I was watching this episode of “Surviving Suburbia” in my Fremont California hotel room while packing for my trip pack home to Boston’s north shore. As you can see from the clip, the Mom is desperate to have her son Henry go to college and persuades her husband to have a little pep talk. In other scenes, the family plays a board game and the Mom talks about the advantages of college, but the son remains unconvinced. Henry brings up the advantages of travel or getting a job.
As I flew across the United States the next day (yesterday), I thought about how much one can learn from travel. I taught US history to high school students for the first 16 years of my adult life – and I had never traveled outside of New England except to Walt Disney World with my children and to Colonial Williamsburg with my parents as an eighth grader. Later in life, I visited many states in the west and my appreciation for the size of the country, the topography of the country, and the heritage of the country and my understanding of history increased immeasurably. I wish I could go back and teach those history classes again!
As I look out the plane window, I can see the snow on the Sierras, the desert plateaus across which the pioneers traveled and died, the prairie lands that extend endlessly, and the coasts of the Great Lakes. I think, travel and college are both part of education. Either one without the other is a bit empty. It’s great to have a little of both throughout life.
Richard on a train in Europe, 1970 / © Ruth Goutal, 2009, All Rights Reserved
Despite my lack of US travel, my wife and I spent eight weeks in Europe during the summer of 1970, following the advice of Europe on Five Dollars a Day and the Cooks Continental Timetable (indispensable for spontaneous travel using a Eurail Pass). Many little things broadened my understanding of European countries on that trip. I recently spoke with a veteran eighth grade world history teacher who has never left the United States. I think of all I have learned about the world during the last 16 years of business travel that has taken me to Europe, Japan, China, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines.
I graduated from college as a history major and a secondary education minor in 1967. I didn’t really have the money or inclination to participate in its “European Seminar” – a summer of travel and lectures throughout Europe. What a shame.
Of course college costs today are extremely expensive. Almost as prohibitive in the US as healthcare. Making life choices as a young adult is extremely difficult. It is difficult to shut out what others think – and doing that is not necessarily a good thing. But, as valuable and important as education is, I would tell today’s youngest adults – “Don’t put off exploring the planet for too many years. That’s pretty important too!”
