Why we need an international curriculum model

Why we need an international curriculum model

By John Phillips

This is the first of two articles about an international curriculum model.

YOGYAKARTA (JP): Most international schools are international in name only since they often mirror an existing school system from one of several "home" countries such as the United States.

Everything in these schools reflects the culture of that country -- everything, that is, except the students. The students are "from" all over the world as even those from the dominant culture in the school often spend years overseas.

Out of school these "international" students may live in a cultural cocoon sheltered from the host country environment and, even when they find themselves moving to a third culture, they are still stuck in an international cultural vacuum.

In this sense, these children represent the future challenge of preparing students for a multi-cultural world, one that will drive educational policy. But, for these children now, and for the children of Indonesia later, current curricula are ill-suited to this task as most were created in a rapidly disappearing environment for a society that has long since evolved.

Educators have long anticipated that curriculum reform will be needed because of anticipated changes in technology and in the nature of work.

So, curricular change models have often focused on the essential task of primary and secondary education-teaching students how to learn and to think.

Now, in addition there is as great a need to assist students in becoming international citizens. While it is remarkable how the basic principles implied in this idea were anticipated by the Indonesian state "ideology" of Pancasila, in order to meet the challenges of the future, Indonesia will still need to change its educational system.

A new system should include not only less emphasis on teaching specific information and more on critical "learning-thinking skills", but also, more emphasis on cross-cultural awareness and adaptation skills while teaching tolerance for differences in the way others live, think and believe.

The importance of teaching all children "thinking" skills cannot be overestimated. These skills are essential for the obvious reason that as the world changes and the nature of what it means to be an educated person changes with it, most of us will have to continue to learn new things well beyond our initial years of education.

Thinking skills are also crucial as all citizens of the planet must be able to make critical decisions about the quality and worth of the information available to them in ever increasing quantity, but not necessarily better quality.

For this reason, students must be taught how to think analytically about their world and their lives to allow them to make appropriate choices about which information is valuable and useful and which is not.

The idea that information can be "worthless" or even harmful may strike some readers as being inward "looking", but taking the example of the dissemination of "pornography" over the Internet, it is much easier to see.

Another example might be information that is inflammatory, racist or hate-filled "propaganda" designed to sow confusion and to reap violence in a society.

An apt example of this occurred late last year in Jakarta when a group of armed students were arrested before they could attack students in another school.

Their excuse for planning the attack was that a pamphlet had been circulated saying that the other students had insulted their religion. These students should have been able to figure out that they were being manipulated by someone who wanted to cause what can only be described as mindless violence.

Since there seems to be no way to stem the flow of information regardless of its intrinsic value or truthfulness, students must have the ability to think through problems, sort information, and critically analyze ideas in order to separate the "wheat from the chaff", that is, distinguish the good from the bad.

Without these skills society is at the mercy of those who control information. At the same time, while any curriculum must include the learning of thinking skills, these skills alone are insufficient for future international citizens.

Perhaps as important as thinking skills, future citizens must have the ability to look beyond themselves and the cultural milieu in which they exist to "see" the value and worth of other cultures.

Such a curriculum would begin to alter the predominant view that other ways of living and thinking are interesting, but, ultimately inferior or hostile.

With an appropriate education, other cultures and their perceptions would become not just interesting subjects to be studied but valuable "insights" into the human condition worth exploring for their alternative ways of explaining the world in which we live and from which we can learn and benefit.

In the East, the predominate need might be to combine the previously discussed critical thinking skills with a more scientific approach to those areas of life which can benefit from objectivity and analysis such as the ability to critically analyze texts for flaws in logic and proof.

In the West, the predominancy need seems to be exactly the opposite, to go beyond our self-imposed cultural "blinders" which dismiss anything that is not rational or scientifically provable and to go back to spiritual and cultural roots to discover within them the essence of our common humanity that makes us more than efficient thinking machines.

These "gaps" in our educational system and our inability to perceive the world as others do appear to be rooted in our lack of understanding about other cultures and in our inability to think in ways that take in alternatives instead of rejecting them out of hand.

That is, it seems that what is missing from our education is the ability to think and to act as "whole persons" who are open to new information and ways of seeing and who understand not only ourselves, but others as well.

Perhaps it is restating the obvious, but we have much to learn from one another, if we could only open our eyes up a little and "see". To do this, we need a truly international curriculum that expands our ability to think and opens us up to a diverse world of possibilities and promises.