Is there an independent school that exposes children to non-European cultures and religions?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe St. Patricks. There are kids in my DC's classes that are from Eastern European, Middle Eastern and Asian countries. I also know that there is exposure to the Muslim, Jewish,etc faiths in the religion curriculum.

!!! That's hysterical.

[Anonymous]

"WIS has a very European feel to it, and obviously the languages focused upon are European."

Given that nearly all of Central and South America speak Spanish, this is kind of silly. WIS has what you're looking for.

[Anonymous]

To the person who posts about WIS being what I look for. It does better because of Spanish. So complicated because it is the colonial language and the indigenous cultures are not in powerful positions. But without getting into the rest of Asia or all of Africa, we know that 2 billion people at a minimum reside in China and India. That is at least 1/3 of the world. So much that these schools are not teaching their students to think about. I think a PP is right that no enough people care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One common misperception that I want to point out. Hinduism is also a monotheistic religion.

Sorry, I was imprecise. I didn't mean to suggest that the 7th grade curriculum did an exhaustive study of monotheistic religions. They chose 3 that related to the empires they study in the first semester. DC was taught that Hinduism is monotheistic, but it was studied the previous year in a different context (ancient India).

[Anonymous]

To 21:41, I am 21:26. You are certainly right, but I feel WIS by far does the best of the schools in this area. It's not as much in what they teach as who is there. It may not offer the opportunity to learn Urdu or Arabic, but you will meet people from Pakistan and from Arabic-speaking nations. It's the real deal when it comes to internationalism. The exposure -- through students and teachers -- helps make up for the shortcomings and complexities you refer to. Also, there are opportunities for Chinese (Mandarin, I think), but I believe the children still have to be in either the Spanish or French stream. Observe a class and you'll see that WIS achieves the most in terms of broad scope.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am learning a lot from some of the PPs. Thank you very much. One common misperception that I want to point out. Hinduism is also a monotheistic religion with "brahman" being the supreme being. Hindus are a diverse bunch, and common practice includes worshipping an array of gods and goddesses that are considered to be manifestations of the supreme being. In some ways their actual status (each has a festival) is similar though not identical to that of the many saints popularly worshipped in some Catholic countries. However, the early British colonizers spread rumors of a polytheistic and "lesser" religion in part because they didn't know better and in part because it justified their takeover of India.

Thank you for a very informative post. Heretofore, I had only thought it [Hindi] was a language and that Buhddism was the religion. 'doh.

[Anonymous]

Forgot to mention that GDS, at the HS level, has a sister school in Beijing and classes visit both ways -- i.e. GDS kids who study Chinese go as a group to the Beijing school (for maybe a week and stay with families of kids from that school during their visit) and the Chinese kids who study English come to GDS for a week or two and stay with GDS families).

At the end of MS, the French students travel to somewhere in the Francophone world (e.g. one year they went to Quebec and did a live French-language radio broadcast as part of the trip, another year to the Caribbean and did a service learning project) and the Spanish students go to some place in Latin America (again, destination changes). I think that they've also been experimenting at the HS level with some peer-to-peer programs involving Skype -- I think one involved a Mexico City HS.

FWIW, I don't think WIS has a monopoly (or even greater representation) on students/families/teachers from South Asia, the Middle East, or Africa. For example, GDS actually taught Arabic at the MS level (although it got replaced by Chinese when demand turned out to be low over time -- Arabic is still at the HS, but being phased out, I suspect). And the World Bank's presence (and tuition policies?) mean that many of the DC schools have families from nations across the globe. (Cf the previous Sidwell claim).

WIS's strong suit is producing/sustaining bilingual (and trilingual) kids, which strikes me as really important and appealing and hard to find elsewhere in metro DC unless you're looking for a foreign public school (e.g. Rochambeau or the German school).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am learning a lot from some of the PPs. Thank you very much. One common misperception that I want to point out. Hinduism is also a monotheistic religion with "brahman" being the supreme being. Hindus are a diverse bunch, and common practice includes worshipping an array of gods and goddesses that are considered to be manifestations of the supreme being. In some ways their actual status (each has a festival) is similar though not identical to that of the many saints popularly worshipped in some Catholic countries. However, the early British colonizers spread rumors of a polytheistic and "lesser" religion in part because they didn't know better and in part because it justified their takeover of India.

