The role of the International Institute of Teachers College in the founding history of American comparative education

Abstract

Comparative and international education intersects with international relations, international development and modernization, and domestic political, cultural, and economic concerns. Therefore, the history of comparative and international education must be understood in a larger historical context. This article engages the current debate on the founding history of American comparative and international education. It addresses specifically the role of the International Institute of Teachers College, Columbia University in the formation of comparative education as a formal academic field in America. Of particular importance is the investigation of the immediate social and cultural concerns in post-World War I America that informed the motivation and purposes of expanding international education and comparative studies of different nations’ educational ideas, practices, conditions, and systems. A closer look at the founding leaders’ views on the relations of different cultures in terms of social progress further sheds light on how education was perceived as a tool for social change and the extension of American values across the globe.

Introduction

Comparative and international education (CIE) has diverse accounts of the founding leaders and their contributions to the growth of the field (Epstein, 2016; Mundy et al., 2008; Phillips and Schweisfurth, 2008). The confirmative scholarship has been enriched by more critical reflections and critique of the history of comparative education (Cowen, 2000, 2007; Larsen, 2010). Recently, Keita Takayama “engages with the field’s foundational histories as related to racism, colonialism, and imperialism” (2018: 463). He argues that the International Institute of Teachers College and its leaders of CIE, Paul Monroe and Isaac L. Kandel specifically, were little more than tools of American imperialism in the world. His claim of CIE’s comforting history, however, is not based on new research of historical data but his “contrapuntal reading” (Takayama, 2018: 462) of publications primarily in Comparative Education Review, a journal that does not focus on the critical reflections on racism, colonialism, imperialism, and hegemony of America in relation to CIE.

Topics of the important issues of racism, colonialism, and imperialism, in fact, have been critically examined by increasing numbers of scholars whose works, even though not falling strictly into the category of comparative education, connect closely with many subfields of education and international relations. The history of CIE intersects with the history of education, the history of international development and modernization, and the history of foreign relations, to name a few. Takayama’s narrow concentration on Comparative Education Review publications as the source of his criticism of CIE’s foundational history and the complacent historical writing by CIE scholars indicates his own limitations. The critique of CIE’s engagement in colonialism and imperialism would have benefitted a great deal if a broader body of literature had been consulted in an inter- and cross-disciplinary dialogue, namely, the works of scholars who have investigated the relations and roles of education to international political, economic, and cultural interactions, international development and modernization, and American global power.

Historians of American foreign relations have used the terms “corporate internationalism” to analyze the different international endeavors of corporations and philanthropies (Hogan, 1984), ¹ and “cultural internationalism” to interpret the international engagement of educational and cultural institutions in the interwar era (Iriye, 1997). ² Paul Kramer, in his critical examination of international students and American global power, categorized four types of student migration and international education endeavor before 1940: (a) student migration for “self-strengthening” of homelands; (b) colonial and neo-colonial student migration organized by imperial states; (c) evangelical migration of students sponsored by missionaries; and (d) student migration promoted by “corporate internationalists” of educators, business, and philanthropic elites after World War I (Kramer, 2009: 776). Using the concept of corporate internationalism that was developed by Michael Hogan in the discussion of the evolution of corporate order or corporatism in the United States from the Progressive Era to the Cold War, Kramer argues that “corporate internationalists” believed that the seeds of war came from irrational nationalism shaped by the society’s provincialism, national bias, and cultural antagonism, which could only be changed by the society’s leaders in promoting cultural understanding among the common people. Kramer and others point out that corporate internationalists “fastened and often subordinated pacifist idioms to projects in the expansion of U.S. corporate power” for potential export of American products, techniques, and values (De Grazia, 2005; Enstad, 2018). Liping Bu’s study of American expansion of student exchange programs and American global influence substantiates this argument, particularly in the discussion of American industrialists and philanthropists’ promotion of America at reception dinners for foreign students (Bu, 2003). Kramer argues that in the minds of corporate internationalists, “world peace and unobstructed flows of capital and labor would be commensurable if not identical aims” (2009: 21). Other scholars have also demonstrated that education played a central role in the application of modernization theory, social engineering, and international development that contributed to the construction of American world order and hegemony, particularly after World War II (Adas, 2009; Ekbladh, 2010; Engerman, 2003, 2018; Gilman, 2003; Latham, 2002). As a formal field of academic study, comparative education in America grew out of the various programs of the International Institute of Teachers College in the 1920s–1930s, and developed into an academic profession over the following decades by generations of comparative and international educationists across North America (Epstein, 2019). It is appropriate to take a broader look at the history of American international education and its influence abroad to understand the founding history of American comparative education. Scholarship in the field of international education and foreign relations demonstrates a wide range of studies that examine the intersections of American education, international relations, and American influence in the world (Bu, 2003; Garlitz and Jarvinen, 2012; Kramer, 2009; Stratton, 2016; Zimmerman, 2006).

