International schools are the new wave

It’s time to re-evaluate our educational system.

There has been a change in our social landscape: As the world around us becomes more bilingual, culturally savvy and internationally competitive, U.S. citizens have become too comfortable with their local issues and the institutions that serve their single city or state. Rarely do we apply the worldly, cultural things we learn in school in the actual world. Education needs to enter the new age. The new age of education should reconsider the K-12 grade structure in order to better prepare our youth not only for a national society, but also for a global society.

The Avenues World School system hopes to implement a new way of learning and teaching our youth in a global community. Students will be placed in either the Early Learning Center, Lower School, Middle School or in the Upper School, in which the upper grades have the option to study at other Avenues schools in other countries.

The program will also require students to begin to learn a second language in the Early Learning Center and will immerse them within a culturally diverse setting that will broaden their understanding of how the world works — socially, politically, environmentally and economically.

Most importantly, Avenues World School will provide what Fernando M. Reimers, a professor of the International Ford Foundation, calls “global competency,” which will allow others to “put themselves in others’ shoes ... and have a deep knowledge and understanding of the process of globalization itself.”

Intercultural competency begins at an early age and features education about the world and other cultures and their religions, politics, customs and everyday living.

Part of this cultural understanding consists of fluency in a second language. As Chris Wittle, founder of the Edison Schools, said, “single-language children are not competitive anymore.”

In our melting pot society, knowing only one language can now hurt us when go looking for jobs. Also, having two or three languages under our belts will help us interact with the world on a larger scale. This is why the new Avenues World School is stepping up education, thinking outside of our little U.S.-centric selves and proposing an educational system that breaks down the country’s cultural barriers. Now, instead of a state-run school system or a nationally run school system, a globally run school system will link up to 27 different international cities. At the Avenues World School opening in New York City next fall, Tyler C. Tingley, co-head of Avenues, stated, “Students will sit at conference tables, not in rows or compartments ... they’re going to talk about ideas and learn together.”  

This method incorporates a college-like classroom, built on interaction, which will better prepare students for postsecondary education and hopes to enhance communication and collaboration skills overall.

The Avenues website claims that “Through the World Course, students will study demography, world geography, environmental sustainability, economic trade and world religions,” just to name a few topics. Emphasis is put on interaction, getting students involved in the community and communicating with each other — all in hopes of moving away from the rigidity that is set in place with our current state school systems and into a more collaborative structure.

A globalized school system would likely begin to break down small-mindedness, bigotry, racism, stereotypes and prejudices that populate our society and public schools today. By moving toward a culturally expansive educational system, students, from a young age, will learn and communicate with people of different races, backgrounds, cultures and religions.               

Avenues will operate in six continents and in more than 20 countries as the innovative curriculum globally expands after the opening of the New York City school. A World School means students will participate with these initial 27 schools, which will diversify faculty as well as the student body on an international level. Inspiring an atmosphere of diversity by exposing and immersing students in an environment of cultural differences might be just the thing our limited, under-funded, stodgy education system needs. Hopefully this catches on and becomes the new wave for our educational facilities.      


E-mail: mfiandt@imdiana.edu