Globally Elite

The very idea of researching globally elite schools forces me to reflect on my own educational experience. I have attended public school for the entirety of my career as a student. The individuals who walked across the graduation stage beside me were the same four-year-old’s in my preschool class. I am eternally grateful for my public-school education, as I feel I developed a unique sense of community with my school system and town– something I may not have received at a private or boarding school. When researching themes of privilege and elitism, I aim to compare my results with that of my own public-school experience, drawing parallels and indicating differences.

My small suburban hometown, Holliston, is roughly 94% middle-class white people. The students, teachers, faculty, administrators, and coaches at my high school all represented this homogeneity. Upon entering the Colby environment, my eyes were opened to a new concept of elitism and privilege. Much of the Colby population comes from elite schooling experiences. Through meeting so many incredibly gifted students at Colby, I have become more aware of the upper hand we all attain simply by attending this institution. Yet, like in any highly-competitive environment, the hierarchy of social class, race and ethnicity is ever-apparent on Colby’s campus. Had I attended a public state school, I would not have been exposed to the degree of privilege and homogeneity present at Colby.

This brings me back to the questions; Do “elite” schools shape their students to become elite individuals? Or are inherently “elite” individuals the target population for small private institutions like Colby? Considering the lack of diversity I experienced throughout my own public-school education, do universities have more power over depicting a culturally, economically, socially, and politically diverse environment? Is this power truly utilized? A never-ending thread of questions drives my passion for our upcoming research project.

Privilege is rooted in every social institution, whether privately or publicly funded. Beginning my research for the elite Australian school, Everdeen, I immediately noticed striking differences between Everdeen and my former high school. The student interviews depict an intensely competitive academic and athletic environment. Everdeen’s student demographics also stood out to me. Students at Everdeen belong to over 60 nationalities, and many are children of Everdeen alumni. The diverse, service-driven student population at Everdeen appears to be tremendously different from the environment at my high school.

I feel a subtle sense of discomfort when researching such a prestigious international school. I try to remind myself of my privilege, having received a rewarding public-school education that shaped who I am today. However, the disparities between Everdeen and my public high school prove just how different educational institutions may be. Academic and athletic funding, quality of teachers, availability of resources, and attention to extracurricular programs all demonstrate how dissimilar the education of any two students may be. Moving forward, I wish to learn just how these privileges available at Everdeen have positively (and negatively) influenced the academic and athletic success, mental health, and social awareness of students. I wonder how certain programs available at Everdeen could be implemented into publicly-funded schools. Global citizenship is a reappearing concept within the Everdeen environment. Does this concept only have a place in elite international schools like Everdeen? Can smaller private and public schools promote a similar concept? Upon answering these pressing questions, I hope to compare the environment at Everdeen to that of Colby and other private institutions in the United States.

The opportunity to delve into the elite educational systems of other countries is exciting to me. I aim to learn about how culture, socioeconomic background, gender, race, ethnicity, and other factors contribute to the formation of character amongst young students. I plan to analyze how privilege, in addition to these factors, plays a part in an elite educational environment. Additionally, I will compare themes of privilege in globally elite schooling systems to that of which I noticed throughout my public-school education.

The beginning of our project was to choose one among the six listed countries that we were interested in. I didn’t find myself immediately dive into one but feeling uncertain between two choices.

https://gph.is/2BGlCbT

As someone who has experienced attending an international high school, I found the schools in Kaohsiung and Copenhagen very relatable to my own experience. In the recent decade, studying abroad has been a rising trend for high school students in China. I have witnessed several private schools that offer courses like AP, A-level and IB founded over the past ten years in my hometown, Suzhou. Students enter these schools aiming for a smoother transition to their undergraduate study abroad and hope to be immersed in an English-speaking environment. This is a road paved to higher institutions in the western world just like how TES functions. Therefore, a research in TES could help me take a peek at what the dynamics are in schools that act as the tube for transferring students from East Asian countries to the western world.

