IBE—Ambitions, Limits and

Contradictions

Part I The IBE: An Actor of Its Time

Compensating for the Shortcomings of the Treaty of Versailles Dithering at the LoN

The Institut Rousseau, Figurehead of Educational Internationalism?

The IBE: A Federating Platform A Corporate Association, Gilded with Great Names The Perilous Challenge of Federating Social Movements

X

CONTENTS

Faced with Competition, a Strategy to Review References

Achieving Intergovernmental Legitimacy Creating New Bodies, Sealing New Alliances

The First Intergovernmental Conference on Education References

During the War, the IBE Prepares the Post-War Period Preserving Its Mission of Educational and Intellectual Mutual Aid

Getting Recognition for the IBE’s Pioneering Work

“A Marriage of Convenience” with UNESCO?

Preparing Negotiations to Remain Autonomous

Granting the IBE “All the Honours as UNESCO’s ‘Father? and Assigning it the Role of ‘Little Brother”

Towards a Destabilising Universality: The Swan Song? A Process Full of Pitfalls

“Like the Phoenix, the IBE Will Rise from Its Ashes” References

Part II Educational Reformism, Pacifist Internationalism, Universalist Ideals

8 From the Institut Rousseau to the IBE: Promoting a

New Era

A “Copernican Revolution” Endorsed by Psychopedagogy A Positioning Intended to Embody the “spirit of Geneva” A Unifying and Reconciling Neutrality?

CONTENTS Xi

9 Facing Equivocations, Tightrope Acrobatics 129 Avoiding Any Ambiguous Link ... with the NEF Too 129 In the LoN’s Compromising Sphere of Influence 131 Challenging the IIIC by Advocating Neutrality, Objectivity and Diversity 134 References 146

10 The IBE Axiom: “Rising from the Individual to the

Universal” 149 Universalisable Knowledge and Teaching Methods 149 Command Nature by Obeying It: From Egocentrism to Solidarity 151 Democracy and Conflicts of Reciprocity 154 Universal Aims: Cultural Diversities vs World Culture 157 References 161 Conclusion to Part II 163 Part II The Modus Operandi of the ICPEs 167 11 Scenography of the First Intergovernmental Parliament on Education 171 An Almost Perennial Rationale 171 Adjustments for a Larger Audience 176 Analysing the Main Features of the Education World 179 Resolving the Crucial Education Problems of the Planet 181 References 187

12 A Commitment That Was All the More Binding Because

It Was Freely Chosen 189 Making Freedom a Responsibility 189 Firmer Contractualisation, Under the Patronage of UNESCO 192 “Hypocrisy, a Tribute Paid by Vice to Virtue?” 196 An Original Sin: The Instrumentalisation of Expertise? 198 xii

CONTENTS

“Raising Comparative Education to the Level of Intergovernmental Cooperation”

Rosselló’s Dynamic Comparative Pedagogy

Piaget’s Psychopedagogical Theories Transposed to the ICPEs References

Part IV Focusing on Universality: Geopolitical Issues Steady Growth in the Number of Countries Interacting with the IBE

A More Inclusive Universality

Joining the IBE? The Influence of Global Power Relations Lobbying: A Matter of Survival

Three Waves of Membership

Regions of the World Unevenly Represented

Contradictions Linked to the Universalist Aim Authoritarian Regimes and the Call for Democracies Interference of the Cold War

Loosening the Colonial Straitjacket

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

The Formalist Position Challenged in the Name of Human Dignity

The Expulsion of Portugal, a Service to “All Humanity” “The fact that we are weak politically [...] is the strength of our objective and active neutrality”

201 202 205 212

223 225 228

231 231 234 236 242

245 245 250 258

261 262

268 270

272 278

CONTENTS

Part V The Universalisation of the Benefits of Education?

School Subjects in the Service of Peace and the Individual School Subjects: Contrasted and Complementary

Different Methods According to the Type of Subject

Content and Development of the Child

Balance in the Teaching Content

Teachers: “Architects of the Future of Humanity”

A High Level of Pedagogical Training

Training All Teachers in Higher Education Institutions Education Sciences: The Profession’s Reference Discipline Opposing Ideologies Subtly Expressed

The Status of Teachers

On the Fate of Women: “Equality Does Not Mean Identity”

Pioneering International Surveys

Male Bastions Solidly Preserved

1952: Putting an End to Relegation “the Sanctuary of the Family”

The Essentialisation of Differences...