There is no doubt that Monroe and Kandel were European-centric, from which they claimed American cultural inheritance. Criticism of Monroe’s and Kandel’s engagement in colonial and imperial enterprises with racism should be grounded in serious perusing of their writings and careful analysis of their ideas with nuanced interpretation of the complexities in historical context. Takayama acknowledges that his work “is not informed by an analysis of the unpublished materials (e.g., personal letters and unpublished manuscripts)” (2018: 462). One wonders how he can illuminate the scholarly field on the underlying urges and motivations, the purposes and intentions of the publications of Monroe and Kandel without investigating the historical artifacts and archives that are crucial to the reconstruction of the historical context of significant personal importance to these educator-writers to understand the process of their thinking when they were writing. How can we understand history when serious historical research is dismissed? ³ It is more meaningful when critique of the International Institute is based on careful analysis of CIE founding leaders’ ideas and views of human relations between different races and cultures in the particular historical context of American society and the world of their time. This article intends a constructive conversation in the intellectual inquiry of CIE founding history to understand its multi-dimensional complexity in light of historical data, particularly the role of the International Institute of Teachers College in American comparative education.

World War I and international and comparative education in America

International engagement was but one important aspect of the International Institute of Teachers College’s work in the 1920s–1930s; and that aspect was vital in the development of comparative education in America. The creation of the Institute was shaped by the overwhelming concern of maintaining world peace in post-WWI America, particularly when sentiment of isolationism was gaining popularity. The Peace Movement, though most active in American cities, profoundly influenced American political and cultural life (Bu, 1999; DeBenedetti, 1978, 1980; Ferrell, 1969; Nelson, 1967). Diplomatic historian Robert Ferrell commented in his seminal book, Peace in Their Time, that some very shrewd diplomacy and some very unsophisticated popular enthusiasm for peace forged the alliance to prevent future wars. Private institutions and prominent individuals of different professions and civic leadership took active roles in the Peace Movement to engage in international affairs in the realms of cultural, educational, and economic relations, as the U.S. government, under the Republican platform of “return to normalcy,” stepped back from the active international leadership that President Woodrow Wilson had spearheaded.

World War I brought about profound changes in American society, as the U.S. became a powerful international influence to be reckoned with. President Woodrow Wilson’s proposal for peace settlement and his vision of a new world order, as expressed in his Fourteen Points, called for national self-determination and the end of empire. His visionary proposal of a world of democracy and national independence led to great expectations among the anti-colonial yearnings in many parts of the world. Despite the public’s disappointment with Wilson’s compromise on the principles of self-determination and national independence at Paris peace negotiations, the ideas of a new world based on democracy and national independence, nonetheless, continued to inspire peoples all over the world, as peace movements and anti-colonial movements multiplied in many parts of the world (Manela, 2009; Ninkovich, 1999).

American intellectual and cultural internationalists, influenced by Wilson’s vision for a new world order of democracy, actively promoted democracy and world peace through activities of international education and cultural understanding. American private institutions and citizens of social and cultural influence deepened their international engagement in world affairs and the peace movement. Prominent professionals, such as lawyers, editors, professors, and civic leaders and philanthropists on the East Coast in particular, enthusiastically carried on Wilson’s mantle of active international leadership to shape the post-war world with American values and ideals. The social and cultural elites, who had broad international interests, came to believe that war was waged in the minds of men whose ignorance of the cultures of other nations nurtured aggressive nationalism and hatred. Galvanized by the horrors of the war, the American intellectual elite were preoccupied with maintaining peace. They concluded that peaceful relations among nations depended, to a large extent, on international cultural understanding and the personal relations of international leaders. In their view, nations could not maintain friendly relations if their leaders did not understand each other. They sought all means possible to prevent war. Some of them emphasized legal means to outlaw war, such as John Dewey and other faculty at Columbia University who were influential in that endeavor (Ferrell, 1969; Josephson, 1979); others emphasized international cultural understanding to fight bigotry and military aggression by conducting cultural exchange programs among peoples of different nations (Iriye, 1997; Ninkovich and Bu, 2001). Nicholas M. Butler, president of Columbia University, emphasized education for democratic citizenship and world citizenship. James Russell, Dean of Teachers College, urged democratic education for international peace. After the war, Teachers College redesigned curricula to make education contribute to building democratic citizenship and harmonious international relations in the post-war world (Cremin et al., 1954).

