The particular community that I identify with and will continue to identify with is my “IB community.” The International Baccalaureate (IB) is a non-profit educational organization with its headquarters in Switzerland. However, it is a worldwide program that is in 144 countries including the U.S. Because it is an international diploma, most people that typically participate in it tend to be from open minded families or are also international themselves. In my high school in particular, the people that joined this community such as myself where those that came from a multicultural background hence it only made sense to do this diploma. It has a rigorous yet different type of curriculum that focuses more on teaching critical thinking, synthesizing knowledge, reflecting in our own though processes, and linking interdisciplinary studies together. It is often easy to identify the type of students coming from this community because everything we do is from a “global perspective” and how that can affect the people around us. This is simply because the curriculum and the faculty members have engrained this idea called “international-mindedness” which deals with understanding our own cultural and national identity in relation to that of others.
As it has been mentioned above, the mission of this community to basically create students with intellectual, personal, and social skills to live in a globalizing (international) world. The members of this community are expected to have certain things in common. For example, all of us have had to participate in what is called CAS(creativity, action, service) which helps to involve us in activities not related to academics. For this reason, you will find that many have already done independent research (well in a way, it’s a requirement). I think it’s interesting that out of everything that the curriculum tries to teach in high school, the most important thing that the people in this community including me, will forever carry on, is the ability to critically think outside the box and approach problems in various angles.
Information I still want to know:
- Why is it that most schools specifically in America don’t really recognize this diploma as much as the others?
- Being that this is an international program yet we also live in a world where ranking is important, how is one IB school better than the other is the exact same curriculum is followed?