Do we even need a label?, Bonnie Friedmann

more multidimensional than their less travelled peers or, on the other hand, somewhat incomplete. A second, related problem is that of belonging. All too frequently, those who qualify to be described as TCKs lack the tools or the instruments to immerse themselves meaningfully in the culture around them. They are not proficient in the language, let alone the lingo, and they do not enjoy access to or participation in day-to-day life in that place. Equally importantly, they do not have a specific cultural broker or midwife – a term I have come to use to mean someone who introduces others to the culture in which they will spend vast amounts of their time – who helps them to make sense of where they are and of how they fit in. Consequently, they become the eternal observers; spectators not participators. The sad result of this is that TCKs can end up retreating, chalking up their time in the host country to an extended tourist experience while seeking, inevitably, to move on.

This being the case, how can education play a meaningful role in helping to develop and galvanise young people’s sense of self, wherever they find themselves? How can education positively build the identity of those who through unfortunate circumstances have found themselves flung into foreign territory? Education in an international setting can certainly be an activity through which students are encouraged to appreciate themselves for the difference that they can bring to a particular society and to do what Honestly, until I read the Comment in the most recent issue of International School magazine, the term TCK was unknown to me. Been around since the 1950s, this terminology? Argued about by people who claim to be “real TCK’s” as if it is a badge of honour? Related to children whose parents move them around from country to country, passport to passport, so that they could only truly identify with others who shared the same experience? Hmmm …

In the 1970s, my family never moved farther than 30 miles down the Long Island shorelines, though we did do that about 14 times all told – and there was The Big Exception, the time we moved to Connecticut for three years … the move that tore the marriage and family apart. Dad gave up on mom and moved to southern California. At 18 I followed … and sang softly to myself “LA’s fine but it ain’t home, New York’s home but it ain’t mine no more …”. I was as homelandless in one country as my own son now is, born in South Africa, moved to San Diego at 2, Germany at 12. Home, we tell him – and I tell myself, is where the heart is. And my heart? It’s within me, wherever I roam.

That background is probably what landed me at a bilingual international school in Germany, where I have now lived and taught for going on five years. How did our journey begin, me the New York Nomad, and my husband the Boy from Nebraska for whom university on the East Coast opened up the wider world? Good question. Not sure I have a good they can to contribute to everyone’s wellbeing – and, most importantly, be valued for that. Sadly, we have all too often seen what happens when people feel that they do not belong; in the best case, the ‘aliens’ retreat to a ghettoised existence where they cling to symbols of the ‘home’ country, speaking an inferior form of their ‘mother tongue’, or they remove themselves from the social structure completely. The worst scenario, as the news reminds us constantly, is that these ‘foreigners’ have on occasion turned to sinister groups to validate their existence, and in extreme cases they act out anti-social, destructive behaviour.

Those who join a society need to be valued for enriching that context, and international educators should seize the opportunity to lead the celebration. Rootedness feels very important, but we should not get too hung up on it; trees, plants and all living organisms grow, and most bear fruit. Being rooted is not an aim in itself; what matters is what we do with it, how we use our resources to offer support and sustenance to those who shelter under our branches and, yes, who pick our cultural fruit and disperse the seeds further than we ever imagined.

Shamiela Davids is Director of Innovation, and Director of the Leadership College, at Hockerill Anglo-European College, Hertfordshire, UK

Do we even need a label?

Bonnie Friedmann would much rather see a new perspective

Email: davidss@hockerill.com

answer. Well, maybe. Unhappy in SoCal where we met, we jumped at adventure in South Africa in the form of a professorship for him. An adventure for sure; a bit on the dangerous side as we discovered. Okay for us, but not for the baby we then produced. So … back to SoCal, but with the determination that our son would not be a monolingual American, but a Citizen of the World vaguely like the people we met and loved in Jo’burg; not just bilingual but normally multilingual from early ages. And that’s when we found a bilingual English-German IB Primary Years Programme charter school – and well, it just sort of evolved from there. Summer trips to Germany when we realized our minimal high school skills were not enough to help him, a sabbatical year that led to a job in Frankfurt for my husband and, six years later, here we stay. For now.

So yes, I suppose I agree with Hayden and Thompson when they say the time has come to go beyond the TCK label. But what to replace it with? How about going beyond labels, period? We can define experience and attempt to contain it as much as we like, and as humans I suppose we are inclined to do so. Our yearnings for tidy explanations won’t, though, change our richly unique, ever-changing realities in what has become a world connected by economics, electronic media and jet travel, not to mention migration due to the ravages of war and the lack of opportunity as well as the simple desire for adventure and experiences.