Cultural Exchanges Offer Unique International Opportunities for Students

December 12, 2011

The world’s population recently passed more than 7 billion people, an incredible number to fathom. Many people still barely meet anyone outside of a small circle of family and friends, while even more never venture beyond the culture in which they were raised. The intial cultural divide was one of the first things students noticed during the Tallwood High School International Exchange Forum in early November, according to The Virginian-Pilot.

Located in Virginia Beach, Virginia, Tallwood High had no particular intention to serve as a cultural exchange organization when the semester started. The forum actually sprang from a chance meeting between three young high school girls: 17-year-olds Nahdlatur Rosyidah and Muthia Riziany and 16-year-old Illor Sahor.

Nahdlatur and Muthia were both visiting from Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, on an exchange program through the school’s Global Studies Academy. The pair were pleasantly surprised by how friendly and enthusiastic their American neighbors proved to be, particularly upon seeing the communal festivities surrounding Halloween. The girls encountered another surprise at Tallwood High in Illor, who was visiting from Israel. Neither Nahdlatur nor Muthia had ever met a Jew before in their home country and Illor, despite living in the Middle East, had never actually met a Muslim.

Gayle Hartigan, one of the teachers at the school, saw the first exchange between these students from dramatically different, and somewhat isolated, cultures and realized the visit represented a perfect opportunity to explore their different cultures.

Hartigan organized a forum where each of the students and another to represent the other major Middle Eastern religion - Christianity - spoke about their cultures, the meaning of different traditions and the importance of appreciating different view points.

“You learn that we’re all the same,” one junior in the Global Studies Academy, Miles Boomer, told the Pilot. “We [all] just like to have fun.”

Cultural exchange programs serve as an important means of introducing people around the world to ideas they might not normally be exposed to. Many barriers have begun to fall between people around the world, with near-instantaneous communication allowing people on opposite sides of the world to meaningfully interact. However, the case of Illor, Nahdlatur and Muthia illustrates how not all of these barriers are gone. Programs that can encourage people to appreciate and understand distinct cultures will play a key role in creating productive dialogue across the world.