International Education in Practice

Dimensions for Schools and International Schools

Mary Hayden, Jeff Thompson, George Walker, Mary Hayden, Jeff Thompson, George Walker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9781138173712
• eBook ISBN: 9781135725280
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Edited by three leading figures in the field, this book offers an absolutely authoritative interpretation of international education today. Under the umbrella of groups such as the International Baccalaureate Organization, academic research, increasing student numbers and interest from national school systems, international schools are rapidly developing in terms of curriculum, standards and influence. This book brings together present thinking on all aspects of international education, its management and the best practices. Truly international in scope, this is a book that anyone involved with international education should read.

Part D
THE ORGANIZATION OF
SCHOOLS AND THEIR
COMMUNITIES

Chapter 10
Atolls, seas of culture and global nets

Keith Allen

Introduction

The juxtaposition of the words ‘education’ and ‘community’ is not new. The 1930s' Cambridgeshire Village Colleges of Henry Morris, for example, arguably launched the concept of ‘community education’, which was the subject of further considerable debate in the United Kingdom during the late 1970s and early 1980s as many educators appreciated that schools could no longer operate as islands of airy academia within an ocean of employment (see, for example, Allen et al, 1987). Comprehensive intakes, wider views of the nature of education, appreciation of the value of vocational preparation and economic realities, all led towards greater school-community links. Such growth in the imperative of what might be described as the ‘external relations’ of the school has been seen in other countries too.

This chapter will attempt to flag some of the issues facing international schools in relation to the communities within which they operate. It will end with a few thoughts on internationally-minded schools. The concept of ‘community’ recurs throughout. Schools are communities, schools exist within communities, schools serve communities, schools form communities, and schools interact with communities. What then do we mean by ‘community’ in these contexts?

Community, culture and values

Traditionally, ‘community’ relates to elements of ‘commonality’. Dewey (1916) stated that people live in communities because of the things that they have in common, and lists ‘aims, beliefs, aspirations, knowledge, a common understanding, and likemindedness’. Later writers emphasized the idea of networks within communities. Eggleston (1967) stressed the idea of association: ‘a complex network of contractual agreements or collaborations for specific tasks in modern industrial societies’. Taking these two together, a community could be seen as a network of reciprocal social relationships.

More recently, Kennedy and Roudometof (2001) have emphasized that the concept of ‘community’ has changed and continues to evolve. In early societies, ‘community’ was restricted to individuals having face-to-face contact. With the development of the printed word and the legislature of the nation-state, ‘communities’ expanded. Now, communications technology and mass transport conspire to allow the conception of ‘transnational communities’—communities that are not defined by location. Kennedy and Roudometof explain ‘communities’ as ‘units of belonging whose members perceive that they share moral, aesthetic/expressive or cognitive meanings, thereby gaining a sense of personal as well as group identity’. They go on to argue that ‘this identity demarcates the boundary between members and non-members’.

The concept of ‘community’ is closely allied to that of ‘culture’. For Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1997), culture is the way in which a group of people solves problems and reconciles dilemmas. Echoing this view are the ideas of culture as ‘community of practice’ or ‘shared world view in action’. Culture incorporates a social identity (Who am I? How do I differ from others?), a social memory (What are my roots?), a range of cultural practices (How do I behave?) and strategies for adaptation (How do we respond to change?). ‘One's own culture provides the “lens” through which we view the world; the “logic”… by which we order it; the “grammar”…by which it makes sense’ (Avruch and Black, 1993). The concept of ‘culture’ then leads to that of ‘values’. Roger Brown suggested that culture is involved in the maintenance of current value systems and is a vital tool in ensuring that they will continue (Brown, 2000). George Walker has also focused on values (see, for example, Walker, 1999), adding that values form the core of a culture.

Throughout this chapter, I will be viewing communities as symbolic constructs founded on some kind of common culture through shared values. Within a community, meanings are negotiated and various social arrangements are built. Communities may be located in a closely defined physical space but, increasingly, they are delocalized.

