Responsibilities and Problems of International Education

INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION, or rather education towards international-mindedness, willing and able to understand other nations, embodies one of the most important educational tasks of our time. Unfortunately, it has never been taken quite seriously, and has come to be considered only as a peripheral issue. At a time when mankind has been brought very closely together through modern means of transportation and communication, when new national prejudices and political power blocks have erected new barriers, international education has become an objective of fundamental importance. However, international education cannot become fully effective unless it is planned by all nations, without nationalistic reservations. So long as decisive ideological coercion and political reservations obstruct positive endeavours only the mere hope remains for those of good will that eventually the strength and clarity of the idea of internationalism will prevail. At this point the qu-estion arises as to which objective criteria exist to evaluate the positive motivation for international education, as against the negative aspect of nationalistic interests camouflaged as internationalism and even against the abuse of international education for nationalistic 'missioneering'. A reasoned determination of these criteria which, in a way, are the only guarantee for the unadulterated success of international education, can be made only through educational research. Where, therefore may we find the institution which can provide the answer to this question on a scientific basis and what should it look like? The pseudo-rhetorical nature of these questions already indicates that there is no officially budgeted agency in our traditional academic set-up to which we could go for help. Certainly, some people might retort that internationalism per se is a characteristic of education arising from the anthropological derivation of human nature. The logical scientific conclusion would, therefore, point to the field of general education as legitimately including international education also.' Yet, such a conclusion would not help at all in solving certain highly specialized problems inherent in international education, because the area of general education would be overburdened by them, just as it has been so far overchallenged by the education of the problem child, by vocational education, and by many other specialized fields. In very much the same manner as business education, education for social work, and remedial education have developed into independent fields of research and teaching, international education likewise requires to become a branch of teaching and research in its own right.2 The field of international education forms a constituent part of comparative education, which aims at the comparative observation of the general systems of schools and education beyond national borders. 125