Although I took a similar path, I was lucky enough to be admitted by United World College and started my abroad experience at a younger age. Living on a campus that only has 20 percent of Canadians but 80 percent of students from elsewhere in the world differs from students’ experience in KAS. It is more similar compared to KIS which is also a more diverse international school focused on studying IB. Moreover, my study abroad experience in Denmark provides me background knowledge that Denmark is actually not very welcoming for immigrants and anyone who is not ethnically Danish. It would be really interested to explore the relationship between CIS, a much-isolated international community, and the bigger environment of Copenhagen or Denmark.

After a bit of struggle and hesitation, I decided to join the KIS group. It turned out to be quite interesting when we started to read the data. Due to their frequent immigrations, a lot of students in KIS don’t feel connected to Danish culture or society. They are often viewed as exotic, outsiders and can be recognized if speaking Danish with an accent. However, students in KIS have a strong sense of community and belonging within KIS. Therefore, Abbey, Katie and I decided to focus on this aspect: what has facilitated the sense of belonging in the community? We are aware of how Danish immigration policies could be one of the reasons why outsiders feel more connected to each other as the minority group. We are also intrigued by the fact that the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme could have included global citizenship and mutual respect to foster the sense of belonging on the KIS campus.

Although we are excited to dig into the question and conduct research project, we do feel a bit overwhelmed and confused because of the coding process. None of us has actually conducted one such in the past so we hope it would work out and be in line with our proposed timeline of work. I have already been to Denmark but one of my group members is going to Copenhagen for her study abroad experience next semester. Maybe this project could be a spoiler for her next semester in Denmark.

When we decided that language was going to be our focal point of the research, I immediately drew connections to my own experiences with language at an elite boarding school in Massachusetts. Students were not only required to study a foreign language, but also encouraged to join language clubs and jump at opportunities for global adventure when they arose. During my junior year of high school, an opportunity arose and I jumped faster than you can say opportunity. I went with two Spanish teachers and fourteen peers to a small, impoverished town in the Dominican Republic. We spent a week working with a nonprofit organization that brought us to a local school where we taught students the English language. The philosophy behind this organization is to enable these students to “live a life of choice.” That is to say, by learning English, a world of possibilities awaits outside of their small town. While I enjoyed my time spent there, looking back on it now, there was definitely a “westernized” ideology present; it was as if the only way these children could live successful and fulfilling lives was if they learned English.

Additionally, it is now obvious to me why my school pushed this opportunity on us: an international service trip? What better way to maintain our eliteness! As a seventeen-year-old high school student barely able to hold a conversation in Spanish, it is difficult for me to say that I was qualified for the position. Learning more about eliteness and elite schooling through my classes with Adam has made me hyper-aware of my own privilege, especially in relation to my schooling experience. As a white student from an elite prep school in the United States, my expertise certainly did not lie in the realm of international education for disadvantaged children. The presence of globalization, even in an impoverished town on the small island of the Dominican Republic is evident; the emphasis of multilingualism is becoming an increasing global force.

I fostered a love for the Spanish language during high school that I brought with me to Colby, but unfortunately I lost it. For the first two years of my Colby career I was a Spanish major, thrilled at the idea of studying the language in a foreign country. However, the department requires Spanish majors to spend a minimum of a semester abroad, strongly encouraging an entire year. This policy threw a wrench in my plans – as a captain of the women’s ice hockey team (a winter sport overlapping both semesters) I could not imagine missing out on one of my four precious seasons here, even if it was for an amazing educational opportunity. After all, hockey was a deciding factor for me in choosing to attend Colby and is a significant part of my identity, and I was not ready to give that up and let my team down. I hoped that I would be given the chance to study abroad during the summertime to work around my conflicting commitments and interests, but based on the few conversations I had, it seemed like a compromise was not a possibility, and even if it was, I lacked the drive needed to fight for this opportunity. I ended up dropping my Spanish major and I have yet to take a Spanish class since. I am thrilled to return to studying language by examining the theories behind the emphasis placed on learning language, especially as we work on a global scale.

Although I fell off the path to bilingualism in my own schooling experience, I hope that this research project will reinvent my understanding of the importance of language in schooling. Our group is focusing on the influence of language at our school in Taiwan (TES), specifically English as the language of instruction, as well as foreign language curriculum and the role of Chinese inside and outside of the classroom. As an elite international school, some aspects of globalization are immediately evident, such as language diversity and the emphasis placed on multilingualism. One of my group members, Xavier, visited Taiwan this summer and worked specifically with foreign language curriculum in Spanish classes.  I am interested to learn more about how language affects the schooling experience of these students, especially how the ideologies supporting multilingualism have manifested in the institutional structure.

