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The Perils of Teen Travel
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Parents pay big bucks to send their kids on far-flung summer trips. But as Kathleen Kingsbury reports, the reality may involve robbery, sex predators, and even death.
Studying abroad is supposed to be an adventure. It’s also, however, normally supposed to involve some sort of shelter from the elements, be it a far-flung dorm or a homestay with a local family. So when Mary Ellen Kostigen shipped her 16-year-old son, Aaron, off to South Africa to do some college application-boosting community service two years ago, she didn’t bother to ask if he’d have to build his own house.
“My understanding is that they arrived to literally a pile of boards, nails, and straw,” Kostigen recalls. “There was no electricity, no toilet.”
Then Aaron was robbed not once, but three times before he alerted his parents. “He didn’t want to cause trouble, but the [thief] pulled a knife on him and took his iPod and wallet,” his mother says of the third time. “And it still took me about 150 phone calls to get him home.”
“The college student chaperone with them was charging $20 a day to get on the prepaid bus,” says one parent. “He was using the extra cash to buy beer.”
Welcome abroad! This summer, as thousands of American students traverse the globe in pursuit of a wider worldview, some of them will find that their study-abroad programs are remarkably hands-off once they arrive at their destination. And while the vast majority of these kids are in college, some student-travel companies now offer options for kids as young as 11. For such kids, whose sole experience living outside their families' homes has been summer camp, being dropped with few boundaries into a foreign country can be wild.
“Accidents, of course, happen,” says Ellen Bernfield, a Minneapolis mother of three whose eldest daughter, then a high-school junior, went to northern Africa on a community-service trip last August. “What I wasn’t expecting was a 3 a.m. phone call telling me my 16-year-old broke her leg riding a motorcycle in Morocco—she didn’t even have a license in Minnesota.”
Case in point: A group of 17 University of Washington students who traveled to Ghana two years ago had their five-week trip cut a week short when eight participants had to be evacuated on chartered flights from the West African nation after what was thought to be an outbreak of malaria. The same group complained about insufficient food, illness, and irrelevant lectures, charges backed up by an independent report that was completed after their return to Seattle. In the same report, a UW faculty chaperone alleged the tour operator had brainwashed the students and that group meetings eventually resembled lynch mobs.
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Kathleen Kingsbury covers education for The Daily Beast. She also contributes to Time magazine, where she has covered business, health and education since 2005.
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Kathleen Kingsbury covers education for The Daily Beast. She also contributes to Time magazine, where she has covered business, health and education since 2005.
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Kathleen Kingsbury covers education for The Daily Beast. She also contributes to Time magazine, where she has covered business, health and education since 2005.
Solution: Study Abroad in University. Where they have an actual program. And where you're an adult. For best results, go abroad between the junior and senior year when you're less of an idiot and have gotten over the excitement of drinking way too much, but haven't lost the joy of university through constant reminders of how much the economy sucks.
I think you are right, DavidBarron, that should cut down on the disorganization and useless lectures. But I still think that danger and problems are some of the best parts about studying abroad. My experience showed me what life outside of the bubble of federal products regulation and traffic laws is like. You have to be careful and watch out for yourself in a way you don't in the U.S. I think that is huge lesson that is a natural extension of the independence college should teach people.
Excellent advice.
There are very reputable study abroad programs for high school children, but you have to do your research. A great example is Rotary International--a service club composed of local community leaders in each town. I was in a year long, international rotary exchange student program as a Jr. in High School over 30 years ago.. I had to go through an extensive application process and muliple interviews with our local club before they accepted me. My local club "sponsored me" and I was "hosted" by another Rotary Club in the country I traveled to. I stayed with several different families from my host club. My families were trained and thoroughly screened, and I had a member of the local rotary club who served as my "advisor" if I had problems. I got to know all the local rotarians by attending their monthly meetings--if there was any kind of issue, I would have had people I could talk to who would help me. It was the most wonderful experience of my life--better yet, the program has only improved since then. My high school aged son is planning on applying for a rotary exchange for the year after he graduates and before he starts college. We're planning on hosting a rotary international student in our home in the next year!
