The International Baccalaureate: AIS Pillars
This past summer, AIS officially became authorized to offer the International Baccalaureate’s Primary Years Programme in addition to the Diploma Programme. The Primary School faculty dedicated about five years to developing the curriculum, which last year received a national award. As we begin the new school year, I thought it would be helpful to share some history behind the origins of the IB itself.
The idea sprang from the minds of Kurt Hahn and Alec Peterson. Kurt Hahn, a German of Jewish origin who later became a British citizen, was an educator who worked for a negotiated peace toward the end of the First World War. He dedicated his life toward developing a program of education that would contribute to changing:
‘…national and racial prejudices and the causes of war; the preference for watching other people do things rather than doing them oneself; the declines which were affecting youth as a result of the exhausted, disenchanted, and increasingly cynical culture of post-war Europe and America - the decline in physical fitness, in enterprise, in memory and imagination, in skill and care, in self-discipline, and in compassion.’ *
Kurt Hahn first founded Outward Bound, a program all grade nine students will experience this year. Later, he partnered with Alec Peterson who was Director of Oxford University’s department of Educational Studies. Peterson was fighting to end the practice of forcing young students to specialize into three narrow academic subjects at an early age.
These two leaders laid the foundation for the depth and breadth of the IB, including the emphasis on inquiry and research, exploring how we know what we know through the Theory of Knowledge course and making “creativity, action and service (CAS)” a requirement of the IB. Today, the IB enjoys a worldwide reputation for university preparation. Students with inquiring minds, international understanding and compassion for others are just what university professors want and what our world needs. Thank you for joining our faculty and staff in this effort to develop these qualities in all of our students.
*Spahn, Blake: America and the International Baccalaureate.