Jory Macomber

Dear Faculty,

This is my last post on my travels this year.  I have ended up my observations this year with a visit to a large (1000 students) K-12 school in Amman, Jordan.  Travelling the cradle of civilization brought up the debate between global curriculums and local curriculums that is being debated back in New Hampshire.  Interestingly, as I was in Jordan the debate of global versus local was occurring in the Middle East and in New Hampshire.

The Amman Baccalaureate School was founded by a member of the Jordanian royal family to provide an international education for Jordanian students.  The school provides a wonderful, rigorous education; and sends many students to top colleges around the world.  When I got to meet with the Board, they told me the story of when the school wanted to implement the IB curriculum.  Jordan’s Ministry of Education had to approve the program, and reportedly there was a lot of resistance to the change.  Some people in the ministry favored a more traditional, more Jordanian, more religious education.   “Of course,” I thought, the IB is a secular education and a western-style education focused on global (not Jordanian) citizenship.

On one hand, I could see the concerns of the Ministry.  The program is primarily English-based and most graduates go to colleges in the United States and Great Britain.  In addition, a program on a specific religion does not fit into the IB credits.  Ultimately, the program was approved and ABS is justifiably proud of opening that educational door in Jordan as other schools in Jordan also use the IB program.

The debate of how to weave an international education within the context of Jordanian culture and community is still an unresolved topic at ABS.  Here are some examples of where that issue surfaces:

Through seventh grade, approximately sixty percent of the schoolwork is done in Arabic in the courses of social studies, math, religion, Arabic language, drama and PE.  English language, science, art and ICT are the backbone of the English program.  Creating a bilingual program within the IB curriculum has been a challenge.  For instance, Anna’s school in Geneva (Mosaic) chose not to use the IB program because they felt it would not allow them to be a truly bilingual school.  ABS brought in an outside consultant to help design the program and now they feel they have more of a dual language program rather than a bilingual program.

In the high school years, English is the main language of instruction.  I asked some teachers what is the stronger language for most students by graduation.  They responded that in terms for reading and writing, English was the stronger language.   Families understand this reality when they sign up for the school, but some parents and grandparents bemoan that Arabic is not the primary language.

The Ministry of Education also requires that the school use its approved syllabi in religion, history and literature classes.  These syllabi do not always match the IB requirements so some of this work has to be done in addition to the IB work.

The curriculum design highlights the tension between an international curriculum and a national curriculum.  Some other examples of the dialogue between Jordanian traditions and international traditions appear in subjects as broad as school uniforms (pants and button down shirts for boys and girls) and as specific as what’s appropriate for a student fashion show in the auditorium.

ABS has done an admirable job of designing its program, but one if the first steps in their strategic plan is to “clearly define internationalism and bilingualism within the ABS context.”  During my visit I participated in robust discussions on this topic.  Over the past five years, ABS has done an impressive job of drafting their guiding statements, so I am confident that this will turn out well.

The curriculum debate at ABS mirrors questions at many schools of how to weave an international education with local culture.  Just as I was visiting Jordan, the New Hampshire state legislature was debating legislation that would ban the use of the IB in New Hampshire schools for fear of handing over school curriculum to a foreign group.  As I head back to Holderness, we will face this question as well.  Thank you so much for reading.

Dear Faculty,

Three more days!  I hope your last stretch of Special Programs goes well.  Last week I spent two days at the United World College in Maastricht, Netherlands.  The UWC felt like the Rhodes Scholarship of secondary education.

That’s a big statement; what do I mean by that?  The United World Colleges (13 of them) are spread throughout the world and are a two year (11^th and 12^th grade years) programs for aspiring college students.  David Amadu is a UWC-Singapore graduate.  The students are chosen in a competition by national committees.  The national committees also help fund the students so it is a fully-funded, need-blind program.   Most UWC graduates then qualify for financial aid in US and other universities.  The academic curriculum is the IB Diploma.  144 different countries participate in the UWC.

As I had dinner one night with several students and heard their stories, I learned about the competitiveness of the programs.  Two girls from Tanzania and Montenegro made it sound as if they had emerged as one of the top students in their country, thus “the Rhodes Scholarship of Secondary Education.” (my words)  The students do not get to choose their school, just the UWC program, so they apply knowing that they could be sent anywhere in the world for two years.

