Dr Gary Morrison is the assistant director and head of the international education services at Yew Chung Education Foundation. He helped establish the division when the school introduced courses to prepare students for the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma exams in 2000.
What is the philosophy of Yew Chung Education Foundation?
Yew Chung has a holistic educational philosophy which embraces the full integration of the physical, social, spiritual and academic aspects of a child's learning. The ultimate objective is to produce globally-minded citizens.
How does Yew Chung define international education and why does it put such strong emphasis on it?
Many international schools in Hong Kong largely offer their students foreign curricula for foreign qualifications so they can go back to their home countries for further studies. Yew Chung has pioneered a new paradigm in international education. We have brought local elements into the making of decisions. We define an international education through the content and process of education that lead our students to inner transformation as they move from local-mindedness to global-mindedness. The child is affected by our international school culture created by the teaching and learning environment, the administration, and the curriculum that link to character formation in the shaping of a world citizen.
One of our objectives is complete bilingualism. We focus on English and Chinese because they are the key languages of the 21st century. This combination enables our students to operate globally. Great emphasis is put on global education at Yew Chung because of globalisation. For example, when we talk about water shortages, it is not limited to the US state of California; it is a much bigger issue involving global warming and requires global solutions. We have to think in terms of 'one world, one homeland, one planet'. When we develop the educational system, we think of our students in terms of the world they are going to live in and we have to prepare them for that. So we have developed our curriculum and the process and content of our educational system that guide them from here [local], to there [global], thinking globally about their world.