Why ISA does the International Baccalaureate and why innovation should not be a goal in itself, but is sometimes very important.
It is a timely moment to reflect at the beginning of the year about why we embrace all three programmes of the IB (the primary years programme, PYP, the middle years programme MYP, and the International Baccalaureate Diploma programme, IBDP).
Innovation in education is not always a good idea. Kurt Hahn the founder of the International Baccalaureate often quoted his former patron who when asked if he should not be innovative rather than inspired by former models of education said:
“You must harvest the wisdom of a thousand years. If ever you come to a surgeon and he wants to take out your appendix in the most original manner possible, I would strongly advise you to go to another surgeon.”
Innovation is not a goal in itself, and indeed sometimes might be a move of last resort. So why did someone so resolutely traditional in some ways, create what has been one of the greatest innovations in modern education?
The problem arose from two places. Firstly, Kurt Hahn was at a NATO conference a few years after World War Two had ended, and noticed how well German, Italian, British and French people got on - socialising and laughing together, when they had been desperately trying to kill each other only years before. The thought that struck him was, wouldn’t it be good to let students get to know each other and celebrate rather than mask their diversity and unique strengths as students, and perhaps this would make a more peaceful world?
To make this first thought a reality he founded one of the earliest international schools, Atlantic College in Wales, known as the United World College. In the first year he realised he had a problem - simple questions like ‘whose history do you teach’? After all, even back then, there was an almost infinite volume of knowledge and skill, but to make any choice would feel random. LIkewise do you teach Shakespeare? Tolstoy? Cervantes? Confucius? The Bhagavad Gita? Chaucer ? Basho? Whose literature and culture should you teach?
He asked for help with the second problem from Alec Peterson, then working at the faculty of education at Oxford University. Alec Peterson agreed to take a sabbatical to help him create a curriculum.
Peterson’s solution was powerful: don’t teach endless memorised content: teach humans’ ‘main tools of thought’. To take one specific example, in History explore the main conceptual tools historians think with, and make the content illustrative. For example the idea of cause and consequence; explore ideas that events have long term, short term, and trigger causes, which can lead to consequences that are entwined within these. Explore the idea of the relative significance of causes. For the case studies you can choose illustrative examples of historical events from the cultures of the children you teach, or examples you think are particularly strong. In fact, students could even choose their own case studies. It doesn’t matter which historical revolution or industrialisation you study; it just matters that it illustrates the concepts well. You can localise, diversify and personalise content whilst improving the intellectual robustness of the curriculum. Importantly the ideas transfer.
Transferring your learning might not have seemed very important to some in the 1960s when mass travel and mass migration were still in their infancy, and the rate of change in the world was slower. But in the world today the tables have turned. Traditional education models educate for a static, fact based world that simply does not exist and leave school leavers exposed to a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world they are just not ready for. The International Baccalaureate on the other hand, prepares them to thrive in such a world.
An additional feature of the International Baccalaureate comes from the northern European tradition of ‘Dannelse’ in Scandinavia and ‘Bildung’ in German, that Kurt Hahn was very aware of. Education is not just technical training in cognitive skills, but rather a shaping of the character and personality. At the ‘core’ or heart of the IB are creativity, activity and service (CAS). These are supported by focusing on values rather than simply academic outcomes. Again, by going ‘higher up’ the taxonomy of learning, we create outcomes that transfer and last a lifetime. You might not remember the model for a Benzene ring molecule twenty years after you leave school, but you will still know what it means to think empirically like a scientist, and what it means to be principled and caring as a community member.
For this reason the IB also focuses not just on what we teach, but how we teach it. How do we build skills of collaboration, critical thinking, creativity and caring whilst learning? This is something that we particularly value at ISA.
The IB never set out to be just an academic qualification; but as is often the case, things that others directly aim for as an instrumental goal, can be achieved as spin off benefits of just doing the right thing. ISA chose the IB because it reflects what we value and allows our students to be global citizens, but we get the spin off benefit of an incredibly rich academic programme. The IB is now the world’s most highly regarded school leaving qualification. Almost 60 years later, national systems are trying to catch up and adapt their models, but finding it hard to muster the necessary emotional, intellectual and financial resources to do so.
We are proud of our heritage of being the only school in the north of Scotland offering this contemporary and powerful education. It is more than a programme choice; it is part of our DNA.
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