Equality, but Under What Conditions?

In a “Democracy of Utopia”...

The Tipping Point Towards Raising Awareness of Girls’ Rights to Education?

A Proactive Policy for Educating the World

From the Right to Be Different, to the Difference in Rights Fighting Illiteracy, Symbol of Modern Slavery

Behind Equal Opportunity for All, a Tenacious Ideology of Merit References xiii

291 292 294 300 301 304

319 320 322

324 325 328 330

331 333

22 The “Family of Nations” and Its Racial, Cultural and Colonial Discriminations The Equality of Races and Cultures, a “Fine Theme for Speeches but Discrimination Remains”

The Colonies: From Invisibilisation to a Raising of Awareness Between Resilience and Community of Suffering?

The Debt the West Owes to the East and the South “An Unfortunate Human Race” Clinging to a Little Rock References

Conclusion to Part V General Conclusion Appendices

Index

351 352 354 358 360

362 364

ABBREVIATIONS!

A-IBE Archives of the International Bureau of Education

AJR Archives Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau

AJP Archives Jean Piaget

CAME Conference of Allied Ministers of Education

Erhise Equipe de recherche en histoire sociale de l’éducation [Team of research on the social history of education]

IBE International Bureau of Education

ICIC International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation

ICPE International Conference on Public Education

HIC International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation

ILO International Labour Office

INGO International Nongovernmental Organisation

IO Intergovernmental organisation

LIEN Ligue internationale pour éducation nouvelle [International League for New Education]

LoN League of Nations

NEF New Education Fellowship

OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

OIC Organisation of Intellectual Cooperation

PEN Pour PÈre nouvelle [For the New Era; journal of LIEN — see above | l Only those abbreviations that appear in more than one chapter have been included in this list.

XV xvi ABBREVIATIONS

R Recommendation UIA Union of International Associations UN United Nations

UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation WFEA World Federation of Education Associations

Fig.

Fig.

Fig.

Fig.

Fig.

Fig.

Fig.

8.1

8.2

IL

11.3

14.1

IS

LIST OF FIGURES

Networks between Germany and other states in the section on peace education of the Bulletins from 1929 to 1932 (Note: in this presentation, we don’t differentiate the contents of the links)

Networks between the USA and other states in the section on peace education of the Bulletins from 1929 to 1932 (Note: in this presentation, we do not differentiate the contents of the links)

General schema of the ICPEs’ scenography (1934-1968): global organisation and zoom on the course of the ICPEs References to educational models during the 1934 ICPE, by state

Graphical representation of quotes on the issue of compulsory schooling (ICPE, 1951). (a) Unimodal network (1951), extracted sub-network, based on citation links that “value the educational experience of states.” (b) Bimodal network, subnetwork selected from Ceylon, India, Iran, Israel and Pakistan tops

Participation in surveys (yearly average), national reports in the Yearbook, presence at ICPEs, membership in the IBE from 1934 to 1968

Structure of revenue from 1929 to 1967 by percentage

224 240 xvii xviii LIST OF FIGURES

Graphic representation of the mentions, during the general discussion of the ICPE of 1955, on the financing of education. Source: compiled from the database “presence and interventions of states and their delegates at ICPEs (1934-1958)”, design of the network produced with Cytoscape software

Analysis of the connotations in the discourses on Europe in ICPE. The connotations of the discourses are represented by typographical differences:

“neutral”; negative; positive, empathic

List OF IMAGES

The emblem of the IBE. A vignette drawn by children of the Bakulé school in Prague, dedicated to street and to handicapped children, famous for its children’s choir. It appeared on countless publications, newsletters and correspondence. (© AIJJR)

The Institut Rousseau is the founder of the IBE (1925). Created in 1912 by Edouard Claparède, this institute aimed to train educators, teachers and researchers in all educational disciplines, hence the plural in its name “School of educational sciences”. As a precursor, it organised holiday courses (here in 1916, on the measurement of intelligence). (© AVJR)