I believe that it is also important to appreciate that each school will have its own culture. An important task of each international (or internationally-minded) school is to determine the appropriate culture (and values) for the school. This is no easy task but, if we are to understand the interactions between schools and their wider communities, we do need to have a clear view of the community that we are setting up within the school. Gautam Sen has suggested that the culture of the school covers norms, values, attitudes, assumptions and beliefs (Sen, 2001). These lead to several dilemmas, four of which are identified by Cambridge and Thompson (2001) as follows:

• the relative importance of cognitive and affective goals;

• encapsulated versus inclusive missions;

• the tension between international-mindedness and a globally-branded commodity; and

• issues of economic privilege, access and equity.

Schools exist within communities

In relation to the local community, many of the issues relating to culture discussed in the previous section apply. One key issue seems to be the cultural distance between the school and its immediate environs. International schools normally have student bodies that are significantly different from the local community within which they operate. We can imagine them as atolls in a coral sea. They have links, but different ways of life— different cultures.

This is not just a phenomenon of international schools. Many selective national schools (internationally-minded or not) may be described in this way. In applying to send their children to selective schools, parents are making a choice based on the notion that the selective system will reap benefits for their children that would not be apparent in a non-selective system. Frequently, this choice has an economic cost, but the benefits are perceived to outweigh such costs. The school may be chosen for many reasons. It might be seen as providing a higher quality product: it may, for instance, be better resourced. It may be seen as reinforcing privilege, in terms of the ‘old school tie’ opening avenues that are limited, or absent, within non-selective institutions. It may just promote separateness, ranging from separate-sex education, through religious schools to schools that restrict, through economic or other factors, entry to a sector of society. Whatever the distinction, these schools will have a cultural divide between themselves and sectors of their community. In many cases, the school will not discourage this view of separateness, being aware that it is a valid marketing tool.

In relation to international schools, the situation is slightly altered. Many are selective and are naturally keen to endorse their ‘superior’ product, especially in competitive market situations. But there is a tension between the commonly-held aims of ‘international education’ and both the reinforcement of privilege and the promotion of separateness. Selection and inclusion are uncomfortable bedfellows. An important task for the managers of many international schools is to find ways to make them more compatible.

One strategy for the school could be to find ways of generating greater links with the local community. International schools that echo the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO)'s mission of… respecting the variety of cultures and attitudes that makes for the richness of life…’ (Walker, 2000a), face the imperative of developing active links with the community (Allen, 2000). But this raises the possibility of ‘culture clash’. As Gautam Sen has suggested, just through offering international programmes, schools change their own ethos and culture and change the educational culture of the country in which they are located (Sen, 2001).

Sen goes on to suggest in the same work that cultural interfaces such as those between school and community can be seen as conversations, and international education can be represented as a ‘grand conversation between civilizations’. This suggests that a balance needs to be made; that the exchange is between equals. Does it imply that ‘Asian values’ (for example, along the lines of those outlined by Zhou, 1996) should form part of the culture of schools in East Asia, or that Islamic values should be assimilated into the operational structures of international schools in the Middle East? Mark Cooray (1996) has pointed out that cultural mixing is inevitable when different groups are exposed to one another's influence. I believe that, if schools can integrate their learning experiences with the local community, a conversation of cultures can occur and that this will facilitate international education.

Let us think for a moment about multiculturalism. For Stephen Castles ‘multiculturalism represents a kind of corrective to assimilation approaches and policies’ (Castles, 2000), while Steven Vertovec (2002) distinguishes between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ multiculturalism. The former is where cultural diversity is accepted in our private lives while a high degree of assimilation (monoculturalism) is expected in the public domain. The latter is when cultural differences are recognized in the public sphere as well as in the private. The concept of weak multiculturalism in relation to international schools reminds us of Susan Zaw's description of ‘a substantial monoculturalism as to values, mitigated by tolerance of exotic detail’ (Zaw, 1996). If this is our chosen path, it begs the question as to its cultural foundations. Brown has suggested that our educational curriculum ‘can either carry the values of the country in which the curriculum was originally developed or it can attempt to carry the values of internationalism’ (Brown, 2000). I would suggest there is a third dimension: that of incorporating significant contributions from the host culture.

