ABSTRACT
Education comes before anything else at UNESCO. The negotiations that led to UNESCO initially brought together the Conference of Allied Ministers in Education (CAME). Education informed the utopian foundations of the organization: it would be the corrective in “the minds of men” before they proceed anywhere. Whether education was to be understood as a human right or a form of pedagogy, it would elevate human beings above ignorance. After noting that “defences of peace” are to be constructed in the minds of human beings, the Preamble continues: “that ignorance of each other’s ways and lives has been common cause, throughout the history of mankind, of that suspicion and mistrust between the peoples of the world through which their differences have all too often broken into war.” The education sector has historically dominated at UNESCO. It currently makes up nearly one-third of the total regular budget for programs (Table 1.1) and one-fifth of the total staff. Education is central to the humanistic philosophy that guided
UNESCO’s charter. UNESCO’s International Commission for Education in the 21st Century poignantly termed its report Learning: The Treasure Within and begins with the following words: “In confronting the many challenges that the future holds in store, humankind sees in education an indispensable asset in its attempt to attain the ideals of peace, freedom and social justice.”1 The archives at UNESCO are replete with documents and speeches locating in education the rationale for the entire organization. In 1945, UNESCO’s Preamble also steered the organization to “full and equal opportunities for education for all.” Education also remains the Achilles heel of the organization. If the
organization’s philosophy and charter are linked to education, then how are these goals to be translated into viable courses of action? In an organization divided into five sectors, can a sector devoted to education speak to the emphasis given to education in the organization’s
preamble? What if the education sector begins to dominate, materially and organizationally, other sectors in UNESCO? The tensions between education as the guiding philosophy of the organization and education as a sectoral priority have not been resolved easily at UNESCO. For example, a recent intellectual history of the organization notes that by the 1960s, “little by little, a clearer awareness of the immensity and difficulty of the task of coordinating education on a worldwide scale is growing.” This history notes that in the 1990s “this tension between the desired ideal and the practical realisation is emblematic of the shaping of humanity.” Later, foreshadowing the historical weakness of the education sector, the author notes: “There is nothing worse than hopes that have been dashed. In proclaiming major objectives attainable in the near future, in mobilizing support, one obviously runs the risk of provoking despair and bitterness if the expected results fail to materialize.”2
