Nationalism and Internationalism in Education in Europe in the 1920s through the Eyes of an American Observer

This article addresses the ways in which education systems responded to the aftermath of World War I with respect to education for nationalism and internationalism. It does so by drawing on theories of internationalism and through an analysis of the writings of Daniel Prescott, an American scholar who toured European schools in the middle of the 1920s. Influenced by his experience of frontline warfare as a volunteer driver in France in 1917, Prescott travelled in Austria, Czechoslovakia, England, France, Germany and Switzerland from September 1926 to June 1927 hoping to see education systems being more internationalist and less chauvinist. He interviewed prominent educationists and observed and interviewed teachers in schools, sending regular reports by letter to his sponsors and then publishing a book "Education and International Relations. A Study of the Social Forces That Determine the Influence of Education," in 1930. The analysis of his account of his observations demonstrates that Prescott collected evidence of a growing internationalist approach to education particularly among elementary school teachers. The analysis also relates this to the contemporaneous concern to develop internationalism as a response to the nationalism at the heart of WWI.