Washing the world in whiteness; international schools’ policy

International Baccalaureate (IB) Directors of international schools command a paradoxical space of progressive futures, cloaking injustice and whiteness. This is enacted daily through policy, recruitment, teaching and remuneration which privileges the empowered, exploits the marginalised and thereby delivers a critical education of questionable efficacy. This original research applies the theory of Bourdieu.Social agents (Directors) lead a field wherein symbolic violence is normalised in recruitment and operations towards the non-white, non-Anglo Europeans. By deploying whiteness theory, these directors of diversity champion norms of internationalism, but do not ‘see’ the advantage of white, that defines the field. In turn, students learn to engage in whiteness and understand that the knowing, being and doing of whiteness and Englishness is synonymous with internationalism and power. Fundamental change is needed with a formalisation of recruitment/remuneration/teaching policy that operationalises the IB’s progressive educational values and reverses the automatic injustices levied at the non-white/non-Anglo European.