Connecting Teachers and Students to the World

Travel has the potential to transform one's understanding of the world. For more than ten years, Primary Source has brought teachers on study tours to China, where they have developed an appreciation for the country's modern life and ancient history. As the organization has grown, opportunities to connect educators to people and cultures throughout the world have also expanded. In 2007, teachers traveled with Primary Source to China, Japan, and Ghana, and explored African-American history in New England and New York. One journey, the City and Village in Modern China tour, illustrates the profound impact of educational travel.

The City and Village tour, led by Primary Source Maine Director Ryan Bradeen, explored the wide disparities in levels of education, economic development, and opportunity between urban and rural China. These disparities, as the nineteen teachers on the tour discovered, are at the root of many contemporary struggles within the country including rural migration, environmental degradation, and social unrest.

In addition to visiting the economic and political powerhouses of Shanghai and Beijing, teachers lived for four days in the Huang Village of Anhui Province. Huang Village is known internationally as the home of the Peabody Essex Museum's Yin Yu Tang house. The group experienced this village's distinctive culture by living in rural guesthouses with humble facilities, exploring in and around the village, and working in the fields of local farmers.