<p>we had this thought about study abroad.
It was fine if it was offered- it was fine if it wasn’t.
There are so many programs that students can participate in before or after college nowdays- that we didn’t really see it as a criteria.
D had studied in Costa Rica during high school, friends had studied in Paris,Argentina, Japan…- this was during high school, one friend from Reed spent the summer in Oxford, another in Vienna, another is spending two years ( after college graduation) in azerbaijan.
My D2 is planning on spending a year or so in Australia/Ireland. before college.
really lots of options.</p>
<p>Well, I guess my feeling is it is the job of the tour guides to promote their college and it is MY JOB to check out the ‘truth’.
For me the ‘truth’ is ,
- take a real good look at the students and the comfort of the campus. (for us)
2.Check out the crime stats of the college online.
3.Check out the profs., either through open houses, check their bios online, checking where many of them got their degrees , etc. - Ask the tour guide important questions like, how big is you largest lecture hall?
4.Check out the safety of the college town.
5.Take a good look at student housing, look at where the frat houses are, is the community tidy or a mess.<br>
6.Check out the transportation.</p>
<ol>
<li>And most important, HOW DOES MY CHILD FEEL ABOUT THE CAMPUS. LISTEN. We most likely know our child and if we have done a good parenting job he will try to make wise choices in his life.</li>
</ol>
<p>“My problem is I would not be able to pay for that very expensive summer program abroad. My years of paying for summer stuff are over as we have college to pay for. Study abroad for a semester is like paying for college. A summer study abroad program is in addition to college tuition! My older D is planning now to work in France this summer and then study abroad in the fall. So, even though they are in the same family, different mindsets and desires over such plans exist.”</p>
<p>Well understood. The fact that I have goals doesn’t meant they have to share 'em! 
We couldn’t possibly afford a year abroad for either of mine, but luckily enough the financial aid kicks in. My older d. will have a paid internship in Italy next summer working for a development organization supporting the organization that she worked with in India last summer, also supported by a grant from the college. </p>
<p>Frankly, I have a hard time imagining a serious education in art history, music history, or a whole range of other subjects without fluency in the language(s) of the culture under study, and significant time spent studying in the culture where said works come from. (I think I’ve mentioned how I used to try to get my best UChicago students in medieval studies/art to drop out and get themselves to Europe.) Same with various area studies, international relations, international politics, and perhaps even folks who are considering a serious career in international banking. And, on a side note, studies have shown that the single largest reason given for students abandoning or being forced out of graduate programs in the U.S. - in virtually all subjects – is inability to pass the language exams. Surely one can acquire the language later (in the middle of a busy graduate school schedule of study, teaching, and writing), but it could have been so much more fun!</p>
<p>Mini:
The question is what should one expect of a tour guide? The administration’s line or the student’s own experiences and perspectives?
The tour guide seems to have given you hers. She is probably very typical of the student population at her college, whatever the administration’s own policies might be.</p>
<p>I suspect that a fairly significant proportion of students who say they do not want to study abroad have plenty of opportunity to travel abroad anyway. This was true of the small sample of students I talked to. Practically all of them had traveled abroad. Many others are math and science majors who would spend a large amount of time in labs whether at home or abroad and thus do not see the need to travel unless there were some real academic advantages.</p>
<p>Having lived overseas for fifteen years, I wholeheartedly agree with the importance of international exposure, especially to cultures that are severely different from our own. Having said that I don’t think that a full year or even a semester of study abroad is necessarily the best or only way to gain that experience.</p>
<p>My son’s friends are pretty much split 50/50 among those who are going abroad and those who are staying on campus. Many take advantage of the college’s short trips offered as part of Winter Study. Others have already done a lot of traveling. Some chose to continue their sport, their research or to work as a junior advisor in the first-year dorms.</p>
<p>My son considered studying away quite seriously but in the end felt that the academic opportunities offered him at Williams were so exceptional that he didn’t want to miss a year or even a semester of classes. He’s not the norm as he is extremely well traveled, but even among his friends who haven’t been out of the continental US, many opted to stay on campus as they felt that four years with their professors was already too short.</p>
<p>I think the post graduate “gap” year is an idea whose time has come – kids with college degrees who travel or volunteer (or both) before settling down to a real job or graduate school.</p>
<p>“I suspect that a fairly significant proportion of students who say they do not want to study abroad have plenty of opportunity to travel abroad anyway. This was true of the small sample of students I talked to. Practically all of them had traveled abroad.”</p>
<p>Point taken, but you know as well as I do that the “shape” of international travel, and the rootlessness of it, is much, much different than it was even 30 years ago. </p>
<p>And, and it’s just my opinion, an art history professor or an international relations professor who doesn’t insist, or even demand, that a good student do intensive culture/language study outside the confines of the U.S. as part of his/her education (and I don’t mean “travel abroad anyway”), really hasn’t done a very good job, regardless of how good the classroom experience was.</p>
<p>I do agree that the tour guide revealed well what we wanted to know about the university.</p>
<p>Mini:</p>
<p>I agree with you with the importance of travel and living abroad. After all, that’s what got me here!
