International Diversity and the Education of Missionary Kids

Dorothy Haile is the international personnel director for SIM (Serving In Mission). She is originally from London, England, and has been in personnel administration since 1986. She taught at a secondary school in Zambia for 15 years.

Philosophical Aspects

Our Korea office has grown from 46 adult missionaries and 26 children 5 years ago to 75 missionaries and more than 60 children today.

In May of 2004, SIM (Serving In Mission) held an Education Consultation for people involved with the education of missionary children. It has taken place several times in the past at three yearly intervals, and I had to justify the time and expense involved in once again bringing 35 people together from around the world. Was this merely to take place again because the pattern has been established? Or would it contribute to significant changes in the way in which we as a mission agency provide educational facilities for our families’ children, and even be a contribution to the wider world of education for missionary children? SIM’s leaders did agree to having the Consultation, recognizing both the importance of education for the children of our members and the changes in the world of mission. These changes relate not only to the increasingly international composition of the world’s mission force but also to the greater variety in the educational options used by missionary families. The significance and rate of the changes meant that the need for having face-to-face discussion, sharing resources and experience, and planning the future was well accepted. The issues themselves provided some of the major topics for our programme during the Consultation.

It is clear that the international composition of our missionary families has changed significantly in the last 10 years. For example, our Korea office has grown from 46 adult missionaries and 26 children 5 years ago to 75 missionaries and more than 60 children today. We now have families from Guatemala, Hong Kong, Paraguay, and Zimbabwe, to give only a few examples, as well as from more traditional sending countries. It is still true that in the schools we manage or share in managing, families from our U.S. office are usually the largest single group, but they are no longer the majority in most cases. In these schools, too, we generally have children from the national community as well as expatriate families from the business or diplomatic communities. Because we are a mission agency, we see the children of our members as our greatest responsibility; and as the composition of our membership changes, we are reevaluating the way our overall purpose in MK education is expressed so that it communicates what is appropriate for today. At the Education Consultation we reviewed our philosophy of MK education and specifically how it relates to the core values of our mission. In the course of this analysis, we had to look at some issues carefully. We ended up with the following statements:

In support of our purpose to glorify God, SIM is committed to identify and facilitate quality care and education options for our missionary children. SIM recognises the special calling of missionary educators and care personnel whose roles are vital to the mission’s mandate to make disciples of all nations. As people of prayer, we call upon the Holy Spirit to empower our ministries. Our educational philosophy reflects a biblical and multinational perspective, which seeks to develop potential for godly living to facilitate our children’s transition into the educational institutions of their country of citizenship and to fulfill God’s calling in their life.

“Internationalness” is a core value of SIM and so needs to be expressed throughout our mission, including in MK education. However, as we discussed the statement above, it became evident that we almost needed to phrase it in our explanations as a double negative: we do not want to make it impossible for children to return to the educational institutions of their country of citizenship. In other words, we are not requiring them to “go home” for tertiary, or postsecondary, education, but we do not want to make that option impossible. We are aware that when children have spent a number of years in a school where the language and education system originate in another country, their transition to a passport country is difficult, and our responsibility is not to make the transition any more difficult than it will inevitably be.

Application of This Philosophy to Our Schools

We recognize the challenge of enabling children from multiple educational backgrounds to move on to tertiary education in their country of citizenship

We see multiple ways that a school can celebrate the international diversity represented in its student body and its teaching staff. These ways include deliberately recruiting a multinational teaching staff and welcoming the variety in teacher styles and expectations that this recruitment will entail. Another way involves sensitive planning for appropriate content in materials and topics. This content should be relevant to the composition of a class (for example, history, geography, and literature that relates to the children in the class). Schools can also celebrate significant national and cultural events for all nationalities represented (for example, national holidays, customs, and sports).

