For those of us working in international schools, we are all too aware of the challenge of teaching about national identity given our international student body. Whose history should be taught and why? It’s not logistically possible to teach every child about the history of every country represented unless it’s through student-led projects which are presented to the classes, which in and of itself is not a bad exercise at all but is clearly not as in depth an experience as a whole course in one country’s history that the whole class follows.

The concept of global citizenship, so central to many school missions, including that of the International School of Geneva, remains an abstract principle since one does not pay taxes, do military service or swear allegiance to a global passport. Everyone belongs to at least one nation state and has to abide by the rules of at least one nation state, whether it be their own or the one they are living in.

In her thesis on national identity and the moral responsibilities that come with it, the great German American  philosopher Hannah Arendt complained about the notion of global citizenship very much in this vein, as does the contemporary thinker  Nick Tate, whose masterful  Conservative Case for Education: Against the Current argues against what he considers to be a type of elitist, rootless cosmopolitan global citizenship which has the privilege to ride above the requisites that most of the world’s population have to cope with, locked in the pressures and sometimes dictatorial exigencies of a single nation state.

This is where the importance of respecting, understanding and teaching about the host country becomes essential: children growing up in an international school might not learn about their own history (although hopefully at some point they will at least get to research their national origins – frequently multiple national origins at that), but they should at least  be inducted into some recognition and understanding of their host country.

For years, too many international schools have existed as Anglo-American ghettos conveniently disconnected from the host country’s language, culture, history and traditions. I believe, however, that fewer and fewer are in this position and are emphasising a genuine, non-tokenistic appreciation and learning of the host culture.

I used to teach at the Mahindra United World College of India and there was an obligatory course, which I believe still exists, called “This is India” through which students would learn some basic Hindi, Indian history and culture. Impressively, that course was designed and run by students. At my own Alma Mater, Waterford Kamhlaba, we all had to learn some Siswati and would sing Eswatini’s national anthem every week at assembly. Both of these schools were international schools with an extremely varied student population, but both managed to ensure a strong learning of the host country.

At the International School of Geneva, we have introduced a Global Citizenship course which runs across four different year levels. One of the strands is dedicated to Swiss history, political systems, geography and culture. The learning materials for this course come from the Swiss government and the learning happens in one of Switzerland’s national languages: French.

Pedagogical actions like these ensure not only that there is some awareness of the host country and some effort made to study its history, but in doing so, the value of researching and becoming familiar with the  culture where you are living is modelled for students. It’s all too easy to drift into the third culture kid, no person’s land: a type of vague globalised  Americana with some smattering of knowledge of broad global history, generic everywhere but nowhere knowledge of World Wars and the Cold War, a macrocosmic understanding of the past as if from a mountain top looking across multiple fields. However, by zooming in on one and going deep into the details, we become more instructed in those specificities and resonances that give history, culture and politics life, colour, vibrancy and pertinence. All the better if it is the host country that is looked at this way, developing not just global citizenship but glocal citizenship.

How well does your school teach the culture and history of its host culture and what role do you play in that transmission?