As the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) launches an online exhibition to celebrate 70 years of continuous publication of the International Review of Education (IRE), editor Paul Stanistreet considers the significance of the anniversary and explains how UIL plans to mark it

Fifty years ago this month, in March 1955, the UNESCO Institute for Education (UIE) published the first issue of a new journal, the International Review of Education.

Founded in Hamburg in 1952, UIE, under the directorship of Walther Merck, Professor of Comparative Education at the University of Hamburg, was mandated to “establish contacts between educators in Germany and other countries … without prejudice arising from national, racial or cultural differences” and “to participate in the work of UNESCO … to maintain peace in the world and to carry out educational programmes for international understanding”.

The purpose of its new journal – as set out in the editorial of the first issue – was to create “a meeting place for men and women from every country whose thoughts and actions deserve the attention of educationalists throughout the world”, to “inform readers as to educational theory and practice in various countries” and “to explore the extent which such ideas and activities have elements of validity that transcend national boundaries”.

Fittingly, given the remit of the new institute and its geographical location, Merck and his colleagues chose not to launch a wholly new journal, but to revive an old one, the International Education Review (IER).

IER was founded in 1931 at a time of profound political and social upheaval in Europe. Its founder was Friedrich Schneider, of the University of Cologne, who co-edited the journal with Paul Monroe, Director of the International Institute of Teachers College in New York. Schneider’s mission was twofold – to create a “systematic basis for the new discipline” of comparative education and to support international cooperation in education, in many ways the theme of his career.

Unfortunately, this first incarnation of the journal was short-lived. Schneider was a critic of Nazism and was removed from his post (and his professorship) in 1935, having published only three full volumes – and was replaced by Alfred Bäumler, chair of philosophy at the University of Berlin and a prominent supporter of the new regime (probably best known for leading his students to a square on campus and burning an estimated 20,000 books written by liberal and Jewish authors).

Without saying too much about the journal in this very dark period of its history, it gradually shed the veneer of scholarly legitimacy and became a mouthpiece for nationalistic, race-based education theory and by the 1940s it was publishing almost entirely in German. When the regime began to collapse so too did the journal, ceasing publication altogether in 1943.

Schneider revived the journal in 1947, disavowing the issues published between 1935 and 1943, and renumbering from Volume 4, but again the revival was short-lived, and IER again ceased to publish in 1951.

Fortunately, the next attempt at revival was more successful. Merck, like Schneider, was committed to the promotion of cooperation between nations. He advanced the idea of establishing an international journal of education (in fact he did so within months of the new institute being set up). However, rather than establish a new journal, the Governing Board of UIE, which included Schneider, conscious of the history of the journal and its role in the recent history of its host country, decided to revive IER. The journal was retitled (in English) the International Review of Education, and numbering began again from scratch.

Seventy years on – hundreds of issues and thousands of articles later – IRE continues to publish, and to seek to honour its founding purpose, to support wider efforts to build peace and reconciliation and to help foster international understanding, while advancing a notion of education that was associated with democracy and human development.

It was the enduring relevance of this mandate that provided the germ of an idea for a special issue of the journal – to be published later in the year but introduced in a double panel session of the Comparative and International Education Society, chaired by Maren Elfert, in Chicago today.

The journal in its present incarnation was set up in part as an expression of revulsion at the horrors of war and the dehumanizing lens through which people and education had been viewed.

Its rootedness in the idea that people have intrinsic value as human beings, and that different forms of instrumentalism, particularly in thinking about education, need to be resisted, seemed to us to connect it not only to the history of its host nation and to the founding values of UNESCO, but also to contemporary struggles to promote peace and cooperation and resist the tendency to see human beings as means to an end rather than as ends in themselves.

What we wanted to do through the special issue was to give scholars the opportunity to access the back catalogue of IRE to explore how the journal’s core themes – we identified 20, from conceptualizing comparative education to adult education and social movements, women’s education, the decolonization of education, measuring that we value – have evolved and in what ways they remain relevant to contemporary issues and challenges. The response has been tremendous.

Also today, to coincide with the CIES session, UIL has launched a special online exhibition which tells the story of IRE across the decades and includes testimonials from some of those who have contributed to its story.

Later in the year, UIL will host a webinar launching the special issue and hold a special event in Hamburg to highlight the importance of international cooperation for peace and to explore how education, lifelong learning and the media can play a vital role in bridging divides, countering misinformation and fostering a culture of peace.

I want to end by acknowledging the support of the authors, editors, reviewers and readers who have all contributed to our success, as well as to our publisher Springer, the editorial team and the wider UIL and UNESCO family. Seventy years of continuous publication is a significant achievement, the credit for which must be shared among hundreds, perhaps thousands of people.

Paul Stanistreet is Executive Editor of IRE