American internationalists promoted friendly relations among nations with the expectation that the United States would enjoy better trade and business opportunities in the world. They knew that the United States could not afford to withdraw from international leadership if the country was to maintain economic expansion and prosperity. Meanwhile, they also had a genuine interest in advocating internationalism at home and American cultural influence abroad. Insofar as international cultural understanding was concerned, internationalism at home meant being receptive to foreign students as future leaders, rather than Americans studying the cultures of other societies to find out what America could learn from them. People of other nations were expected to understand and emulate America through international cultural understanding. This approach to international relations by American elites did not create a two-way street of cultural exchange and mutual learning and borrowing. Rather, it was an effort to transfer American ideas and practices to other countries for the purpose of manufacturing American-style commercial culture and democratic values in the world. The assumption that America was the beacon on the hill illustrated the American-centric mentality as well as the lack of appreciation of the specific institutions and cultural heritages of other societies. This approach and mentality were particularly ironic for the internationalists who promoted cultural understanding, as they in fact undermined the efforts of developing international relations of friendship and understanding based on mutual respect and equality.

Post-war New York witnessed a fast growth of international students at its colleges and universities. Many of them had difficulty in finding housing and social acceptance, due to American racial discrimination and cultural prejudices. Non-white students suffered blatant racial discrimination when they looked for a room to rent, a barbershop to have a haircut, and a restaurant to eat. The surge of American nativism and anti-immigrant violence after the war intensified the hostile environment for foreigners in the United States. Foreign students, who were caught up in this racially discriminative and xenophobic climate, became profoundly disillusioned with America (Bu, 2001, 2006). As most of the non-white students came from the middle class of their own countries and would take on leadership positions after they returned home, American cultural internationalists thought that they could be a promising force to help them realize the agenda of promoting internationalism in America and spreading American democratic ideals and commercial practices abroad. Those holding this view of foreign students’ potential in world affairs included John Rockefeller, Jr. and his associates in the philanthropic and industrial circles. They sponsored the building of a New York International House near Columbia University in 1921 to offset the racial challenges and housing difficulties the students faced. The New York International House became the first of an International House Movement that aimed to create a living environment conducive to the training of future world leaders with the experience of the best of America (Bu, 2003). ⁴ In the 1920s–1930s, the International House Movement promoted a new progressive vision of internationalism with diversity and inclusion (Fosdick, 1932).

Paul Monroe, the International Institute, and comparative education

Paul Monroe, who had contemplated an education center for foreign students before the war, was inspired by the Rockefeller philanthropy’s commitment to the well-being of foreign students. He sought the Rockefellers’ support for an education center specifically geared towards foreign students’ academic and professional needs. Monroe envisioned the center to serve “chiefly as a means of spreading and interpreting democracy, and of developing international understanding and fostering international good will.” ⁵ Rockefeller, Jr. shared Monroe’s vision that the education center complemented the work of the International House Movement. Together, these two new institutions would help foreign students adjust to the social, intellectual, and personal needs in American society. They believed that the students’ positive educational experience would strengthen the effort of America’s international engagement and leadership. Monroe was convinced: “We have one of the most profound instruments for accomplishing these ends right in our own hands here if we make use of it.” ⁶ His idea of an education center was realized when the International Institute of Teachers College was established in 1923, with a grant of US$1m for 10 years from the International Education Board of the Rockefeller Foundation. Monroe was to serve as the director of the Institute for its entire existence from 1923 through 1938 (Bu, 2020).

