I think I will be disagreeing with you Steven, but I'm not sure, only because you are talking about international high school, and that does not necessarily have to be the IB program. (If you mean the IB program, then I am definitely disagreeing you.)
I have taught in the IB middle and high school program for years and love it. Especially for the best and the brightest! However, since you're question is about the elementary program, I will stick to that for the moment. The PYP program (primary years program) goes from years 1-5, it is very thematically organized with units of inquiry which allow students to investigate a topic from lots of different perspectives, rather than one subject at a time.
The program culminates with a grade 5 class project which takes the whole year to develop, it is then presented to the school community. It is a wonderful experience for the students to see what other students are interested in and problems that they can solve. As well as see what they are capable of producing.
There is an international component to it, and a community service portion as well. Done correctly, it gives elementary students a great foundation for the future. Unlike the high school program (called the diploma program), which is very content driven, there is a lot of flexibility in the pyp and the myp (middle years program) in terms of content covered.
Back to Steven's comments about IB not being for math and science students, I would definitely disagree with him. I am an IB Physics and Math teacher and it gives the students a great opportunity to delve quite deeply into these topics, even allowing them to take 2 sciences concurrently if they want to. The higher levels of these subjects not only cover first year college, but also allow students to gain college credit for their work, if that is what is important to you.
The group 4 project, a requirement of all students in the IB program, is a fantastic opportunuty for the students to carryout a cross subject scientific investigation from start to finish with little to no interference/help from the teacher. Through this project students see what it is really like to pick a research problem and try to find a useful answer to it.
If you have not had experience in the IB program yourself, I do not feel that you have the expertise to make such scathing comments about it. However, I will agree that the way it is done in many US schools is not how it should be done. But that gets into a whole other discussion.
So, I like all of the IB programs and think that done correctly, they give students an excellent education.
Last edited by Kerry; 06/14/10 03:34 PM.
