1912 Creation of the ‘Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau’ 1925 (18 Dec.) IBE created as a private Swiss association 1926 First issue of Educational Documentation and Information published 1929 IBE becomes an intergovernmental organization 1930 First meeting of the IBE Council 1933 Publication of the International Yearbook on Education

INTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE EDUCATION INFORMATION AND DOCUMENTATION CENTRE The International Bureau of Education (IBE) is an information and documentation centre specializing in comparative education. Founded in Geneva in 1925, IBE became the first intergovernmental organization concerned with education in 1929, following the signing of its statutes by Poland, Ecuador and the Republic and Canton of Geneva. In 1969 IBE became an integral part of UNESCO, but retained broad intellectual and operational autonomy. The activities of the Bureau include the preparation and organization of the International Conference on Education and the conducting of international studies on comparative education which are published as monographs. Since its inception IBE has collected and stored on a permanent basis information of general educational interest. To this end, in close co-operation with UNESCO Headquarters, Regional Offices and Institutes, IBE maintains an international educational documentation and information centre which collaborates with national centres and regional and international networks. IBE’s action is timeless and indelible: the international community’s memory since 1929 for all educational questions and issues, it is today the world’s foremost observatory on the development of education. THE ORIGINS The International Bureau of Education had, in fact, a past even before its official creation. Its origins were to be found within an intellectual movement calling for educational renewal which, first appearing at the end of the nineteenth century, developed in the first half of the twentieth. esearch, it gave new impetus to the art of teaching and opened up new possibilities for education. There were several facets to this movement which had originated in America and in several European countries. It was opposed to the traditional methods of education, which it considered should be replaced with a ‘New Education’ centred on the premise of the school for the child and not the child for the school. Building upon psychological research, it developed an approach to teaching which would use activity methods to awaken children’s creativity and foster their all-round personal development. Its ambition was to create a free, democratic and humanist school, and to contribute to peace through education. Very rapidly there emerged the beginnings of agreement on this amongst educators. Adolphe Ferrière, a Genevan educator, was an early contributor to the harmonization of these principles and goals, and in 1894 he founded the Bureau of New Schools. In 1912, he presented the project prepared by Frédéric Zollinger, secretary of the Zurich Cantonal Education Department, recommending the creation of an international centre for education. The same year Edouard Claparède, another Genevan educator, recommended the creation of a school for the sciences of education which would simultaneously be a school for educators, a research centre, a documentation centre and a centre for the dissemination of new ideas. This new establishment - the Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau - was opened in Geneva on 21 October 1912. However, the First World War was to intervene. The development of the Institute’s international action and the creation of the International Bureau of Education was postponed until 1923 when Henri Bergson, in his capacity as President of the League of Nations Commission for Intellectual Co-operation, was requested by the International League for New Education to recommend the setting up in Geneva of an International Bureau of Education. A grant of $5,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation made it possible for the Governing Board of the Institute J.-J. Rousseau to create IBE in 1925. Pierre Bovet was appointed Director with Adolphe Ferrière and Elizabeth Rotten as his deputies. IBE was born. (1)

THE EARLY DAYS, IBE BECOMES AN INTERGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION (1926-1946) A non-governmental organization created at the initiative of the ‘New Education’ movements, the International Bureau of Education is, as stated in its statutes of 1926, ‘an information centre for all matters relating to education’; its members are international unions, federations of national societies, national and local associations and institutions, and individuals. It came into being to reinforce the action of the International Commission for Intellectual Co-operation - a body under the aegis of the League of Nations - action which a number of educators deemed inadequate, at least at the beginning. The first activities of the new Bureau were devoted to disseminating information (2). In 1929, IBE was granted new statutes making it an intergovernmental organization. The first two members to sign the statutes were Ecuador and Poland, co-signed by the Republic and Canton of Geneva. Spain and Czechoslovakia joined a year later. However, membership was also open to private organizations and especially ‘any government, public institution, or international organization’ paying the required contribution. Its activities were twofold: ‘centralize documentation relating to public and private education, and take an interest in scientific research in its field and initiate experimental or statistical surveys the results of which are brought to the attention of educators.’ (3) Jean Piaget, psychologist, already renowned for his work on the genesis of intelligence, was appointed Director of the Bureau, with Pedro Rosselló, a Spanish educator and one of the most fervent advocates of comparative education, as his deputy. They were to lead IBE together until it became part of UNESCO. The earliest activities of the Bureau consisted of reporting on educational innovations. From 1934 on, the Bureau organized an International Conference on Public Education. (4) Each session of this Conference (5), which met yearly, debated three themes on which recommendations were made. (6) IBE was inspired in its choice of themes by the principal educational trends and innovations of the day. If these could be interlinked more closely then, in the opinion of Rosselló, they could be explained, which would thus give practical finality to comparative education. On the basis of reports presented to the Conference by Ministers of Public Education, the Bureau published an International Yearbook of Education. The IBE had a library and a collection of children’s literature. It also functioned as an educational documentation and information centre, publishing books and a newsletter Educational Documentation and Information, and maintaining a permanent exhibition on education. The activities of the Bureau were interrupted during the Second World War (7) and resumed only on cessation of the conflict.

Pierre Bovet (Switzerland) First Director of IBE from 1925 to 1929 For Claparède, the conditions that make for international understanding are the same as those that make for straight thinking. Is there today a terrain better suited for international understanding than education? Quoted by René Maheu in his opening speech to the 34th session of ICE, 1973 Albert Thomas (France) First Director of the International Labour Office from 1926 to 1929 Men of science must be able to study historically and critically all the developments of the Great War of 1914-1918 so that, later on, we can determine, in a clear way and of one accord, what education can be given to the young children we are preparing for peace.[...] How can we teach peace? In what conditions can we teach them not only about the League of Nations but also about the whole great humanitarian movement out of which the League of Nations was born? Perhaps this is how we will be effective in assisting in this education for peace, so much desired by the International Bureau of Education. Conference on Education, Work and Peace, University of Geneva, 1928 Jean Piaget (Switzerland) Director of IBE from 1929 to 1967 After the upheavals of these last few months, education will once more constitute a decisive factor not only in rebuilding but also, and especially, in construction proper. Report of the Director: Eleventh Meeting of the IBE Council, Geneva, 1940

                               

FOOTNOTES:

(1) The Forerunners of the International Bureau of Education, P. Rosselló, IBE, 1943.

(2) IBE publishes a Yearbook, initially concerned only with a few countries in Western Europe, and organizes conferences and exhibitions.

(3) 1929 Statutes, Article 2. These Statutes also create a Council, composed of three representatives from each of its member countries, an Executive Board and the Standing Consultative Committee.

(4) The first session of this Conference did, in fact, coincide with the third ICE organized by the international community.

(5) Until 1946 the Conference was convened jointly by the Swiss Federal Council and IBE.

(6) Twenty recommendations adopted by 1946, some of a mainly administrative nature: conditions for admission to secondary education (1934), schools inspection (1937), teachers salaries (1939), etc.; others relate to education: teaching modern languages (1937), health education in primary and secondary schools (1946), etc.

(7) During the war, IBE was responsible for a service of intellectual assistance to prisoners of war: distribution of books financed by the sale of stamps and other donations.