I wrote the following note to introduce a workshop in Internationalism in Education held at my school recently led by two leading British authorities on the subject. The workshop was very interesting to me personally, because it clarified for me the enormous confusion that the word "internationalism" generates in the minds of those who encounter it for the first time. At the end of the workshop, it became clear to me that internationalism as an ideology of education is none other than the attempt to understand and build bridges with people who are different from what we are. These differences may well exist within nations and cultures as much as between them. In this sense, people who try to work and live across caste or sectarian differences within a part of India, or across racial differences in the US, or across ethnic differences in a European country, are just as "internationalist" as those who work for understanding between peoples of different countries or cultures. What unites them is the attempt to negotiate differences, to acknowledge the humanity of the other, to see through differences and acknowledge the humanly universal or universally human.
This stance has educational implications. It requires learners to engage with a variety of perspectives and epistemologies. Thus it is likely to be nurtured most effectively with a transdisciplinary approach to learning that is both reflective and dialogic rather than didactic. It also needs a pedagogy that is based on authentic and direct (as opposed to second-hand) experience. It requires the cultivation of empathy and a capacity for deliberate and systematic moral reasoning.
Yet some people thought that the concept itself was too narrowly "western" in the way it was defined, others were disappointed that no definition was offered or attempted, and still others thought that the concept was too slippery to be defined at all. As anticipated in the note, many felt that the talk of internationalism was subversive of Turkish "national values" - a feeling exacerbated by the accidental timing of the conference to coincide with the conference on the Armenian "problem", and the imminent rejection of Turkey's entry into the EU. The scholars who led the workshop may have failed to appreciate the ways in which the concept of internationalism could be perceived as problematic in this setting (a failure for which I may have been partly responsible). To that extent, the workshop itself was a failure of internationalism as a mode of talking about what we do as educators and learners.
At the same time, I would regard the workshop as a success, since it energized many others who attended it. It can also potentially signal the beginning of a conversation that ought to have begun in our school the year we introduced the International Baccalaureate program in 1994, but didn't. That in turn would depend on the vision and energy and intellectual rigour of the administration to turn the ideas generated at the workshop into a work in progress in the school.
INTERNATIONALISM - SOME FIRST THOUGHTSInternationalism in education, especially in a national educational context such as in a school like ours that is not an international school, is a confusing, contentious and contested concept. Why would a national school need to even consider internationalism? What should it mean in the context of our school? The note below is offered as a set of questions that will hopefully clarify some of the issues and stimulate further discussion and debate during the forthcoming workshop this month.
IB schools are of course committed to some notion of internationalism. But internationalism is educationally too important to be conceptualized in terms of the IB or any other organization, and needs to be considered independently of it. Internationalism also ought to be de-linked conceptually from the nation, given that most countries in the world are multi-national, or multi-ethnic. Internationalism, as a concept or principle, as a way of making sense of the world outside, as well as a social practice, has gained great poignancy in the wake of recent events in some of the most open societies in the world.
In almost every country, most citizens are now forced to become aware of the impact of events and forces, artifacts and ideas originating elsewhere. Our students increasingly come into contact with people from other cultures, and will probably continue to do so to an even greater degree as adults. It would therefore be a mistake to educate youngsters in any country as if their own country was isolated or unrelated to the world outside, and without some notion of how to relate to it. Whether or not we are mindful of the connections our students form with the world outside their own familiar cultures, they will tend to regard others who are different from themselves in a variety of ways – for example, as dangerous, or irresistibly domineering, or worthy of imitation, or inferior or worthy only of ridicule, or as instruments or resources to be exploited towards the pursuit of their ends, or as friends and fellow-participants in the drama of human experience. It is a fundamental premise of educational internationalism that we as teachers should influence the ways in which our students relate to their national and cultural others. Peace, justice and friendship are not automatic in human relationships, and need work and preparation. The basic question here is how we should shape these ways – what methods should we apply, and in which direction. But in order to do this, we ourselves need to be clearer in our own minds about what it means to be international-minded, and what values, dispositions, attitudes, methods and practices enable us to make sense of ourselves and of others.
This question must therefore touch not only on the issue of personal and cultural identity, i.e., how we as teachers and students, understand ourselves (whether natives of this country or not) as well as others. We also need to ask: What concepts do we need to employ to understand others who may be different from us? And what practices do we need to adopt in the classroom and in school in order to enable our students to relate to different “others” in ways that affirm their common humanity, yet allow both their distinctiveness?
If internationalism is so good, why then is it resisted? What difficulties does internationalism present in a national education program in a country like Turkey, with recent memories of imperial collapse at the hands of western imperial powers, and where the education system seeks to inculcate strong nationalist values?
Talk of internationalism within a national context often generates cultural anxiety: does internationalism not threaten understanding and love and respect for one’s own culture or nation, and thereby create a sense of inferiority towards one’s own cultural inheritance? Does it not mean opening the doors of one’s own culture to the winds of change in ways that one may live to regret in future? Internationalism, like modernity, is often associated with being western, either by origin or by adoption. In many non-western societies, to accept the discourse of internationalism may therefore seem to mean acquiescence in western domination. Such anxieties can be shown, through further examination, to be illusory.
Internationalism also generates moral worries. Does not internationalism require a certain moral relativism, and encourage a kind of pusillanimous “correctness” where one refrains from criticizing foreign ideas or practices that one may find repellant, merely for fear of seeming intolerant? What standards does one use to judge oneself and others, and whose standards are they?
Internationalism can also be confusing without certain distinctions being made between the hegemonic varieties, and the co-operative or solidaristic varieties. The hegemonic variety is associated with seeking domination and ruling out dialogue, whereas the solidaristic kind is established through dialogue between different parties that regard each other as being of equal worth and dignity by virtue of being human. Both kinds are possible in politics, commerce, the arts and culture. Hopefully, educational internationalism fosters the second kind, but without ignoring the first.
Thinking of internationalism in education also raises further questions about how it can be embedded in a curriculum, and what practices create opportunities for experiencing and learning it in the classroom. How can internationalism be structured into a school program – as an add-on course, as an essential leavening to the curricula, or in some other fashion? What sorts of knowledge, skills, behaviour and attitudes would constitute evidence of internationalism? How could internationalism be conceived in different areas of knowledge? While it might be relatively simple to design internationalism into literature, history and the social sciences, how could a mathematics or science curriculum be rendered internationalist, when the knowledge claims in these disciplines seem to be culturally neutral?
The above questions are not meant to exhaust the discussion of internationalism, since many more will doubtless occur to readers of this note. Nor are they meant to prescribe or anticipate the scope of any future discussion too rigidly, but merely point to some of the issues that might be addressed at the forthcoming workshop. I hope they at least stimulate further reflection.
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