Like many others, this week I have watched with despair the events unfolding in Europe. Having spent the majority of my early adult life living, working, and travelling much of the continent, and with former colleagues currently teaching in Kyiv, the scenes have been particularly difficult to watch.
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Nelson Mandela
It is in these moments, however, that I am heartened that our School and our community hold a strong commitment towards an International Baccalaureate education for our students. An IB education is much more than academic subjects, report cards and ATARs – it is education for a better world. The International Baccalaureate Organisation and IB schools throughout the world, including CGGS, are guided by the IB’s ambitious and hope-filled Mission Statement:
IB Mission Statement
The International Baccalaureate aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect…These programmes encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate, and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right.
In the Junior School and ELC, we bring life to these ideals through the Primary Years Programme and, from Year 6, the Middle Years Programme. At the heart of these programmes, and the IB Diploma in our Senior School, is the IB Learner Profile. The Learner Profile is the IB mission statement in action. For families in the Junior School and ELC, you will be familiar with the vocabulary of the Learner Profile, with students often mentioning how ‘principled’, ‘caring’ or ‘open-minded’ they have been. Or that they are a ‘thinker’, an ‘inquirer’ or a ‘communicator’. The Learner Profile, however, is much more than an arbitrary list of words displayed on the walls of our classrooms. They are, most significantly, a rich collection of 10 personal and collective behaviours that inspire peace, recognise common humanity, and encourage a shared guardianship of the planet.
Each day we endeavour to live out the Learner Profile attributes, actively developing and demonstrating them in our classrooms, on the sporting field, in the wider community, and importantly even when no one is watching! For all of us, this requires practice, and for our students it requires conscious and well-planned learning experiences that allow for the Learner Profile attributes to be identified, valued, appreciated, and celebrated when we see them in our students – and I encourage parents to do the same!
While it might be seen as simplistic and possibly slightly naïve, I do believe that through the Learner Profile and IB Mission Statement we can, as Nelson Mandela suggests, use education as a powerful weapon to change the world.
Peter McDonald
Head of Junior School and ELC