Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Different perspectives

The final part of the IB mission statement is as that students become "active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right."  I really love this statement and think it gets right to the heart of international mindedness.  I love the word "also" which implies that this is simply a different perspective - and that this difference is valuable.

In Stephen Covey's 7 habits he writes about truly effective people, describing them as having the humility to recognize their own limitations.  Effective people value differences because they know that these different perceptions add to their own knowledge and understanding of situations.  Covey writes that if two people have the same opinions then one of them is unnecessary.  I agree with this statement.  Oftentimes the best conversations I have are with people who see things differently from me - and these are the people that I learn the most from.

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1 comment:

  1. Vijay.StringsSeptember 29, 2013 at 1:41 PM

    Madam,

    I completely agree that humility is very central to an individual's growth and building it in formative years of student is very essential. As a researcher in Physics many times whenever we talk about Nobel Laureates, we talk about their modesty, their accommodating nature to value others thoughts which helped them to have a larger perspective of things.

    Madam I am building a blog on a very similar theme where I am exploring how technical and non-technical elements interplay for evolving perspective of things. While doing searches related to same I came across your blog. Really useful.

    Thanking you
    Vijay

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