It was a long tradition of belief among American progressive educators that education could change people’s views and reform society. In the 19th century, American educators observed education in Europe and used European ideas and practices to reform American education to meet societal needs. Such names as Alexander D. Bache, Horace Mann, Henry Barnard, and William T. Harris, familiar in the education field, made prominent contributions to American education reform about pedagogy and the American public school system. James Russell was usually credited as the first to offer comparative education courses at Teachers College before WWI. After the war, more Americans in higher education applied progressive ideas to international engagement to promote democratic development and peaceful relations via educational activities. James Russell, who was horrified by the tragic impact of the war on society, critically reflected on the role of prewar education that glorified war heroes. He felt a strong urge to change the prewar education to seek a new role of education in promoting and maintaining world peace. Faculty and students at Teachers College also expressed explicit desires to seek more definite sympathy and more effective cooperation between nations. Most faculty considered education the only way to attain democracy, and they were confident that the United States’ success in democratic education would make great contributions to that end in the world. ⁷ Democratic education, in their minds, meant the American public education system and the learning of democratic ideas, practices, and institutions. The advocacy of education for democracy was accompanied by a growing interest in other countries’ educational systems and practices and comparative educational studies at Teachers College. Among the leading educators with interest in foreign societies and their educational systems were Paul Monroe, John Dewey, William F. Russell, William Kilpatrick, and Isaac L. Kandel, to name a few. Both Dewey and Monroe spent a considerable amount of time abroad, giving lectures on education and American thought in countries of Asia and the Near East, such as China, Japan, and Turkey. ⁸ In Dewey’s case, he spent more than two years in China, where he was hailed as Confucius from the West (Tan, 2016).

American educators, who were convinced of the advantage of American democracy and its educational system, attempted to shape international relations and the world order with American values and practices. At Teachers College, faculty emphasized educational means to spread democracy and change the world, with the belief that democratic education would provide the foundation for national democratic development and international peace. In reality, their endeavor to promote democracy and world peace extended, at the same time, American cultural and educational relations with other nations, and more importantly, increased American influence across the globe.

The International Institute of Teachers College embodied the belief that American education would best influence the democratic development of other societies. The Institute was purported to serve three inter-related purposes: (a) to train foreign education leaders; (b) to connect American schools with foreign educational theories and practices; and (c) to provide educational assistance to foreign countries upon request. ⁹ Out of the emphasis on engagement with foreign educational systems came the initiative of investigating first-hand foreign educational ideas, practices, and conditions. Immediately after the establishment of the International Institute, faculty went to study schools and observe educational practices in countries of Asia, Eastern Europe, and Western Europe. In the spring of 1923, William F. Russell (associate director of the Institute, son of Dean James Russell) went to Bulgaria to learn all aspects of education in that country. He gathered educational statistics, studied the system from elementary to secondary and vocational education, and investigated curriculum designs, teacher training, and instructional approaches. The result was his book, Schools in Bulgaria (Popov and Sabic-El-Rayess, 2013). Isaac L. Kandel began to explore international understanding and education (1924b, 1925b), and conducted comparative research on education in Europe (1924a, 1925a). International activities of education and research that purported to fulfil the purpose of the Institute generated dynamic studies of educational conditions, including women’s education conditions, and the systems of other countries. They stimulated the design of a variety of courses on comparative education at Teachers College, including “Contemporary Educational Movements Abroad,” “Education and Nationalism,” “Education of Women: Its History and Present Problems,” “Foundations of National Education,” and “Education in Industrial Society” (Bu, 1997). All of these, in turn, led to a significant increase of American education influence in the modernization of countries in Asia and the Middle East when the returned students became key leaders of education and recommended their governments to request American educational assistance.

Foreign students played an indispensable role in the development of comparative education studies. Commenting on their role, Monroe wrote:

The foreign student of education in the United States at the present time is definitely and consciously interested in studying the entire technique of a democratic education, of inquiry into the effects on the American democracy and in acquiring or adapting such of the educational procedures as may be applicable with modifications to other social groups. Through the experience which he brings and shares with other students he makes the study a comparative investigation which redounds to our benefit as well as to that of his fellow foreign students from other foreign lands (Monroe, 1928: 2).

