Download The Benefits of an International School Education

The Benefits of an International School Education
6th Apr, 2009 | Source: Newsweek Showcase
The growing number of international schools around the world is
allowing parents to choose an alternative kind of education for
their children - an education for the real world of global
communication, international opportunity and cultural diversity.
This is an education, which goes far beyond the confines of the
classroom and sees in the learning process the chance for some
remarkable lessons.
International schools are no newcomers to the educational
marketplace - but there are certainly different "types" of
international school. Some international schools serve a largely
expatriate community and focus on teaching a set national
curriculum that provides access to tertiary education back in a
particular home country. Other international schools have far more diverse student populations and offer
opportunities for young people to graduate into a worldwide educational environment.
However, in recent years there has been a growing awareness amongst some international educators and
parents about the need for an education that offers far more than a traditional academic curriculum. This is
an approach to international boarding school education, which offers a more child-centered and holistic
approach to learning. These are schools, which see an opportunity to specifically develop cross-cultural
understanding, an international outlook and an ability to build quality relationships with people from very
different backgrounds and creeds.
One international school, high in the Swiss Alps, has students from 60 different nationalities and 30
different first languages. Through a shared holistic approach to education they find out about each other’s
cultures and views on the world. By sharing everyday parts of their lives; dining, sleeping, and helping
each other tackle the challenges of an exciting outdoor education program, they learn to develop tolerance.
What is more, friendships are formed which transcend traditional barriers and differences. Ordinary day-today situations become opportunities to educate the students beyond their own cultural mind set.
Students are exposed to diverse experiences and are encouraged to achieve their full potential across many
different dimensions, academically, physically, spiritually and socially. It goes without saying that they are
also encouraged to have a healthy international outlook! One of the great advantages of this approach to
education is that, in the very fabric of everyday school life, students are naturally exposed to many different
cultures, promoting a broad-minded spirit of multicultural interest and acceptance. The college encourages
students to reflect on the divisions, which characterize so many of the world’s problems to find values,
which see a common humanity behind the diversity.
Says Dr Jonathan Long, Headmaster of this Round Square school: "The nature of the problems the world
needs to solve today cannot be solved at the level at which they were created. We need to see beyond the
fragmented differences of culture, language and religion to a more fundamental reality. One of the great
advantages of an international education is that you can create an environment in which young people from
different cultures; nationalities and languages are brought together in one place. They have the opportunity
to learn that what makes them human is not their cultural identity, language, or religion alone but it is also
something essentially spiritual that transcends all of these things. In other words, they have the chance to
recognize that there is a common humanity which transcends the differences at which world problems are
often experienced today."
"This is where an international and holistic approach to education offers some hope. It gives students the
chance to rub shoulders with another human being at a more essential level. For example, in the challenges
of outdoor education young people from varied backgrounds discover that they experience the same human
feelings of fear apprehension and achievement. An international education is as much about the quality of
the relationships that can be formed between human beings as it is about a particular curriculum or set of
qualifications. These relationships become the soil in which other things can grow. To be effective and
fruitful, the curriculum needs this kind of soil, but just as important as the curriculum is the methodology
and the values used to deliver it."
There are other more obvious advantages of an international education too. Students can learn a range of
languages and become truly multilingual - many international schools, run bi-lingual programs, and offer
language support for non-native speakers. The students hear these languages being spoken by their friends
outside of the classroom, thus adding a degree of reality to the language learning process.
Most international schools enable students to graduate to universities throughout the world - offering an
enormous variety of experience. Universities are often impressed to see that a student has benefited from
the unique challenges of an international education. Graduates also have lifelong access to their school’s
international network of social and business contacts. Their multilingual and international social skills can
provide a powerful springboard to becoming influential leaders in a global setting.
Academic rigor is vitally important because academic qualifications are still the passport to accessing a
good university and professional career. International qualifications are increasingly popular today and
certainly help to promote a global perspective. But in addition to academic rigor, successful people often
pay tribute to those elements of a more rounded and holistic international education, which exposed them to
a wider variety of experiences and learning for life.
The main challenge facing education in the 21st century is to educate young people for the 'real world' of
diversity and difference. Whether these differences remain as the fragmented divisions of hatred and
intolerance will depend to a large extent on the kind of education young people receive. An international
education offers the opportunity to celebrate diversity in a spirit of understanding and tolerance and to
develop a positive regard and awareness of other people. This must be one of the most important challenges
facing the world today - it is certainly a challenge which international education can face with courage and
determination.