And it depends on the discipline a student is in as well and the definition of “study abroad.” I have a strong suspicion that a student who wants to write a senior thesis on some Chinese topic will be urged to spend at least a summer in China, at the expenses of Williams, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Swarthmore, and other well-endowed colleges. In fact, I would be surprised if that student were allowed to go on without having gone to China. Ditto for a senior thesis on Renaissance Italy.
But, as you know, the most popular major these days is economics, a field in which area knowledge is deemed unnecessary.</p>
<p>Mini…my daughter didn’t need any school or professor to insist on studying abroad nor on learning a second language fluently. Her school has an open curriculum. My daughter has always loved French and exceled and accelerated in it. While she’ll never major in it, she has continued studying French every semester so far at Brown because she wanted to. While she has been to France twice, she has always wanted to spend some time there. She might normally opt to do study abroad in France but for her major, many programs are in Italy (not that she would not like Italy though her language is French). So, that is why she is now looking for a job in France for this summer. She’ll pay herself to fly there and then earn money to live there. It doesn’t cost me money. But then she’ll also spend the fall semester hopefully in a pre architecture program through another university in Florence and that program actually includes taking Italian. </p>
<p>What I was saying about my other D’s recent mention/desire to do a program during the summer intead of the school year, in Amsterdam through her program at Tisch, and how it cost 10,000 which I can’t spend for a summer program now that she is in college (and yes, she also is on both scholarship and financial aid too) is not like what you are talking of your daughter’s funded summer internship. This is actually an academic program, not an internship. It was this specific program itself that she was interested in rather than to miss a semester at the program at her college to study abroad (which then we COULD pay for as it is in lieu of college tuition). This was not a serious discussion as she was not asking us to pay for it (she knew the answer!) but was saying she wanted to pay for it herself from her own earnings but that is a huge chunk of change and I think she needs those earnings for other expenses. </p>
<p>I only brought her up in this conversation as an example of someone who does not want to miss a semester of her specialized training program at her school. She does have an interest in traveling to other cultures and did go on one HS school trip to Italy and Greece. Also as part of being a Tisch Scholar she will travel abroad either winter break of soph or junior year (fully funded by her university) to work with those in the arts in another country (this year’s older kids are about to leave for India but she can either go to Brazil next winter or whichever country is the following winter). While on the one hand she says she’d love to go on all the overseas trips her sister has done or will do, she would not want to give up what she is doing, in order to do so…older D did two summer travel programs in HS…younger D thought those sounded really cool but would never give up her theater program (her passion) to do those. Last year she had the opportunity to go to France but wanted the money instead to go back to her theater camp and her words were: “France will always be there but this is the last time I will ever be able to go to my theater camp” (was her 8th year and the place was her heaven on earth.)</p>
<p>So, that’s why I brought up my kids…one wants to study abroad, the other would like to but won’t give up a semester to do it but will travel abroad other ways.</p>
<p>Susan</p>
<p>
Wow, I would have thought that in the global economy international exposure would be critical.</p>
<p>Momrath,
My thoughts exactly. This reminds me of a map I saw a few summers ago in the Washington Post, I believe. It showed where the employees of the US Foreign Service had requested postings. The #1 location was…Canada, closely followed by England and Australia for goodness sake. Clearly the aspiration for ‘foreign’ was lacking in these individuals… I wonder what a comparable map would look like for employees of the “World” Bank!!</p>