My trip to England for two years, 12-14, was uneventful compared to this.
My favourite memories were top of the pops, favourite song was bang a gong by trex, and my favourite food was fish cakes.
Those were the exciting events I faced :), besides the plane trip, the train ride, and meeting new people.
I think the incidents described in the article are probably things you would write home about, but normal things like I described, which I think would be more common, would go unnoticed.
It sounds like most of those situations could have been avoided had the kids and parents done proper research on the programs. There's no excuse for sending your kids somewhere without finding reviews of the programs, getting an explanation of the costs and accommodations, the itinerary -- all of it.
I spent my junior year abroad in Paris and in that time traveled to several other countries, but I was 20 at the time. There were emergency protocols and health insurance in place in case something happened to us. I was mature enough to handle the situation when my wallet was stolen in London, or when I was arrested at Stansted airport. It was a university-sponsored program with a reputable company.
Study abroad is pretty benign unless you're completely negligent, as I suspect a lot of those parents were. As for freak accidents, there's no accounting for that, whether you're at home or abroad.
Readers of this article would be better served by learning not about the "extreme dangers" of study abroad programs, but how to prepare their children for an experience of a lifetime and how, as parents, to conduct appropriate due diligence to choose the proper program.
Study abroad changes lives and is perhaps the best, long-lasting tonic for developing leadership skills, maturity, cross-cultural understanding, and critical thinking in young people and adults alike.There is no mention of the wonders, the self-awareness and the life-long friendships that come from such an experience, which leads me to wonder if the author of this article had ever studied abroad herself. Only three sentences at the end of this article discuss the importance of research. The rest is dedicated to the description of isolated incidents which can happen anywhere in the world, including - and perhaps even more likely - in our own backyards.
I am a life-long world traveler, and am eternally grateful to my parents for encouraging my curiosities and independence which set me on my life's path. They cared enough to know where I was going, instilled in me a sense of personal responsibility, and then trusted my readiness to be set free. When the time is right, I intend to prepare my children the to take such opportunities to learn and grow.
I don't really see the point here. Do bad things occasionally happen when parents/students do not choose study abroad programs with solid reputations? Of course. Do students going abroad sometimes get themselves into trouble? Of course. I don't see the exigence of this piece. In a country as culturally and geographically isolated as the US, the stress should be on gaining cultural knowledge from around the globe, not scaring people into thinking that study abroad programs are dangerous and risky. As with any endeavor, there are risks and those need to discussed and proper research needs to be done. Also, there is almost no argument in this story. It's a random collection of misadventures from study abroad programs. Editors do your job by not letting your writers slap together random elements. This is a topic of interest for many, but you do it a disservice with such poor execution.
Coetzee--I agree completely.
This story felt like snippets, not a coherent whole.
Um, I think the main point is that parents should be more diligent in assessing the program in which their child is participating and to investigate inconsistencies or red flags once their child is in the placement.
Another point would be to make sure your child is sufficiently matched, in terms of maturity, with the program requirements.
Yet a third point would be that there is no agency that tracks these programs or the problems of kids in these programs. This is something that we as a country might want to consider implementing as more and more young people participate in these placements.
My nieces did two trips to Mexico through an organization in their church. They worked with children of extreme poverty in Baja. They lived in tents in a desert area and had a blast.They benefited greatly by volunteering and being able to use their Spanish. They were teens but were well supervised and kept very busy during these placements.
My friend's daughter lived in Spain for four months in a Spanish immersion program through her school. She was too immature and the placement was poorly matched (a strict vegetarian placed with a big meat-eating family). Though she stuck it out, her borderline eating disorder became a real issue.
For the most part, it's a highly beneficial thing for kids to go abroad and experience the conditions that our fellow inhabitants of the earth experience. Going hungry and being thirsty are probably good things for most American kids to experience at least once in their lives. They need to know what the majority of humans' lives are like all of the time.
