Features
Diversity as the bedrock of peace implications for education By Conrad Hughes
I
n 1924, when the world’s first international school was established – then known as the League School, and later as the International School of Geneva (Ecole Internationale de Genève, or Ecolint) – the vision was an education for peace. But what did peace mean in 1924, and what does it mean today? And how do we educate for peace? In 1924, the memory of war was still vivid. The violence of extreme nationalism had drenched Europe and its colonies in blood. The tensions that led to WW1 were around the suppression of multiple ethnic identities: Serbians could no longer celebrate who they were, children would no longer learn Hungarian at school, the ambitions of world dominion by colonial powers would drown out the hopes and aspirations of others. The violence of WW1 was caused by the tension created when the will of a few is thrust upon the diverse aims of many. Colonisation also aimed to destroy diversity: to take continents with thousands of languages and impose one or two; to destroy ancient customs and belief systems and replace them with one or two religions; to destroy ancient narratives, as priests did in Mexico, smashing Inca tablets containing sacred coda; or as Macauley did in India, designing an education system that would try to make Vedic culture vanish from students’ minds and memories. Unlike these attacks on diversity, from the start Ecolint sought diversity and not uniformity: different national dresses and not one uniform; an international history and geography course, not the study of one nation only; bilingualism and not monolingualism. But the dark power of homogeneity, of monochromatism, of violent dogmatism continued. Hitler was against diversity: no Jews, no homosexuals, no anarchists, no people of colour, no freemasons, no
