At the International School of Brussels....

At the International School of Brussels, we celebrated our annual International Festival yesterday: foods, fashion, festivals, and flags in all their colour and pageantry. It was a lot of fun, and I ate too much. Thank you to all the organizers! 

I also found myself reflecting on how international schools have changed over the last two decades and became very appreciative that ISB, thanks in part to its diversity and its strong diplomatic community, still represents much of the original ethos of international education. While the four F’s of internationalism (foods, fashion, festivals, and flags) matter, the real learning is helping students understand the commonalities between themselves and others; how others, in their differences, can also be right; and how international education can help students understand peace deeply, not just superficially.

In a recent podcast conversation with Stuart MacFarlane MacAlpine, I realized it had been quite a while since I had last had an extended conversation about the educational philosophy behind our schools. This feels like a loss. In schools (and possibly even in organizations like the International Baccalaureate), it can be all too easy for all of us to become consumed by day-to-day operations and to let the idealism of internationalism quietly slip into the background.

For a time, I was hopeful that globalization might move us beyond wars between countries. I was wrong. Very wrong. We are seeing a dizzying number of wars these days, and there is a danger that we begin to numb ourselves to the news cycle. History also reminds us that societies can forget how terrible war is when they have not experienced a major one for generations. Peace between countries cannot be taken for granted. Nor can it remain an implied value of international education. It needs to become a more explicit one again. One of the strange things about institutions is that the longer they last, the easier it becomes to talk about how they run and the harder it becomes to talk about why they exist. And that is probably where we are with international education.

As Maria Montessori wrote, “Preventing conflicts is the work of politics; establishing peace is the work of education.”