A list of members for the honorary committee of the

IBE. In preparing the foundation of the IBE, the Institut Rousseau requested support from well-known personalities, who could reinforce its credibility. (© AIJJR)

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) 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

XX LIST OF IMAGES conferences and its state delegates replaced these summer ets ively. we AUJR) he centre, Jean Piaget, , and Pedro secretary Le more ent twenty a vit t responsibilities, among others, as nandlaror, orga conferences, responsible for the library and | for war prisoners; behind her, Blanche Weber, bath for the section of child ure for 12 years. (© IBE)

Letter from the Swiss Federal ned Depar tment to the e ta countr ry, , Switzer nd, \ E. This was the subject of much negotiatior the educational responsibilities were previously the e cantons. ae IBE) isoners. ni the rs

IBE’s cate for the di ofthe “ss

O. She was one of the first women to be awarded the Doctorate Honoris Causa of the University of Geneva, in 1948. (© IBE)

IBE’s stand at the entrance to the exhibition of public education (1943). On the left-hand side, article 2 of its as Switzerland is a federal country, and most of

LIST OF IMAGES xxi rules on the iio ee wie a shorti i nes awe

Image 6.2 Constitutive session of UN Oi i van 1946. At the bid nak, one can read the a onpm “IBE” Dwd the 88 dei a pans tour. e edu tional world. (© IBE) 96 Image 8.1 — af me sin i oes — a ig ul " 115 dstence, the IBE ides hee ae ee ey over a d in more than a hundred languages, from 140 countries. The collection consists of over 20,000 books, currently being digitalised. ( 135

Image 9.2 T he ton th he BE and will (© BGE) 141 Image 10.1 ire books. The IBE or). The last one was fina ed by the Rockefeller cee: in Latin America during World I) ) 152 Image 10.2 pe on be prie in ervey yay xxii LIST OF IMAGES

Executive Committee was in ass of ees pal roposal for managing the arrangement of the states a tables to pencuuiani exchanges between every ne, n: quite a delicate question. (© IBE) n: the 25th ICPE 1962. 224 piede duca!

Robert Dottrens, co-di responsible for the financ than twenty years. (© IBE)

The IBE director Jean Piaget and the deputy director Pedro Rosselló were friends also in their p (with their families) as this picture and many others show. (© AIJJR)

$ + Rousseau and commission of the IBE for more

LIST OF IMAGES

Image IV.1 Caricature of Jean Piaget, director of the IBE, 1939. At this moment, he was also professor at the universities of Geneva and Lausanne, as written in the caption, and co-director of

Insti dis = the fah of 43, ou se nese wel an 4 eea step ir )

Image 15.1 IRE revenues s and ap e, in 1939, Thei incomes from re not very high (64,460.- CH

at the fee was fixed at 10,000 gfi paaa dis gate in des minutes sof ik IBE Co 1965, 1 He com requ ts “hi to a survey + oa TBE t to aae ek. languages should be given priority, and to ask states to

se translations. No ra was waj ia to cover these the Oder and Mn rivers, appl t ca pari in nn textbool geography was sete in the 1939 si 1949 te de wk strong stress on international comprehension and against

XXIV LIST OF IMAGES racial prejudices, to be banned from textbooks. Obviously,

the double page of the atlas proceeds otherwise. (© IBE) 303 Draft for the table of expenditures for education per

country, 1933. This table is part of the first survey discussed

in an ICPE (1934), published in French on the question of budget savings in education. Note that the inquiry also

included colonies like India, Belgian Congo, Tunisia, etc.

(© IBE) 317 Discussion during the 1952 ICPE on women in education.

In this first conference dedicated to the crucial issue of

access of women to education, the role and place of women

were meaningful for the first time. Women’s NGOs and

UNESCO were the instigators of this topic. (© IBE) 329 Response of the Minister of Education of Saudi Arabia of 31 October 1959 to the IBE survey on the organisation of

special education for mentally deficient children. The

minister replied that this type of education required special

teacher skills which the country did not have at that time. However, the Ministry planned to establish a department

for this type of education as soon as resources permitted.

