 INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION
By Roger Bartholomew
Roger Bartholomew spends his life talking with students - both as a teacher and as a counselor. His position as president of International Education Specialists, Chairman of Southville Foreign University and Director/Teacher at Southville International School all involve listening to students and parents and advising them on their studies and careers. He is a frequent speaker in schools, colleges, universities, public forums and focus groups.
WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD……..
Thus sang Louis Armstrong in 1968.
Mind you, he wasn’t watching two Democrats fight out a primary, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US economy spending iitself down the drain (and taking all of us with it), the Olympic Games being in danger of cancellation due to air pollution, and Manny Pacquiao nearly making a myriad of TV commentators look very presumptuous. Mind you, there were a few things wrong then as well: the Vietnam War, bell-bottoms, the Martin Luther King assassination, the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, Saddam Hussein coming to power and Yale becoming co-ed.
But Louis had a point……. Despite all that was going wrong it was a wonderful world – and it still is!
Last month I said that a variety of opportunities would be featured here for people who want something special out of life and I have to be true to my word. The problem is, of course, where to start. So, I decided to start with the Brits!
Last month, at the British School Manila, something strange was going on. Teenagers were walking out of the school with cuts, bruises, black eyes, broken noses, slashes across their faces, one even had her throat slit, and their teacher, Richard Grennan, had two bullet holes in his forehead. Was this Chechnya rather than Fort Bonifacio? The security guards just stared…… because the kids were walking and chatting to each other as if nothing had happened.
 But a lot had happened. After a six-hour workshop with Chris Maughan, Director of the Cambridge School of Visual and Performing Arts, 30 students from a variety of high schools had learnt some of the secrets to the horrific injuries that we regularly see on CSI. Smoke and mirrors? No. Cosmetics, wax, polymer, artificial blood, sponges, brushes, some creativity, skills and techniques and students were quickly disfiguring each other with gruesome injuries. Called “cosmetic prosthetics”, there is a great call in the film, TV and theatre for specialists who can make the audience recoil in horror at the “realistic” injuries suffered by the actors. This girl [see picture below] was the victim of a “bottle attack” with a couple of punches thrown in for good measure.
Arisa, a Visual Arts student from Southville International School got in the way of an enraged werewolf with predictable results……… and a drama student from Brent School got into a pretty bad fist fight with her boyfriend who then decided to do some one-upmanship on Sweeney Todd (Johnny Rep beware – competition is on the way from Brent School).
 So where is the Wonderful World? Of course the wonderful world is the world of illusion as presented to us by film and TV to bring some entertainment to our lives. The Cambridge School of Visual and Performing Arts teaches students not only cosmetic prosthetics but also the full range of design studies, theatre arts, film and TV production, set design, graphics and animation for the movie iindustry. From there students can go on to the most prestigious schools in the UK such as the Royal Academy or Central St. Martins where many of the industry’s best known people started their careers. And after the student workshop, Chris Maughan spent a week with GMA Channel 7 – so we should be seeing some good stuff on that TV channel especially when you watch those tattoos!
The students who attended this workshop all agreed that it was the coolest thing they had ever done and many of them were really excited about the career opportunities that this specialist skill could bring them. One thing was for sure, this was something really different and really off-the-wall and was certainly not more of the same! The Cambridge School of Visual & Performing Arts works with International Education Specialists in the Philippines to help people who are talented in the art and design area to advance their careers through specialist studies in the UK.
But don’t take too much notice of Chris’s comment when he said, “Cosmetic prosthetics? It’s a cutthroat business”.
Kudos to this year's batch of graduates! Read more about what could be in store for them this year with the latest job opportunities and the best career guidance to make their job hunting easy, convenient, and fun.
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