Abstract
In the context of World War II, education for peace seemed not only necessary but also urgent. One of the first goals proclaimed by UNESCO was to cultivate “unity in diversity” in order to achieve a better cross-cultural relationship and cooperation between diverse human communities. A central focus area was the improvement of geography and history textbooks in the member states because, as was seen by UNESCO in those years, most entrenched forms of prejudice are established in the formative years of childhood. Education had to move from reflecting nationalistic attitudes to promoting a spirit of mutual understanding.1
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Notes
Falk Pingel, UNESCO Guidebook on Textbook Research and Textbook Revision, 2nd ed. (Paris/Braunschweig: UNESCO, 2010), 7ff.
W. Laves and C. Thomson, UNESCO: Purpose, Progress, Prospects (London: Dennis Dobson, 1957); P. Luntinen, “School History Textbook Revision by and under the Auspices of UNESCO”, Internationale Schulbuchforschung 10 (1988): 337–349; UNESCO, Better History Textbooks (Paris: UNESCO, 1950).
UNESCO, A Handbook for the Improvement of Textbooks and Teaching Materials as Aids to International Understanding (Paris: UNESCO, 1949); UNESCO, Better History Textbooks; UNESCO, Geography Teaching for International Understanding (Paris: UNESCO, 1951); C.P. Hill, Suggestions on the Teaching of History — Towards World Understanding (Paris: UNESCO, 1953); J.A. Lauwerys, History Textbooks and International Understanding — Towards World Understanding (Paris: UNESCO, 1953).
A. Martínez Palomo, “México y los inicios de la UNESCO” in México en los orígenes de la UNESCO, ed. P. Alvarez Laso (México, DF: El Colegio Nacional, 2011), 9.
UNESCO, A Handbook …, 101–102; see also p. 39. J.A. Lauwerys, History Textbooks …, 40. H.J. Krould and H.F. Conover, Textbooks their Examination and Improvement — A Report on International and National Planning and Studies (Washington, DC: The Library of Congress, 1948), 93
UNESCO, A Handbook …, 39; Charles G. Fenwick, “The Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Peace”, The American Journal of International Law 31:2 (April 1937): 222; Samuel G. Inman, Inter-American Conferences 1826–1954: History and Problems (Washington, DC: University Press of Washington, 1965), 178.
See, for example, Ian Grosvenor, “Geographies of Risk: an Exploration of City Childhoods in Early Twentieth-Century Britain”, Paedagogica Historica 45:1 (2009): 215–233; M. Lawn, ed., An Atlantic Crossing? The Work of the International Examination Inquiry, Its Researchers, Methods and Influence (Oxford, UK: Symposium Books, 2008); E. Fuchs, “History of Education beyond the Nation? Trends in Historical and Educational Scholarship” in Connecting Histories of Education — Transnational and Cross-Cultural Exchanges on (Post-)Colonial Education, ed. B. Bagchi, E. Fuchs and K. Rousmaniere (New York: Berghahn Books, 2014), 11–26.
Ivan Christensen and Christian Ydesen, “Routes of Knowledge: Towards a Methodological Framework for Tracing the Historical Impact of International Organizations”, European Education autumn (2015); Barney Warf and Santa Arias, eds., The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2009); Vera E. Roldán, “Para ‘desnacionalizar’ la historia de la educación: reflexiones en torno a la difusión mundial de la escuela lancasteriana en el primer tercio del siglo XIX”, Revista Mexicana de Historia de la Educación 1:3 (2013): 171–198.
P. Latapí, “60 años de la UNESCO: Un aniversario en el que México tiene mucho que celebrar”, Perfiles Educativos 28:111 (2006): 113.
Quoted in M. Martínez Báez, “Los orígenes de la UNESCO” in México en los origenes de la UNESCO, ed. P. Alvarez Laso (México, DF: El Colegio Nacional, 2001), 29.
A. Enríquez Verdura, Jaime Torres Bodet y la UNESCO: Los límites de la cooperación internacional, B.A. thesis (Mexico: Centro de Estudios Internacionales: El Colegio de México, 1997).
“The peaks of universal thought” in E. Loyo, “El Sembrador y Plan Sexenal. La formación de los nuevos campesinos (1929–1938)”, in Entre paradojas: a 50 años de los libros de texto gratuitos, ed. R. Barriga Villanueva (México, DF: El Colegio de México — SEP-CONALITEG, 2011), 100; Greaves Laine, Política educative …; L. Martínez Moctezuma, “Los libros de texto en el tiempo” in Diccionario de Historia de la Educación (multimedia version, CIESAS-UNAM-CONACyT, 2003) http://biblioweb.tic.unam.mx/diccionario/htm/articulos/sec_29.htm (accessed 20 March 2003).
Having acted as private secretary to José Vasconcelos in his tenure at SEP in 1921–1923, he cherished the project of publishing high quality, multiplying books that would enrich popular culture and that would support the work done by teachers and schools, according to Brambila, “Caminos entreverados”, 127. He created the Biblioteca Enciclopédica Popular — Popular Encyclopedic Library — which printed literary classics from 1944 to 1948, according to Lorenza Villa Lever, Cincuenta años de la Comisión Nacional de Libros de Texto Gratuitos: cambios y permanencias en la educación Mexicana (México, DF: CONALITEG, 2009), 46. This experience would be important in his second term as Secretary of Education and the creation of CONALITEG.
