A Pax Pedagogica?

Abstract

In the 5V2 thousand years of recorded history there have been 14 Vi thousand wars. In the last 30 years nations have fought some 30 times nowadays by forms of military intervention without formal declaration of war which nevertheless mount the most awesome armaments of conventional weaponry in human history. As the Pax Britannica is succeeded by the Pax Americana, the Pax Ballistica continues to masquerade as society's chief political stabilizer. International education therefore arises in our time as a reach for a Pax Pedagogica, which in a thermonuclear age may be mankind's last hope of averting a global holocaust which would indeed be a war to end our civilization. Whether the universalizing of education for peaceful development will succeed in mollifying mankind will depend upon its being seen as the court of final appeal for rational man in irrational society. The United States is the first paramount nation to have set about secondary education for all its people. It is customary to boast that a quarter of the total American population is now under formal instruction of one kind or another; that there are 2,337 universities, colleges and junior colleges, both public and private, now offering higher education of some kind to almost 7,000,000 students, with 500,000 teachers plus 85,000 administrative and service staff. The full magnitude of the American educational enterprise appears when to all this is added the basic structure of school systems 93,000 elementary and 31,000 secondary schools with a total enrollment of 51,000,000 pupils, with some 2,104,000 teachers and about 120,000 superintendents, principals and supervisors. The annual expenditure on schools is $35 billion, and on higher education $20 billion (a massive total which is nevertheless only 5.5 per cent of the gross national product).1 In grand total, the United States provides for 57V2 million educands,