Will Smith, in a recent interview with Beats 1, talked about his first new music in a decade, his failure with After Earth, and the possibility of there being a third Bad Boys movie. Despite these fun topics, he said something innocuous which caught my attention the most. Smith said, "I think travelling is, you know, one of the most important things to open and expand your mind." He's far from the only one to have this fairly common opinion. When I did a Google search on "the importance of travel," an abundance of results came up of people advocating it. Even Mark Twain once called travel "fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness".
In fact, when I did a google search for the opposite idea, "Travel isn't important," only one article seemed to hold negative opinions about travel. But that article has a lot of it absolutely right. It's time we stop saying that travel is important. As that article points out, travel is a privilege only enjoyed by those who can afford it. Personally, I don't like the word privilege anymore; overuse has deprived the word of much of its meaning and changed the connotation of what little remains. So let's not worry about whether travel is a right or a privilege, a soul-changing experience or just fun. Instead, let's look at how many people travel.
Around 64% do not have a passport and thus, with some exceptions, probably haven't traveled outside the country. It seems strange to call something important that less than half of Americans have experienced. If we want to focus solely on students, we can take a look at study abroad. Ithaca College's website calls Study Abroad "increasingly important" to develop "international experience and intercultural competence." Meanwhile, NAFSA says that only 1% of enrolled undergraduates are studying abroad, and under 10% of all graduates ever have. We shouldn't stress something as being super important when comparatively few people get to experience it. That's almost elitist.
For those that have studied abroad: great! I hope it was fun. I'm not saying that studying abroad or travel in general is bad. My issue is when people make it out to be necessary to expand your mind or combat prejudice, like Will Smith and Mark Twain above (admittedly not the most conventional of people to group together). Those two things are important, and travel can help with those things, but that doesn't make travel itself important. Syllogistic fallacies, people: I'll be here all week.
Maybe you're too busy to travel. Maybe you don't have the money. Maybe you're scared or otherwise reluctant to leave home. All of that is perfectly fine. People who endorse travel often talk about seeing a new part of the world or their own life in a new light. I'd say you can probably do that in your home town. Walk down a street you haven't before, or go to a natural area you've never explored. Don't have time for that? When you're walking that day, look somewhere you wouldn't ordinarily look. Work from a tiny room that you never leave? Weird, but still doable: try to look at a part of your room you usually don't spend time in. Face literally, physically glued to your computer screen? You may have bigger problems, but you still have an entire internet's worth of information to explore. Plus, there's books. Everyone forgets about books.
There are dozens of methods to see the world in new ways. So stop saying travel is important.