J. Torres Bodet, Educación y concordia internacional. Discursos y mensajes (México, DF: El Colegio de México, 1948), 143–144.
Poul Duedahl, “Selling Mankind: UNESCO and the Invention of Global History, 1945–1976”, Journal of World History 22:1 (2011): 130.
J. Lomeli Quirarte de Correa, “La influencia de los Congresos en la ensenanza de la historia” in La enseñanza de la historia en México, ed. R. Ramírez et al. (México, DF: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia — Comisión de Historia, 1948), 298.
R. Ramírez et al., ed., La enseñanza de la historia en México (México, DF: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia — Comisión de Historia, 1948), 91.
UNESCO, Geography Teaching for International Understanding,10 47. As said before, Silvio Zavala was born in 1909 and passed away in 2014. Besides being a prolific and renowned historian, he held many posts in academic and diplomatic institutions, and was probably one of the exemplar cases of the close relationship between the discipline of history and the construction of the modern state in Mexico, according to Enrique Florescano, El nuevo pasado mexicano (México, DF: Cal y Arena, 1991). He was one of the intellectual leaders of El Colegio de México, which has formed generations of historians and diplomats in the country. He was the director of the National Museum of History from 1946 to 1954, and president of the History Commission of the Pan American Institute of Geography and History (1947–1965). He was also quite active in the International Council on Museums, and, being the director of the National Museum of History, usually included visits to museums in his trips and a broader concern with the historical education of the public through radio talks and movies. On the other hand, his institutional work at El Colegio de Mexico was central. This center was founded as an offshoot of the Casa de España en México, which started as a center to attract intellectual refugees from the civil war in Spain, according to Stephen Niblo, Mexico in the 1940s: Modernity, Politics, and Corruption (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Books, 1999), 36. It had the support of the Rockefeller Foundation and Harvard University, and besides Zavala there were other prominent intellectuals, such as José Gaos, Daniel Cosio Villegas and Alfonso Reyes. Zavala founded and directed the Center for Historical Studies from 1940 to 1956 and was president of El Colegio from 1963 to 1966.
Duedahl, Selling Mankind; P. Bakewell, “An Interview with Silvio Zavala, by Peter Bakewell and Dolores Gutiérrez Mills”, Hipanic American Historical Review 62:4 (1982): 559.
UNESCO, Bilateral Consultations for the Improvement of History Textbooks (Paris: UNESCO, 1953), 37; A. Reyes, Fronteras conquistadas: correspondencia Alfonso Reyes-Silvio Zavala, 1937–1958 (México, DF: El Colegio de México, 1998), 256.
Silvio Zavala, “Historical Museums and International Understanding”, Museum 7 (1954): 96.
Quoted in George D. Stoddard, “Education in UNESCO”, The Phi Delta Kappan 30:3 (1948): 74.
I. Appendini and S. Zavala, Historia Universal: Moderna y Contemporánea (México, DF: Porrúa editors, 1953), 318–320.
B. Ulloa, De Fuentes, historia, revolución y relaciones diplomáticas (México, DF: El Colegio de México, 1911), 84.
J. Vázquez, “La imagen de Estados Unidos en los libros de texto mexicanos” in Imágenes reciprocas. La education en las relaciones México-Estados Unidos de América. Quinta Reunion de Universidades de México y Estados Unidos, ed. P. Ganster and M. Miranda Pacheco (México, DF: Universidad Autonoma de México Azcapotzalco, 1991), 82–83, 90.
Decree of 12 February 1959 creating CONALITEG, quoted by J. Vázquez de Knauth, Nacionalismo y educación en México (México, DF: El Colegio de México, 1970), 221.
Villa Lever, Cincuenta años de la Comisión Nacional de Libros…; A. Rangel Guerra, “La impronta de Jaime Torres Bodet en la creación de libros de texto gratuitos” in Entre paradojas: a 50 años de los libros de texto gratuitos, ed. R. Barriga Villanueva (México, DF: El Colegio de México — SEP-CONALITEG, 2011), 153–154. CONALITEG has been the subject of several studies, such as Villa Lever, Cincuenta años de la Comision Nacional de Libros …; Barriga Villanueva, Entre paradojas; Ixba Alejos, El Estado mexicano. Most of the time it has opened a national bid for textbooks to which authors submit their manuscripts. Initially CONALITEG tertiarized the production of the textbooks, but since 1961 it has had its own production system.
J. Nespor, Knowledge in Motion. Space, Time and Curriculum in Undergraduate Physics and Management (New York: Routledge, 1994), 15.
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Dussel, I., Ydesen, C. (2016). UNESCO and the Improvement of History Textbooks in Mexico, 1945–1960. In: Duedahl, P. (eds) A History of UNESCO. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-58120-4_12
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