Thank you for a very informative post. Heretofore, I had only thought it [Hindi] was a language and that Buhddism was the religion. 'doh.

You are welcome. Thank you for writing because it illustrates my point that well educated Americans - and I am of course assuming you are one - are woefully uninformed about the world. It is the fault of the education system, not yours.

[Anonymous]

Another GDS parent here. I don't know what grades you are looking at, but the 6th grade and 9th grade curriculum for history is totally non-Western, and quite a bit of 7th grade. That in addition to language offerings. 10th is European history, 11th is US history.

[Anonymous]

So at GDS, the rest of the world gets 9th grade, Europe gets 10th, the U.S. gets 11th. Do I have that right? There are non-European civilizations and empires worth studying that could legitimately take up a year or two on their own, and of course, a school has to choose how much to do. But if one treats the world equally then why spend an entire year (11th) on a mere 350 years of U.S. history. That is a blip for the thousands of years of history to choose from. An important blip because we are living in the superpower right now and it happened when some of the ancient civilizations were at the low point. But if the point is to provide perspective to children, what message is it sending to spend all of the 10th and 11th grade on Europe and then U.S.? "We're the biggest fish that has ever swam the seas" or some equivalent.

Having said all that, its noteworthy that so many GDS parents have spoken out in glowing terms of what their school is doing for teaching non-European civilizations and countries. This must mean the school is doing something right in this area.

[Anonymous]

You don't think it's valuable to study the history of your own country in significantly greater depth?

[Anonymous]

Good point, PP. It probably is a good thing to study one's own country in somewhat greater depth. But U.S. history is only a few hundred years. Should not take a lifetime to cover that.

[Anonymous]

You should, of course, be looking at public schools. The notion of a private school is, itself, an elitist Euro-centric, Judeo-Christian convention. I'm surprised with your expressed desire for a global education for you child, that you would even consider an exclusionary, elitist institution like a $30k+ private school!

[Anonymous]

Independent schools still have to be responsive local standards of cultural literacy even as they push the envelope. Why do 8th and 11th graders get US history and 10th graders get European? Because AP exams and college coursework will assume a certain knowledge base. Why does the rest of the world get 6th/7th/9th? Middle school is more flexible because kids in the US aren't generally judged based on content knowledge acquired in MS history courses.

The other thing going on is that what you can teach at what level is a function of what your teachers know (in how much depth) and what materials are available. One of the problems GDS encountered with Arabic was lack of age-appropriate curricular materials for English-speakers learning the language. What teachers know isn't just a hiring decision -- it's also a function of what is taught in college. And a function of the size of the school. A HS of 500 kids might decide to devote one FT faculty member to, say, Chinese history and another to Chinese language/literature/culture. But if it does so, it can't necessarily afford to do the same for India, or even South Asia, or Francophone West Africa, etc.

Look at the number of faculty required at a university that tries to cover the globe. Not realistic at the K-12 level. So you make strategic decisions -- e.g. if you don't want kids growing up thinking the US is and always was the center of the universe, you do a comparative unit on Empires (Roman, Carolingian, Abbasid, Malian) the year before you teach US History.

RE GDS -- I think that the thing they're doing most right is treating curriculum as a work in progress and diversity as a moving frontier. These kinds of issues are central to their understanding of their mission.

Which also means that history isn't the only discipline in which kids learn about other cultures -- language and lit, visual arts, dance, assemblies/guest lectures/holidays, service learning and community service projects, etc. provide other teachable moments and they are recognized as doing so. Every year, for example, the entire MS has a global awareness conference with both student and adult (parents, alumns, friends, teachers, working on various projects) presentations in both small group and plenary sessions.

[Anonymous]

WIS does not sound like OP's cup of tea. It's very Western, privileged ruling class Western at that. Sidwell has a junior year or semester abroad program, it's part of the culture. I'm not sure there is a DC private that's as global as OP would like.