The International School Dilemma
Shameless crosspost
I was busier than a one legged man in an arse kicking competition last week, so I am just here to tell you that my latest article on The International is out.
It’s about: After a few years of being here, a lot of internationals send their kids to local Danish-medium schools.
Also it just so happens that in some international schools, the majority or a significant minority of students are Danish origin (they are sometimes international-danish kids, like one Danish parent or just got back from international school in Amsterdam etc but are often just Danish kids looking to improve their English skills), I am pretty proud of the graph showcasing the phenomenon but I am a little bummed out that I didn’t catch a typo.
You see, I used to work at a school that when it opened was called Aarhus Academy for Global Education, for long boring reasons. And I worked there when they rebranded to Aarhus International School. And I still didn’t catch that even the most recent data from statbank still has them down as AAGE. Regret the error etc etc1.
And of all the editions to not catch a typo, of course it would be the month that they
PUT THE MAGAZINE IN ACTUAL NEWSPRINT WITH LAST WEEK IN DENMARK
(which is probably bigger news that I got a school name out of date).
I picked up my copy at Aarhus City Welcome on Saturday, and was able to show my kid 1) I wrote this and 2) you took this profile picture of me. A proud moment for both of us.
I showed it to my husband and he went ‘cool. Wait. Did you WRITE ALL THESE WORDS TOO?’
Sorry, this isn’t my personal blog. Anyway. Enjoy the article, I love the graphs and I love how they aren’t blurry (that took work, believe) even if I did get the one school name I ought to have got right, wrong.
If you have a bit more time on your hands, the other articles are really good this month also, and I recommend you dig in and enjoy.
Like really regret the error.
There are a number of important, if not crucial, topics and information that should be taught, particularly in high school.
When I asked a Canadian teachers’ union official whether there was any mandatory child-development science curriculum taught in high-schools, he immediately replied there was not. And when I asked the reason for its absence and whether it may be due to the subject matter being too controversial, he replied with a simple “Yes”.
This strongly suggests there are philosophical thus political obstacles to teaching students even such crucial life skills as healthy parenting through understanding child development. What bewilders me, though, is how teaching such curriculum would be considered more controversial thus a non-starter than teaching sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) curriculum, as is already taught here?
Although society cannot prevent anyone from bearing children, it can educate all young people for the most important job ever, even those intending to remain childless. After all, a mentally as well as physically sound future should be EVERY child’s fundamental right — along with air, water, food and shelter — especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter.
And the wellbeing of ALL children needs to be of great importance to us all, regardless of how well our own children are doing. But I'm not holding my breath, as I've found that most people are pessimistic and/or hostile towards such concepts. For many people, such ideas, if ever implemented, would be too much like communism and therefor somehow the end of the world.