The most widely utilized international curricula are from the West. They incorporate Western values. Are these appropriate for international schools? Doubt comes from many quarters, not least from two giants of Indian 20th-century history, Rabindranath Tagore (Sudarshan, 1998) and Mahatma Gandhi (Sen, 2001). Tagore suggested that:

We have for over a century been dragged by the prosperous West behind its chariot, choked by the dust, deafened by the noise, humbled by our own helplessness and overwhelmed by the speed. We agreed to acknowledge that this chariot-ride was progress, and the progress was civilisation. If we ever ventured to ask “progress towards what, and progress for whom”, it was considered to be peculiarly and ridiculously oriental to entertain such ideas about the absoluteness of progress. Of late, a voice (Gandhi) has come to us to take count not only of the scientific perfection of the chariot but of the depth of the ditches lying in its path. (Tagore, in Sudarshan, 1998)

Gandhi, meanwhile, asserted that ‘I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any of them’ (Gandhi, in Sen 2001). As George Walker has pointed out, the spread ofWestern culture is not accepted in many environments, as it ‘is being fiercely resisted by the strengthening of local cultures’ (Walker, 2000b).

What about the idea of identifying ‘international values’? The concept is supported by several documents. The 1995 Commission on Global Governance called for efforts to ‘foster global citizenship’ and to transform a ‘global neighbourhood’ into a ‘universal moral community’ (Sudarshan, 1998). Kevin Ryan, amongst others, has attempted to identify ‘moral laws’ that are cross-cultural and ‘universal truths’ (Ryan, 1997), but these seem much too general to be useful (for example, one of his ‘moral laws’ is ‘some degree of honesty’). Nevertheless, Hayden and Thompson (2000) argue that we can move towards the ‘convergence of social and cultural values’.

Empirical evidence that this occurs can also be seen from the writings on those described as Third Culture Kids. Authors point out that students do find ‘cultural balance’ (Pollock and Van Reken, 2001), develop transcultural skills (Willis, Enloe and Minoura, 1994) and adopt an ‘international “third culture”’ for school (Langford, 2000). But, as Samia Al Farra (2000) has warned, ‘many people…in the Arab world…perceive internationalism as a threat, as an invasion by Western values in particular’. Both of these ideas (Western-based international school cultures and global ‘third culture’ systems) are bound to widen the cultural distance between many international schools and the communities within which they exist. Would incorporation of local values and customs help? In the context of East Asia, this has been suggested by Professor Zhou Nanzhou. Arguing that ‘culturally, the East and West are compatible and complementary rather than contradictory and mutually opposing’, he suggests that education can make a great contribution to humanity if ‘the East and West could learn and benefit from each other’ (Zhou, 1996).

So where does this leave us? Our ‘atoll’ school is surrounded by a stimulating, but distinct, sea of cultures. The people of the atoll can adopt a significantly ‘monocultural’ system (with a few exotic details) or work towards a multicultural approach. If they succeed in following the difficult path towards strong multiculturalism, they may find that interactions with the sea of cultures outside fits neatly into this system, with the local communities merely representing an additional handful of equally valid cultures. On the other hand, if they follow the easier monocultural path, they have to choose the ‘flavour’ of monoculture. Emphasis on either the ‘Western’ or ‘global’ paths is more likely to lead to ‘culture clash’ with the community than adapting the school culture to some key values found within the local community.

Surely, the antithesis of international education is to allow our students to contravene local norms. Yet this is what we may see happening in practice. For example, several friends in South-East Asia have quietly and patiently pointed out that some of our ‘Western’ students' behaviour was offensive. This was especially true of ‘overt sexual behaviour’, but it extended into other fields too (dress, for example). If the school is hidden away from the gaze of the host community, such behaviour may be acceptable. But if a school is going out of its way to promote active links between itself and the host community, such attitudinal and behavioural differences cannot be hidden.

Before leaving this discussion on the cultural dilemmas facing schools that wish to exist in harmony with their local community, I would like to raise an issue relating to one part of the local community—the parents who send their children to the school. Several pieces of research (such as that of Bell, 1988) have shown that a coherent ethos between the school and parents is a prime factor in school effecti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• PART A: HISTORY AND NATURE OF INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION
• PART B: CURRICULUM
• PART C: PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
• PART D: THE ORGANIZATION OF SCHOOLS AND THEIR COMMUNITIES
• Index