[ This is an essay written for a sociology of tourism class. i've decided to post it here because it expresses some unorthodox ideas about travel, in particular as it pertains to midd students. i encourage others to likewise consider posting schoolwork to the blog. ]
i attend a college where i am a minority because (1) i do not study a foreign language, and (2) i choose not to study abroad. This raises several questions. Why does a school like Middlebury College place such emphasis on its language and study abroad programs? What objectives does it believe these avenues access? Where do they actually arrive? What is my relation to these directions and destinations as someone who digresses from the trodden path? Why do i digress?
In seeking to understand the act and rhetoric of studying abroad, it is helpful to draw on the field of tourism studies to investigate how modern humans relate to travel. For Dean MacCannell, the tourist industry represents the proffered solution to modern feelings of alienation (from work, from family, from community, from self) which run rampant in urban and suburban populations. By engaging with the authenticity of others, we are supposedly afforded a dose of reality that makes the unreality of the everyday life tolerable (paradoxically). John Urry’s approach to tourism pursues a similar idea, where modern beings make a temporary departure from the “regulated spheres” of routine life to “engage with a set of stimuli that contrast with the everyday and mundane”. To these understandings Nelson H.H. Graburn adds the dimension of rituality, which invokes discourse about the sacred and profane and about the structure surrounding ritual activities. Moreover, Erik Cohen complicates things by pointing out that escape from alienation is not necessarily the root of all tourist activities, but that a more nuanced “interest in or appreciation of that which is different” spurs variations of “movement away from the spiritual, cultural or even religious centre of one’s ‘world’ into its periphery, towards the centres of other societies”.
Since Middlebury has made no official statement regarding the purpose of its study abroad programs, i turn instead to the college’s mission statement under the assumption that study abroad operates along similar guidelines. From the mission statement:
“We strive to engage students' capacity for rigorous analysis and independent thought within a wide range of disciplines and endeavors, and to cultivate the intellectual, creative, physical, ethical, and social qualities essential for leadership in a rapidly changing global community. Through the pursuit of knowledge unconstrained by national or disciplinary boundaries, students who come to Middlebury learn to engage the world.”
What we can glean from this is that Middlebury exports its students to build this cherished “knowledge unconstrained by national boundaries” for the production of global community leaders. The emphasis here is on intellectual and professional cultivation. To expedite these processes the college implements a standard of language proficiency as the touchstone for immersion. By putting students in close touch with unfamiliar cultures, the college aims to foster the tenets of “universal sympathy” and “international responsibility” that underlie to global citizenship.