The IBE had first investigated this problem in 1936. The

1959 survey focused on “educable” and “recoverable”

mental retardation. Seventy-one countries responded, and

79 participated in the 1960 Conference on the subject and produced Recommendation N° 51, which aimed to improve

early diagnosis and “special education for the mentally

retarded” through appropriate structures, methods,

programmes and professionals. (© IBE) 343 Natal’s answers to the IBE inquiry about the situation of

married women as teachers (1932). IBE organised

international surveys from 1927 on, in this same year

together with the IOL on child labour. The IBE invited as

many countries as possible to participate, including

provinces in federal states, and some colonies. (© IBE) 355 Jean Piaget in 1976 at his 80th birthday. (©AJP) 381

List OF TABLES

Table 8.1 Educational and other associations corresponding with the IBE

Table 11.1 Number and percentage of surveys and recommendations discussed in the ICPEs in function of three main categories (1934-1968)

Table 15.1 The revenue of the IBE in Swiss francs from 1929 to 1967 by decade

XXV

Chapter 1

The whole world puts its hope in education. It needs an energetic, active, enterprising educational organisation, able to penetrate everywhere, to put everything to work, to make the most of everything. If we do not become that organisation in a short time, another one, or others, will be created and we will have no reason to exist. It would undoubtedly only be half bad if these organisations presented the same guarantees of objectivity and of scientific serenity as the IBE, which lives in the atmosphere of pure scientific idealism of the J. J. Rousseau Institute, of political and religious neutrality which is that of the Swiss Confederation, and the advanced international spirit of Geneva. But this would not be the case, because it is impossible to find these three conditions combined elsewhere. (Marie Butts, Secretary General, Report to the Council of IBE, 21.10.1927, p. 2)!

At the end of the Great War, the whole world would confer on education a redeeming mission. This was obvious to the Secretary General of the International Bureau of Education (IBE), who defended with conviction—here in 1927—the uniqueness of the Bureau that the Institut Rousseau’ had just set up in Geneva (1925). According to Marie Butts, only that particular Bureau could provide all the guarantees of credibility lAdF/A/1/2/36, AIJJR. 2Also called Ecole des sciences de l'éducation [School of sciences of education], a centre for psychopedagogical research and documentation.

© The Author(s) 2024 1 R. Hofstetter, B. Schneuwly, The International Bureau of Education (1925-1968), Global Histories of Education, and legitimacy required of such a “sanctuary”®: strict objectivity, scientific serenity, political and religious neutrality, and an advanced international spirit.

The energetic tone of the above quotation in fact reflects the drama that was then unfolding, and which distressed Butts, who felt that if the enterprise was not better supported and directed, it would soon go under. A few months earlier, she had compared the IBE to “a budding giant” whose “growth is a little frightening [...] the time has come to make a serious effort to provide our Bureau with the financial means that are absolutely essential for its survival”.* Less than two years after its creation was proclaimed loud and clear to the world, the IBE was actually on the verge of collapse.

However, we know in retrospect that the Bureau still exists today, and this book is being published in the effervescent context of preparations for its centenary, which will be celebrated in 2025: a longevity that few intergovernmental organisations created during the inter-war period have been able to achieve, with the notable exception of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and its Bureau, whom the IBE had taken as model. How, under what conditions and at what cost did this small institution of 1925, which effectively intended to merge its destiny with that of humanity, master the growth of this “budding giant” and deploy its potentialities? Have its universalist ambitions and flagship principles been maintained, and have they been able to guide its activities and productions? Such issues are among the main questions to which this book intends to provide an answer.

This introduction begins with our point of departure, namely that the IBE of the first part of the twentieth century can be seen as a matrix of educational internationalism. If we widen our time frame here, it is the resolutely universal and universalist ambition of the IBE that comes to the fore, under the aegis of Piaget, when the institution becomes intergovernmental. Hence the title of this book, which also sets out the main theme. We then briefly situate ourselves in the intense debate concerning the universal, and forge the indispensable tools for developing this critical

3 These are our words, but it refers to its builders’ idea of an IBE as a space preserved from external interferences (skohlé in the meaning attributed to it by Bourdieu, 1997, pp. 24-26, which also underlines its ambiguities).

