It is certainly understandable, given the military conflicts of the past century, that many teachers across Europe have concerned themselves with issues of war and peace. As a number of historians have noted, following each of the wars of 1870, 1914-18, and 1939-45, there were strong upsurges of interest among teachers in establishing international teacher organizations. Their interests were clear: these new bodies must advocate fervently for the belief that state schools could and should play an important role in educating against war, and in favour of peace. Following the Second World War, at the founding conference of the World Organization of the Teaching Profession (WOTP) held in Glasgow in 1947, delegates participated actively in sessions entitled “What could teachers, as private persons rather than government functionaries, and through their voluntary organizations, do for the strengthening of world-wide education and for the cause of peace?” and, “What organization could be strengthened or created to achieve these purposes?”   In his key-note address, the newly elected president also signaled his support for “education for peace.”
 
Following this conference, a group of teachers from across Europe came together to initiate a major project with the hopes of promoting peace education within schools – the development and mass circulation of a handbook relating to “Education for International Understanding, World Citizenship and Peace.”  A subsequent annual meeting of the WOTP passed a motion stating that this handbook, containing sections on international understanding, extracts from various world religion texts, media literacy, etc, “should be prepared and published” for teachers around the world.  In 1952, following a comprehensive update to the WOTP, the assembly agreed that this project “be recommended to the 1953 Assembly” for action. However, in spite of all this activity and support, little mention of this project is made in any of the documents from the following year’s conference, and the project soon disappeared entirely.
 
Drawing on primary documents, this paper will explore the development and subsequent demise of this well-meaning project.  Of particular interest in this regard was the increasing influence of cold war politics on, and within, this international teacher organization, and its adoption of very particular meanings of the concept of “peace” in this context.

As noted above, the majority of the data for the paper has been drawn from historical documents in teacher organization archives, and historical newspaper reports. Secondary references include: Michael Barber, Education and the Teacher Unions (London: Cassell, 1992) W.W. Brickman, ‘International Education’, in Encyclopedia of Educational Research, ed. W.S.Monroe (New York: Macmillan, 1950) Mary Futrell, Fred van Leeuwen and Rob Harris, ‘Toward International Advocacy’, in Teacher Unions and Education Policy: Retrenchment or Reform?, ed. Ronald Henderson, Wayne Urban and Paul Wolman (Oxford: Elsevier Ltd., 2004) Robert Iverson, The Communists and the Schools (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1959) Charles Maier (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) Robert Sylvester, ‘Mapping International Education: A Historical Survey 1893-1944’ Journal of Research in International Education 1, no. 1 (2002): Marjorie Murphy, Blackboard Unions: The AFT and the NEA, 1900-1980 (Ithica and London: Cornell University Press, 1990) Claus Offe, ‘Challenging the Boundaries of Institutional Politics: Social Movements Since the 1960s’, in Changing Boundaries of the Political, ed. F.Simon and H.Van Daele, ‘The International Teachers’ Organizations until World War II’, in Instruction, Education and Society in the 19th and 20th Centuries, ed. M.Depaepe and M. d’Hoker (Leuven/Amersfoort: ACCO, 1987) Alan West, The National Education Association (New York: The Free Press, 1980) Wayne Urban, Gender, Race, and the National Education Association: Professionalism and its Limitations (New York and London: Routledge Falmer, 2000)