ABSTRACT
There is, I believe, a misconception that international education was created for the internationally mobile student, the so-called 'global nomad'. To explain why I do not believe this to be true I need to go back briefly to 1924, to the origins of international education and thus, indirectly, to the origins of the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO) (Knight, 1999). In 1924 the International School of Geneva was founded for the children of the new breed of international civil servant working at the League of Nations and at the International Labour Office. This was not a vote of no confidence in the local school system; on the contrary, a Swiss group of educators was closely involved in the project and the school's first working language was French. Rather it was a combination of pragmatism (these children would return one day to their own countries) and vision (an education based on the values of the League itself). Even today, 'Ecolint' , as it is known around the world, has a charter which commits it to preparing young people for re-entry into their own, as well as entry into different, cultures.