It is clear that Monroe and his colleagues encouraged the students to use whatever was applicable from American experience with modifications to the conditions in their homelands, not passive and dogmatic copying. Studies on the American educational influence in different countries demonstrated the adaptive and selective use of Western ideas by the peoples in different countries in their national reforms and modernization. In Turkey, John Dewey spoke of democracy and education, and emphasized the attention to local community’s well-being and pluralism; whereas the Turkish officials emphasized democracy as a political goal and used education as means to create national unity for a secular modern “democratic nation-state of Turkey out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire” (Santoro and Dorn, 2012: 105). In China, Paul Monroe and John Dewey were highly respected and remembered by their former students, such as Jiang Menglin (minister of education and president of Peking University) and Tao Xingzhi (founder of Xiaozhuang Normal School and leader of the Rural Education and Reconstruction Movement). They invited Monroe and Dewey to give lectures at education institutions and help China with educational reforms. When their former teachers came, they provided them with guidance on what topics of lectures to be delivered and what areas of education reforms to be surveyed (Su, 1995; Wang, 2007; Zhou and Chen, 2007). In other words, the returned students became the guides of their former teachers in the education reforms of their own country.

The teaching and research on international and comparative education symbiotically created new knowledge and literature of CIE as an academic field. It is undeniable that the collections of the Institute’s library (currently held in Teachers College’s Gottesman Libraries), the continuous publication of Educational Yearbook during 1924–1944 edited by I. L. Kandel, and the numerous publications, reports, and monographs by the faculty helped lay the foundation for the study of comparative education in the United States. Creation of knowledge and accumulation of materials and documents, not to mention the training of the first generation of comparative educators in America, embodied the core intellectual endeavor and achievement that helped the Institute attain its educational purpose and its status of international prestige and influence. The Institute became the center of comparative education studies in North America, collaborating with its counterparts in Europe. Regarding the international education work that led to the emergence of comparative education, Monroe summarized:

In the pursuit of the two major functions of the Institute—the instruction of the foreign student concerning American education and the instruction of the American student concerning education abroad, a third function is developed—that of investigation of foreign educational conditions. This function becomes two fold, investigation at the direct invitation of foreign authorities as a means of practical professional assistance; and investigation for the purpose of increasing the knowledge of American educators of a foreign system (Monroe, 1928: 5).

Monroe’s view on education, democracy and human progress

Paul Monroe held the idea that democratic education was a powerful means to bring about social change and progress. He explained that a modern national education had two fundamental functions: one was the education of the masses, and the other was the training of a small number with supreme ability to lead, upon whom the conduct of the masses of a society must depend. ¹⁰ This point of view was common among American social and political elites who aimed to train foreign students into international leaders with American democratic education experience and values. The elitist education approach of training international student leaders to promote democracy was embedded in the effort to foster international cultural and political leadership among the students in America before they returned home. Monroe argued that “the educational processes of a democracy have become of supreme importance” for cultural and political purposes in the modern world. The education of international students “has far more significance in the interchange of cultural achievements” than in the past. ¹¹ With shared knowledge of science and democracy, Monroe explained, the foreign student was “in reality dedicating his life to the service of internationalism.” ¹² He pointed out that the role of the students in the “dissemination and unification of culture has not been clearly recognized,” despite the fact that the transfer of Western culture—science and democracy—to Japan and China, for example, had been greatly facilitated by the students from these countries who had studied in the West (Monroe, 1928: 1–2). Monroe also cited the revolutions in China and Turkey as examples to demonstrate the American educational influence on those who had returned home to lead their countries’ revolutionary movements. ¹³

Paul Monroe had been a leading advocate for international education long before the establishment of the International Institute of Teachers College. He showed deep interest in foreign students at Teachers College and had been broadly involved in American educational enterprises overseas since the early days of the 20th century (Bu, 2020). As Director of the School of Education at Teachers College (1915–23), Monroe was an active leader of the American education profession and a strong advocate of international educational and cultural programs. He chaired the International Relations Committee of the American Council on Education, the Institute of Social and Religious Research, and the China Medical Board of Peking Union Medical College. He was a founding trustee and the Far East Director of the Institute of International Education (IIE, not to be confused with the International Institute of Teachers College). ¹⁴ A prolific author and prominent scholar on the history of education, Monroe was also the chief editor of the five-volume tome, A Cyclopedia of Education (1911–1913) that included essay contributions from more than one thousand scholars of different countries. He was considered the leading expert on education in the world. Lawrence Cremin credited Monroe with setting ‘a standard of respectability in every field of educational thought” (Cremin et al., 1954: 42). Both the U.S. government and the globally oriented Rockefeller Foundation sought his assistance on matters of education. ¹⁵ Monroe’s involvement in assisting the U.S. government extended to the Paris peace negotiations of World War I. He was commissioned by the U.S. government to provide reports on the educational and societal conditions in the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East, Africa and East Asia (Ment, 2005). The purpose was to inform American peace negotiators on the national aspirations in these regions after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and German empires.

