Published each month of the school year, October through June. To order SCHOOL LIFE send your check, money order, or a dollar bill (no stamps) with your subscription request to the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington 25, D. C. SCHOOL LIFE service comes to you at a school-year subscription price of $1.00. Yearly fee to countries in which the frank of the U. S. Government is not recognized is $1.50. A discount of 25 percent is allowed on orders for 100 copies or more sent to one address within the United States. Printing of SCHOOL LIFE has been approved by the Director of the Bureau of the Budget. OSCAR R. EWING.... Federal Security Administrator Executive Assistant to the Commissioner GEORGE KERRY SMITH... Chief, Information and Publications Service JOHN H. LLOYD............ Assistant Chief, Information and Publications Service Address all SCHOOL LIFE inquiries to the Chief, Information and Publications Service, Office of Education, Federal Security Agency, Washington 25, D. C. UNESCO Is It Going Our Way? by George D. Stoddard President, University of Illinois, and Chairman, U. S. National Commission for UNESCO NESCO has been called a fledgling. It is certainly an infant, with UN almost human traits. It cannot walk at all without help and it will never be able to get anywhere alone. Designed to increase understanding, it needs a bit of understanding itself! It is like the child in Overstreet's scene: "Along a village street, on an April morning, a mother and small daughter were going together, from home to store. Going togetheryet through different worlds. The mother, clearly, was going to the The small daughter was just going. Happily, she zigzagged along, a few steps behind. store. "Suddenly, where sunlight slanted across a garden, the child made a shining discovery: a stone flecked with mica. Then and there she squatted down to examine this wonder: 'Look, Mummy-the stone has stars!' "With abrupt impatience, the mother turned. 'Oh, for heaven's sake. Come on! I can't be dragging along with you all day.' "Perhaps the mother was overbusy; or worried. But there was that about her mouth, and the steel edge of her tone, that gave one a shivering conviction that she spoke in her normal manner. Besides, had she been a person quick to notice shining things, she could scarcely have denied herself the beautiful moment that was hers for the taking: the moment of looking at a stone through the earth-intimate eyes of a child. Not out of patient parental virtue, but out of gratitude, she would have stopped to look. "Yet there must have been a time when that mother, herself a child, zigzagged through a world too entrancing to cross in a straight line. What had the years done to her? They had done, we must suppose, what the demanding clock-ordered years do to many of us: they had narrowed the range of her seeing."" The story illustrates the problem that exists today among peoples over the world. Persons who see shimmering in a stone the ingredients for world order are pulled along by a society whose watchword is progressprogress measured by the production and distribution of material things. Who can afford to be unhurried in this competitive age? The answer is, all those who seek to establish a higher standard of living. Paradoxically, they cannot reach the goal without, at the same time, reaching the higher ground of world peace. All who would aid a child to grow strong and finally to develop a new leadership, must take time out for thought, for the weighing of values, for the testing of cooperative endeavors. The first true liberal is the little child, advancing without the impediment of externally aroused fears and blockings, first through the example of parents and then, for a long time, through the example of teachers. Companions weigh in the balance, but they in turn, have their attitudes shaped by adults at home and at school. We place increasing responsibility for a peaceful society on the teacher. By stooping down with the pupil and being able to fire his imagination through things close at hand, the teacher stimulates new thinking and keeps faith alive. Thus it is that the infant UNESCO, an organization which is founded on the principle that the defenses of peace must be constructed in the minds of men, moves forward in a program to teach international understanding to the peoples of the world. The aims of UNESCO in public education are to be found in the following articles of faith: "One of the chief aims of education today should be the preparation of children and adolescents to participate consciously and actively in the building-up of a world society, rich in its diversity, yet unified in its common goals of peace, security, and a fuller life for every human being. "This preparation should consist not only in the acquisition of skills, but more particularly in the formation and in the development of psychological attitudes favorable to the construction, maintenance, and advancement of a united world. "This preparation should be adapted to 1 Overstreet, Bonaro W., Freedom's People, Harper and Brothers, 1945, p. 37. With permission of the publisher. the capacities of school children of all ages and to the teaching conditions peculiar to the various countries of the world.” 2 One of the first concrete recommendations made in this report asked educators everywhere to see that the textbooks used in their schools presented an adequate picture of the world in which we live. Recently, Dr. Jaime Torres-Bodet, DirectorGeneral of UNESCO, referred to a need for history texts that are not merely the "presentation of the past as a succession of victories and defeats. . . . Appearing as a sort of referee who decides the rounds in giant and murderous brawls between peoples, the history book remains the principal bastion of nationalism in most countries." 3 If UNESCO cannot feel free to condemn militant nationalism wherever found, it can be of little help in achieving or maintaining peace. A world understanding is unlikely when the textbooks that children read in school present a viciously distorted picture of people in other countries. Here then is a point where UNESCO meets the individual teacher. The teacher should place a value judgment on the textbooks being used and speak out against the book that spreads poison. The chief poisons lie in the glorification of war and the reduction of human personality to the status of the pawn. The great danger is the loss of freedom. Pupil Awareness Another responsibility that falls on the individual teacher is that of developing within pupils an awareness of international affairs. If UNESCO is to fulfill its purpose of helping peoples speak to peoples, there must be a sense of responsibility in youth that will enable them to envisage citizenship in world-wide terms. Perhaps international understanding can be dramatized for pupils by teaching them to live peacefully with one another. If pupils are given to bickering in the classroom they have hardly developed the background for getting along with people from other countries. By instilling in pupils a desire to live harmoniously with one another and a desire to know and understand people far away, the teacher will have taken a long step forward. Another aspect of a teacher's responsi bility deals with the way international organizations are examined. The UN and Preamble to the Report of the Eleventh International Con. ference on Public Education, Geneva, Switzerland, June 28July 3, 1948. 3 Torres-Bodet, Dr. Jaime, "Education in UNESCO," Scholastic, Vol. 54, p. 13, April 6, 1949. UNESCO have long-range objectives. They should be viewed not as organizations that are striving exclusively to cope with immediate situations, but as organizations that build up a potential in defense of fundamental human rights. Hence it is important that students understand the need for such organizations. The rôle played by the UN and its specialized agencies is a vital one, and the potential contribution they can make to society should be brought before the children. As one means of doing this in the classroom, various local organizations can present phases of the programs of international organizations with which they have had experience. Since the most vivid learning process is the experiential, let us ask what kind of programs will interest pupils? UNESCO clubs are one path along which pupils and teachers can get a glimpse of education for peace. Developed around themes like the Declaration of Human Rights and its relation to themselves, UNESCO takes on new meaning. Projects in which everyone can take part, like corresponding with pupils in a school in another country, help to make clear many aspects of international relations which previously had been vague. as Let us look, for example, at the work of the student council of the Riverside High School in Milwaukee, Wis. This group decided last year that they wanted to adopt a school in France in order to further intersigned the Pont L'Eveque School in Pont national understanding. They were L'Eveque, France, by the Save-the-Children Federation and immediately began writing to the pupils over there. Then began a High School which resulted in boxes of campaign helped by everyone in Riverside goods being sent to the adopted school. An clothing, food, school supplies, and athletic important byproduct of the program was that students at the Riverside High School had an opportunity to become acquainted, through letters, with pupils from another country. This project has given new perspective to these pupils and has helped the educational work being carried on in France. Another example of how students can develop interest in educating for peace through UNESCO is to be found in work done at the West Virginia University High School in Morgantown. Last spring the senior class decided to center its graduation program in UNESCO. Their first step was |