In an essay on world schools in 2012, published in the 10^th Anniversary edition of the Journal of Research in International Education (JRIE), I wrote this:

Put simply, a world school that is comfortable in its local identity but also cosmopolitan needs to look in two different directions at the same time. This is not easy: we humans have not wired ourselves for this. Put simply again, and no doubt crudely, international schools tend to see mainly, sometimes only, the global. National schools, on the other hand, often look myopically, at times exclusively, at their national heritage and traditions. Deracinated globalism versus petty patriotism. World schools look inward and outward at the same time. Imagine how different the recent history of the world might have been, and the foreign policies of great powers especially, if more and more students had been and were schooled in the national and the international, the local and the global, at the same time and in balanced measure.

Looking back over the past 13 years since then, how I wish that the last sentence of the paragraph above (expressed many times and far better by others) had been acted on more. It remains worrying to me, and unnecessarily limiting, that too many International Schools drape themselves with the multi-colored flags of the world without waving the flag of their host countries prominently enough. And too many, almost all, national schools, are clothed in the one-hued patriotic weave of their own country. The impact of both types of school might be substantially different if each thought more carefully about the clothing in which they wrap their curricula. And that would impact positively the fashioning of our world.

In 2013, shortly after writing the essay just referenced, I moved to Beijing to help start a new school, Keystone Academy. The founding team set out quite deliberately to grow this notion of a World School into a detailed concept, and then a living practice. We called it the Chinese Thread, an essential part of the clothing of the school’s holistic curriculum.  We expressed it like this, in summary:

In the third paragraph of the Keystone Academy Mission, the three keystones of the School are summarized. This is the third of those keystones: promoting Chinese culture and identity in a world context.

These nine words define the Chinese Thread at Keystone, and the Chinese Thread is a defining feature of our School.

More explicitly, the Chinese Thread at Keystone focuses on Chinese culture, identity, language, history, and many other aspects of being Chinese, but always immersed within the broader surroundings of our world, forging connections between China and its global context.

It is this focus that makes us a world school. We are of course a Chinese school, but we are not a national school only. We have international programs and we encourage global outlooks. Yet we are not an International School, because we are deeply rooted in our country, culture, and context. As a world school we strive for a balance between the majestic national heritage of China and the rich cultural diversity around our world – a world that benefits from the global exchange of people, ideas, and things.

Our Chinese Thread does not involve only a few: it involves everyone – students and their families, teachers, and all the others who work here within our community. It is not a matter of national origin or citizenship, or access to knowledge: rather, it is an attitude of heart and mind. This attitude is one that recognizes the educational value of orienting our curriculum around what is local, while at the same time embedding this perspective in a more global approach and context.

The name, the Chinese Thread, functions metaphorically. At Keystone, we think of learning as a cloth of many colors, woven together. It is the Chinese Thread that is the major strand in this weave, the strand that holds it together and gives it strength and vitality.

I continue to hope that more and more schools will respond to current global fractures and fault lines by clothing their curricula in both local and global colors.  This will entail accepting and exploring a rootedness in context and culture, but with a strengthening of this through an outward, uplifting, and global gaze. As examples, schools in Ecuador (of all types) might weave an Ecuadorean Thread through their learning, in Poland a Polish Thread, and so on.

This is one of the compelling challenges of our times for all schools, wherever they are.