Attending school is almost always a child’s first opportunity to engage at length with the world and with other people outside their immediate household. Additionally, children and young people spend most of their time at school throughout their formative years. Thus, it’s frequently the site of key experiences and interactions that will go on to shape these children’s values, skills, and personalities as they grow up.
The important role education plays in a child’s life and growth means that choosing a school for their children is sure to be a daunting experience for any parent. This process is likely to be especially intimidating to expatriate parents, who may find their options in their host country limited to international schools by virtue of language barriers or legal restrictions. Luckily, the best international schools offer their students rich learning experiences, combining enjoyable and diverse activities with consistent academic rigor.
If you and your family have plans of relocating to Singapore, consider a school with a progressive, globally focused American curriculum Singapore expatriate families trust. Such an institution is guaranteed to teach its students a wealth of significant lessons that will serve them well throughout their lives. Among these most important life lessons students can learn from international education are the following:
Respect for Cultural Diversity
A multicultural learning experience is one of the biggest and most obvious benefits of sending your child to an international school. They’ll have the opportunity to socialize, study, and work with teachers and peers from a vast variety of cultural backgrounds. Such an environment discourages the development of harmful discriminatory and prejudicial attitudes. Instead, your child will rapidly learn how to navigate cultural differences with respect and compassion and how to engage people from all walks of life.
An international school will also give your child copious opportunities to remain connected with their home country’s culture while simultaneously immersing themselves in their host country’s traditions and ways of life. This will ideally lead them to develop a strong and well-rounded sense of identity that has been fundamentally shaped by life in multiple places.
Concern for Global Issues
International schools, by design, train their students to think of themselves as citizens of the world at large and to engage actively with issues of global importance. They’re frequently encouraged to study current events and to contemplate the most pressing problems facing the world today, such as environmental and climate crises. They also have plenty of opportunities to discuss these problems with their peers and to brainstorm concrete ways to help others in their communities and beyond.
In general, an international learning environment will exhort students to dedicate their time and talents to endeavors that don’t simply serve their personal interests but benefit members of a larger community. Many international students, for instance, actively embrace volunteerism and altruistic endeavors as a means of serving the greater good. A good few even go on to pursue humanitarian work professionally after graduating.
Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving
Because their student and teacher populations are inherently diverse, international schools tend to favor a flexible approach to learning over the highly standardized approach typically favored by traditional educational institutions. International schools, for instance, tend to offer customizable curricula and a wide selection of courses for students to choose from. In the classroom, teachers are trained to readily adjust or alter their lesson plans to suit individual students’ differing needs and learning styles.
This agile, multifaceted educational environment will expose students to a variety of learning experiences and approaches that mimic the vital complexity of life in the real world. Students at international schools will find that more is required of them than simply absorbing information for the purposes of passing exams. They’ll be expected to ask thoughtful questions and form considered opinions about the material they study. They’ll also have many chances to engage with complex problems and work together to develop creative, innovative solutions.
Healthy Risk-Taking
Many students at international schools eventually go on to pursue employment opportunities or further studies outside their home countries. With this in mind, international schools make an active effort to challenge their students by presenting them with unfamiliar and difficult situations, tasks, or learning content. Students at international schools are trained to be comfortable with uncertainty and to readily embrace opportunities to leave their comfort zones. They also quickly learn not to feel failure and to handle difficult experiences with confidence and grace.
Passion for Learning
Educators in international schools strive to inculcate a love for learning and discovery in their students. In many cases, this passion persists long after students graduate and grow up into adults, following them into their professional lives and beyond. A love of learning supports the development of high-level investigative skills and research practices that will serve students well in any field they choose to enter. It also enables them to feel comfortable with both collaborative and independent work.
The supportive, all-inclusive learning environment at an international school is designed expressly to help shape your child into a competent, compassionate, globally minded adult. Whatever your child’s particular interests and aspirations might be, the lessons they learn during their school years will surely set them up for success.