The origins of international education: innovation
10 March 2025
If there was a spirit animating the early days of the international schools movement, it was clearly one of innovation. Writings about the inception of international education, the most powerful being in the so-called “red book” by Marie-Therèse Maurette and Fred Roquette, made up of vignettes and statements by teachers and students from the 1930s till after World War 2, are full of the poetic dreaminess that had swept across nascent peace-keeping organisations of the time such as the League of Nations and the International Labour Office: there was clearly a wind of creativity in the air and a resolutely positive view of the future. Today one reads these emotionally-charged narratives and cannot help but be moved by the sheer conviction and will for change that comes through so forcefully.