The students are the magic of the program.  They are bright, sociable and want to make a difference.  One girl from Germany left my table early at dinner.  I asked her where she was going, and she said she had a “board meeting.”  It turns out she is on the board of a non-profit, second-hand book store in Maastricht.  She had spent some time in the store, made friends with the director, and then had been asked to serve on the board.  I asked her what her role was on the board.  “Promotion,” she said. “The store wants to get kids in to read their books, and I help with that.”

Student driven service such as this example is a required part of their program.  Another group of kids worked at a local non-profit restaurant.  They serve inexpensive meals to “lonely” people, mostly elderly.  The kids had gone from serving meals and doing dishes, to organizing a program every other Friday night.  They would do some type of presentation on their home culture for the customers.  That evening, a girl from Kenya was teaching dance steps to some other girls (not from Africa).  The next Friday night’s presentation was going to be Kenyan dance.  I smiled at the image of girls from Africa, Latin America and Asia performing a Kenyan dance for the elderly of Holland.

During my visit, students from the UWC of the Adriatic were visiting on a cultural tour.  Their school is in a small village, so they were excited to see the big cities of Maastricht and Amsterdam after a ten-hour train ride.  When they heard I was from the USA, they asked me how to order correctly at Starbucks.  The kids are also a rough and tumble group.  Since they come from all economic strata, they do not have the polish of wealth.  It’s very refreshing.

UWC-Maastricht also hosts students from around the world for a Theory of Knowledge conference.  (Theory of Knowledge is a required IB course.)  This year’s theme is “Crossing Borders”, and some students were working on how artists from different parts of the world viewed borders.  One class was looking at Frost’s Mending Walls when I was there.  The comparative fine arts projects were wonderful.   Only students present at the conference that is two days long.

The boarding challenge for UWC-Maastricht is unique.  50 UWC students enter the school in the 11^th grade year and join a group of 25 day students from the Maastricht area.  Some of those students have been in that school since kindergarten, so the mixing presents some integration challenges.  The two programs that have worked involve orientation and the boarding house.  All 75 students are in the IB program, and so the local students participate in the three-day orientation at the beginning of the year.  Then, the boarding students host study groups, meals and parties at the boarding house.  Going back to last week’s theme of location, having two different groups of kids share one location for an activity helps improve their sense of community.  The Residential Director says they work hard to treat the students as one group.  “Once faculty make a distinction between day and boarding, the students will,” he said.

During my meeting with the Head of School, I learned a lot about the UWC system and the challenges of starting a new UWC school connected to an existing K-12 school.  We also talked about the goals of the school’s global curriculum, and his answer made me think of the bookstore, the restaurant, the kids travelling from the Adriatic, the ToK conference and of the boarding house.  He said, “All the important lessons occur outside the classroom.”

Dear Faculty,

For those of you who can read this post, I hope Special Programs has started off well.  From Philadelphia, to the forge, to the Pemi Wilderness to all the places that the Seniors are headed, Special Programs creates new locations for everybody at the school.  I bring that up because my visit to the Leysin American School (LAS) in Switzerland last week, as well as my visit to the UWC-Maastricht this week brought up issues around location.  This blog travels from mountain classrooms to the educations of John McCain and Barak Obama.

LAS is a boarding school of about 300 kids set up in the Swiss Alps, about a 90 minute drive from Geneva.  When I asked both adults and students, “why did you decide to come to LAS?”, many pointed to the window and said “just look outside.”  The scenery and mountain opportunities are stunning.  A picture of the view from a class in the library is below.

These comments reminded me that for boarding schools, just like colleges, location is a big factor in who decides to attend that school.  A school can’t change its location but it can use it.  Just as Holderness has many programs connected to the New Hampshire mountains and forests, LAS has a “mountain challenge” in its orientation, an afternoon ski program in the winter, and longer expeditions into the Alps.  Being on a train line and in Switzerland, LAS also takes advantage of its location in the center of Europe.  As part of their international curriculum, students and faculty take travel weekends and cultural trips every term to many parts of Europe.  Below is a fuzzy picture of where kids were headed for their next cultural trips.  The destinations included Florence, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Sorrento, Berlin, Munich, Barcelona, Venice, Georgia, Prague and Croatia.