Last but certainly not least, we recognize the challenge of enabling children from multiple educational backgrounds to move on to tertiary education in their country of citizenship. We also recognize that teachers and parents as well as the students themselves need to understand the issues involved in this transition. Therefore, at the Consultation, we talked at length about the advantages and disadvantages of using an “American” system (American general high school diploma) compared with using a system such as the IGCSE (International General Certificate of Secondary Education) that may well, we believe, make it possible for students from a greater range of nationalities to qualify for educational institutions in their own country while not disadvantaging students coming from and returning to the U.S. system. We also recognised that adding AP courses to either a general diploma or to the IGCSE significantly increases the options for most students. We discussed both the advantages and the disadvantages of the “largely American” system and the “largely non-American” systems, noting that many of these advantages and disadvantages are perceptions rather than realities.

We were very aware that there is no one universally correct answer to these complex and emotive issues and that in today’s world it is generally speaking easier than it was in the past to transfer the documentation from one system to another. After discussion lasting altogether about two days, we came up with the following statements:

All children will be moving to an unfamiliar school situation. We wish to affirm that the pathways that facilitate the transition to “the educational institutions of their country of citizenship” could be successful completion of the following:

• American general diploma programme (probably only for the United States and Canada)
• American general diploma programme plus advanced placement courses
• IGCSE followed by advanced placement courses
• IGCSE followed by CIE (Cambridge International Examinations) advanced levels
• International baccalaureate or other European university entrance programmes
• Recognized and documented homeschooling programmes

In all situations, it is recommended that all students in U.S. or equivalent grades 11 and/or 12 take the U.S. College Board Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT I). The ACT (American College Test) is recommended by some colleges and universities within the United States.

We identified some practical issues as we compared different systems. The following are advantages of the U.S. diploma with AP courses:

• The majority of teachers are already familiar with the system.
• The AP international diploma can be acquired outside the United States.
• AP training is available.
• It meets the needs of the biggest single group of students.
• It preserves the status quo, and people don’t like change.
• American parents’ perception is that it allows more free time because academic requirements are not as demanding.

The following are disadvantages of the U.S. system, even with AP courses:

• It does not meet the needs of all MKs.
• There are typically more non-Americans than Americans coming to the schools.
• The AP diploma requires calculus (this requirement may be changing), which is not easy for some students however academically able they may be in other subjects.
• AP does not provide the depth required in the United Kingdom for some subjects.
• Without the AP diploma, United Kingdom students have to do an additional year of school.

Note: when APs aren’t offered, there are options like Northstar, but they are costly and require strict monitoring.

The following are reasons for choosing the IGCSE (from Cambridge or London University exam boards):

• It matches the stated MK education philosophy of SIM International and has wide acceptance internationally.
• It provides a written, proved curriculum framework.
• It emphasises writing skills and application of principles rather than repetition of facts.
• It tests analytical skills.
• It has verifiable testing criteria. There are two levels: extended and general.
• It has a global perspective and expands students’ worldview.
• Its content does not differ substantially from that of the U.S. education system and in fact enhances it.
• Students can use U.S. textbooks.
• It is accepted internationally, so no country is at a disadvantage.
• Cambridge and London exam boards offer distance learning packages to train teachers (London, at least, will send examiners overseas to schools for training).

The following are the difficulties resulting from choosing the IGCSE:

• It requires a different approach to literature and more analytical questions.
• It requires integration of multidisciplines of mathematics.
• It requires remembering things that have been learned over more than the one year, for examination purposes.
• Parental perceptions are difficult to change.
• It has different grading scales from those in the United States, creating difficulty for teachers as well as students and parents.
• Getting resources may be a problem.
• There is some difficulty in transcribing to tertiary institutions.

Through our lengthy discussions, we came to the conclusion that there are additional and highly complex issues relating to students who come from non-English speaking backgrounds. These issues partly relate to the challenge of learning to write at the college level in more than one language. With particular reference to Korean children, we recommended the following:

• Recruiting Korean teachers, especially those familiar with other cultures, and also men rather than women since women are not acceptable “translators” for men; recruiting those fluent in English and in Korean, who could be considered cultural brokers and not necessarily teachers
• Having transition seminars on the field for MKs who are returning to Korea

I know that many articles have been written on this important subject recently. Our Consultation concentrated on identifying practical issues that schools and mission agency staff could use in communicating with their missionary families. We know that a school must build and maintain the confidence of its constituency if in the long run it is to succeed in its efforts to provide quality education for its students.

International Diversity and the Education of Missionary Kids 8.2