ABSTRACT

Philip Coombs, director of the International Institute of Educational Planning, wrote the main report of the conference, and his presence in Virginia was extremely important. The majority of Coombs's work focused on developing technical approaches to making educational institutions and processes more efficient. According to Coombs, foreign aid was the basis for carrying out the reforms and eventually overcoming the crisis. In the Fourth Annual Conference on International Understanding of 1961, Francis Miller, the special assistant to the secretary of state for cultural and educational affairs, affirmed that the ideological position of the United States in the world was crucial, especially given the widespread crisis of "civilization." The first is the contradiction between education for peace and education for war; the second reflects a familiar paradox in North American society—bellicose or messianic expansionism; and the third alludes to the belief in the virtues of constructing of a universal scientific pedagogy.