When I said there's no point, I did not say that the article did not make points. I said that there is no point to the article as in there is no need for it - that's what having no exigence means. The author makes points but the problem is that they are all obvious and that it does not engage in a larger conversation regarding this issue. Basically, there is no big study abroad program problem, in fact most are highly beneficial, as the author admits but here is an article concerning study abroad program problems. So then it becomes a list of exceptions to a generally safe and beneficial practice, which is not of great value. It's like when you read stories about over-exercise or being too intellectual -yes one can overdo it and there can be dangers but since the number of people affected is minimal, it is not an issue in our national discourse and no new information is communicated in the piece, there is little value in an article about it.
Life is dangerous.... So you better stay in bed
As someone who has been over seas a great many times on my own (to Sydney), before those holidays I had done a enormous amount of research into my own University's Study Abroad program (when I was attending, that is).
Judging by the cases pointed out in this article, it appears that there was a lack of research and that the programs where many of the problems were experienced, may have had a past history of mismanagement. You need to be knowledgeable about the host country and its university. Send them emails, ring them, and ask for advice -- have a plan.
And know the culture... showing too much "national pride" while over seas during a sensitive time, is quite inconsiderate. You really need to be self aware and disciplined.
The article merely pointed out the dangers of real life, not any unique danger to studying abroad.
Having been on several teen tours your article makes some unseemly generalizations. There are thousands of different teen tours and immersion programs and lumping them into one big group does a disservice. Some are good, some aren't.
I ended up using a referral program to find a reliable program for my children (http://www.ChoiceCamps.com) and have been very happy with the results.
Works both ways. My sister worked on an exchange program in Arizona finding good wholesome home environments for lodging high school aged French students. The students all said they did not smoke on their appications and they all did. One teen was so emotionally disturbed that she was sent home. My sister escorted her to the airport. The girl broke away from my sister and jumped off a balcony. Fortunately her injuries were not severe, but her parents were sent for and they had to personally take their child home. Other nightmares. My friend coached a high school hockey team. They went on a trip to Montreal. The kids jumped curfew and got drunk on the town. And we will never know what happened to that young woman from Alabama on her HS grad trip in Aruba.
I will now convey a good experience. My own daughter studied abroad in London when she was in her junior year of college. However, she was warned by the students who went the year before to choose a family to live with prior to going. She learned that some of these home situations were nightmarish. Some kids got stuck in a home with an out of work barrister who was a drunk and filled all the stereotypes of an Archie Bunker like creep. She found out about a really great couple who had loads of rooms and lots of good food and asked to be placed with them. Her experience was wonderful. But don't take anything for granted.
With all due respect to the writer, this is a poorly edited piece that seems to have been written for nothing more than some low-grade shock value.
A girl breaks her leg, a guy falls down a well, and kids get malaria in west Africa! Holy hell, let's never travel again! Things like that would never happen under the safety blanket that is America.
Furthermore, articles like this one can be written for any activity that involves a level of risk and personal responsibility. Why not write an article about the perils of Cheerleading Camp or the dangers of Boy Scouting...
Bad things will always happen when young people go abroad, but last time I looked, a lot of bad things happen here at home as well.
I disagree. Allowing teens or youngsters to go abroad, where they generally are not under supervision, can be perilous. I certainly would not allow my children to live abroad. They can have those experiences once they are out of high school.
For the record, I lived abroad as an adult, and am married to a foreigner who would say "Over my dead body" before allowing our teens to go to his East European home country unaccompanied.
Huh...........................I would bet you do not have children that you feel the need to protect.
I would encourage parents to become aware of what's going on in the world. Sending a sixteen year old, who's never traveled before to Morocco or South Africa seems pretty daring. I know very experienced travelers who had scary experiences in those countries. Send them to Paris, England, Canada, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, or any number of countries with a reasonable crime rate.
