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Summer Session Kansan Friday, July 8.1966
UN school provides children a world view
By Aline Mosby
NEW YORK — (UPI)— There's a school here where the children learn that history books often represent a one-sided opinion. It's a school where pupils of all colors study together, where everyone knows the three R's in at least two languages.
The United Nations school is so successful it is expanding into a new building.
It was called an experiment in education when opened as a nursery school in 1947 with 20 pupils from 15 countries.
Its goal was to operate on the UN principles of internationalism, meaning objectivity in the social sciences such as history, emphasis on languages and teaching children of all nations.
TODAY, WITH 600 students of 69 nationalities, the 12-grade school is a hit, not only with UN families but with U.S. citizens clamoring to get their children on the waiting list. With plenty of pupils assured, $14 million has been donated by various countries and foundations to build larger, ultra-modern quarters for 1500 children on filled-in land near a pier at East 25th Street in Manhattan.
In its new quarters, the UN school may well become the most sought-after private school in New York. Now fees range from $800 to $1250 per child.
"This could be a preview model in international education," is the opinion of Marietta Tree, former member of the U.S. delegation to the UN, who was named to raise funds for the new school.
"As time goes on, education all over the world will be more universal, and more international,
when boundaries are less defined."
THE GENERAL theme of the international school is that it is "an orchestration of national cultures," as Mrs. Tree described it in an interview. Children of every race, religion and ethnic group in the world study together in harmony and yet do not lose their own characteristics.
"An Arab child learns a song in Japanese, a boy from Iceland does a Latin American dance," said Mrs. Tree.
This international theme was most evident when I visited the school's current ramshackle quarters in an 1890 school building on Manhattan's East side. The results of the art class that decorated the corridors included every kind of world art from Chinese brush painting to reproductions of Egyptian tomb drawings to modern colleges.
Another example of internationalism is an attempt at objectivity in social sciences. I stood outside a history class while a British teacher was explaining in an unbiased way about "the Austrian army advancing upon Potsdam. . ."
AN ASSISTANT to the registrar, Victoria Nes, of Baltimore, daughter of a U.S. diplomat, explained that history classes use both English and American textbooks, and outside reading is required of other countries' history books.
The children learn that their history books are biased, she said, and the pupils study how they are slanted. Otherwise how could you teach history to Soviet, French and German children in the same class?
Mrs. Tree predicts that as the world becomes smaller, schools
everywhere will concentrate more on languages, as is done at the UN school.
THE MAJORITY of the children already speak English, so that is the teaching language except for the first two grades. In those classes children are taught in both English and French until the French-speakers learn English.
But French also is a required subject. They also study a third language of their choice.
Currently the proportion of students is almost 50-50 between UN and non-UN American students.
"I've been so struck by the UN school that my own child will attend next year," Mrs. Tree said. "There's a long waiting list of American parents who want their children to have this tremendous cultural advantage."
The school is "denationalized" in other ways. Its only flag is a faded UN flag hanging in the lunchroom near a map of the world with cut-out figures of children of all nations.
NO NATIONAL holidays are celebrated, or the school would have to observe as many as 69.
Some Americanization is noted. The luncheon menu is meat loaf, hot dogs, hamburgers, salads or Chinese food. U.S. school holidays such as Thanksgiving and George Washington's birthday are observed. A bust of Washington sits in one hall but the foreign children, to whom he means very little, occasionally decorate him with hats and signs.
Another American touch was a row of brown-eyed Indian children in the library—all reading Batman comic books. However, they had their choice of a wide
variety of French and U.S. magazines and books, said one teacher, a Lebanese.
The UN school teachers come from many nations. But so many are British that the headmaster is touring Africa and Eastern Europe to recruit some from those areas "to give the school a better balance."
THE IMPACT of the school on New York is evident even outside on the sidewalk. As I left, two elderly gentlemen stopped to stare at some Oriental students visible through a window.
"Why, I went to this school 60 years ago," one senior citizen said to the other. "Now look—filled with foreigners from the UN."
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