Features
Is the IB meeting the needs of our times? We must acknowledge the ‘certainty of uncertainty’, writes Mikki Korodimou Practising education that ‘meets the needs of our times’ (the founding principle of the Atlantic College project in 1962 (Jonietz and Harris, 2012)) requires an in-depth personal, communal and global exploration to understand what exactly these needs are. Answering this pertinent problem means taking a step back. It demands a critical reflection of where we are at in terms of our educational practices and the world we call home. It asks of us to think about how we have arrived here and perhaps most importantly to reflect upon where we wish to go. Coming into teaching for the first time in January 2018 at UWC Atlantic College was invigorating. It was challenging and it was adrenaline-filled. Learning early on that saying ‘I don’t know’ was OK, I started to feel like the possibilities for exploration in the classroom were infinite. Despite the evident engagement and curiosity ignited in the students, however, when we delved into the unknown the stress of moving away from the security of the syllabus, textbook and marking criteria quickly became apparent. The word Winter
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| 2019
‘assessment’, the dreaded 45 points maximum of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, and the question ‘is this going to be in the exam?’ crept in. Boundaries of time and space for experiential, personal and contextuallybased learning materialised. The focus of education, it seems, is increasingly on the end goal, rather than on the means used to get there. We are turning what should be a learning journey (synonym for life) into a process of accumulation. Whether it be IB points, experiences, or CAS (Creativity, Activity, Service) hours in the IB Diploma, we are collecting, without necessarily engaging with value in the process or the interconnected nature of all that we do. The success of the IB over the past 50+ years has been phenomenal; there are numerous benefits of the education provided by the IB Diploma Programme, and countless examples of how the programme can be moulded, tailored and contextualised by passionate and engaged educators. Yet there are also downsides which must not remain in the shadows of our contentedness. In his recent book, David
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