Location is a factor on the LAS campus as well.  The school has recently purchased and renovated a beautiful 19^th century hotel and turned it into their center for the IB Diploma program.   The Head talked to me about how the IB program and a beautiful facility were academic distinguishers for ASL.  The US diploma students work out of another building, Savoy, and so the new IB location creates some challenges too as housing the two different diploma programs in two different buildings can create a sense of two separate campuses.  Here are the school photos of the buildings:

LAS has students from over 50 nations and does not have one group larger than about 20% of the school.  Below is a picture of the names and nationalities of last year’s graduating class.

Like many international schools, the Head talked about how having such a spread of students eliminates the insider/outsider dynamic at the School.  Everyone arrives as an outsider and works to create a new community.  I watched the Student Council work on organizing the school’s international fair: a group of students from all over the world had divided up tasks from activities, to scheduling, to promotion, to finances; and they were visibly excited about the event that would share all of their cultures.  Below is a picture of the Student Council.  The kids with their hands raised are the executive committee.

As with the trips and the fair, much of their global education occurs outside the classroom.  Correspondingly, the residential dean makes sure that all students room with a person with a different mother tongue.  LAS also has a week-long orientation program that includes the parents.  Like Brillantmont, LAS uses a digital tool called PowerSchool that puts up daily assignments and grades for all students, teachers and parents to access in real time.  Connecting to the parents is an on-going process.

On the IT front, the students and faculty all use MacBooks and Google Docs, so the many digital assignments and projects can easily talk to each other.  With these new tools, the Dean of Faculty talked about the concept of global citizenship as another strand of international education.  Using digital tools can create international citizens.  For instance, many of the Arab Spring protests were powered by global digital citizens.  In contrast, one of the weaknesses of the Occupy Wall Street movement was its inability to leverage digital citizens.  The school hopes to educate kids in that type of citizenship.

As part of faculty training, all the adults had read Third Culture Kids by David Pollock and Ruth Van Reken.  Third Culture kids are students that have a passport from one country but live in another country.  For example, Anna Mac is a third culture kid this year.  The book discusses the issues and strengths of such students and helps teachers better work with them.  An interesting example of the global skills of third culture kids came out in the book’s introduction: both John McCain and Barak Obama are third culture kids.  McCain was born in Panama and lived overseas until he turned 15 years old.  Obama was born in the USA but spent a considerable part of his childhood in Indonesia.  Those experiences probably helped them rise to the top of the US presidential ladder where international (and digital) skills are especially important.

Enjoy your new locations during Special Programs.  A new spot creates unease, but in the long run creates important new perspectives and skills.

Jory

Dear Faculty,

It was great to see everyone during Parents Weekend.  I enjoyed being on the other side of the conference lines.  You all look great.  After returning to Europe, we went to Paris for three days, and I spent time at the Sorbonne and at the American School of Paris, two leaders in international education.

On a walk around the student section of Paris, I went into the reception area of the Sorbonne (Universite Paris-Sorbonne), and the lobby had a piece on its history.  According to the exhibit, a medieval school of theology had been operating in Paris for awhile when in 1254 Robert de Sorbon, a chaplain, said he wanted to create a college not only for teaching theology but also for the hosting and nurturing of poor teachers and students.  [“l’hebergement et l’entretien des pauvres maitres et escholiers”—you may want to check my translation with Janice or Lew.)

The back story here is that the students up to that point had to find their own housing and there had been a street protest about the cost and quality of housing in the neighborhood.  (I guess the practice of young people throwing rocks in the streets of Paris goes back aways!)  Only the very wealthy could get adequate housing.  When the college started offering hebergement to the students, they organized them into four “nations.”  Nation had a somewhat different meaning back then, but essentially they housed students according to their cultural, linguistic and political background.  Here’s a map of the four nations:

So instead of mixing the different cultures, they housed the students with familiar faces. They also provided house masters, food and rules of behavior, or entretien.  At that time, the students usually started at around age 14, so as I read the history, I thought: “This is one of the first boarding schools!”

The Sorbonne was one of the few medieval universities in Europe.  Over the centuries, its practice of safely housing its students helped attract some of the best young minds from around Europe.  I wondered if its boarding program was one of the reasons that by early modern times, the European center for philosophy, scientific advancements and art had moved from the Italian peninsula to Paris.  One could argue that the Sorbonne was the first place to realize that an affordable, respectable boarding program would help them attract talented students from all over Europe (which was like from all over the world to them.)  Of course, supporting that claim would require more research.  However, I found no evidence of a 13^th century job program or parent teacher speed conferences in their history.

