In the wake of the First World War, a commitment by influential people across the combatant countries to prevent more bloody conflicts resulted in the creation of the League of Nations in 1920. And, as education researcher Ken Osborne writes, one method they hoped could help achieve this was transforming the way the next generation was taught history.
By the time of the League’s founding, Osborne writes, it was common for peace-minded reformers to critique the focus that history classes across Europe and North America placed on battles and national pride. In 1892, for example, Fanny Hertz of Britain compared teachers to “recruiting sergeants.” And in 1913, the International Council of Women called for history teachers to focus on the advancement of technology, arts, trade, and human wellbeing rather than “eulogize vanity and arrogance in the name of patriotism.”
The League, and one of its advisory committees, the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC), called for concrete steps to address this issue. They advocated that next textbooks should focus more on the advance of “civilization”—which should reflect the contributions of people around the world—and on social history. Students should consider how people around the world dress, their homes and family structures, and other everyday matters.
However, Osborne notes, the League didn’t go as far as H. G. Wells, who rejected patriotism as “base, cramping, crippling, unjust, falsifying and altogether mischievous and degrading forms into which human minds are compressed.”
For the most part, reformers argued that national pride offered children a sense of belonging and formed the basis of a coherent social order. Summarizing a widely held view among League reformers, British educator Alfred E. Zimmern wrote that “[t]he road to internationalism leads through nationalism, not through leveling down to a gray and indistinctive cosmopolitanism, but by appealing to the best elements in the corporate inheritance of each nation.”
Some reformers proposed the creation of a single international textbook to be used across countries. However, the ICIC dismissed this idea as impractical. But, as it turned out, it had little success even in changing the contents of history books at all. When it developed a rather milquetoast 1937 declaration calling for textbooks to avoid prejudicial statements and cover the history of other nations and world systems, only about half the member nations signed it.
Osborne writes that in 1928 the League did create a monthly magazine, published in English and French, to help teachers share stories about international cooperation with their students. It also encouraged educational activities related to internationalism, including essay contests, conferences, festivals, and mock League meetings.
Ultimately, though, as with many of the League’s efforts, it simply didn’t have the resources or clout to accomplish many reforms before the world was overwhelmed by another destructive war.
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