by Barry J. Ostrow ‘62

Last year, while meandering through Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, I was stopped by two shopkeepers who spoke little English. I thought they were trying to sell me carpets. But in both cases they were offering to dispose of the empty Coke cans tucked in my jacket pocket. Hardly the terrorists some expect to be skulking in a Muslim nation.

When governments fail to communicate, their citizens can do so through independent and group travel; business, cultural, and academic exchanges; and other variations on the theme of “getting out of Dodge.” There is no greater education than on the streets of a foreign city.

The graffiti on a wall in Ecuador is more likely to target American politicians than the American people. On that same street you’re just as likely to be invited to lead an impromptu conversation in English.

My conversations with “the locals” have been as different as one with a Polish pediatrician in Sydney’s botanical garden and one with a Sardinian restaurant owner in a busy Copenhagen traffic circle. The takeaway is that people are the same the world over, with the same aspirations for themselves and their children.

Shortly after graduation I spent a year in Seoul, South Korea, courtesy of my local draft board. On my first visit to a middle class Korean home, my hostess served a delicious Chinese dinner. When I commented on the wonderful meal, she explained, “I just ordered out from the Chinese restaurant.” What a great way to find out that we are all a lot alike!

As we were leaving Finland one summer, our Dutch tour guide warned us that the Russian people were terrible. Wrong! St. Petersburg was the highlight of the trip, and the dour Russians he’d predicted we’d run into never materialized. In fact, my encounter with a group of young people in a McDonald’s on the Nevsky Prospect was delightful. They wanted to know about college in the United States. I hope they recall the exchange as fondly as I do.

While I was planning a trip to southern Africa, an acquaintance growled, “Why would you go there?” His attitude was racist. What I gained in Cape Town, standing before Nelson Mandela’s cell under the tutelage of a former prisoner of apartheid, was a lesson in how those same racist attitudes came crashing down in his country. The South Africans seem to have mastered the forgiveness thing.

The people who can afford to, but have never even left their home state, amaze me. Their curiosity doesn’t extend to the other side of the hill. They seem content in their own little world, indifferent to the larger one.

I say to them: The world is one big classroom. Enroll today.