With an increasing number of high school graduates deciding to attend university, it is those that spend their high school years immersed in the multicultural world of international schools that prosper greatly.
Despite some aspects of an expatriate life that can be considered detrimental, it is international schools that truly prepare their students for life in university and thereafter.
A student that attends a school with a homogenous student body will assume his or her own truths to be true everywhere. The surroundings of students with comparable experiences and similar backgrounds allows a student to make such an assumption. There is simply no one to disagree. An international school teaches its students that these assumptions are often incorrect, or simply too narrow. A student from the United States of America may have grown up believing that their opinion is fact, but when arriving in a classroom with students from a dozen different nationalities and all with greatly diverse experiences, those “facts” become a lot shakier. Students then know to question the “facts” they are presented with. We often take open-mindedness to mean being open to receiving new ideas, but it is a mark of a truly open minded person to challenge the ideas presented as general truths before requiring another to ask them to make such challenges.
Nanjing International School Counselor Scott Langston provided this interesting observation from watching his own students. “At an international school, your friends don’t necessarily think like you, they challenge your thinking. I think international school students stop making assumptions because their thinking is challenged like that. They wait to find out about someone rather than making quick judgements.”
Another quality that was specified as coming from overseas time was confidence. This comes from former students. British national Sarah Henton graduated from Bangkok Patana School, before returning to the United Kingdom for university. She has since gone on to earn a Ph.D. in volcanology at the University of Fairbanks, in the U.S. Although she says her first years in university were difficult, due in part to reverse culture shock, she said, “I am not afraid of moving far away from my family and I am not scared by new challenges in new places”. The confidence instilled in her from her eight years at an international school has led to her feeling comfortable in unfamiliar situations.
Like Henton, Carlos Andrade found his confidence to have grown, resulting from his time abroad. Andrade, a high school graduate from Taejon International Christian School in South Korea and a university graduate from the Culinary Institute of America, spoke briefly on his experience. “I became much more extroverted in that environment”,s he wrote, “and so when I moved to New York for university, I wasn’t fazed and it was easier for me to blend in.” Ecuadorian-native Andrade then elaborated upon how, when he first moved to South Korea, he experienced culture shock, but because he had that time in Korea, his transition to New York City was seamless.
Other qualities named were tolerance, curiosity and having a global perspective. These qualities all aid in the students’ time in university. A final trait that seemed to be brought up by all former international school students is the sense of independence that was cultivated by their time abroad. This independence, along with their adaptability, made adjusting to a new life relatively smooth. Nicholas Monahan, an American graduate from the NIST International School and university graduate from the University of Virginia, told The Nanjinger, “Adaptability that time at an international school can teach you helps”, in response to what living abroad did for him in terms of transitioning to university.
International schools are able to instill all of these qualities in their students for a few reasons, but former students and faculty alike agree that international schools offering the International Baccalaureate Program are an excellent means of preparation. The IB Organisation is “a non-profit educational foundation” with a “hard-earned reputation for high standards of teaching, pedagogical leadership and student achievement”, or so says the IBO website.
Read more stories published in The Nanjinger by downloading any issue as a PDF, for free! Langston discussed the significance of the two-year Diploma Program, in which there are a few required assignments for graduation, such as the Extended Essay. This assignment is highly unpopular among current students, according to Langston, but almost unanimously, university students look back upon the assignment favourably for its role in preparing for university. Despite all of the positive qualities that come from growing up abroad and attending international schools, the drawbacks can have quite an impact as well. For one, the instability that almost always accompanies an expatriate life style can be difficult to cope with. This is both on a short term and long term level. Students can be in international schools for many reasons, but copious amounts of travel is almost always a factor. Parents travelling for work may require children to be pulled out of school for short periods of time, or even full terms. This can impact the unmistakable quality of a consistent education. In the longer term, though, a childhood of uprooting can have long lasting consequences. Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, Shigehiro Oishi, says, “We know that children who move frequently are more likely to perform poorly in school and have more behavioural problems. However, the long-term effects of moving on well-being in adulthood have been overlooked by researchers”. In Oishi’s study, adults whose childhood consisted of moving consistently reported less satisfaction in life. This may be due to the fact that these adults often report fewer quality social relationships or possible links between general health and living in undeveloped locations. In addition to the instability and consequences that can be caused by living the expatriate lifestyle, there is the simple question of timing. The older the students get, the more difficult it is to transition from school to school. International schools are well equipped to deal with such migrations, but it can still be highly demanding on the students. Moving in the middle of the term makes an academic and social transition even more challenging. University is of course an important milestone in the academic careers of students. Success in university often directly impacts later life achievement. International schools prepare students around the world by developing qualities that will serve them later in life, qualities such as confidence and open-mindedness. International curriculums improve, or hone, students’ critical thinking skills, and also promotes other characteristics that serve them well in university and beyond. Despite the drawbacks of living as an expatriate, the advantages serve former students well as they graduate and begin the rest of their lives.