‘Secretariat report for the meeting of the IBE Council, 30.5.1927, p. 3. AdF/A/1/2/28, AUJR.

5 For a recent overview retrospective, see Hidalgo-Weber and Lescaze (2020).

sociogenesis of the IBE’s ambitions and achievements within its relational network and the educational context of the twentieth century. We continue with a presentation of our problematic, a description of the approaches and contents of each of the five parts, and a presentation of the rich archival heritage on which our investigation is based. This introduction concludes with a few remarks designed to highlight contradictions that are still present today, and which we will take up again in our conclusion, since our research helps to shed new light on them.

THE IBE: A MATRIX FoR EDUCATIONAL INTERNATIONALISM

Our investigation of the sociogenesis of the IBE in the dense web of international organisations (IGOs and INGOs) of the first half of the twentieth century leads us to assert that this Bureau constituted a matrix of educational internationalism,° with the universal in mind. Education is a nodal facet of the “cultural internationalism” conceptualised by Iriye (1997) which demonstrates the extent to which cultural phenomena—representations, values, knowledge, literature and the arts—play a central role in the process of internationalisation, which intensified in the nineteenth century, to become a veritable tidal wave during the first half of the twentieth century (Herren, 2009; Sluga, 2013). The adjective “international” plus the suffix “-ism” depicts this process as a cause to be embraced, an imperative to be implemented, an objective to be achieved. In our view, it can be interpreted as an internationalisation that becomes conscious of itself.” Referring to works describing the sociogenesis of internationalism,’ we use the term “educational internationalism”? to designate the convictions and achievements of a myriad of actors, individual and collective, private

6A previous collective work (Hofstetter & Érhise, 2022), the only large-scale historical research devoted to this organisation at the time, bears this title; given its importance for our book, we specify its status in our foreword and refer to it specifically in the parts which build on this knowledge base.

7The term was in fact used by the very people who were working and pleading at the beginning of the twentieth century for the construction of new international structures and mentalities (or were resisting or challenging them) (Geyer & Paulmann, 2001; Herren, 2009).

SWe refer more specifically to: Clavin (2005), Laqua (2013), Reinisch (2016), Reinisch and Brydan (2021), Saunier (2013) and Sluga and Clavin (2017).

° See in particular our latest analysis: Droux and Hofstetter (2020), Hofstetter and Droux (2022), Hofstetter and Schneuwly (2020), Matasci and Hofstetter (2022). Matasci and Ruppen Coutaz (2023) have most recently used this concept to collectively examine the circulation of knowledge during the Cold War.

and public, who were convinced of the need to apply the methods of international collaboration to the field of education in order to pacify the world. The IBE would attempt to be the epicentre of this, by setting itself up as an international rallying point.

During the immediate post-war decade, the IBE was indeed a significant emblem of the mobilising power of civil society, as it strove to stand out as a federating body for international associations that aspired to build universal peace through education. Since 1929, set up as an independent intergovernmental organisation, the first in the field of education, it had been striving for the universality of its state partners, in order to improve education systems with them. The internationalism of which it claimed to be a part aimed to work on a global scale to universalise access to education and to define universalisable teaching methods: an educational internationalism of which it can be considered to be the matrix. It would be a matrix through the new modes of collaboration and exchange that the Bureau established: the objectivity and neutrality its founders included in the statutes of the Bureau from the outset constituted for them the tools for international action on education systems, the preserve of nations. Its partners thus profiled the IBE as an intergovernmental centre for comparative education, the first IO specializing in the description and comparative analysis of public school systems. It was in this capacity that from 1947 onwards the Bureau collaborated with UNESCO, for which it is considered a precursor. It was also a matrix in defining, studying and discussing the causes on its agenda: addressing a wide range of problems deemed crucial to the world’s educational progress, it endeavoured to construct what its leaders called a charter of “world aspirations for public education”. In its own way, it inaugurated what we now call the global education agenda.!°