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September 30, 2014

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Home » Supplement » Education

Teaching kids ‘how to think’ not ‘what to think’

By Jonathan Paulson | September 30, 2014, Tuesday | Print Edition

WHEN I first came to Shanghai just four years ago, there was just a handful of IB schools. Fast forward to the present, and there are 18 schools offering the IB Diploma Program. In 2010, Shanghai Community International School graduated 23 IB students. Fast forward to the present, and SCIS graduated 89 IB students. That is crazy growth. What is in the water here? Why are so many students and schools going IB? Answers. Please.

The International Baccalaureate is a non-profit international educational platform. In 1968 in Geneva, Switzerland, a group of teachers at the International School of Geneva, with assistance from several other international schools, founded it to serve as a model for a truly international education.

In its infancy, the program consisted of a common pre-university curriculum culminating in a common set of external examinations given at the same time throughout the world. This allowed universities to fairly compare a student in Switzerland to a student in America to a student in China. While the program has grown and evolved over the past 55 years, the IB program still operates on those same original principals.

Reread those previous two paragraphs. The program is for international students. And it’s for all international students. It was not founded to be just for a select number of elite students. That is a common misconception. Read through the curriculum below, and you’ll see for yourself.

It consists of six core classes called “groups,” one additional critical thinking/philosophy class called “Theory of Knowledge,” one extended essay project, and an engagement requirement called “Creativity, Action and Service.” The program is two years, at the end of which all students around the world take the same tests at the same time to determine their grades.

While the curriculum is balanced and strong, that is not what most people point to as the strength of the program. Most everyone I spoke to (administrators and teachers) say the strength of the program is the way it is taught rather than what is taught. SCIS-HQ Principal Evan Hunt put it succinctly: “I’ve always liked the fact that it teaches how to think not what to think.”

But why does the IB curriculum teach people how to think whereas the other curriculums merely teach what to think? The answer, as SCIS IB Coordinator Jessie Koenig says, lays in the additional CAS, Theory of Knowledge, and Extended Essay requirements. “Each of these build on student interests and ask students to apply the knowledge they learn in their courses to real life situations. By keeping the focus on student engagement and development, the International Baccalaureate program requires students to become more than passive learners of content and asks them to become active users and consumers of information on multiple levels.”

The IB curriculum takes place over two years and must be taken in its entirety. It’s designed to produce the next Steve Jobs rather than the next Ken Jennings.

That is much different than the Advanced Placement (AP) curriculums. The AP is a one-year deal, and it can be taken a la carte. Its purpose is to get students college credits in US universities. It should be noted though that the AP currently has an AP Diploma in the pipeline to try and compete with the IB Diploma.

The IB program is also much different than the “A Levels.” The A Levels is a two-year program, but it is very specialized. Most people only take three subjects for their A Levels, and those subjects are based on what they want to study at university. This is not a holistic liberal arts education like the IB program.

When I posed how to best prepare for the IB program to Pudong Head of School Dan Jubert, he quickly replied, “First of all, it needs to be rigorous. That’s a given.” Everyone seems to agree the IB program takes discipline, time management, and active critical thinking skills in order to be successful. And the best schools incorporate those elements into their Grade 9 and 10 curriculums.

Still interested in the IB diploma program? Good news. You’re not alone. The water is warm. Jump in. The diploma is becoming more popular by the year. At its current growth rate, in 10 years every school in Shanghai might have it.

Jonathan Paulson is SCIS-HIS Communications officer.

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