Educating Global Citizens?
Belonging in International Schools By Danau Tanu When “race” isn’t always about race for third culture kids. This article was first published in Inside Indonesia (Edition 102) and later incorporated into Growing Up in Transit: The Politics of Belonging at an International School, which will be released in paperback in December 2020. See www.danautanu.com for a 25% preorder discount code. Also available now in hardback and as an eBook.
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his is my country. The bule (white people) shouldn’t mess with our country,” he said, perched precariously on the back of a bench at an international school in Jakarta, Indonesia. Dae Sik was talking about Indonesia. He grew up in Indonesia, but he is technically South Korean. His passport says so, his name says so, and ethnically speaking he is. “But, aren’t you Korean?” I asked. “Of course,” he responded. “It’s in my blood.” As far as he was concerned, nothing he had said was contradictory. Dae Sik’s high school is a multicultural bubble for expatriate and Indonesian children. Inside the security gates lies a well-maintained, oasislike campus which belies the bustle and smog of Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia. As students flood out of the classrooms at recess,
you can hear a Russian teenager speaking fluent, colloquial Indonesian to a classmate; Indian teenagers speaking English with an American accent, then switching to an Indian accent and back again within a matter of seconds, depending on who they are talking to; a Taiwanese teenager speaking English, Mandarin, and Indonesian in one sentence. No-one bats an eyelid. It’s just another day at an international school. When Suharto was president, Indonesian citizens were prevented from attending international schools, which catered mainly to the expatriate communities. But since this restriction was relaxed, international education has become increasingly popular among the financially privileged, who praise them for the high quality of education they offer. While international schools are sometimes criticised for their exclusiveness, they celebrate the number of nationalities represented in their student body and teaching staff as a mark of their diversity. But despite international schools’ ideology of “global citizenship,” students learn to internalise cultural hierarchies—meaning that student perceptions of popularity are sometimes coloured by race.
September 2020
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