Education Abroad Helps, Not Harms, American Students

To the editors:



Mark Adomanis’ comment, “Foreign Affairs” (Apr. 3), was alarming and contradictory on its own terms. Adomanis contends that “the world is too competitive a place to have students wasting a quarter of their college years” on study abroad. But given that global competition, don’t internationally-educated Americans more easily compete for foreign contracts and visitors? At a time when misperceptions of the United States abound, won’t international friendships and human understanding better position our country to triumph in ongoing ideological battles? Most importantly, might grappling with the human challenges other societies face spur young Americans to examine ourselves and our own society? In my experience, as a student abroad and a government analyst, the answer is yes.

In the midst of his diatribe against international and interdisciplinary studies, Adomanis manages to advise students to “take a course in ancient Greece, read Plato, or learn a foreign language.” Given Adomanis’ concern with international competitiveness, one wonders why he would so shackle those language students by gutting study abroad. I remember an Arabic course taught by Harvard’s William Granara as one of the best I ever took, but surely Adomanis recognizes the incomparable advantage of studying modern languages in their natural context. Immersed students not only acquire vocabulary and syntax more rapidly, they spark human curiosity, exchange, and understanding with people previously ignored, and that is precisely the purpose of education.

Study abroad can be improved by more integration with host schools, home-stays, and increased funding. Such expansion and improvement, not the degradation of international education, is precisely what American education and competitiveness demand.



H. CLAY PELL ’05

Providence, R.I.

April 4, 2006