The IB Dimension: What’s Wrong with the CAS Program

by Marc Bernstein

The International Baccalaureate (IB) program enumerates four “ways of knowing”: sense perception, emotion, language, and reason. Ironically, however, the IB program only uses three, consistently neglecting to use its common sense. Particularly in its Creativity, Action, Service (CAS) program, the IB program is ridiculously unreasonable and detached from reality. The IB program’s idealistic demands and lack of understanding its students form a frustrating isolation from reality which I refer to as the “IB bubble.” And in the “IB bubble,” there is nothing you can do but play along with IB and its vivid imagination.

Let us begin with Service, the area of CAS about which I undoubtedly hear the most complaints. Thrusting us into a world of compulsory service is likely to make us “life-long learners?” I don’t think so. Unfortunately, as a result of CAS’ Service requirement, IB students help their communities because they are made to, not because they are morally compelled. And here the “IB bubble” begins to form, as students render community service devoid of any intrinsic motivation.

What precedent does this set? It sets one of condescension and superficiality. “Ugh, I have to serve soup to some poor people on a Saturday. And I have to do 50 hours of this!” IB students learn to associate community service with obligatory labor and come to consider the people whom they help as instruments to earn their hours. In this respect, the IB program encourages students to look down upon whom they aid.

But the state of Maryland requires 75 Student Service Learning (SSL) hours for a student to graduate. Why doesn’t this mandatory service also breed disdain? Well, first of all, students can earn all of their SSL hours doing just one service activity, while CAS requires that the 50 Service hours be spread out among several different activities. The result: SSL hours allow students to direct their efforts towards service that best suits them; CAS, on the other hand, deters IB students who are passionate about a specific form of community service from pursuing it. As a result, IB students are forced to divert the little time that they have to service activities of lesser interest. CAS becomes oriented around getting your hours done instead of getting much out of them. Reluctance infects the IB student, bitterness wells up, and so condescension and superficiality triumph.

To be fair, IB’s goal with the Service portion of CAS hours is a noble one: to allow students to experience a myriad of community service activities in hopes that one piques their interests. Requiring students to engage in community service is appropriate; it affords them a sense of belonging to the community and a sense of pride and righteousness. But CAS just imposes too many encumbrances, with its overly demanding panoply of service followed by extensive, idealistic reflections, strangling what could be a meaningful experience into mindless, meaningless action. I can’t imagine that, upon filling out the reflection, even one student thinks, “Gee, I guess my service was successful in ‘increasing [my] awareness of [my] own strengths and areas for growth.’”  This is the language of IB– a language foreign to our rational society and without a Rosetta Stone.  Good as IB’s intentions may be, mandatory service plus jargonistic reflections equals an empty experience almost every time.

Last summer, as a rising junior, I volunteered at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda for four hours every Saturday. I talked with patients, collaborated with doctors and nurses, and enjoyed my work. If I was able to help my community, while also developing confidence and a sense of righteousness, why won’t the IB program accept my service for CAS hours?

The answer is a simple, bureaucratic matter. IB arbitrarily decided that one’s service cannot be counted for CAS hours unless it is done between the narrow time frame of shortly after the start of one’s junior year to the spring of one’s senior year. This is because, of course, CAS hours are supposed to dramatically change the participant’s life within a one and a half year span– no more, no less.

But even if IB did accept my service for hours, would it then be necessary for me to intently evaluate the extent of my service and name the specific skills that I would have learned? No. These processes, in IB’s excessive strive for profundity, are unnecessary and actually would detract from my experience, tainting personal satisfaction with pointless labor.

And to top it off, CAS would require that I take on at least two more forms of community service. How am I expected to continue working at the hospital, as time consuming as it is, if I need to engage in two more Service activities? Yes, it is good to try new things. And yes, it is good to experience a variety of community service. But, being yet another hurdle in the IB student’s CAS requirement, this attempt to facilitate student growth falls on deaf ears. As a result of its broad and idealistic approach to Service, the IB program encapsulates itself and its student victims in the “IB bubble.”

The same principle is true for the 50 hours of Action that IB students need to earn. Again, the IB program’s good intentions are marred by its irrationality. Our youth should learn to be active, engaging in sports or other exercise to promote a healthy lifestyle– IB got this part right. However, CAS requires that students spread out Action hours among several activities, and furthermore, that each activity is supervised. The few students who play three organized sports are fortunate, but for the rest of us, the IB Dimension continues its oppression.

I personally exercise daily– running, biking, swimming, lifting weights– the works. I have spent hundreds of hours in the gym since the beginning of the school year, yet the IB program recognizes not one . . . because I don’t have a supervisor. I am fulfilling the purpose of staying active and leading a healthy style, but for CAS, this does not suffice. I will most likely resort to after-school yoga at B-CC to complete the majority of my Action hours. As for the two other supervised Action activities in which I need to participate, I have not a clue.

But what about the students that spend every afternoon skateboarding? Or those that bike along the Capital Crescent Trail every weekend? Are their activities not action? Of course they aren’t! Because the students don’t have supervisors! And as everyone knows, if you don’t have a supervisor, you have no choice but to sit on the couch and watch cartoons (though, maybe I can get Action hours for cartoon-watching if I find a supervisor).

Creativity hours are much the same– with a required supervisor for each activity. Do we really need a supervisor to watch over our shoulders as we paint a picture, play an instrument, or write a poem? (Actually, I’m crossing my fingers that writing this article will award me Creativity hours.) Might the supervisor’s intervention actually stifle our innate creativity?

The answer to the first question is an indubitable “no.” Studies have shown time and time again that we are most creative when unprompted (Dean Ryan, 1980; Edward Deci, 1985; Richard Ryan, 1992). The answer to the second question, however, is more difficult to determine.

Of course, instructors are often paramount to learning an artistic technique or an instrument. I myself would be half as good at playing the drums as I am today without the instruction of my teacher, Mr. Scott Taylor. But who is to say that playing an instrument is not an expression of creativity, regardless of one’s talent (or lack thereof)? A supervisor may be able to teach technique and contribute ideas, but creativity always originates from within.

And then we arrive at those who are extremely creative and talented but receive no supervision– those who construct the astounding mosaics in their spare time, those who pick up instruments and jam with friends in a garage, those who write poetry simply for writing’s comforts. These people are undeniably creative, and surely they develop the expressive outlet that the IB program so desires in its students. But still, they receive no hours; IB wants its students to be structurally creative. This paradoxical concept is a testament to the IB program’s unreasonable and hypocritical nature. It demands “Creativity,” a category so broad that earning hours should not be difficult, yet IB contrarily implements requirements so rigid that it undermines the purpose of Creativity hours, entirely.

It seems as though the IB program is constantly battling itself. It inspires community service and then strips it of its greatest value. It calls for students to be active, but only under a supervisor’s omniscient eye, barring students from taking the initiative to exercise on their own. It preaches creativity, but of course under certain, necessary guidelines– austere guidelines which sear the passion and joy out of art, asking us to paint murals on prison walls. There is a separate dimension for this absurdity and hypocrisy. It is the IB Dimension. It is the “IB Bubble.”

-Marc Bernstein