ABSTRACT
Founded in Geneva in 1950 and directed by Swiss writer Denis de Rougemont, the European Centre for Culture (ECC) intended to be an important player in European educational projects after the WWII. This chapter analyzes de Rougemont’s philosophy in the field of education, inside and outside the school system; we also wish to show the variety of projects that the ECC initiated and the educational actors with whom it collaborated, as well as the limits of its action. In the early 1950s, failing to influence the reform of history textbooks, the ECC paid particular attention to projects developed outside the school system, while at the same time federating the Higher Institutes for European Studies. From the mid-1950s, with the support of the European Cultural Foundation, and thanks to the contacts he had established with the European Association of Teachers, de Rougemont decided to tackle the problem of primary and secondary education head-on, via the “pilot experiments in European education”, and then within the more ambitious framework of the Campaign for European Civic Education. With a small operational team, and despite its limited resources, the ECC contributed in shaping the postwar European cultural and educational world.
