Education: A Triumph of Propaganda

Internationalism, bugaboo of politicians, has no terrors for the educationists. They had little enough compunction about meeting in a World Conference of Education at San Francisco, and the World Conference had even less hesitancy in perpetuating itself as a World Federation of Educational Associations, with an American (Augustus O. Thomas, of Maine) as President, a Chinaman and an Englishman as Vice-Presidents, and directors of appropriate race for Asia, Europe and America. The Federation is to meet every two years and its geographical sections are to meet every year in turn. There is to be a central office and research bureau which will be established for the present—not at Geneva or The Hague—but in the United States. The interests of the Federation shown by the resolutions adopted at its final conference are enough to make Senator Lodge turn over in what his enemies describe as his political grave. The Federation is interested in graduate scholarships at Government expense for the international study of education; a World University; international school correspondence; unification of science; special international textbooks in history and civics; improvement of rural schools; world-wide health education; world peace through understanding as the ultimate goal of world education. It is fortunate that these heresies were promulgated in San Francisco rather than New York. How could the great patriotic principle of hatred of all Britishers, so dear to Mayor Hylan’s educational heart, flourish under a system of international textbooks in history? What kind of hundred-per-centism could be taught in schools which looked to a world peace through understanding? Commissioner Hirshfield may well weep as he calls upon his Puritan ancestors to witness this triumph of radical propaganda.