SCHOOLING FOR PEACE AND INTERNATIONAL UNDERSTANDING

Abstract

The use of schools as a political instrument has long been a highly developed art. Before widespread radio or travel, each nation could furnish through the schools the information available to most of its citizens and thereby further the interests of the State. Very often misinformation about others - particularly military, economic or cultural rivals - was added to a chauvinistic view of the motherland. This kind of education let Hitler pervert one of the best schooled, most cultured and creative populations of Europe, reducing many of its citizens to the barbarians of Belsen or Auschwitz. One of the most insidious educational programs ever devised led this inhumanity to be confused with patriotism, this schooling to be mistaken for education. It is important to remember that nationalistic schooling was augmented by the influence of press, radio, cinema, youth groups and demonstrations, and probably by bitter family memories of imposed treaties and economic privation.