Why does the president of Harvard take his children to a strange place every year?

The sentence "I am not the headmistress of Harvard, but the headmistress of Harvard" reminds people of Drew Foster, the only headmistress of Harvard in more than 300 years. Today, the headmaster gave a speech at Harvard. She used her personal experience to tell us why we must go out and see the world.

Go to a strange place every year. -this is a requirement for yourself and a plan.

This habit seems to have existed since childhood and has continued until now. To this day, I take my children to a strange place every year.

For me, learning to travel has become a tradition, and its significance lies in my own growth.

1) Travel makes us really know the world.

The world is getting smaller and smaller, and we are dealing with strangers almost every day. We are all familiar with all kinds of firsts.

The world children live in has become a family. Technology blurs our nationality, makes communication faster, and forces us to adapt to various changeable social environments.

Therefore, children's future must be working and living with people from different countries and different cultural backgrounds, so understanding the whole world has become a compulsory course for them.

Not long ago, among the four skills of 2 1 century talents just promulgated by the "American New Labor Skills Committee" composed of education and business leaders, "knowing the whole world" was listed as the first standard.

There are so many contents in the world that we need to be familiar with and explore, which are definitely not limited to learning other countries' languages. Language is just a tool, more important than it is to learn strange culture and history, and the humanities and life of other countries.

So, I tasted the delicacies of other countries with my children; Familiar with traffic routes and public signs; Appreciate different forms of architecture; Experience different kinds of religious phenomena; Experience getting along with strangers; Adapt to various climatic conditions; Even different smells in the air.

When you go to a strange place, you will always hear children say such things. This is different from ours. Just like this, you will always compare what is good and what is not.

In this comparison, we have broadened our horizons, expanded our pores and broadened our minds.

When we see a bigger world, we can be more tolerant and open-minded. In fact, accepting and respecting each other's differences has become the focus of "understanding the world".

2) How should we travel?

There are many ways to learn about the world. Chatting with others through books and video materials can help us learn about the world, but none is more important than immersion learning.

The ancients said: Reading thousands of books is not as good as reading Wan Li Road, and reading Wan Li Road is not as good as reading countless people. And our consistent practice is "read thousands of books before Wan Li Road, read countless people on Wan Li Road, and think back after Wan Li Road."

Every time we go to a strange country, we will have a week-long training with our children, including language, culture, customs, photography skills and so on.

I was deeply impressed that the children started reading related books one month before going to Italy, and gained a basic understanding of the Renaissance during the training process. They also shared the mystery of the Louvre and the legend of Napoleon with the children.

Simple language training allows children to simply go through customs and find their own direction, while local bus administrative signs weaken their strangeness.

After arriving in a strange country, children began to verify whether the information they had learned before was consistent with everything in front of them, began to walk in strange cities with familiar tools, began to collide and communicate with local people and things, and began to need local people's help to complete the tasks we planned in advance.

In a strange city, you must integrate into their real society.

I still remember that they used the subway bus for free in Munich; When they changed trains from Berlin to Cologne Railway Station, they were busy and orderly. The calligraphy of Maria Square attracted foreigners' onlookers; Run between the fountains in Rome to complete the urban task; Playing football with foreign children on the lawn in Fei Sen.

Only by giving them full and free contact with this society, fully mobilizing their communication skills and strengthening teamwork in the process of communication can they really improve themselves.

Children need to get in touch with the local people. More importantly, they should live in the local way, use their transportation and visit the museums they often go to, not just browse there, but stay there and enjoy it seriously.

Just like we stayed in the Louvre for three days, how free we are compared with the photo work of the "Three Treasures of the Louvre" by the tour group. In the evening, we play games on the lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower. After seeing the lights of this magnificent iron building at night, we staggered onto the subway and sat in a youth hostel in Paris under the night lights.

With excitement and fatigue, with harvest and growth, we have completed the journey, but this is not the end. We left there, but we also brought back the idea of a strange country.

In addition to the memories left in our minds, we also have diaries, postcards, photos and various types of group discussions, which will make the harvest of one journey longer and heavier until the next one starts again.

3) "Know yourself and the world"

Every time I go to a strange city or country, the way of traveling from study to growth can effectively help children establish their own thinking patterns in their brains.

They know which organizations need help in a strange place, and they know how to use their own resources to complete the task. When a person is in a strange environment, his advantages and disadvantages will be extremely clear, which undoubtedly gives us an opportunity to know ourselves.

Not only children, when my children and I face such strange shocks, I grow up every time and see myself more clearly.

When children grow up and face unfamiliar environments again and again, the unfamiliar environments they will face when they grow up will not make him afraid, because he already has his own model.

Many people will say that it is too young for children to go abroad at the age of seven or eight. What can they remember? Not to mention children. They don't know anything.

In fact, this is our misunderstanding of children. Usually, we judge whether a person has gained or not by his expression or his change.

But for a child who is growing up physically and mentally, their expressive ability is not enough for them to express their gains clearly and effectively and reflect their growth.

So the adults arbitrarily said that they were too young to be useful to them and could not remember them in the future. In fact, perhaps for a four-or five-year-old child, it will not be remembered until he is in his teens, but it is absolutely significant for his growth in the next year.

Maybe we don't have to take them abroad, but we often see, hear and feel the same and different in different environments, can adapt to various means of transportation, and can summon up the courage to listen, see and feel in strange and noisy crowds, which is a kind of growth in itself.

The breadth of a person's life determines his Excellence.

A journey from childhood is the starting point to expand the breadth of life. I like that sentence:

Life is not a destination, but a journey.

Life is not an end, but a journey.