TO END NATION’S BIAS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 20000, 7 January 1935, Page 9

TO END NATION’S BIAS

PURGING OF TEXT BOOKS Study of international relations is a subject which is becoming of increasing interest to the world, it is stated in a recent report to the League of Nations by the Intellectual Co-opera-tion Organisation. -A programme for the coming year | includes study of the formation of an j intellectual elite, and the origins of western civilisation. A vast new field, that of social and political science, has been opened up to intellectual co-operation as a result of the initiative taken in 1933 and 1934 by Professor James T. Shotwell and M, Edouard Herriot. chairman of the governing body of the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation. It is proposed: (1) To draw up a list of the institutions and organisations which engage, in the different countries and internationally, either in research or teaching in the field of social and political science; (2) to initiate re- ; search into the principles and methods j of the various subjects into which they j may be divided; and (3) to undertake | a series of studies of certain specific j problems. The first of these studies will concern the effects of mechanisation on modern civilisation. Another interesting proposal, in the educational sphere, is that which concerns the revision of school textbooks. The committee of intellectual co-operation contemplates supplementing the improvement schemes now in existence by the preparation of a standard draft bilateral agreement for the abolition of differences in the interpretation of certain historical events in the textbooks now in use. "We believe,” says the report, "that no work for international organisation in the world, for an international order, and, consequently, for peace, will be durable, or even possible, if not accompanied by a corresponding effort in the intellectual sphere.”