From the Institut Rousseau to the IBE: Promoting a New Era

Chapters 8 , 9 and 10 describe the positioning of the IBE from the point of view of the values it defended and the principles that guided it. This chapter examines how the IBE of the 1920s conveyed the spirit of education as being the primary tool for peace-building internationalism, being imbued with the Wilsonian pacifism that was embodied by Geneva once it was designated as the headquarters of the League of Nations. It also examines how the Bureau’s leaders succeeded or failed in reconciling these resolutely committed collective ideals with the strict objectivity and self-proclaimed neutrality of the IBE, the importance given to psychopedagogy as “Copernican revolution”, and the adjustments that such precarious balancing acts required. These analyses are enhanced in an insert on peace education as presented in the IBE’s bulletins.