Registered: Sep 2000
Location: The Bottom of the Toyem Pole
Posts: 9455

Sad but true?

Discuss.

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What Students Don't Learn Abroad
By BEN FEINBERG

Over the past two decades, many colleges and universities, including my own
institution, have created study-abroad programs for their students. The
theory is that in today's interconnected world, it is more important than
ever that students be attuned to the nuances of cultural difference. But
what, exactly, do students feel that they learn from studying abroad?
Doubting that a professor could elicit sincere responses from students, I
invited one of my favorite undergraduates to work as my research assistant,
interviewing 30 or so of her peers who had recently returned from courses in
Central America, Europe, and Africa.

The responses from Peter, who had spent 10 weeks studying and working on
service projects with a group in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Lesotho, were
representative. When asked what he had learned from his African experience,
Peter used the first-person pronoun seven times, eliminating Africans: "I
learned that I'm a risk taker, um, that I don't put up with people's bull,
uh, what else? That I can do anything that I put my mind to. I can do
anything I want. You know, it's just -- life is what you make of it."

Peter didn't mention that Zimbabweans live in an impoverished dictatorship
where 25 percent of the population is HIV positive, and thus they cannot do
anything they put their minds to -- a lesson he evidently didn't learn.
Instead, like so many other traveling young people, he claimed to have
learned about himself, and talked about group dynamics; students'
transgressive behavior, like drinking too much; and bungee jumping at
Victoria Falls -- rather than southern Africa's cultures or social problems.

And what he learned about himself sounded suspiciously familiar. After
reading through transcript after transcript of stories of self-discovery by
a heroic individual or a team of heroes, I recognized the not-so-exotic
source -- Nike commercials and the other televised exaltations of the
"extreme" lifestyle, in which advertisers encourage us to play extreme
sports and consume extreme hamburgers.

Thomas Frank, the author of One Market Under God, has pointed out that
recent graduates of leading programs in anthropology and cultural studies
write many of the current television commercials. Perhaps that helps explain
the anthropology and cultural-studies icons we see so much of -- members of
exotic tribes and rebellious youth, for example -- and the apparent
emphasis, in some commercials and programs, on valuing diversity and on
blurring borders.

In any case, subtle and not-so-subtle images of America's relationship with
the rest of the world permeate the televised landscape and provide potential
travelers like Peter with a ready-made language for understanding their
studies abroad in ways that may undermine the plans of the programs'
designers.

One type of commercial model shows us exotic humans in all their tribal
finery, but, in a multicultural twist, they -- Masai warriors, Sicilian
matrons, Tibetan monks, Irish fishermen -- are revealed as strangely
prescient consumers with a quirky knowledge of luxury cars or Internet stock
trading. In one commercial, we witness an Inuit elder teaching his grandson
about tracking by identifying marks in the snow. "That," he says, "is a
caribou." Then, after a pause, during which the wise man stares at the snow,
he reverentially intones the single word "Audi." From ads like those, astute
students like Peter learn that foreigners are obsessed with us -- our
commodities and displays. What we may learn from them pales in comparison
with the glories that they see in our consumer lifestyle.

Other commercials reduce distant lands to images of animals or nature, and
imply that nature can be thoroughly dominated by SUV's or swaggering,
extreme-sports youths. Athletes and Nissan Pathfinders fight bulls in a
ring, giant outdoorsmen tap the miniaturized Rockies, a hiker butts heads
with a bighorn sheep. And, of course, sophisticated viewers like Peter know
that all those animals are the creation of technology.

In one commercial, a driver -- insulated in his fully self-sufficient cocoon
-- is able to program both the road and the various beautiful and exotic
settings it passes through. Not only is the technologically empowered
American greater than nature, we create nature to suit our whims. There is
no outside world anymore, no dark places of mystery yet to be seen. Our
SUV's do not travel to an unknown world so much as create different options
from a well-known list. Television's emphasis is on how the actor -- whether
a contestant on a reality-TV show or the driver in a car ad -- is seen and
manipulates how she is seen. Even when outsiders exist, everyone is looking
at us.

Reality shows like Survivor that are set in exotic, faraway locations create
a world that is hermetically sealed off from reality (from real locals and
the real effects of prolonged physical hardship) while playing with the most
essential signs of the real -- thinning, wasting bodies and the ingestion of
grotesque creatures.

