The New Ideal in Education: An Address Given Before the League of the Empire on July 16th, 1916

In the bloodiest year of the Great War, a Serbian philosopher took the podium before the League of the Empire to issue a radical challenge: our schools are factories of ego, and the fruits of that egotism are the trenches themselves. Nikolaj Velimirović argues that competitive, individualistic education breeds the very nationalism and selfishness that fuel war. His alternative vision, which he calls Panhumanism, demands a complete restructuring of how we raise children, one that prioritizes collective responsibility over personal achievement, that connects young minds across borders rather than隔离ing them within nation-states. He proposes an International Board of Education to oversee this transformation, believing that peace can only be secured by teaching children, from the earliest age, that their humanity transcends national boundaries. Delivered in 1916, this passionate address reads as both a wartime jeremiad and a utopian blueprint. Its insistence that education is the foundation of peace feels hauntingly relevant in every subsequent era of conflict.