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I recently saw an item in my newfeed about The American Exchange Project:
There was some positive feedback in the news article I read. I found it a bit surprising just how much the rural/urban divide has grown. I've often lived between the two areas with my schools often having kids living in high density housing along with kids raising barn animals. My parents preferred living rurally, but still had to live close to cities to find jobs.
I've been on two exchange programs myself. One as a middle/high schooler going to Europe with Student Ambassadors (a now dead org). And the second as more of a work exchange trip going to the company's India office. There is something undeniably effective about just having very different people sit down and talk/interact with each other in a non-violent setting. Not that I really disliked either set of people before visiting them, but I felt I definitely understood them better afterwards. There are coincidences of living, and the things you see living in an area. They just sorta seep into your conscious. My young middle school self noticed that Europe generally did not give a crap about topless women. Tits galore on billboards and beaches in Spain. Europe was also pretty open with alcohol, and the 15 year old in the German family I stayed with openly told her parents about the drinking party she was going to. They had to remind her that I wasn't allowed to go, and American drinking ages had to be explained. Bunch of things I noticed in India as well, main one was just the sheer volume of people.
Had a shower thought today about how some people (like Joe Rogan) thought Covid would bring us closer together as we worked to solve and fight a collective problems. I think we maybe mostly agree that did not happen. I'm starting to think that covid was the opposite kind of problem we need. To get that kind of problem solving, humanity coming together juice, I think more people need to be offline, meeting in person, and ignoring things happening too far away from them.
Staring at the sun today.Watching the eclipse today, reminded me about solar flares. I'd predict that a widespread solar flare that knocked out communication networks would probably leave us all a little happier than Covid. It would probably be very bad for some people, but we'd know less about those people.I hate the political angle on this. It feels leftist to me that “if we just had more schools/spent more money” we would not have “maga/disinformation problem” instead of most of things being fundamental disagreements.
That being said America is a vast country and a lot of Americans would benefit from getting to see more of it.
One of my own personal favorite trips was touring the gulf which has many unique places around it. It helped I had friends to see. But you get going thru their everything from old south (Pensacola for me), New Orleans it’s own animal, and Houston/small Texas towns to see a whole lot of culture and many different foods.
There are no doubt similar tours to be done that can take a couple weeks and involve 18 hrs or so of driving.
Agree that more Americans should see more of America. Pretty cool place. I feel like I've done most of my traveling in the last decade just attending weddings. My wife and I both have a lot of cousins. I did more travelling in college and just after college as part of an obscure rec-level sport club (underwater hockey, check it out and play it, my endorsement is worth op security concerns)
I am not feeling that this needs a political dimension. I think in general there are two axis of negotiation on any topic. One is the object level disagreement. And the other is a more nebulous social standing / social cohesion.
Take a simple example of where you want to go eat for dinner with a group of people. The object level concern is "what do I want to eat". If you are with people you care about and interact with regularly like your family, then you are definitely willing to go eat somewhere you don't like just to keep another person in that group happy, or make it clear that you might get later leverage on other things. Or you just love them and you want to make sure that they are happy.
Imagine you are instead going out with random strangers. They will eat at different tables, and you won't even know who they are. The nebulous social standing dimension / social cohesion negotiation space gets entirely erased. You have no reason except to advocate where you want to eat. And any compromise is a pure loss.
I think the bifurcation of America into rural vs urban has really destroyed the nebulous social dimension negotiating space. No one on either side is willing to compromise because its a pure loss for them and everyone they know. But if you stick them face to face with each other and get them to talk about politics you kind of reintroduce that nebulous social dimension.
Politics needs some grease to work. That grease is often the nebulous social dimension. Congress itself seems to partly work on these informal social dimensions. Politicians that only went after the objective political issues like Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders were semi-pariahs within congress. They often weren't useful in making deals, because they may as well have been robots.
What this exchange program does, what all exchange programs do is add some negotiating space.
When I went to India, I ended up liking my Indian coworkers better. It meant when it came time to schedule meetings that meant me waking up an hour earlier, I wasn't as annoyed with them. Because I knew it often meant staying an extra two hours for them. There were a bunch of minor effects like that. It added up to me being happier / better at interacting with India team members.
The student exchange program I went on middle school is now dead. Its an objectively bad way to spend money. Its basically subsidizing vacations for less well off PMC children that can figure out the hoops that need to be jumped through to participate. I think this American Exchange program might end up going the same way.
Buying the grease through an exchange program just seems way too expensive. Having the grease is pretty important though. They should probably just pay some popular youtubers or ticktockers to do lifestyle viewpoint videos on rural/urban people. Idk, I'm not smart enough to figure out an alternative.
I don’t see why it has to be through schools particularly though. The general idea is good, traveling to places unlike the places you usually go (and that aren’t built to cater to people like you, aka tourist destinations) definitely grows you as a person. But to me, schools are already doing way more than they can possibly do: welfare office, therapy, socialization, and so on. This leaves too little time for the purpose of educating the children to know the basics of literacy, numeracy, and science literacy that they absolutely need. If the kids were doing well in those areas as compared to international standards, we could have the conversation about trying to do other things.
I don't know how highschools are now, but a decade ago when I was a college-bound high school senior the last semester was basically a joke. As long as you didn't fail anything too badly highschool had ceased to matter. GPA had ceased to matter. Even the most diligent students got caught up in the general mood of laziness. A few weeks taken out of this last semester would probably have no negative impact on education.
But I ultimately agree that it doesn't need to be handled through schools. I think this effort is private, and that's how I'd prefer it stay.
I’ll agree that the last semester of high school is coasting, and that the program is only a week or two. But we’re also considering the money factor which can add up quickly and take money from other important programs and issues. A room, food, transportation, and materials is probably in the realm of $2000 a kid. If you’re sending more than a couple of kids we’re probably talking about 60,000 a year on the program. Money that could be used for dozens of other programs or materials that could be used to educate kids in skills and knowledge they will need in their future lives.
Which will long term benefit Americans? Kids who understand science and math at high levels, or that they spend a week in a school in a red state (or blue depending on district)? That the majority of kids read on grade level, or that they go on a field trip? A robotics lab or science lab? And this is why I think even if it’s just a week in the last semester, unless it’s completely self funded, it’s really taking a lot of money from other very necessary programs that would benefit every student.
Yes, I agree, as I said in the original post it seems like an objectively bad way to spend money.
I’m glad we agree. My point though is that this is a huge problem with trying to turn schools into one stop shopping for solving everything that affects kids. They’re daycares, cultural centers, therapists, art centers, sports leagues, enrichment activities, and when they can find the time and money, education centers. I don’t think it’s possible to have schools take over everything that other institutions and families drop and still perform their primary function as education simply because everything added takes time, energy and resources away from that purpose. And I think this is also a major factor in teacher burnout. They’re wearing so many hats, many of them contradictory, with little to no support and often forced to deal with serious mental health crises while trying to teach the other kids something.
My sister in law teaches elementary school. She had a kid in her class who was cutting herself as a way to get attention as well as acting out a lot. Because the resources are minimal she had to deal with this, and pretty well beg the school to get the kid more help than she could provide (parents didn’t seem to care). In the meantime, the class could get nothing else done. That’s the result of turning public schools into the Swiss Army Knife of society. Once it does everything, you no longer have time for teaching.
I'd agree with that too. One other problem it causes is that, for kids who drop out of school, they also get cut off from everything else in their community. Really drops an anvil on high school drop outs, who hardly need any other trouble in their lives.
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