Education for International Understanding After Wwii - An Education for Human Rights?

Abstract

UNESCOs program on education for International Understanding had the overall aim of contributing to a world based on peaceful cooperation between nations and peoples after WWII. Such education, although it included providing pupils with knowledge, centered more on the teaching of skills, practices and attitudes every individual would need in order to live peacefully together across cultural and national boundaries. International Understanding as such was to be a mental defense against war and totalitarian ideas. Here, we discuss the content of education for international understanding in the 1940s and early 1950s, together with ideas for its implementation in different regions and nations. It will revolve around UNESCO’s Teachers’ Seminars from 1946 to 1952, and their foci on cultural understanding and human rights education within UNESCO’s broader debates on how to teach International Understanding.