The International Bureau of Education (1925-1968): "The ascent from the individual to the universal" – Ideal and its contradictions

• In Event: Not just the usual suspects: 100 years of UNESCO IBE's shaping global governance of education (Part I)

Proposal

The universal was always a central ideal of the IBE. But we know that this ideal is constitutively controversial and antinomic (Balibar, 2020, Diagne, 2018). How did the IBE deal with these antinomies? With this question at its heart, we have conducted a wide-ranging investigation on IBE’s history between 1925 and 1968, based on a wealth of sources above all from the archives of the IBE and of Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau, some of whose results we will present (Hofstetter & Schneuwly, 2024).

We’ll start with a brief reminder of the origins of the BIE as a corporate association founded in 1925 by the Institut Rousseau as a federating platform for associations, leagues and collectives aspiring to build peace through an education based on principles inspired by the “new education”. Transformed into an intergovernmental body and placed under the aegis of Jean Piaget from 1929 onwards, the IBE developed a strategy that would take shape in 1933-1934: the institutionalization of the International Conferences on Public Education (ICPEs). These henceforth constituted the BIE's modus operandi of which it asserted a strict neutrality and scientific objectivity. Since 1947, the IBE collaborated with UNESCO, but retained considerable autonomy, particularly in defining the issues it tackled.

We will describe in some detail the IBE's modus operandi, based on principles derived from Piaget's universal theory of moral judgment (1932/1948). It foresees the possibility of "ascending from the individual to the universal" in order to construct recommendations for education that are valid for all, with science, particularly comparative education and genetic psychology, playing a central role. The main issues addressed and their evolution will show the breadth of the IBE's ambitions: school disciplines in the service of peace and individual development; teachers as architects of humanity's future; access to education for all; the fate of women and racial, cultural and colonial discrimination.

The ideal of the universal was, however, constantly under attack, as we will show through three key moments. The rise of totalitarianism in Europe implied heavy compromises. The Cold War severely limited the possibility of truly universal representation within the ICPEs. But above all, in the 1960s, the countries of the global South used the ICPEs to assert their interpretations of universal rights, different from the more abstract ones of the IBE. They advocated the exclusion of empires resorting to colonialism that alienated the whole of humanity, and demanded that the West pay its debts to the poor countries. The IBE did its utmost to save the enterprise, but finally lost its autonomy when it became part of UNESCO in 1968.

Authors

• Bernard Schneuwly, University of Geneva

• Rita Hofstetter, University of Geneva