Over three years of taking social justice classes at Colby, psychology seminars, and doing civic engagement, I believe I’ve come to the beginning of my senior year with more questions than I began with. While this realization is at times overwhelming, it also seems to suggest a more optimistic path for the future, both for what it means to be a young educator in a politically chaotic atmosphere, as well as for ways to understand how today’s climate may dictate shifting needs within the classroom, with “classroom” taking on broader definition.

It is a strange juxtaposition to be diving into critical discussions on social mobility (or lack thereof) and perpetual elitism when I am taking part in an enterprise (a small, private liberal arts school) that seems to be doing just that. In beginning our research on a private, international school, I keep coming back to the same question — how are we to criticize these systems as people who are simultaneously benefitting from them? So true and interesting!

I think this is where allowing for liberal definitions of “social justice” or “classroom” can be most beneficial to the greater community. For example, while Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines social justice as “a state or doctrine of egalitarianism” aimed towards “the removal of inequalities among people,” it seems critical that, as social justice advocates and activists, we also consider the context of the society we are discussing (ranges of class, race, sexual orientation, etc…) (Dolan-Reilly, 2013). Perhaps to clarify, I mean that, coming from a background of a private liberal arts education, the acknowledgement that we will not be able to understand, say, the experience of someone who attends a large public university. However, in defining and then enacting social justice principles and policies, specifically in the field of education, it is necessary for us to accept this inability to understand what it is like to be in another’s footsteps, and instead do all we can to collect information and hear experiences that give us the widest perception of another’s perspective.

In the context of this year, and more specifically, this research project, taking these goals of listening and empathy, may allow for more effective and creative ideas to emerge regarding new meanings of the classroom, and what education looks like. Thinking of the “classroom” as a backyard, a playroom, or a dinner table, and reevaluating our ideas of what it means and who gets to be an “educator,” keeping in mind ideas of privilege, accessibility, and elitism, could provide important insight as we continue our research through an international lens.

The main focus of my group’s research project revolves around the different language policies of the Takau English School, in Taiwan. Many elite international schools see globalization as an important issue in today’s world; therefore, our research will look into how various language policies affect students on their paths to becoming global citizens.

The study of foreign language holds a pretty important place in my heart. As a high schooler, I used to think studying French was trivial. I believed it was merely a fun class to go to each day, where I could practice a new accent. However, Colby shipped me off to Dijon, France my first semester Freshman year, and that experience allowed me to discover the true benefits of studying language. It is important to note that I was not a happy camper when I received my acceptance letter from Colby and read “Congratulations! You’ve been accepted into our Global Entry Semester program in France…etc.” My dream had been to go to Colby… not France. I was unable to see at the time how influential starting college in a foreign country would be.

Whenever I describe my experience abroad, I always use the phrase “fast-tracking maturity,” because it’s the best way to describe how that semester impacted me as a student, and as a global citizen. The Fall of 2016 was a heated time politically as well, which impacted my understanding of what it even meant to be a global citizen. Elections in both the United States and France were simultaneously occurring, and the antics of the U.S. election had a major impact on France. It was intriguing listening to my French host family talk about how they felt and listen to how concerned they were. This is the moment I began to realize how connected our world is.

So while looking through the data of the TES school, I began to find a similar sentiment being shared. At TES, they practice many different languages, and one student mentioned that students may face language barriers while trying to connect with other students. By studying foreign languages together, it allows the school to become closer, “like a family.” Another student mentioned that they planned to go to Germany after high school to study language, which I thought was reassuring in terms of how beneficial the students saw the study of languages and culture. A third student even described language as being a “tool, or an instrument,” which I thought seemed like an accurate description.

In conclusion, when you study foreign language you’re not simply memorizing words and letters. Rather, you’re learning about a new culture and new customs or ideas. This certainly depends on how willing the teacher is to discuss more cultural aspects of the language; however, I think it’s pretty common. It certainly helps when you’re studying the language in its actual country of origin, although there are ways to create a global experience wherever you are in the world.