ABSTRACT
The rise and spread of international schools in business and economic centres world-wide has recently attracted the interest of educational researchers. These researchers have questioned the relationship between the traditional model of a liberal, broad-based western education found in many such overseas schools and the concurrent development of progressive and world-minded attitudes in students. Over the past 20 years, especially since the fall of the eastern bloc powers and the rise of the Pacific Rim economies, increasing numbers of international schools of many types, sizes and outlooks have emerged to serve expanding multilateral business, professional and diplomatic constituencies. Since the 1960s, when international schools were first established in significant numbers (Leach, 1969), the total membership of the United Nations has risen from 75 in 1969 to its present level of 185 nations. In the same time frame the number of non-governmental organizations has risen from a modest few hundred in the 1960s to a present estimate of about 30,000 (Commission on Global Governance, 1995).
