The colonialisation of education first crossed my mind when teaching a Year 8 class in Bangkok about Victorian England in preparation for Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

The Horrible Histories excerpt that depicted an advert for a Victorian maid in the style of a well-known (in the UK, at least) cleaning product was lost on my 15 Thai pupils, as were jokes about Victorian Wife Swap and Made in Victorian Hertfordshire.

It happened again in a Year 7 lesson. We were writing children’s books for key stage 1 and I asked them to tell me their favourite childhood book; they said the generic fairytales interspersed with cartoons such as Tom and Jerry.

So I suggested literary vintages such as Meg and Mog, Funny Bones, et al - and they looked at me like I was the odd one out. We went over to the library to collect and read them.

Over their heads

While there, I wandered around the EYFS section and came across Toddle Waddle by Julia Donaldson. It’s a “follow the leader”-style book using onomatopoeic and rhyming words -hence the name.

The pictures are all based around a seaside resort and pier. The characters reflect the diverse ethnic backgrounds of modern Britain, but this doesn’t translate to an international student’s understanding of a quirky seaside town in Britain complete with foibles and an innate character.

Many of them will never have visited Southend or Bournemouth beaches, after all.

Another occasion saw my eldest son bring home Barry the Fish with Fingers by Sue Hendra.

It’s a picture book about a fish with fingers, whose artwork resembles the great British dish of fish fingers. He was four at the time and had never had a fish finger; I had to explain the concept to him in detail.

But Thai children don’t eat fish fingers for tea, do they? Even on my own son, the cultural significance was lost and there is no cultural equivalent or way of explaining it. Barry the Fish with Thai Fishballs…It doesn’t quite work somehow.

A lack of connections

Yet the international school library is full of British writers viewing the world with a British lens that some international children simply cannot relate to.

I often wonder about the morality of a British education for international school pupils. Where is their cultural relevance? Their literary legacies? The moments where they connect a memory to a place or taste and belly-laugh with contentment that only resonance can bring?

Fast-forward to Bahrain.

Once again immersed in the English curriculum, teaching a diverse range of students, the hegemony of the GCSEs means that the students must learn British history: the relevance of the Anglo-Saxons is what exactly to a child from a small island in the Persian Gulf?

Lower down the school, students learn about British money and count coins alien to them. It builds the foundations for the curriculum further up, but at what cost?

Let’s promote local culture

It’s a cultural capital that lacks exchange. Yes, the IGCSEs are international, but only in name. They still demand that dusty, old, white, British-centric history is memorised and ingested to be recalled in a sweltering exam hall once per year.

Bahrain has a rich history of art and culture; there are poets and artists whose writing in the mother tongue is much admired. But to find that beauty, you have to go beyond the school gate and search for it for yourself.

There are citizenship lessons in Bahrain - but for Bahraini students only; the Arabic departments will focus on the arts and cultural aspects with a special day held yearly.

While it is lovely to hear a traditional band play or have a camel pass by your classroom, it’s as tokenistic as Black History Month outside of which other scientists, artists or writers exist.

How can we address this? 

As head of English in Thailand, my department used Book Week to look at South East Asian writers and poets. Each class studied a country (Japan, South Korea, etc) and then presented their literary findings to the school.

Sadly, though, it was still only one week in a curriculum that leaves little room to explore diversity at the best of times. And where do you find time in a packed timetable?

A solution may be found in that many international schools offer after-school, extracurricular activities in which culture and heritage can be explored. Here in the Middle East, it could be a chance to offer Arabic calligraphy, poetry from Rumi or artwork from ancient Persia.

More deeply, though, culture needs to be woven into the curriculum, balancing both the host country and the examination’s motherland.

Exam boards could offer a fuller range of reading matter, diversifying their exams in the regions they occupy.

This matters deeply. International schools have a unique obligation to be representative of their host nation, their students and the examination pathways, so we must give this the attention it deserves.

After all, do international educators really want to be seen as the new imperialists imposing a Britain-centric view of the world on children while ignoring their own culture around them?

Or do they want to offer a teaching experience that reflects the local culture in which they are honoured to teach?

Julia Knight has been teaching overseas in Thailand and Bahrain since 2012