Random Walks in the Low Countries

The NS to Amsterdam was filled with young  and old people, couples and friends, stacked high at 7 am on a misty weekend morning.  Muziekfeest of voetbal? I asked the girl across from me.  “De laatste dag van de maand,” she told me, the last day to use summer discount coupons, and everyone was headed to north for a day out.  She showed me her design website and talked me through her landscape photographs.

We didn’t hit track works until den Bosch, where we all exited for the snelbus to Utrecht, spiraling up the stairs with luggage or children in hand.  I was running early, so the delay provided more chance to see the countryside and chat with the seatmates.

 

 

I caught up with reading the weekend papers, the FT questioned the purpose of design museums (but I still like them) and devoted it’s magazine to Parisian foods.  The Shrink and Sage asked whether we should stop moaning  (Okay if it is intermittent, well-founded, and mutually shared with a friend). The NYTimes had the more intriguing question though: Schools should be safe, but learning should be dangerous: Should teachers and curriculums include provocative topics and ideas that students must react to?

It seems like it’s good to be challenged and broadened in a safe space: a bit like having your mind indirectly vaccinated through encounters with subversive literature and experimental theater.  And, if not in the schools, where should children learn how to interpret and respond to the many philosophies and practices that they will encounter later in life?  Home, church, on the street, when-it-happens?

I thought about applying the idea to something more practical: understanding people in other countries.

In the 60’s, we studied cultures in the 60’s: culture and tradition in social studies and language classes.  People from Peru wore embroidered red dresses and wide-brimmed hats; people from Paris ate snails (we made a batch) and rode bicycles (It’s a bit like Life in the UK testing.)  In later decades this gave over to promoting diversity and multiculturalism: study of emerging political and social voices through literature and current events, building awareness of minorities and post-colonial guilt.

But none of it really prepares you for actual encounters with people from another culture. I was fortunate to have been on the Experiment in International Living: a summer in Switzerland at 17, living on a farm. You come to understand how everyday things get done and how people think differently about social and political institutions. Its been true throughout my life since.  The Dutch experiences in World War II are not written in our history books: I needed to talk with people about their grandfather’s stories of hardship and hiding during the Occupation to really understand.

But we can’t send students across the world to experience other cultures.  How can we give them provocative experiences of another culture to react to and learn from?  Back in the day, some people had Pen Pals, overseas friends that they would exchange letters with.  Technology could potentially update the idea: we can give students a telepresence with immersive visual and audio links through Glass and other lifelogging tools.  What if a live hour of touring home or community, going shopping, or hanging out with friends could be made available, shared, discussed and compared?

The key to understanding lies in the experience of ordinary life for an individual person today; we can use our tools to do this better than when I was growing up.

The plane was winging into Southampton by noon, I’d planned for a walk along the Thames if the day turned sunny.  It was, and I did: relaxed conversations beneath the willows, a pint of ale, watching autumn arriving.