Monroe’s work with the U.S. government and the Rockefeller Foundation, no doubt, deepened his conviction that the American system of education was democratic, which was advantageous to that of old Europe. He believed that American democratic education would provide the foundation for democratic development and peace in the world if spread to other nations. In 1920, he co-compiled and published a collection of speeches and writings of prominent Americans titled The American Spirit: A Basis for World Democracy, to demonstrate the success of American democracy and the “constructive patriotism” of America in contrast to the destructive nationalism and war in Europe (Monroe and Miller, 1920). In The American Spirit, Monroe endorsed President Woodrow Wilson’s vision of the United States as the model for a new world of democracy.

Monroe moved around in the circles of social and cultural elites where he was highly respected for his expertise on and leadership of education. Like most American educators during the Progressive Era, Monroe and his associates at Columbia University regarded education a fundamental means of social panacea. They extended this function of education to the international realm after the war, believing that other nations would benefit from the American experience. In their view, the training of foreign students, with proper guidance in the American education system, could produce a great force for social progress in many countries. To Monroe, one large factor for human progress was the transfer of cultural elements from one people to another. He believed that cultural relations had the best advantage of all the different ways of inter-national interactions in creating friendly relations among nations.

Nations come into contact with nations through commerce, through travel, through politics, through religion, through cultural activities and interests. Each of these has its advantages and disadvantages in connection with the development of international good will. But of them all, that contact which we call educational—i.e. the cultural and intellectual contact—is the one which has the fewest disadvantages and the greatest advantage, from the point of view of those who are interested in cultivating international understanding and good will. ¹⁶

Monroe regarded students as a great asset of intermediaries of cultural transfer when they traveled to different countries “to obtain and bring to his native land a knowledge [sic] of the cultural achievements and activities of other peoples” (1928: 1). Citing from Herodotus to Marco Polo and from Cicero to Martin Luther, Monroe tried to drive home the message that students were key instruments in the process of cultural transfer and the cross-fertilization of human progress. He pointed out that foreign students studying in the United States were contributing to the accomplishment of cultural transfer among nations when they showed interests in extracting from American experience what was most applicable to the problems of their homelands. He cited Japanese and Chinese students who had studied in the United States as intermediaries in the transfer of Western culture—science and democracy—to their homelands. As the United States was one of the leading nations of modern industries with advanced technology and science, it was clear that cultural transfer, in Monroe’s mind, meant the export of American cultural elements to other countries rather than the other way round. Like many progressive educators, Monroe believed that education was a fundamental process and tool for social reform and improvement. In his analysis of the role of education in creating a common culture in a democratic society, he again emphasized the importance of the American education system and the foreign student:

For cultural as well as for political purposes the educational processes of a democracy have become of supreme importance in our own generation. Admitting all of the defects, which are many, and all of the unsettled problems, which are more, the educational system of America is the outstanding achievement in the machinery for disseminating and developing a common culture shared in by the masses of a people. Hence, the foreign student of education has far more significance in the interchange of cultural achievements than the foreign student of the past (Monroe, 1928: 2).

Monroe argued that from ancient time to the present, international education occupied a central role in the cultural development of different societies and the foreign student was vital to the transfer of culture—knowledge, techniques, science, and political ideas—in the process of cultural development of different societies (1928). Monroe advocated modernity of human progress, which was attractive to many native leaders of non-Western countries in the modernization efforts to catch up with the West. His consistent message was that culture could be reinvented and education had an essential role to play in cultural transfer and social progress.

