FARMINGTON – When Mt. Blue Middle School eighth-grader Amanda Hall declared that frogs’ legs taste just like chicken, she spoke from experience.
Hall had just returned from a weeklong trip to Europe, where, along with eighth-grader Harris Roberts and about 70 other students from across the United States, she took part in a variety of cultural experiences including eating frogs’ legs and escargots in Paris, learning how Belgian chocolate is made, and attending a rock musical in London.
The students visited London, Brussels and Paris during an international summit hosted by People to People, a foundation started by President Eisenhower. The group aims to “take everyday citizens (and) bring them together to meet and exchange ideas and see they are more alike than different,” said Susannah Cornelius, the program’s director of admissions.
Eisenhower “wanted his legacy to be one of peace, not war,” Cornelius said. The students who are invited to participate in the summit are “the future leaders of the world,” said Cornelius, and have to be both at the tops of their classes and nominated by educators to take part in the educational summits.
Diverse experience
The students’ forays into international cuisine and culture took place between lectures by British and European Union Parliament members, and organized political debates with European students. Aside from shopping for chocolate and seeing paintings and sculpture in the Louvre, they visited Runnymede in England to see the original signed Magna Carta, went to the Breendonk Concentration Camp in Belgium to learn about the horrors of war, and viewed the inside of the European Parliament building in Brussels.
Cornelius said one of the summit’s aims is to expose students to “other ideas,” and show them that there is “more to the world than just the 10 miles around them.”
“Whether you’re in Pakistan, Maine or the U.K., we all share so many common values,” she said.
Both students said they were surprised to learn about some of the differences and similarities between life in Europe and the United States. Sometimes, Hall said, Britain seemed just like the United States. “You’d see billboards and skyscrapers and think, oh wow, it’s just like home. And then see all these old buildings.”
The two were both surprised by their experience in the Belgian concentration camp, where, to give them perspective on what life was like for inmates during World War II, employees “yelled at us in German a lot,” said Roberts, and packed them into tiny cells. “Fire codes definitely did not exist,” he said.
Both Hall and Roberts were impressed with most aspects of the British school system, although they found it somewhat restrictive. “You choose your career path earlier” in Britain than in the United States, said Hall. “When they’re 14 they start to take fewer classes. So if they decide they want to do something entirely different, it’s very difficult.”
Roberts said his perspective on American government, as well as European governments, changed while at the summit. “You can see how this government has been evolving for thousands of years,” he said, explaining that the first American leaders built their government around European principles.
Visiting political institutions and learning about other nationalities’ views gave them “a wider scope,” said Hall.
Roberts added that although students can gain an international perspective from reading articles on the Internet, reading “doesn’t compare to going to the E.U. and listening to people talk.”
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