George Mason University had its annual study abroad orientation this past weekend, at which the Center for Global Education presented exciting opportunities for students and faculty. It is a truism that study abroad “broadens” outlooks, and listening to students talk about their experiences in these programs illustrates why better than any glossy brochure could.
I recognize students’ transformations in my own experience. My first trip abroad was in high school, and the six-hour time difference meant that I fell asleep early in Paris after my arrival and woke up equally early. It was a perfect time to visit Les Halles markets — still in existence in the 1960s. That crack-of-dawn taste of the market’s legendary onion soup was the start to an eye-opening summer.
Study abroad programs were not widespread decades ago, so I never had the opportunity to go during college. Now there are many schools, like GMU, where students can travel in faculty-led groups to Israel and Palestine, Beijing, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Granada, Spain, Kenya, Costa Rica, Galway, Ireland, Montreal, and India, among other destinations. These school-sponsored trips award credits toward graduation as well as life-altering experiences in foreign lands.
Study abroad exposes students to exotic and unfamiliar places, but with the support of adults and students from their familiar school “homes.” There’s someone to answer questions or help look for a lost passport. Students help one another find great places to eat and troop off to famous sights together. They finish each other’s sentences in the language of the host country when one person draws a language blank. They commiserate with each other during bouts of homesickness.
Some students return, as my daughter did from her summer in Cambridge University’s art history program, intellectually altered. She discovered the subject of her Master of Fine Arts project there, and that passion for trees and roots has informed much of her art work since her return. Many students have told me something about the study abroad experience ignites intellectual passions that last long after they return home.
What kids are reading
This weekly column will look at lists of books kids are reading in various categories, including grade level, book genre and data from booksellers. Information on the books below came from Amazon.com’s list of children’s best-sellers and are listed in order of popularity.
Children’s books on travel
1. Travel Team by Mike Lupica (ages 9 to 12)
2. Kid’s Trip Diary: Write About Your Own Adventures and Experiences! by Loris Bree and Marlin Bree (ages 9 to 12)
3. The Travels of Babar by Jean De Brunhoff (ages 4 to 8)
4. A World of Wonders: Geographic Travels in Verse and Rhyme by J. Patrick Lewis and Alison Jay (ages 4 to 8)
5. Tino Turtle Travels to Paris, France by Carolyn Ahern and Neallia Burt-Sullivan (ages 4 to 8)
6. Hello Europe! by April Pulley Sayre (ages 4 to 8)
7. Seven Natural Wonders of Europe by Michael Woods and Mary B. Woods (ages 9 to 12)
8. Dorling Kindersley Travel Guides: Kids’ London by Simon Adams (ages 9 to 12)
This summer I will return to Oxford, England, with 17 students, and they will undergo the normal disorientation phase, followed by a gradual assimilation into the culture of a different university and different country. They will discover beans for breakfast and kebab carts parked in the streets. They will hear Gregorian chants echo from chapels as they walk among the colleges, and will try their hand at punting down the River Isis — just like characters in Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited.” They will have near-death experiences as they inevitably forget to look both ways before crossing the street; it will only take one such encounter to make them remember that the British drive on the “wrong” side of the road! If they are lucky, they will have a meal that, like with Marcel Proust’s famous madeleines, will evoke hosts of memories for the rest of their lives. That’s what happens whenever I taste the cheesy crust on top of onion soup. Study abroad doesn’t exactly change students, as make them a more expansive and worldly version of themselves. That broadening of horizons is something that can never occur in the home classroom in quite the same way.
Erica Jacobs, whose column appears Wednesday, teaches at George Mason University. E-mail her at [email protected].