When a promotional piece for the reality-TV program The Amazing Race shows
an American woman in a clearly foreign space -- perhaps India -- she is not
troubled, confused, or interested in her environment. Instead, she strips
down to a bikini emblazoned with a U.S. flag to get directions to the next
challenge from a bug-eyed and eager native. "Will I wear this if it helps me
get home?" she says. "Hell, yeah!" That young woman clearly did not travel
to broaden her horizons. For her, India becomes, as much as Salt Lake City
or Kandahar, a place for aggressive performances of her American identity --
unwrapping herself in the flag, so to speak.

In that model of globalization, where the outside world is no more than a
fantasy playground whose only real inhabitants are obsessed with our
commodities, it is no surprise that students like Peter ignore the presence
of real foreigners and fill their travel stories with images of personal
growth or bad behavior.

We now are the world, to be looked at, admired, or despised; what is
important about the activity of others is their response to our display. It
impresses them or -- in the case of Bush's description of bin Laden as
sullenly looking at us from his dark, satellite-equipped cave -- angers them
to see how free we are and how much fun we have.

Students like Peter talk about interactions with outsiders only in vague
abstractions, while expostulating brilliantly about the nuances of American
students' interactions with one another. Even the few individuals who left
their peers to engage the outside world explained that move as an individual
rejection of the group and still found it easier to discuss their fellow
students than the generically defined "friends" they met at bars.

One young American who traveled to Guatemala bragged that "I have a
surprising ability to relate to almost everyone," but "everyone" turned out
to mean members of preconceived categories of human-rights workers, Indians,
and children, whom she described as objects of more first-person sentences.
She specifically excluded less exotic, fast-talking city folk who were "just
different" and not worth mentioning.

Students return from study-abroad programs having seen the world, but the
world they return to tell tales about is more often than not the world they
already knew, the imaginary world of globalized, postmodern capitalism where
everything is already known, everyone speaks the same language, and the
outside world keeps its eyes on those of us who come from the center.

The question for colleges and universities is, can our programs challenge
that perception of the world, instead of allowing it to sink in more deeply?
The answer is probably not.

But at least we should avoid pre- and post-travel orientation sessions that
focus on group dynamics and individual growth. Instead, those sessions could
be used as opportunities for students to learn how to question the way that
we tell stories about our travels, and to discover for themselves how those
stories share features with commercials about men who play football with
lions and reality shows where contestants dare each other to swallow
centipedes.

Ben Feinberg is a faculty member in the social-sciences department at Warren
Wilson College.

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http://chronicle.com
Section: The Chronicle Review
Chronicle of Higher Education, May 3, 2002; Page: B20

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: zanzibar
Posts: 10477

I think if Mr. Feinberg expects the Amazing Race or Survivor to be the Discovery channel he needs to watch more TV.

Also I hear more about Togo than I'd ever really even want to know from a co-worker who studied there.

D

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: zanzibar
Posts: 10477

We now are the world, to be looked at, admired, or despised; what is
important about the activity of others is their response to our display. It
impresses them or -- in the case of Bush's description of bin Laden as
sullenly looking at us from his dark, satellite-equipped cave -- angers them
to see how free we are and how much fun we have.

I don't even get that bit. Is the author suggesting that we should be ashamed of freedoms, or am I missing the sarcasm?

Also, like many things in life, study abroad is what you make of it. My friend that studied in London didn't go there to learn British history, he went to take packaging courses at some military institute and get drunk in pubs.

Also I think a lot of the described apathy to foriegn cultures may be partially (if not mostly) the fault of our education system, which seems to be stuffing in more introspective self centered learning and focusing less on history, culture and sciences (unless its computer science).

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: The Bottom of the Toyem Pole
Posts: 9455

I think that bit you quoted wasn't referencing our freedoms as much as commenting on the shift in perspective. In many ways and for many people, America is no longer an element of the whole, but rather has become the Whole itself. The world doesn't exist anymore outisde of its relation to the US and American culture/ media. That last phrase makes me wonder what the difference is between our media and our culture.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location:
Posts: 4501

Good read...don't agree with each and every point made, but don't disagree enough in general to make issue of it. I think there's another extreme to this: students who study abroad merely to have access to harder courses and different academic resources, and then don't spend any time outside of the University. Another form of isolationism that seems a waste of a plane ticket and tuition to me.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: I don't fukn' know!
Posts: 5137

when the our english brethern visited us in Philly, did they learn anything about american culture?

just wondering.

very interesting read though.

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