Bangkok Patana IB students: Ling Chih Chang, upper left; Marc Nielsen, lower left; Abishek Jirathasneswongse, upper right; and Diane Archer, lower left. |
The IB is on a roll throughout much of the world. Not surprisingly, it is the course of choice right here in Bangkok at some of the biggest international schools
During the past month, I’ve made a number of visits to international schools located here in Bangkok. I’ve had a chance to interview many students and one thing that has struck me about those studying in their final two years is that they were taking the same course of study. All of them – be it NIST, ISB or Bangkok Patana – were in the International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma programme.
Actually, the IB is on a roll throughout much of the world. At last count there were 1,182 schools offering the IB worldwide, a growing proportion of which are extending the curriculum to the primary and middle school years.
According to the latest information from the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO) headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, six of these schools are right here in Bangkok.
The diploma programmeThe IB diploma programme began in 1968. It was aimed at geographically mobile students and was designed to offer them a standardised curriculum acceptable to colleges and universities throughout the world.
From the outset, the IB was not based on a single national curriculum. Instead, it drew on what its designers considered to be the best practices of a variety of educational systems – predominately, but not exclusively in Europe. The curriculum was to emphasise critical thinking and exposure to a variety of viewpoints, aiming to "foster tolerance and inter-cultural understanding among young people."
Today, students earning the program’s diploma must pass exams in a primary language (one in which they have native or near-native proficiency), a foreign language, mathematics, an experimental science, a social science, and an elective course in another social science or the arts. In addition, diploma seekers must complete a rigorous theory of knowledge course, write an extended 4000-word essay on a topic of their choice and complete 150 hours of an innovative combination of extracurricular activities.
Final examinations are all externally graded, the responsibity of the IBO’s team of 3400 examiners worldwide. In addition, the IBO carries out regular site visits to ensure member schools are up to standard. To ensure that they are, the IBO also provides teacher training workshops and information seminars, curriculum and assessment support, as well as research. It has recently opened an online curriculum centre to offer teachers at authorised schools electronic access to materials and discussion forums.
All this, in the words of a local international school administrator, costs the schools and their students "an arm and a leg". Is it worth it? Colleges and universities seem to think so. Credits from IB courses are almost universally accepted, even at the most selective institutions. In addition, high IB course grades virtually guarantee advance placement in most universities.
"Good practice"
"The IB," according to NIST Deputy Headmaster Michael Matthews, "hasn’t invented anything. It’s just pulled things together and put them into an international context."
"The thrust of the programme," says Matthews, "is essentially good practice. It draws on good practice from – the documentation says – around the world. But the honest truth is that it is a western programme. And that’s sometimes a criticism made of it."
"It’s rigorous, he says, "but it is intended to be accessible to the great majority (of students) with different degrees of effort. And it makes every effort to look at things from an international perspective."
Matthews acknowledges that there are limits to this approach, especially in the technical fields. "The reality is that when you are doing calculus, there’s not a lot of international perspective on calculus – although the expectation is there that the teacher will acknowledge, for instance, that the roots of calculus are not solely Isaac Newton, but calculus was developed in Korea as well," he explains.
In other areas, such as world literature, says Matthews, the IB programme "really goes to town, with the international element." History, he says, "is essentially a world history course and students can specialise on particular regions. We specialise on southeast Asia for obvious reasons."
While the IB is by no means strictly an international school programme – it has been adopted by hundreds of public schools in the US, for example – Matthews clearly feels the international school provides the best setting.
"Our greatest asset," he says, "is that we’ve got 51 nationalities in our students. In an average class, you’ll have at least a dozen nationalities. That gives you tremendous scope for discussion."
As an example, he describes one such discussion that took place in his class shortly after the Taliban destruction of the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan. "Everybody in the class automatically took the position that this was an appalling act, quite outrageous, unjustifiable," he says.
"But in this class I was able to turn to the Muslim student and ask what possible justification could there be for this from a Muslim point of view. And the Muslim student was able to explain – while totally disagreeing with the Taliban act – that in Islam any representation of the human form is considered an insult to God. Only God can create the human form."
This "reasoned explanation" of the origin of the extremist viewpoint, says Matthews, "produced a wonderful discussion. The final conclusion of the class was still this was a totally unjustifiable act. But it was an informed conclusion whereas at the beginning of the class it had been an uninformed conclusion."
According to Matthews, regular teacher input ensures that the IB curriculum is constantly evolving. "One of the great things about the IB," he says, is that it isn’t a government body. We’re not being directed by what a particular government or ministry thinks students should be learning. The IB is becoming more bureaucratic as it gets larger – that’s inevitable – but it’s still essentially structured as a series of committees from the participating schools, teachers sitting on curriculum design committees and designing the programme. It’s a programme essentially written by the practioners, going up through a committee process."
Shock treatmentHow do Asian students, particularly Thai students who are used to relatively authoritarian teaching styles, adjust to the IB’s emphasis on child-centred learning and independent critical thinking?
Matthews acknowledges that the adjustment is not always a smooth one. Sometimes a little shock treatment is in order. In his theory of knowledge, for example, Matthews lectures on a totally-fitious ancient philosopher, Hiddoesteles.
