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Why I feel strongly about International Baccalaureate I have been following the discussion about Ozark becoming an International Baccalaureate school with some interest. You see, I was at Central High School when it became an IB school. And it has been fascinating to see the hysterics that have occurred in the last month or so.

I was not a student in Central’s IB program; even through I spent five years in Springfield’s gifted students program, I was a senior when the program started and you had to begin as a freshman. But given the chance, I would have signed up in a heartbeat.

Smart students want a challenge in school. Curriculum’s designed to teach to the academic equivalent of the lowest common denominator may be good enough for the government, but it leaves those students who are looking for a better education wanting. School without academic rigor is, at best, a waste of time.

IB attempts to do more than simply make it so a student can answer a standardized, fill-in-the-bubble test.

Rather than telling students what to think, as some opponents have been saying, IB teaches kids HOW to think.

How to look at the world they live in and make decisions on their own instead of having thoughts and opinions force fed to them.

I attended the school board meeting last Thursday evening where one of the speakers said that the IB program was un-American because it attempted to teach students to think globally.

How is it un-American to strive for the best education you can get? How is it un-American to think globally when we live in a global community?

The only people in this day and age that don’t need to think globally are those who can’t or won’t look farther than the edge of their front yard.

For our students to have even the slightest chance of succeeding in the future, they can not have the education of 50 years ago. Times change, and our schools have to change with them.

My fiancé, Headliner News reporter Emily Hoffman, has been covering the decisions and discussions about the IB program for the last couple of weeks, and she showed me some numbers that seem almost criminal.

For the first year of the IB program, Ozark’s projected cost will be $34,500. For that same year, the overall budget for the district will be $45,450,000. If you do the math, that means Ozark will spend .07 percent of its budget to give its top students an extremely unique opportunity for excellence.

You might not be able to put a price on a child’s future, but I know that it has got to be more that .07 percent of the money you have.

When you compare it to the $4.6 million that Ozark spends on special education, you have to ask yourself why are some so upset about the cost of IB? The feeling at Central in the fall of 1996 was one of happiness. The IB program was a good thing, something that would be great for the students and elevate the profile of the school. I am firmly convinced that anyone who thinks that IB would be bad for Ozark is putting their own feelings and agendas above the welfare of the students.