<p>As for colleges that can’t handle the truth…in fact, it was usually the admissions personnel, not the tour guide, who seemed less inclined to truly dish. There are of course great questions to ask that help sift through some of the muddle, but, it is, after all, just a sales job for the most part…and best seen that way.</p>
<p>WW, excessive concern with safety turns one into a sheltered captive. Prudence and judgment are fine…but they need to be exercised not in a vaccuum.</p>
<p>My D is planning to spend a semester in Budapest studying math with Hungarian thrown in on the side. I am chuffed.</p>
<p>In fact my daughter will be doing a study abroad…in Edinburgh. I understand they speak Scottish which, as I gather, is known to be as spicey as their cuisine ;)</p>
<p>TD,
Good to know Prudence and Judgment pass muster. Living outside NYC…having lived in 3 countries (one was even a European country that, of all things, has three official languages) we have tried our best to live on the sharp edge of International dangerlike Bond, James Bond, only employing excessive prudence when having breakfast in the American South.</p>
<p>{edit…as is, thedaughter is completely fluent in French and Farsi (told she’s not bad in English either) hoping shell pick up Scottish in Scotland}</p>
<p>Momrath:</p>
<p>Most students in economics will probably go into business rather than academic economics, in which case a knowledge of a foreign culture and a foreign language will be helpful. But academic economics has become more and more mathematical and less hospitable to area knowledge. Scholars who are economists of a foreign country, for example, have a hard time getting tenure. Henry Rosovsky, the Harvard Dean who introduced the Core Curriculum, was a Japan economist. He was never replaced. Nowadays, area economists are welcomed by business schools but not by economics departments.</p>
<p>TheDad: Glad to know you don’t have to persuade your D to go to Budapest. Maybe I should ask you to come and talk to my S next year? :)</p>
<p>Marite, I would love to come visit again. </p>
<p>WW, your “prudence” in Durham does strike me as excessive, American south or not, experience in foreign countries or not. I deal with a lot of folks relocating to the Los Angeles area who seem to think they need to live in protected cantonments for safety. I’m familiar with the mindset.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>TD,
Clearly, this gift of yours has apparently also endowed you with the ability to know, based on an internet post, whether someone is, to use a word you have seemed fond of directing at my 17 year old daughter who had an honest disagreement with your world view, a “bigot” or, now, in the above post, those who need to live in protected Cantons. </p>
<p>My daughter chose a school other than Duke, thousands do; this hardly qualifies her, or her family, as people of the mindset to believe they need to live in protected Cantonsor does it?</p>
<p>We lived, voluntarily, with homeless refugees sleeping and eating in our domicile for a bit over 5 years. Thedaughter, Fountainsiren, was aged 6-12 at the time, she woke up with these people in the morning and went to sleep with them at nighthundreds of them from around the world, having often left body parts or families behind to get out with their lives. We heard, around the dinner table, gut wrenching stories from people who could barely speak without crying on a daily basis. Some were communists; some were Bahai, some were Sufis, some were atheists because they could no longer believe in God. It was enough to make any good person question the goodness of human nature. They were often simple innocents from Africa, and the Middle and Far East, sometimes from a more activist background. Fountainsirens own cousin, a Marxist and student organizer, was one of those tortured and raped. It lasted almost two years. Shes here now, safe and recovering her life.</p>
<p>But you already knew a bit of this because I shared this with you in a private message. So whats with the Cantons remark? Really? Wasnt bigot more than enough?</p>
<p>You disagree with my daughters outlook on life, and by extension, it seems, mine. I get it.