Parents need to wake up. Overseas education is more about alcoholic slacker teachers and sex predators than the Harry Potter Boarding school formal dinners we imagine. American laws do not protect the students and once the catastrophe occurs college admissions counsellors believe the overseas education system rather than the victimized students. Ransoms for transcripts are common place. This is the big secret everyone keeps rather than alert others to the perils abroad. Over my dead body indeed. Stay Home and don't believe the promises, the websites or any of the Hollywood myths. Nurturing in education only happens in America. The wealthy European who is interested in education takes full advantage of what is offered in the USA.
That is absolute nonsense! There are lots of countries that are safe and where international students are treated well. I used to teach at an international language school in Canada - some of the students had studied in America before and told me they preferred Canada. Also, Japan is the safest country in the world by far - have you ever compared crime statistics? Both my brother and my cousin studied over in Japan and had a wonderful time and were treated very well, they didn't have any negative experiences at all. Your answer is typical of an American who has stayed in their country all their life.
Solution: Enlist! Yes, when you go on your foreigh escapade, the natives are often hostile. But you're trained to defend yourself, and waste them, if necessary. George Patton
Yes, enlist...but in the Peace Corps.
Kathleen - Nice job. Now, controlling parents have a new, completely overblown issue to obsess about.
As a seventeen year old European who has lived around the world and gone on several of these travel expeditions this article is in my opinion at least picking the most extreme examples.
Earlier this year I and a group of friends organised a trip to an orphanage in Vietnam and nothing was provided we got the planes, contacted the orphanage and looked for a hotel. Young people won't make stupid mistakes if they're given this responsibility from a young age (to mention the American patriotism).
But accidents do happen, but by throwing young people in the throws of chaos they'll figure out what's safe and what's not themselves.
The same can and does happen to kids at home. Common sense is the only remedy when traveling anywhere whether to the local mall or abroad. Staying in a group; if you are going off alone let your friends know, keep in contact; be wary of strangers; be observant and aware. The same safety precautions parents teach their kids in general apply. Kids abroad should have adequate oversight. And both parents and kids need to investigate and ask more questions before signing on and dishing out money for what may be a less than requiting trip. That said, I spent my sophomore and junior HS years abroad. Yeah, I got into a few jams, alcohol-related mostly taught me some valuable life lessons. But there's no better way to learn about this wide world and to grow up in ways you can't at home. Life becomes an adventure then you chalk it up to experience. The world should be every teen's oyster just be careful how you open it.
As a junior in college who just completed a semester in Sydney, Australia this is feels rather extreme. This author continues to bash some of the most rewarding and challenging programs American universities have to offer. Honestly as an undergraduate you do not walk away with a complete or even worthwhile education if you solely participate in lectures and class work. Honestly how much of the information that you learn is that valuable. College is the time to make mistakes, mature. and grow intellectually. I have yet to hear a horror story like these from the hundreds of kids that I''ve talked to about that went abroad. I doubt this author understands the true meaning of a college education much beyond the paper diploma and GPA.
The real benefits to a college education are the intangibles.
This article is hilarious. Fear mongering, much? I started traveling abroad on my own to Europe when I was 16 - based on this article, it sounds like I should be dead and that I am this rare breed who has managed to survive HORRORS. Please. I went through some legitimate programs and now I'm living on my own abroad this summer as well and I'm alive and well.
What's the key to having a successful time abroad? It's pretty simple - don't be an idiot, be aware of where you are (shockingly, read up on the country, culture, etc.) and have a good head on your shoulders to begin with.
Don't let this silly article scare you off - living abroad is one of the best experiences a teen can have.
" Now, controlling parents have a new, completely overblown issue to obsess about." Dumb remark.
