A few weeks ago, I set my foot on European soil for the first time. I went on a seven-day trip to Greece with my friends from school and this marked my first trip to Europe. While we were having gyros there, enjoying the peaceful mountainous view of Delphi, we heard a baby crying on the top of his lung a few tables away from us. Then, a friend asked me a question: I personally think it’s not worth it to bring children too young on trips like this. Do you think just by traveling you learn something even if you are not mature enough to understand the culture and history behind the things you see?
My initial response was “Yes. Traveling to another place is meaningful in itself. Of course we learn something just by the act of traveling.” But this question lingered in my mind for a few more days. Is the mere act of traveling really rewarding in itself or is it the information and personal experience that comes from traveling that cause the transformation of mind and soul that we typically associate with traveling? If the latter, is it really not worth it to bring children too young to understand history on trips abroad?
To start the conversation with my answer, I say no. Even after a few more days of thought, my answer still remains a no, mostly stemming from my personal experience. I believe that even without the “educational” aspect of learning new information about a foreign country, just seeing a different environment, hearing a new language and feeling the breeze we have never experienced before can fundamentally transform anyone.
The main reason I believe so is that mere exposure to different things eliminates the fear of the unknown. This may sound like an exaggeration; “fear” does sound like a big word to be using in this context, but it is real. It is terrifying to step outside of one’s comfort zone, whether that be a home country, a mother tongue or an ethnic group. And this fear multiplies quite rapidly if a person has never been personally exposed to such a different environment. For example, at the age of ten, I moved with my family to the United States. I did speak English at the time, but not fluently, I did not know much about the history of the United States to the point that it took me a few months to realize that the name of my school, Roosevelt Middle School, came from the name of a president, and I barely knew anything about the presence of different races around the world. Nonetheless, while I interacted with friends in school and visited different states in the US, I naturally encountered people with different accents and colors of skin and perceived the diversity in the world. In hindsight, I believe that the experience and interactions I had at this time did transform me, as I am not scared of or nervous about approaching people from countries very far away from my own or initiating a conversation with a stranger in a language that is not my mother tongue. Even without full understanding of the knowledge, exposure to a different environment did transform me into a more open and courageous person.
So I do believe that just the act of traveling is meaningful in itself, because it is an opportunity to be exposed to a different world. Now, the question of “is it worth bringing children abroad” is more complicated when we bring in expenses into the equation, but apart from the money, I believe that the act of having a foreign experience is always valuable even to children as it shows that the world is much bigger than what they see everyday at home. What do you think about this question?