Rita Hofstetter is Professor in History of Education at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She is Director of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute’s archives, and coordinator of ERHISE (Social History of Education Research Group).  She conducts research particularly on the history of education sciences (including Rousseau Institute), the construction of the teacher state and teaching professions, international networks in education. Bernard Schneuwly is Honorary Professor of Language Didactics in the University of Geneva, Switzerland. He is former Dean of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational sciences and former Director of the Teacher Education Institute. He conducts research on the history teaching first language in the context of the evolution of education systems and on Vygotsky’s theory.

• Chapter 1. General Introduction.- Chapter 2. The primacy of education to pacify the world?.- Chapter 3. The IBE: a federating platform.- Chapter 4. Achieving intergovernmental legitimacy.- Chapter 5. During the war, the IBE prepares the post-war period.- Chapter 6. "A marriage of convenience" with UNESCO?.- Chapter 7. Towards a destabilising universality. The swan song?.- Chapter 8. From the Institut Rousseau to the IBE: promoting a New Era.- Chapter 9. Facing equivocations, tightrope acrobatics.- Chapter 10. The IBE axiom: "rising from the individual to the universal".- Chapter 11. Scenography of the first intergovernmental parliament on education.- Chapter 12. A commitment that was all the more binding because it was freely chosen.- Chapter 13. "Raising comparative education to the level of intergovernmental cooperation".- Chapter 14. Towards a universality of voices.- Chapter 15. Joining the IBE? The influence of global power relations.- Chapter 16. Contradictions linked to the universalist aim.- Chapter 17. Education is a political issue.- Chapter 18. School subjects in the service of peace and the individual.- Chapter 19. Teachers, "architects of the future of humanity".- Chapter 20. On the fate of women: "equality does not mean identity.- Chapter 21. From educational justice to social justice.- Chapter 22. The "family of nations" and its racial, cultural and colonial discriminations.