The International Baccalaureate is an international highschool program. It was founded in the 1960s so that children of travelling diplomats and the like would get a less schizophrenic education, but it has since become quite popular, once it was discovered that it Sucks Less(TM). There are now about 1000 schools in about 100 countries which offer the IB program.

In the glossy-paper brouchures, the IB curriculum is drawn as a brightly coloured hexagon. The student (who in IB-speak is always refered to as the 'candidate' to stress the uncertainty of getting a passing grade) can choose 6 subjects from the selection of official IB courses his/her school offers. Of these:

  1. Must be the student's native language
  2. (literature),
  3. Must be a foreign language,
  4. Must belong to "Individuals and Societies": history, economics, geography...
  5. Must be an "experimental science" (physics and the like),
  6. Is mathematics (no choice.)
  7. And the last one can be chosen freely.

The most intersting part of the IB is the grading. At the end of the two years, there is a series of tests. The papers are sent away to Cardiff, UK (or in general to the nearest office), where they are assigned to examinators all over the world for grading. This means that teachers are not grading their own students, which IMHO makes for much more pleasant teacher-student relations. It also makes for plenty of cramming and anxiety during the weeks before the exams. And it makes for bad luck if you happen to have migraine on the day of a test (as happened to a friend of mine), or if you happen to overlook a page of the test until there only remains three minutes of writing-time (as happened to me).