Monroe was attracted to the idea that culture was an artificial product that could be manufactured and that education was central to the manufacturing (reinventing) of a culture. He explained that such education was not the traditional type of an individual person’s cultural attainment but “a process controlled by the state for political and social ends” as developed in modern Europe and the United States. Education for political and social ends, he claimed, had become the tool and process for changing society in the modern world. ¹⁷ Looking at the political development of non-Western cultures where American and European educational enterprises operated, Monroe characterized them into three different stages of development according to their form of a common culture or nationality: (a) the tribal form; (b) those in transition from traditional to a modern state of political organization such as China where Monroe detected a bi-cultural—old and new—tension during this transition; and (c) the culture that had completed the modernization of political organization with “an effective school system” such as Japan (1927a: 181). In the end, Monroe used Western yardsticks to measure the level of development of other societies, but he did not see the rest of the world as “homogenously backward or retarded” (Takayama, 2018: 467). Monroe’s analysis of the different stages of cultural development indicated that he viewed all cultures as having the potential to develop and reach the highest level defined by Western standards. This outlook of a positive trajectory for all societies capable of achieving progress was liberal and progressive in the conservative 1920s and in contrast to American racist policy that regarded non-Western societies incapable of self-governance.

Monroe believed that Western education had an important role to play in the social progress of different cultures. However, he emphasized that Western education should be operating within the political parameters of these cultures. After WWI, Western education in Muslim societies in general faced a crisis. In Turkey, profound transformations were taking place when the country struggled to create a republic out of the deceased Ottoman Empire. Monroe explained that Western education had a unique role in the modernization of Turkey but pointed out that it ought to adapt to the new political conditions.

In Turkey, due to her experiences of a century past, there is a suspicion, if not direct hostility, to Western education, especially Mission education, owing to the fact that it has been directed toward the minority peoples and not toward the Turks (Monroe, 1927b: 128, 1927a: 180).

Turkish people as well Turkish authorities believed that Western schools “were directly responsible, in part at least, for the political misfortunes of Turkey.” Monroe candidly admitted that “it cannot be denied that there is in Western education as interpreted by Americans, even by American missionaries, a political bias hostile to the traditional political ideals and practices of the East” (1927b: 128–129). He reminded his audience: “Hostility to Western power and culture, even in India, does not imply an unwillingness to learn from these contacts and to profit by them. . . Western education should seek to adapt itself more closely to [the host country’s] government standards than in the past” (1927b: 131). He commented that governments in the modern world had recognized education as a great political power to change people and society and as means of “strengthening their hold on the people.” He encouraged Western education including mission education to seek “to demonstrate to the political authorities and the public at large that the private initiative in education. . .can contribute to the general progress and welfare” by introducing superior quality and democratic ideas and practices and “elements which the government can never control nor command” (1927b: 131–132). Monroe talked about sharing Western educational work with the natives: “Not only on the teaching staff, but in administration and control, native cooperation should be more largely sought” (1927b: 134). Monroe’s discussion of nativization of Western educational institutions was part of his thesis on the process of unifying cultures. He and his colleagues had made similar argument of nativization of Western education in China and other Asian countries, where, for instance, the Peking Union Medical College was operating with such expectation but slow implementation.

Monroe was critical of Western missionaries’ resistance to changing and adapting to the new political environment in many non-Western countries that were undergoing a post-war “cultural renaissance” of modern transformation. He chastised American missions:

In the face of our own policy, American missions cannot justly ask a different one of a foreign government. Nor can they properly rely on the power of our own government to force the adoption of a more favorable or more lenient policy in a foreign land. Even if success crowned such an effort, it is obvious that mission education or any religious work which must rely on political or military force is stultified and in the end ineffective (Monroe, 1927a: 203).

Monroe, however, did not question the right of Christian missionary education to shape the development of non-Christian societies. He believed that they had a role to play to influence the state education of other nations in two ways: “first, by modifying the ideals, spirit, and purpose of the dominant state education, and second, by operating educational experiments which will force the dominant system to imitate the higher type” (Monroe, 1927b: 125–129, 1927a: 180).