From the Sorbonne, I travelled out to the American School of Paris (ASP) which is actually in Saint Cloud.   ASP is the first modern international school established in Europe, founded in 1946 to educate the children of diplomatic and corporate families moving into the rubble of post war Europe.   In 1967, ASP moved to its current campus.  The area had been occupied by NATO, but when NATO moved to Brussels, ASP moved in.  Up until this year, the French government had owned the land, but in 2009 the French government asked ASP to buy the land outright or move to another spot by the end of 2012.

ASP offers both the IB Diploma Programme and AP tests, and we discussed how they thought that the IB assessments were more thorough.  When I asked why they kept the AP, they responded that many American families ask for the AP over the IB.  In terms of their global education program, ASP is working on how to best prepare engaged global citizens.  They feel that engagement cannot occur in a traditional classroom, and they are pushing for more off-campus immersion experiences.  Like most schools, however, the regular school year feels “too busy” to schedule those encounters, so they are trying to create more options and funding for vacation and summer trips.  The difficulty of pulling students out of the traditional classroom is a common theme this year.

ASP also extends into the local community with an Extension program for French school children on Wednesday, Saturdays and vacations.  The programs focus on English language acquisition and American culture.  The themes I saw focused on Native Americans and Jazz music.  It is open to lower, middle and upper school students and works at distinct levels of ability.  Over 2,000 French students participate in the program.   A main building on campus is dedicated to the Extension school.  The program reminded me of the large demand for learning English language and culture among international families.

Finally, I also wandered into a Mathematics and Art exhibit near the Sorbonne.  Below (and also attached) is one of the displays.  In Paris, they find love in math:

The next post will feature a guest writer.  Martha travelled to Jordan last week and visited King’s Academy.  Stay tuned.

Dear Faculty,

I write as you are in the midst of officiating the Barton Olympics, so it feels like an appropriate time to write about international sports.  Let’s start with the notion that sports do not save the world, nor necessarily do sports improve the world.  But sports are a useful metaphor or symbol, and sports are entertaining.  I have had a chance to follow some international sports recently and to witness some enduring lessons.

Soccer, as we all know, is big in Europe and around the world.  I caught the passion for the sport during my first accreditation visit when team members from England, Wales, the Netherlands, Zurich, Germany and Spain could all identify their favorite clubs and stop everything to watch their clubs play.  As I worked to understand the soccer system over here: Italian League, Swiss League, Premier League, Champions League, et cetera, I realized that international sports are a microcosm of the international businesses and transnational citizens that influence international schools.

Professional soccer is a total free market for players.  These leagues do not have drafts, minor league rights, or long term contracts.  Players change teams all the time as they negotiate for better contracts.  The best teams have to constantly compete to attract the best players.  The fans stay extremely loyal to their club, but the players move around to follow the best deal.

For example, Rivaldo is a star player.  He has won the FIFA player of the year award (1999), three league titles on three different continents, a Champions League with Milan (2002), and a World Cup with Brazil (2003).  Recently, he has shocked the soccer world with two contracts.  Two years ago, he agreed to play for a club in Uzbekistan for $14 million.  Now he has signed with a club in Angola for less money than he could earn elsewhere because he wanted to build a Church in a Portugese speaking country.  He learned the game and won glory in Brazil; he played for the best club in the world in Italy; he earned his biggest paycheck in Uzbekistan; and as he says now “my life is about more than soccer in Angola.”  Rivaldo could symbolize the goals of many international schools: a graduate who finds success in their discipline around the globe and who gives back to the world.

On to ski racing: last weekend I watched two World Cup ski races with a college friend who participated in two Winter Olympics, scored on the World Cup for several years, and won nine US national titles.  We were watching the young Americans (like Julia) trying to break through on the World Cup.  He remembered that when he first came to Europe “it was like a slap in the face” because the Europeans were so much more aggressive than American skiers.  Eventually, he said, the experience pushed him to go “beyond what I thought I could do.”  Now he is a leader at Global Rescue, a company that provides world-wide medical emergency services.  His athletic experience is an example of the value of an international immersion for students.  Think of how many people refer to the slap in the face of an overseas trip that opened their eyes to do something new.

