Catalyzing World Class Education
For me, the idea of being a Third Culture Kid (TCK), is something that’s always been inherently tied to education. I first heard the term during my undergraduate degree, in an Anthropology class looking at migration. It was something that struck an immediate resonance for me, and continues to reverberate even now, almost a decade later. It’s something I’ve been reflecting on a lot lately.
I think my relationship between being a TCK and the way I think about learning and education was established long before that moment of recognition. It had a lot to do with my father and his attitude to learning. He himself would fall into the category of TCK, as he was the son of a diplomat. As a child, he and his siblings moved around Europe. Hearing stories of his childhood is always a romantic affair, of afternoons spent reading at Parisian café’s, and cavorting with kids who would grow up to be novelists, and actors, lawyers and politicians. He talks about sneaking onto trains and escaping boarding school in Geneva, and learning to drive in an old mustang on the back roads of the French countryside.
When he finally returned to America, it was to briefly touch base with his family in Virginia, before fleeing to the west coast, and art school in San Francisco.
As a result, travel was always a big part of our lifestyle growing up, and in turn, our education. There was an emphasis placed on travel being just as important as school and traditional learning. We moved a lot, and I tasted the full spectrum of the Australian educational system, with a sampling of the very different learning style offered by the US, all sprinkled with the learning that came from trips across Europe, America, and Asia. When we finally settled in Canberra, it was because it was somewhere Dad had chosen for the educational opportunities, all the way through to University. He encouraged me to enroll in the International Baccalaureate program, which focused on a ‘holistic education’ across all of the disciplines. It was that decision that got me all the way through year 12 math, along with Theory of Knowledge (Philosophy), World Literature, and rudimentary Spanish. All these years later (most of them spent in study of one kind or another), I’m happy I was pushed to embrace that kind of breadth.
But what does any of this have to do with the relationship between being a TCK and education? And why does it matter now?
In my mind, one of the first and foremost traits of the TCK is the adaptability of thought.
There’s a desire to absorb new experiences, to connect with others, and to understand big ideas. There’s a need to engage in all of these areas, to have discussions with people who might be considered the ‘other’ (another Anthropological idea), to appreciate shifting perspectives and reconcile identities. It’s a skill that TCKs gain through experience, but more than anything, it shows an extreme level of critical thinking; an ability to engage with ideas, dissect information and form opinions. Speaking to a friend recently – a Ph.D. researcher who focuses on consciousness – we discussed the need for critical thinking skills, and how perhaps this is something that needs to be focused on even earlier at school. It is these skills that allow us to dissect misinformation and ‘fake news’, the skills that allow us to navigate the crises of our age, such as a global pandemic, a climate on the brink, and a global political environment that is potentially more divided than ever.
A new education bill has just passed in Australia, driven by the federal government and education minister Dan Tehan. The proposed changes were contentious, it’s pitched as a bill that will make university education more accessible and cut fees for courses that focus on ‘employability’, that will produce students who are ‘job-ready’ upon graduation. The flip side of this coin is that from 2021, we will see an exponential increase in fees for courses in the arts and humanities, degrees that allow students to focus on areas like literature, history, and philosophy, and that foster the development of critical thinking skills. It’s also a degree that is held by the majority of the ministers who voted on this bill, including Dan Tehan.
The bill reflects a shift in the way the state and business are thinking about education: as a training program for employment. It doesn’t encourage critical thinking, but ‘up-skilling’. It’s a more mechanised model wherein critical thinking, reflection and creativity are not a priority, but rather, the functionality of the individual and their ability to perform in a job. I find this frightening because it is the exact opposite of encouraging the skills we need to advance societies at both the national and international level.
It encourages cultures to become more insular, with a more stratified hierarchy, where only the wealthy can gain access to those critical thinking skills that are needed to engage on that deeper level, and ultimately, to govern.
I see the relationship between being a TCK, and education as key to this. I feel like my experiences when I was younger primed my mind for that more flexible kind of education. It wasn’t until I was exposed to those ways of thinking in University that I felt like I’d finally found my place and that I understood the value of the experiences I’d had up until that moment. It was this combination of experience and education that allowed me some small amount of self-awareness, of understanding my place in the world, and just what kind of world I wanted to be a part of.
Now, more than ever, we need to be thinking about ways to nurture critical thinking, of how we can help develop global citizens, who can engage with ideas and issues, and can make decisions and enact positive change. I believe that TCKs have a part to play in all of this, as advocates for freedom, mobility and an understanding of ‘the other’. Third Culture Kids are, in many ways, the original cosmopolitans. By connecting with each other and telling our stories we can be a part of this conversation, perhaps one of the most important conversations that is happening. Such conversations are a World Class education in their own right.
- Edited by Ava Senaratne