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When the International School of Geneva (Ecolint) opened its doors in 1924, its initial enrollment was quite low, with only eight students, and it faced a budget deficit by the end of the first year. Some questioned the wisdom of continuing the experiment, citing its slow start and limited return on investment. However, one key reason for the school's continued operation was its commitment to honoring the teaching contract with a Deweyan PhD from the University of Chicago, who had traveled across the Atlantic specifically to contribute to the school's founding vision: an education for peace based on constructivist and inquiry-based pedagogy. Her name was Florence Fake.

If there was a spirit animating the early days of the international schools movement, it was clearly one of innovation. Writings about the inception of international education, the most powerful being in the so-called “red book” by Marie-Therèse Maurette and Fred Roquette, made up of vignettes and statements by teachers and students from the 1930s till after World War 2, are full of the poetic dreaminess that had swept across nascent peace-keeping organisations of the time such as the League of Nations and the International Labour Office: there was clearly a wind of creativity in the air and a resolutely positive view of the future. Today one reads these emotionally-charged narratives and cannot help but be moved by the sheer conviction and will for change that comes through so forcefully.