Back to soccer: just this morning I read in the NY Times about a soccer club in Kiryat Shmona, Israel.   The club is from a city of 23,000 people that sits near the border of Lebanon, and the team is close to winning a national title and joining the Champions League.  That would be like St. Anselm’s of Manchester, NH qualifying for the NCAA Division I basketball tournament!  How did they do it?  Two of the reasons: they invested in an academy to nurture young players, and the team has a diverse roster that includes six Arabs.  Two international education metaphors here: nurture young players, and encourage diversity to attract the best players–even when that means including six Arabs on an Israeli team.

And not incidentally, all of the people in these stories began from humble situations.  I hope the Barton Olympics were as fruitful.

Jory

Dear Faculty,

I hope your winter has started off well.  I see you have received some snow and cold weather.  It’s been a month since I last wrote as I have been travelling to the US and not visiting schools.  In the two weeks back in Europe, I have read quite a bit and visited World Cup ski races.

Among the articles I read, a piece by Harriet Marshall of the University of Bath clarified some trends that I had been seeing.  In her article Education for Global Citizenship in Richard Bates’ Schooling Internationally: Globalisation, Internationalisation and the Future for International Schools, Marshall explores the different agendas of organizations calling for a global education.  She encourages schools to identify their global education goals as those goals will direct the curriculum.  On a personal level, I hear these question a lot: “why is Holderness taking on more international students?” and “does it want a more international program?”

The article points out some different agendas for global education:

• Cosmopolitan values.  The increase in the power of IT and easier travel create transnational companies and jobs, as well as connecting people and cultures across the globe.
• Political systems.  Organizations such as the UN, the World Health Organization and the World Trade Organization take a global look at political systems.
• Social Justice.  Organizations such as OXFAM look at human rights and reducing poverty on a global scale.
• Environmental sustainability.  Organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) have global education programs as well.

Undoubtedly, these agendas overlap, but they also can compete with each other.

After I read Ms. Marshall’s article, I went back and looked at some of the global programs that I have studied.  There are some clear distinctions.

The IB program (IBO.org) was founded by both transnational companies and by international diplomats.  Its mission aims to develop “knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world.” The UN influence is evident in that sentence.  The IB also wants “to develop challenging programs of international education and rigorous assessment.”  Here the IB fits into the goals of transnationals companies.  And as I have travelled, I have heard much more of the second goal from IB school people.  Schools and parents talk more about the credibility of the academic program and how it opens access to leading universities.  These groups see the IB as a door to the high level international social/economic world.

OXFAM is more blunt.  Their program for global citizenship includes many of the characteristics of most programs, but they want to develop a global citizen who “is outraged by social injustice.”  OXFAM schools are reformers.

The WWF takes an environmental slant when it describes a One Planet School as “a place committed to reducing its impact on the planet here and now; a place which prepares young people to act as drivers for sustainability in the future; a place with a vision of how people and nature can live in harmony, on a thriving, green planet.” (wwf.org)

The Asia Society, based in New York, has a created a Partnership for Global Learning (www.asiasociety.org).  It has a three pronged agenda:  preparing youth for “the future workforce”, preparing youth “to work successfully in a world of increasing social, ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious diversity,” and preparing youth “for a world of climate and environmental instability.”  Like the IBO, social justice is included but is not as prominent in their writings.

Coincidentally, EdWeek emailed an issue today on global education.  Here’s an excerpt: “Much of the debate centers on whether the U.S. education system has slipped from a position of dominance, or is holding steady, in areas deemed crucial to economic security, particularly the STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—and so-called 21st-century learning and communications skills.”  The view here is more about how to keep the US strong in comparison to other countries, especially from an economic perspective.

At Holderness our strategic planning documents refer, at times, to all of these values; although cosmopolitan values and environmental sustainability appear the most often.  (The strategic plan refers to developing “responsible global citizens”)   I think we have taken in international students for economic reasons and because, they push our program.  International students certainly push our art, math and science programs; and they have also strengthened our soccer, hockey and basketball teams to name a few.  I would also say that the financial aid we have granted to international students has opened important doors and is a small but significant step to reduce poverty and improve individual rights.

Going forward, one of Professor Marshall’s main points is that schools should identify their agenda in creating a global education program.  A school does not need to cover all facets of a global education, but it should decide upon its focus.

Again, I am interested in any questions or thoughts.  Email me or post at jorymacomber.com.  Next week, I think I will venture into writing about international sports.

Dear Faculty,

As you prepare for exams and the conclusion of the first semester, I have just returned from a visit to the US and the TABS conference in Boston.  That visit and a book I have started pushed me to think about boarding school demographics, the economics of private schools and ultimately how governments are getting out of the education business.  (It’s not that dramatic, but I needed a hook.)

