The Development of Hiroshima International School

Abstract

Jean Piaget is well known as a child and cognitive psychologist. He is less understood as the founder of the discipline of genetic epistemology, the scientific study of the genesis and development of human meaning-making. He is also a major proponent of constructivist learning and activity pedagogy. A major supporter of the first international school, the International School of Geneva (which later developed the International Baccalaureate), and an early director of both the world’s first child study center, the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute, and the International Bureau of Education (later a part of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization), Piaget was deeply committed to student self-government, collaborative, active learning, and peace education. In 1980 I became principal of the Hiroshima International School of peace and culture, and we used his seminal work, “The Right to Education in the Modern World,” based on Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to create and sustain an authentic “international” school organization, curriculum, and pedagogical practice.