by
Don Morton
An
international school brings the worlds of business,
politics and education together in an incalculably
valuable common enterprise. Since its founding
in 1964 the International School of Amsterdam
has inspired a spirit of cooperation and good
citizenship amongst the public leaders of these
three great constituencies in the historic,
evolving community of the Dutch Randstad.
A great family of public-spirited citizens have joined hands
to assure the success of international education at ISA.
Civic responsibility involves the exercise of good citizenship
through public service. One may pause today in justifiable
awe to consider and celebrate the often self-sacrificial
contributions that members of the Dutch and international
communities have made since the beginning, and are making
today, to the development of ISA. The results are enjoyed
directly by the school's present families and their children,
of course, but the school provides a service to the larger
community too and may serve, ideally, as a humane model for
the world.
The
lasting fruits of civic-mindedness presently
visible at ISA are the more striking and praiseworthy
because so many of the individuals who contributed
labor and expertise through the years knew
they would soon move on. They knew that the
benefits of their hard-won current initiatives
would be enjoyed by families to come. Still,
they served. And at ISA those who arrived sensed
quickly that they had inherited a labor of
love and dedicated themselves to the continuation
of the good work.
An
international family's average length of stay
in Amsterdam is about three years. Thus one
may calculate that ISA has now served more
than a dozen generations of such enterprising
families. It is because of the joyfully shared
experience of contributing unstintingly to
the development of the school that old friends
are now interested in keeping in touch with
the school and one another.
Implicit
in the slogan of Voices - "Keeping old
friends in touch with the school and one another" -
is a tribute, then, to the civic-mindedness
of all those who since the beginning have contributed
effectively and self-sacrificially to the development
of international education at ISA.
|
Let
us be as clear as Pericles: As Athens was the
school of Hellas, open to the world in the fifth
century B.C., so our school aspires to be a model
of civic virtue for the international society
of the future.
How
did the international community of Genoans
and Venetians and other folkdoms organize the
education of their children while residing
in the earliest merchant democracies of the
Low Countries – in towns like fifteenth-century
Brugge, for example? In any case, ISA's story
belongs to the late twentieth and early twenty-first
century with all the many hopes and concerns
of these times. Certainly Amsterdam – and
Amstelveen – have a role to play in the
quest for a new, public-spirited world order.
Civic
responsibility is a glue that holds societies
together. Civic virtue enables people to prosper
in peace and triumph over adversity. The quality
of civic-mindedness is
the tie that binds folks together at ISA across the generations.
From it grow friendship, cooperation and peace. Here in Amsterdam – and
Amstelveen – the people of Japan and Sweden and Israel
and Nepal, of the Netherlands, New Zealand, Libya and France,
of Australia, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom,
Canada, the United States, of Russia, Ireland, Cyprus, Finland,
Norway, Serbia, Croatia, and Greece, of India, Pakistan,
Bosnia, Egypt, Turkey and Indonesia, of South Africa, Argentina,
Chile and more have come together to forge ties that transcend
distance and time.
The
flags of our school's constituent nations,
supplied by the PTA, stand proudly in the foyers,
a welcoming and inspiring sight. They show
that civic-mindedness bursts the bounds of
cultures and times and brings people together.
The
growing list of addresses in the Alumni Register
forms an Honor Roll of old friends – friends
who already own a piece of the farm because
of what they did here as parents, students,
faculty, administrators, board members and
friends. Day after day at the Alumni Office
as messages and visitors arrive from afar,
one experiences the strength of our community's
overarching commitment to the values of excellence
in international education.
The
Alumni Office salutes ISA's old friends, the
benevolent founders of a good work still flourishing.
Back
to Voices 2003 |
A
Welcome from our Alumni Coordinator Don Morton
