What is the point of an international school?

In an attempt to answer this question, this presentation will revisit the original aim of what we call ‘international education’. Remembering its shared origins with those of the United Nations, and that its original purpose nearly a century ago was ‘Education for Peace’, I will explore whether ‘Education for Peace’ might mean something different today.

A modern understanding of ‘peace’ demonstrates that international education should be fully and continually focused upon the principles of environmental sustainability, equality and equity, and in order to do this it must eradicate the underlying attitudes inherent in a colonizing mindset.

At the same time, it is necessary to expand our understanding of the phenomenon of colonialism beyond the commonly received political definition.

In recognizing the tricky twofold task of educating to decolonize while simultaneously decolonizing education itself, I will explore just a few of the ways in which present-day international education could begin — or is already beginning to — broach this challenge.

This presentation will also invite contributions and reactions from participants to share and go further on this topic as a community.

My conclusion is that we should be very cautious: if international schools do not constantly and exclusively pursue this goal of decolonization, they will almost certainly do more damage than good.