Still, a little discretion might be worth the effort of a seasoned and eloquent man like yourself.</p>
<p>WW, it’s not that your D chose a school other than Duke. It’s that, based on your post, an article on gang violence and campus security can give you the heebie jeebies. </p>
<p>From your response, it’s evident that you have an understanding of what real problems are. Which makes me question all the more why you would be dissuaded–or give anyone an example for being dissuaded–over the trivial. </p>
<p>And despite the terrible experiences your D has first-hand experience, yes, supporting a roommate change because of sexual orientation just because “someone isn’t comfortable,” is bigoted. The former has no bearing–and no excuse for–that latter. And it makes no difference whether it’s a student or a parent, your daughter or someone I have no knowledge of whatsoever…the condition is not dependent upon some sort of social relativism, e.g., I know you and therefore this is okay. Yes, I’m a hard man. If you want to add rude and heartless, I can live with that too. If I can call B.S. on the Pope or the President, I will do no less for more mere mortals.</p>
<p>
The point of this thread involved the openness of college newspapers and the disingenuousness of tour guides. My point was, in keeping with the thread, that having read the paper that morning we decided it would not be worth asking the tour guide about the articles veracity that made a claim of gang violence and a lack off campus security:
</p>
<p>TD,
There are times, when for varying reasons we may find someones position to be wrong, or shortsighted, or ill-considered. All of which involve judgments of rhetorical content, not of people. That is, they are not hate-speech, or hateful speech. I have found that most people are able to effectively and respectfully disagree with people over the content of their speech without referring to the content of their character. They do not need to attack the person.</p>
<p>The later, to me, is demagogic speech that wishes to bully, the former is reasoned speech that wishes to express and engage–it can even be playful and acidic speech, but not never hateful. I cannot think of any good reason why anyone would want to refer to another as a bigot, or a red-neck or a racist, in any normal circumstance. If, however, one was facing down the Grand Dragon of the KKK, or the Grand Poobah of the Arian Nation, then for the sake of a particular audience you may want to characterize them as a bigot to distinguish them as falling into that category of hatred that is not deserving of a reasoned response but rather the righteous anger of a good people. Short of this, to use such speech is to engage in demagoguery. </p>
<p>Demagogues come in all flavors. </p>
<p>Most often, demagogues are simply drunk on their own utopian vision of the world: Things MUST be ONE WAY because thats the way they OUGHT to be in their UTOPIA. This is the opposite of realism; that is, the disposition that will work for the best possible world having considered the frailty and vulnerability of the real people in it. We have raised our children to hope for the later having seen first hand the awful handy work of the former on peoples bodies and in peoples lives and hearts. Demagogues are always right, and the clarity of their vision is always worth the sacrifice of other peoples comfort, if for no other reason than that their perfect vision demands our respectwhich vision, seen discreetly, may in fact offer some better end.</p>
<p>Still, History has been harsh in its judgment of demagogues and I would say, rightly so. </p>
<p>The speech you used to characterize a then 17 year old girl, fresh out of high school and preparing for college, to me, is joined at the hip with the style of speech favored by Jerry Falwell and other demagogues like him. It is designed to enrage. You, TD, may have had different ends, but the ugly means–at least here–remain the same.</p>
<p>As to the original issue, I wrote you privately over this and explained:
</p>
<p>A little bird told warned me that I should weigh in here since many people on this site are friends of mine and know both my actual name and my cc screen name.</p>
<ol>
<li> Students of the same gender and of any sexual direction should be able to room together without any fear and try to have an open mind over this unique and new living situation, as it has been an historical feature of dorming for generations–often, unfortunately, based on a dont ask, dont tell policy.</li>
<li> Someone (particularly incoming freshmen), for whatever reason, and most particularly a previous uncomfortable sexual experience including but not limited to rape in its many forms, should be able to request a particular dorm environment without any stigma attached to them for asking. Whether of the same or opposite gender. This should be a subjective and immediate decision not hinged on the fate of civilization as we know it.</li>
<li> I myself would never make such a request.</li>
<li> I would hope that any member of any administration would first explain all of this to the requesting student; particularly, that there is nothing at all to fear in such a living situation and then go ahead and approve the anxious transfer all the while taking the ultimate care to be sure that the roommate is also not hurt or offendedeven by keeping the actual nature of the request to themselves.</li>
<li> I could be wrong about 1,2 & 4, but not 3.</li>
</ol>
<p> thanks dad.</p>
<p>FS:</p>
<p>Well said.</p>