Foreign flight

When I came to Columbia, I was surprised to meet students who had never traveled outside the United States. I was even disgusted by the idea that Americans, whose culture touches the remotest corners of the world, would not take the initiative to venture out and see them. Indeed, Americans have often been characterized on a national level as isolationists, and on a personal level, as solipsists. The notion of American supremacy has become a tradition deeply rooted in history. Does that explain our reverence for the flag, our unwillingness to learn other languages, or our record of nonparticipation in international organizations? These are enough to make almost any liberal intellectual shiver. Meanwhile, in recent years, Columbia has incurred both praise and criticism for spending millions on its global centers to expand its reputation abroad. More than ever, we are warned that our economic position is temporary, likely to be eclipsed by China in the near future. If we are to accept this premise, then American solipsism is impractical, even dangerous.

Pardon my nostalgia—after four semesters, this is my last column before I go to study in Paris, a farewell and also a question. What does it mean in the 21st century for American students to travel abroad? The concept of travel for its own sake—which I will crudely call “tourism”— is hardly universal. Seasonal changes forced nomads to decamp in search of game, merchants and explorers risked their lives with the hope of profit. There were no breaks or gap years, no time to spend “finding yourself” on your parents’ dime. Once you were old enough to dig ditches, you dug ditches. Anyway, Western tourism emerged as a result of the Industrial Revolution, the advent of safer means of transport, and the rise of a leisure class with time to kill. Tourism was, and still is, a luxury good. Bourgeois families sent their sons on the famous Grand Tour, an extravagant vacation through the major cities of Europe that could take months or years. We call it a “senior trip.”
Notice that only sons were sent abroad. No one was more stigmatized than a young woman traveling alone. Even when my grandmother was offered the opportunity to go on a tour of Europe, her parents decided no: a supervised trip with a chaperone and a group of girls would be too risky.

There is every reason to be grateful for the opportunity to travel. It is a product of unique and almost unprecedented historical circumstances. And yet, only 37 percent of American citizens have passports. Only one percent of college students study abroad. Perhaps some of this can be explained by solipsism, but America, surrounded by oceans, is an expensive continent from which to travel.

With so many facing prohibitive costs, I am confronted by the prospect that study abroad is a mere indulgence. After all, there is no concrete reason why one must study in Paris, Florence, or São Paulo. Columbia offers wonderful French classes. New York lacks in almost nothing. In the age of the Internet, it is possible to learn about a culture remotely. Education by experience is more the stuff of college fliers and costly summer program brochures than it is a reality. Once our museum visits and excavation projects in Central Park are done, we find ourselves cooped up in Butler for two weeks, learning from our bright little screens. Is this an inferior mode of education? Possibly not—what it wants in romance, it makes up in efficiency.

Furthermore, travel abroad does not guarantee self-improvement. One can hardly visit the Louvre without confronting tourist groups in matching T-shirts and dog tags jabbering in bathroom lines and buying crappy souvenirs. Mark Twain once wrote, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” Of course, that depends on how you travel. Upon consideration, I think that our usual questions about travel are misplaced, as far as education is concerned. Which countries a person has visited, and whether or not she can go abroad, are not indicators of anything valid. In a culture whose highest good seems to be 140-characters of snark, I’ll admit that when I write these columns, I’m sometimes terrified of waxing idealistic. But here goes: Our education is about becoming the kind of person who can truly benefit from going abroad, developing the kind of mind that benefits just from being conscious—looking hard, seeing clearly, and thinking bravely.

Adieu!

Amanda Gutterman is a Columbia College junior majoring in English. The Far Side of the Familiar runs alternate Wednesdays.