Master of the wry understatement, Joshua Emmott (history department) notes that trying to understand people and the way they live and think is a real advantage as you try to learn history. An inveterate traveler himself, Joshua has taken students to India over one March break in the past, and to Egypt during another.
This year, Joshua, who teaches History of the Middle East and Globalization and Islam, among other courses, inaugurates a trip to Jordan. Eight students are joining him and will do far more than visit the sights.
“If you envision a certain content area in your course, and not only physically going to the place you are studying, but interacting with the people living there, in a 24/7 context, that’s what this trip is doing,” Joshua says.
The trip that inspired Joshua’s venture with students into Jordan was one he took in March 2016. He’d been enticed to give the trip a try because of its label: experiential education—a familiar bit of contemporary jargon that could use some definition, he thought. Good idea to see what that’s like. Organized for educators by Where There Be Dragons (wheretherebedragons.com), the format and activities enabled adults to engage with the issues and the people living in the region, in hands-on ways. “Dragons” describes itself as “a community of bold educators and intrepid adventurers.” The firm’s goal is to frame up opportunities for travelers to build relationships that foster empathy and understanding across cultures. Typically, Dragons offers programs for summers, semesters, or gap years. Their programs take place in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America: Senegal, Laos, Bolivia, Rwanda, Thailand, and Nicaragua, among others.
Midway through his own experience, Joshua was struck with how a trip that succeeded at immersing kids in this kind of on-the-ground experience would be especially valuable for students in his Globalization and Islam course. “The Middle East is less accessible to our students than, for instance, Europe or South America. It’s opaque: the language, the religion, the customs,” Joshua says.
Based on the components of Dragons’ program for educators, and with the help of the firm, Joshua organized a trip and program that would replicate his own trip, within the time frame of a two-week March break. “This experience will locate students right in the middle of what we’re trying to understand,” Joshua believes.
Before they go, students accompanying Joshua will have studied international economics and the World Bank; resources and trade; why some nations have been economically successful since World War II and why some developing nations struggle. They will have launched into Jordan specifically: its history, economic development, and the impact of the refugee crisis on the country, among other issues. They plan to have conversations in Milton, by Skype, with some of the refugee organizations they will visit once they’re in Jordan. At home, Joshua will have raised some of the same questions for his students that focused the activities of his own trip:
- What does it mean to be a Muslim in a modern Muslim society like Jordan?
- How is Islam actually practiced, compared with what you read about it in books?
- How do you live in a country with depleted water resources and massive unemployment?
- How is the refugee problem affecting Jordan?
- How does tourism affect conservative, traditional cultures?
The group begins their visit in Madaba (the home of Moses), then spends a number of days in Jordan’s capital, Amman. In a typical day, they might begin by visiting UN and NGO offices, talking with people who are shaping or implementing government policy, as well as people who are working in the refugee camps. After lunch and conversation, they then meet with refugees and discuss with them how policy initiatives show up in their experiences of social services, or in the employment or education sectors. To close the circle, students revisit the UN or NGO folks to discuss what they’ve heard from those who are meant to benefit from certain policies and programs.
After time in Amman, students head south to Petra—an ancient city famous for structures carved into red rock, and the skill of the Arab Nabataeans in creating water collecting and conduit methods (circa 312 BC). Petra is Jordan’s most-visited tourist attraction; it’s an ideal city and region for exploring the tensions between tradition and modernity.
“People who live and work in Petra,” according to Joshua, “are in the most conservative part of Jordan, which is one of the most conservative countries in the Middle East, probably after Saudi Arabia. In Jordan, most women don’t drive; levels of education for women are lower; numbers of women in the workplace are lower than in Lebanon or Turkey; and there, they still have honor killings.”
Members of Joshua’s educators group went to some of the villages where the Petra tour guides live. “You don’t see many women in these villages, because they all essentially live inside,” Joshua says. His travel colleagues were able to talk with the guides about the apparent stresses between their world after work, and their world during the day. Their livelihood depends on mingling with women, and women tourists freely lead lives that would be impossible for their own wives. How do you bridge those worlds?
The educators also went to live in home stays with Petra area residents for several days, as will Joshua and the Milton students. The trip includes daily training in Arabic. Every morning, each person in the group has a different role. With the limited words and phrases they’re able to learn, travelers are expected to fulfill that role—for instance, making lunch reservations at a restaurant, or purchasing water and lunch for everyone going on a daylong trip into the desert.
The trip’s underlying theory is to reverse the typical power dynamics: As a traveler, you have an objective, you have the tools, and you need to follow through on your responsibility. Afterward, you discuss how you think it went, and what you might change to improve the interaction, next time you go through it.
One novel thing about this trip, Joshua says, is that the students will mostly meet people their same age. At night they’ll have lots of social things to do—like going to cafés in Amman where young people hang out. They’ll try out a locally popular form of Arab dancing, called Dabke, and hear the music that young people are listening to in Jordan.
Joshua may be hopeful that this trip, long-planned, will be transformative. The full immersion into Jordan will change the dynamics of his course, at a minimum. Consistent with his style, however, all Joshua is willing to say is, “It will be interesting to hear what all their perspectives are, once they return.”
by Cathleen Everett