The hostility toward Americans in the last 8 years has escalated to a point where even on the US overseas students websites many students report that while in the UK for example boarding schools request American students use only a Canadian ID on traveling bags. Hiding ones passport under a Canadian cover while traveling is not a good sign lol. Additionally alcoholic teachers, headmasters etc and abuse are not considered behaviors only a hovering parent would recognize lol. In the US these behaviors would get the teacher or administrator tossed out- overseas this behavior is a norm
( especially in the UK). So be aware- you wont find that in the brochures or online lol.
However if you are willing to HIDE your National pride or origin, ignore drunken behavior of teachers and headmistresses, ignore over the line behavior of sexually promiscuous teacher student trysts then by all means enjoy overseas education. To each their own. I would exclude Canadian schools they are excellent in general and welcoming to US Students.And the little game of extra exhorbitant fees for transcript retrieval after you have left the school surfaces at the last moment and can exceed 10k. Who you going to complain to? And do you think the colleges care? As far as they are concerned you owe money to a prestigious institution! So beware! Thank you for an overdue article.
Speaking of dumb remarks: "overseas this behavior is a norm." You've managed to create a behavioral norm for over two hundred countries and 6 billion people in the world and prop up the US as the only bastion of responsible education in the world. Absurd. There are modest dangers in going abroad, although I would rank binge drinking IN US colleges (1500 deaths annually) as more of a threat, just as there are in most endeavors, but there is no need to villanize the whole world. We need to inform students and parents to be careful just as we always have. An article that restates that is just being obvious and redundant and is really not Daily Beast worthy. And please stop laughing at yourself with lol, it's just annoying.
@ Derida - I think your spelling, grammar and syntax rule you out for any sort of observation on education.
You may show yourself out.
Cinghiale.what a rude snob.....
I thought, the biggest danger for students, is getting shot in an American University or High School.
Statistically, haven't more students been shot in the USA at school, than anywhere else in the globe?
Coetxee, Cinghiale and the rest. If you want to pretend the issues I raised never happened so be it. I could care less what you think. However if you think alcoholic teachers are not a serious problem in France and in UK then you are just plain dumb. Do we have issues in the US yes. But we have laws here at least that protect us. Overseas you are in a fix. And the transcript for ransom issue is very very commonplace. I will not remain silent to go along. I know what I am speaking about and so I have chosen to share this with parents contemplating overseas education for their students. Final point about hiding the American flag on luggage and passports- you have got to be kidding- a non issue? By the way Cinghiale and Coetzee do you work for one of those overseas mills you seem pretty angry. Relax with Coetzee who seems to want to control not only what I write but how I feel.
Amen! Finally someone is exposing the dangers and down-sides to these trips!! We just pulled our 17-year old daughter out of Rwanda where she was on a teen education trip through Where There Be Dragons based in Boulder, CO. We trusted the company to provide safety and a planned itinerary for her, but she ended up spending a great deal of time unsupervised and was left to walk alone to and from her home-stay by herself and to figure things out on her own. She didn't feel safe and wanted to come home. The company hasn't even contacted us to make sure she is home or to get any feedback from her regarding what went wrong. They are definitely a company that is more interested in making money than concerned about the kids well-being. She reported that instructors would be available in the morning for 10 minutes and then not be seen all day. Instructors would take local friends out to dinner and use money money intended for the students' meals. Last straw is on my daughters departure, instructor had my daughter pay for instructor's breakfast, pay for instructor's taxi and then wasn't allowed to use instructor's cell phone to call me to say she had arrived at the airport. Instructor told her it was too expensive to use her phone and to find a pay phone. Airport in Kigali didn't have a pay phone my daughter could find. It took 12 hours for someone to call me to say my daughter was on a flight home. Pathetic. Last year, she traveled to Tanzania with Adventures Cross Country (ARCC) and had an amazing experience. Safe, fun, educational - a trip that really changed her life. I still believe that there is great benefit in having your teen do these kinds of trips. It is just CRUCIAL to find the right company with a stong founder/CEO...not someone who talks every opportunity to talk about himself and his travels and his vast knowledge and becomes defensive when confronted about a potential problem while your child is half-way around the globe!
Thank you.
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