SCHOOL EDUCATION AND MANAGEMENT SERVICES
WHAT IS THE ESSENCE OF INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION?

A phrase like International Education is stimulating and can easily evoke strong thoughts of different kinds. International and education seem to be words with profound meanings and serious implications.

International curriculum, international staff and international students perhaps might be an initial base upon which a school can address large and international questions to shape itself and educate the minds of the children. However, is this sufficient? Are not the emergent educational processes, which make the staff and students sensitive, sensible and responsible, are more important? Can an international educational outlook emerge from a remotely located school without adequate facilities and without having an international curriculum? Prima facie, this does not seem possible if we consider the form important, but very much possible if we are looking at the content and attitude. Asking a simpler question makes it easy. Can an international cricketer be born in a remote place without adequate coaching facilities? Yes, it has happened.

It seems important to ask the right questions with or without impressive and imposing infrastructure, international curriculum, international staff or international students. If the right global questions are the fountainhead of the educational intent and processes of a school, an internationally oriented educational centre can emerge. The educational approach and processes will emerge from these questions and the school will be much more than its people, students, curriculum and processes. When concern for the world at large influences, energizes and shapes a school, as it does in our case, the staff and children become mindful, thoughtful, sensitive and sensible. They do not lose sight of the larger questions of life and society in the quest for learning and understanding the subjects or participating in activities. They realize over a period that we are an inescapable and integral part of a much larger and more beautiful world. To preserve this global beauty we need to partake of the challenges faced by the world community. Is this not one of the facets of what an international school is supposed to bear in mind at all times?

It is clear that a school can be international in its content and fabric if and only if a few people share questions of the global kind and remain large and gracious in their relationship with other peoples of the world. We need simplicity and reverential outlook from each of us towards all others, around us, for us to be international and global. Can each of us be so simple as to have lost most of our identity because it is strong identities, which prevent internationalism? If we consider such an outlook of internationalism, it is more easily possible for children to be educated with the right understanding of matters and a wide outlook.

As an educator in a school, I have experienced many simple situations, which held immense potential for children to develop oneness with others and be with people of different kinds with understanding and respect. This quality is clearly beyond the boundaries of nations or peoples and is true internationalism. Sharing a few instances might help.

The starting prayer of the different groups of children is the same in our school, even if we hold their morning assemblies separately. The students of Classes 1 to three and Classes 4 to six assemble concurrently at different locations. Chanting by one group can disturb the other, because they are only a short distance from each other. After experimenting with different means to bring about synchronism, these days we request one group to join the other from any word convenient. The confluence achieved this way is not “right,” nevertheless, the children have learnt to join a distant group to do something together. The good effect is palpable. Such spontaneous and simple approaches have the promise to improve collaboration and cooperation amongst children without the use of such words. Downplay of competition in possible ways seems to be a pre requisite for the natural flow of understanding between individuals and groups to come about. Such an approach also brings about the best in the child.

Natural merger of two different groups to sing together has beautiful notes of internationalism imbued in it. A child, who can join others in singing a melodious song in a simple and spontaneous manner, would have developed the simple art of being with others internationally!