My blog from Houston, Texas. Updated most weeks, usually on Sundays.
A few weeks ago, I found myself in an animated conversation, during which a surprising assertion was put to me. The proposition put to me was this: “if it were not for the French Section, Awty would not be an international school”.
I hope the comment was merely meant to be provocative, because the absurd implication was that Awty is just a two-nationality school – French and American.
It is important that we never take this diversity for granted.
We were privileged to welcome Houston-based consuls, vice-consuls, cultural attachés and ambassadors from some 16 countries – Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, Croatia, Egypt, France, Israel, Mexico, Netherlands, Peru, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, and Turkey. Each year, we choose to honor one country in particular, and this year’s choice was Brazil. It was thus a real pleasure to hear a short goodwill speech from Brazil’s Deputy Consul, Mr Roberto Furian Ardenghy, and to enjoy some highly memorable Brazilian singing and dancing.
Wonderful as it was, however, no celebration of multiple nationalities could ever of itself rise to the next level of celebrating internationalism unless a special effort was made to do so – which is precisely what the organizers of our International Festival did.
As I explained to the students during the opening ceremony at the beginning of the International Festival, this theme was inspired by three facets of thinking:
1.Human rights are not well known (for example, see http://www.youthforhumanrights.org and http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml). Not many people know that there are 30 Universal Human Rights, and even fewer are able to name many (or any!) of them.
2.The right to education is one universal human right that students at Awty ought to appreciate, but there is a danger that they might take this right for granted because they have always had access to schooling. Not everyone in the world has access to education, and we wanted our students to know that Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights says that “Everyone has the right to education…”.
3.The example of Malala illustrates vividly the importance of Article 26. Malala Yousafzai is a 15 year old girl who lived in a region of Pakistan where some members of the community believed that only boys should go to school. Malala defied the ban on girls in school, and as a consequence, she was shot in the head at close range last October. She survived her wounds and has committed herself to the cause of making education in schools accessible to all children of the world, girls and boys alike. Malala has been nominated for the Nobel Peace prize this year.
Internationalism is something much deeper than gathering a number of different nationalities together. To reiterate the thoughts I expressed in my blog of 27th January 2013, internationalism is an belief that individuals can improve the state of the world through understanding global realities, and the accompanying acceptance of the responsibility to take action to do so.
The International Festival ended on Friday afternoon with an international talent show and fashion parade. It was a fun-filled finish to two great days of celebrating internationalism at its best. Rather than trying to describe it, let me leave you with a few more concluding photographs…
Our intercultural polynational multicultural international festival
Sunday, 14 April 2013