My father died in December of 2003.
You might remember him: horn-rimmed glasses, prominent (OK, huge) earlobes, baritone voice and, of course, the bow-tie.
If you remember anything, you remember the bow-tie.
For the first 11 months of Paul Simon’s final year, he spent most of his waking hours peddling what would become his last big idea–to make study abroad the norm and not the exception for America’s college kids.
To him, it was simple. The tragedies of Sept. 11, 2001, showed that Americans needed to learn more about the world around us. And what better way to learn about our neighbors than to pay them a visit or two?
How about 1 million visits per year within a decade?
That is what the bipartisan Commission on the Abraham Lincoln Study Abroad Fellowship Program has recently recommended, giving hope to a lost friend’s last wish. What is needed now is an energetic, grass-roots effort to create the kind of groundswell that will command the attention of college and university presidents, as well as the Congress and White House.
Dad knew that having 584,000 foreign students on our campuses in 2003 was a great thing, but that only 170,000 Americans studying abroad was not good enough. He knew that the world’s military and economic giant should have more than a mere 1 percent of its young people getting to know their neighbors.
That’s right, just 1 percent of our college kids spend either a summer or semester studying abroad. And about two-thirds of them do so in Western Europe.
In the next 50 years, 95 percent of the world’s population growth will occur outside of Western Europe. That’s why Dad wanted his Lincoln Scholars to concentrate on learning about less traditional areas.
There are roughly 2 million American students graduating from college each year. Seeing to it that half of those study abroad might seem like too big an idea to some. But as Dad was fond of saying, “A nation cannot drift into greatness. We must dream and we must be willing to make small sacrifices to achieve those dreams.”
On behalf of that guy with the bow-tie, I ask that you urge your representatives in Congress to support the Abraham Lincoln Study Abroad Fellowship Program. For more information, please visit www.lincolncommission.org.