Some demographic numbers that I heard at the conference made an impression in my mind.  There are approximately 40,000 boarding students in the United States.  About 20% of those students are from foreign countries, predominately from Korea and China.   Of the 32,000 US boarding students, 25% or so receive financial aid.  That leaves 24,000 US students who pay the full price of a boarding school education.  My first impression was: “That’s a small group of customers.”

Geographically, almost all of those 24,000 students come from the Boston to Washington DC corridor.  Very few students from population center such as southern California, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, Denver, Houston, etc attend boarding schools.  It is easier to convince a person from Seoul to attend Holderness than it is to convince a person from Chicago to attend Holderness. In addition, population and economic growth in the US is occurring more along the sun belt than along the east coast.

On the flip side, private day-school enrollments are thriving in the United States and growing rapidly internationally.  To cite Richard Bates in Schooling Internationally, there were over 5,000 international schools in 2007 and that number is growing.  For example, on my accreditation visit to Yokohama,  I worked with three Heads of School that were running schools in Asia that are less than ten years old with over 500 students enrolled.  To add some dollar figures to these numbers, I have heard that Korean citizens spend $5 billion/year on US tuitions, and “2007-2008 USA overseas revenue from international education was  $15.54 billion. (Bates, 2011)  Private education is a significant global business.

To continue on the economic vein, Bates also recognized the growth of trans-national corporations (TNCs=companies with operations in more than one country).  It is estimated that there are 64,000 TNCs world-wide.  And here’s a staggering realization to me: of the 100 largest economic institutions in the world, 51 are TNCs and 49 are national or state governments. (Bates, 2011)

In the twentieth century, governments were the primary drivers of the growth and evolution of education.  The emergence of TNCs, however, is changing that dynamic.  These large companies have a vested interest in good schools, both to attract employees to their locations and to train future workers.  Thomas Jefferson, Horace Mann and John Dewey (among others) wrote about the importance of education and democracy.  The current TNCs care about the importance of education and democracy and a market economy.  I saw this influence in person in Geneva, Zurich and Frankfurt where corporate groups have actively worked to increase the number private, international schools in the area.  One school estimated that 60% of its tuitions were paid by TNCs as part of employee compensation.

How does that affect the evolution of education practice?  Some of the most influential curriculum shapers in the world these days are private businesses and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).  We hear a lot of talk about NCLB, etc, but what shapes our schools?  Independent organizations such as the College Board, the IBO and PISA play an influential role.

At Holderness, I argue that the most influential outside force on our curriculum is the College Board.  All of our students take the SATs and most take the APs.  We want our kids to succeed on those exams, and the exams do influence how we teach.  The College Board is a private, for-profit company that has gained the trust of US colleges and universities.  US colleges and universities, in return, have some influence with the College Board, but state and federal government groups have much less influence with the College Board.

On an international scale, the IB and the PISA wield similar influence on teaching, curriculum and assessment.

The IBO is an international NGO whose initial purpose was to serve students of the internationally mobile workforce.  It does not serve any government.   The IB has evolved and now half the IB World Schools are public schools receiving government funding and direction.  In the US, many public school systems have taken on the IB as a means for school improvement.  In response, I heard one European international school Head complain about the direction of the IB curriculum; he said it was bending too much to the state government demands in the USA.  Local, national and international governance is an issue in schools as well.

PISA is an international assessment program created by the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development.  [The OECD was created in 1961 (the USA was a founding member) as an offspring of the Marshall Plan to promote the benefits of western democracy, a market economy and international cooperation.  There are about 40 member countries.] PISA aims to “survey a student’s skills and knowledge as they approach the end of compulsory education.” (www.oecd.org. 6 January 2011)  The largest international assessment tool works independently of any governments and derives from an organization driven by a framework of western democracy, market economy, and international cooperation.  Lucky for me!  I prefer western democracy, market economies and international cooperation.

Looking at these large numbers and trends, the question for Holderness is “so what?”  How does a small school of 275 students in Plymouth, NH (population 8,000) effectively fit into this USA and international picture?

Holderness has always operated outside of significant government influence; but more of our students are from outside the USA, and more of our graduates will work for international institutions .

I will write more on these questions later, but I would love to hear your thoughts.  Use email or go to jorymacomber.com