Students are assigned to do additional library research on the man, an exercise intended to raise red flags when their investigations yield no mention of a Hiddoesteles whatsoever. It doesn’t, of course, and come quiz time, the unsuspecting students answer according to their lecture notes. They all fail.
The test, he explains to his shocked class was not to call up memorised information – "the test was to spot that this was a spoof – and you failed."
"What do you mean?" the students protest. "You’re not supposed to tell us lies,"
"No," counters Matthews, "teachers generally don’t tell you lies, but teachers make mistakes. Don’t accept it just because I say it. Think about it."
This, he says, "annoys many of our Thai students. They get angry and they resent the fact they cannot just live in the comfort zone of teacher says it, I memorise it, I repeat it on the test. They don’t like having that comfort zone removed because although it might be dull, it’s safe. What we are asking them to do is stick their heads out, voice an opinion and maybe you’ll be wrong. But give it a try."
Matthews readily admits that the IB approach is not perfect in every respect. "It may well be," he says, that "learning has a range of different approaches. I see Korean maths and its done by rote-learning; it’s done by huge amount of drill-and-practice. It’s not at all student-centred, but I can’t bring myself in all honesty to say that Koreans aren’t damn good at math and aren’t well taught at math."
"I do think we need to push back just a little bit and say, OK, maybe there are areas where drill-and-practice has scope in the technical areas. So I don’t think we’ve got it all right. I don’t think we’re at the end of the discovery chain here."
Deeper and broader
What do you think of the IB programme? "Great, Spot on, Brilliant!" were the immediate responses I got when I asked a group of four Bangkok Patana IB diploma candidates, Marc Nielsen, Ling Chih Chang, Diane Archer and Abishek Jirathasneswongse.
Compared to alternative programmes, said Marc, "it’s so much broader, yet so much more in-depth. You have your six subjects and you focus in on them so much. I think it’s more comprehensive than Advance Placement courses in the States, but it’s less intensive than the A-levels in the UK."
Abishek concurred, saying the programme forced him to explore areas he probably would have foregone had he been given the choice. "Sometimes I might not want to do a course like biology because I want to go into humanities when I go to the university. If I did A-levels which is three subjects primarily, I’d be more focused on things I like and sometimes that frustrates me, but it does give me a broader education."
"Also," adds Diane, "the fact that we have to do an extended essay really teaches us research skills in the university because we have so many essays, we have to do so much research."
In one way, however, the IB sounds much like other programmes, including the one offered in the Thai national system. It is results-oriented, exam-oriented and the students are very aware of the rules.
Diane: "There are six subjects and you can get seven points for each. That means 42 and there are three bonus points. You need 24 to pass."
Marc: "You have three ‘highers’ and three ‘standards’. In your higher subjects, if you get lower than a 2, you fail."
Abishek: "And you can’t get 3 in your standard."
According to Diane, achieving a 45 is not a realistic goal. "Only about 15 in the whole world got 45 last year," she said
The reason, said Marc "is that the IB is incredibly hard and some people have compared it to college levels. But this is also an advantage because of the credit you can earn towards a university degree. When I go into college, it’s likely that I’ll be able to knock off some university courses because of ones I’ve taken here in IB."
The CAS programmeThe IB is more than a rigorous academic programme. Said Marc, "There is something in the IB called CAS which is "creativity" "action" "service". We are required to do 50 hours each of creativity, action, service, but a lot of us go over the top. I did 90 hours for a (theatre) production. That was creativity and I’ve done loads more. I was technical manager so I was in charge of both lighting and sound."
For community, said Ling Chih, "we worked with the child protection foundation. Sometimes we’d go visit them at the shelter or once we organised a Saturday where they came to our school and we organised different events for different age groups and we let them have the whole entire afternoon here and let them use our facilities."
Abishek’s community service was a bit different. "I coach football, he explained, "Ten-year-olds and kids from our school and other schools, we play on Saturday and I coach them."
What’s action? "Anything physical," Marc explained, "for instance I can use diving"
Future plansAs you would expect, all four students are university bound and they are well into the application process. Diane has set her sights high. She has applied to England – Cambridge to be specific. She wants to study in the field of land economy, a mixture of economics, law and environmental studies, with the idea of returning to Thailand to work for a government agency or as an independent consultant.
Marc has applied to various universities in Washington DC and Boston while Ling Chih has applied to universities in both the United Kingdom and the United States. She has an eye on a business degree.
As for Abishek, he has applied to Australian universities in Sydney and Melbourne, aiming at a law degree. That is for practical purposes, he quickly explains. His long term dream is to study film-making at New York University. After that? "I don’t care where I work – even the North Pole. I want to see the world."
Follow up
For a conversation with a student taking an innovative IB elective course, just click here. And for readers who want an in-depth look at the IB programme, see the International Baccalaureate Organisation’s website. For an illuminating if sometimes irreverant look at the IB from the student standpoint be sure to visit http://www.ibscrewed.com/home.asp.
terryfrd@ksc15.th.com |
