George Walker, former International Baccalaureate director general, gives a personal view of how IB can bring an international outlook to education.

I much prefer the term ‘global-mindedness’ to ‘international-mindedness’. The concept of an international world belongs to the 20th century when events took place in distant, exotic countries whose schools – to use Alec Peterson’s phrase – were across frontiers. In the 21st century, those frontiers have been largely removed by electronic communication and ease of travel.

Today, the global world starts on our doorstep, where the cost of buying a house is affected by the cost of labour in China, manufacturing in India, modifies the weather in Florida and mass migration alters our national identity. This is the world of globalization – the unprecedented global movement of capital, goods, services, people, ideas and carbon dioxide. It is a world that has very little connection with the events of the Second World War and the subsequent cold war that launched the International Baccalaureate.

So the next challenge for the IB is to ensure its programmes help students become globally minded. Three consequences of globalization will challenge schools in the 21st century and I believe the IB is responding to each of them.
George Walker, former International Baccalaureate director general, gives a personal view of how IB can bring an international outlook to education.


The first is diversity. The chances of working with, living with or networking with someone, of a different culture are now very high thanks to rapidly growing migration. Every aspect of the IB – its programmes, assessment, governance and administration – help its students draw on different experiences from around the globe.

The second challenge is complexity. More information, new forms on information, different cultural perspectives and a greater sense of individual empowerment are all conspiring to make issues more complicated. All three IB programmes encourage students to acquire critical thinking skills: they recognize that future global citizens will need to live with more ambiguity and be less inclined to seek quick solutions.

The third challenge is inequality. Globalization produces winners and losers and the winners can no longer ignore the plight of the losers if the world is to live in peace. The three IB programmes share a common set of values described in the IB Learner Profile.

These encourage students to combine (in Thomas Friedman’s words) a “business school brain with a social worker’s heart”. A strong set of ethical values will be the IB’s most precious gift to the 21st-century global citizen, who must “understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right”.

From: IB World Magazine 2008