Spherical Schoolroom

Several well-known university psychologists recently submitted to the educational division of the United Nations a plan for International Education which, while it seems pale stuff beside the big dynamic questions of Greek aid and starvation in Europe, is interesting as one of the small, unsensational steps necessary in the long haul out of the world's postwar slough. The series of international institutes for teachers, researchers and young people that the plan envisages may very possibly be a foreshadowing of the form that will be assumed by education in the future.

The plan is designed to give UNESCO a chance to confirm graphically its contention that international living and cooperation in our time is a solid possibility and not a damfool dream. One of the projected institutes, for instance, would bring together 20 young people from each country under an international faculty. The difficulties posed by language, ideological, and personal differences could be studied and prescribed for in a way obviously not possible in the heated UN sessions, or in the many cultural areas of the world which are sealed from, and uncomprehending of, each other. the educators hope that a common denominator of values--at present so glaringly lacking in the UN--can be arrived at and spread through centers in each country at which the institutes' "graduates" could tell their experiences. Economic and ideological storms can wreck this unassuming little plan only too easily. The violence in this case to the cause to peace would be huge.