In promoting American democratic education to the world, Monroe concentrated on the bright side, despite his admission that there were many defects and unsettled problems in the American education system. Different from John Dewey who was critical of American democracy and sought to reform it, Monroe offered little critical examination of American society. ¹⁸ He did not discuss racial discrimination and cultural prejudices in America, nor the segregation in the American South in many of his writings on American education. When he analyzed the elements that formed the basis of a nation and nationality, he wrote of America: “The development of the American nation, particularly, demonstrated that strong nationality might be compatible with or even dependent upon freedom in religious thought and practices and upon the obliteration of racial lines through complete freedom of immigration” (Monroe, 1927a: 178). Monroe apparently talked about America in the ideal operation rather than the social reality where racial tensions and anti-immigrant movements were intensifying in the wake of the war. In the 1920s, there was a strong surge of nativism and violent attacks on immigrants, and deportation of many became news headlines in the country. The most restrictive immigration laws in American history were being enacted just as Monroe was writing about nationality and immigration. It was obvious that Monroe favored unlimited immigration in face of the surge of strong anti-immigration sentiment in the 1920s. However, Monroe was silent about the social and racial tensions and the pushbacks about social progress. He was, with dedication, to present America in the best light. Bernard Bailyn once criticized Monroe’s writing of American history of education as celebratory and self-serving (1960).

Conclusion

The International Institute of Teachers College (1923–1938) performed many aspects of CIE work that scholars have examined: namely, training foreign education leaders in pursuit of applying American ideas and methods to the modernization and social engineering of their homelands; creating knowledge and accumulating literature on educational ideas, practices, and systems of other societies; and developing comparative education as a field of study. The multi-dimensional work of the International Institute—knowledge creation and circulation, comparison of educational ideas and practice and systems, promoting peace and international cultural understanding, spreading democracy, and exporting American values to increase American influence abroad—accelerated after WWI when maintaining world peace was a major concern of the American public and international cultural understanding was embraced as a fundamental necessity to fight bigotry to avoid war (Ninkovich, 1981).

When we study the creation of the International Institute of Teachers College, Columbia University and its central role in the development of CIE, we need to pay close attention to the immediate historical context in which the ideas and operations of the Institute evolved. It is important to examine the multi-dimensions of CIE and the specific historical time in which the International Institute was created. The active engagement of the American private sector in shaping world peace and international relations after WWI was unprecedented at the time and far-reaching in the following decades. It opened up new frontiers and opportunities to expand American influence abroad via trade, education and cultural programs. The field of comparative education was formed in America primarily due to the Institute’s extraordinary work of international education and comparative studies. Activities such as creation of knowledge of comparative education, research on educational ideas, practices, conditions, and systems of other countries, and training international education leaders and comparative educators were a major part of the story of the Institute that should not be denied or neglected, although that was not the entire story. To the educators who embraced Wilsonian internationalism, American education had a vital role to play in changing the world toward a new international order of democracy. Paul Monroe and other founding leaders of American CIE in post-WWI America actively pursued the goals of American influence on world democracy as envisioned by Woodrow Wilson, while the expansion of American CIE programs led to the formation of comparative education as an academic field of study. It is difficult to imagine how comparative education in North America could have advanced professionally in the 20th century without the seminal work of the International Institute and the founding leaders of comparative education, most notably John Dewey, Paul Monroe, and Isaac Kandel. Monroe and his associates were strong supporters for Woodrow Wilson’s vision of a world of democracy. As a Wilsonian internationalist, Monroe promoted, with profound conviction, American democratic education as the means to change the world.

CIE, like all established academic fields, has its own historical accounts. The CIE historiography is composed of the richness of diverse research and publications of generations of CIE scholars. It is natural and expected that each generation of scholars, building upon the existing scholarship, makes new contributions based on newly discovered data, informed by new insights of theories, and inspired by current concerns and issues. Intellectual credibility in historical scholarship is deeply rooted in exhaustive examination of sources and nuanced analysis of the complexity of historical past with special attention to time and space. Discussion of the founding history of CIE, specifically the role of the International Institute of Teachers College, cannot neglect the specificity of post-war American concerns about the world. Mary Lindemann, President of the American Historical Association, recently comments: “Intellectual exchange is a conversation, an activity that’s hard to share with someone intent on abuse” (2020). In the academic community, more efforts should be made to hold up intellectual responsibility and civility. Intellectual endeavors can be best accomplished by using the opportunity of inquiry to test the validity of theoretical concepts with evidence to advance new insights and arguments.