The language of redemption ...plays a prominent role as informants perform their assumptions with regard to The Nature of Innate Human Nature. In fact, the industry's raison d'etre is itself redemptive in nature, in the sense that it aims to "make a difference . . . [to make] changes in the world" (Z, 1-27). This being the case, human nature must be assumed to be "mutable" or "educable" — that is, "redeemable" from ignorance and unknowing. Phrases used consistently and frequently include changing lives, enhancing understanding, making a positive impact, and changing the world. More unique but in the same vein are those informants who said, for example : "We help realize dreams . . . and ignite the kids' interest in learning . . . we also develop teachers to . . . travel with us, then they become high!" (B, 2-various); "Teachers come back and say to us that their kids learned more the 10 days we were in Europe than I managed to teach them over the last year of school" (C, 1-5); "Each of these programs are little contributions to making people understand each other better, to overcome ethnocentricity" (C, 1-14); "I . . . contribute to that young person's future" (L, 1-31); "I'm most proud of the kids when they come back and tell you how [the trip] changed something for them, how it opened their eyes . . . it gets them to look at life in a different way" (P, 1-4); "The kids turn into a whole new person" (R, 1-6).

Additional and compelling evidence of this "mutability" motif — more specifically, of the possibility that one may learn and grow and thus change for the better (or even for the worse) — is bountiful; it is an ever-flowing stream that winds its way throughout transcripts and documents alike, including performances gleaned from various companies' General Catalogue statements:

The most important ingredient [in your tour's success] is your belief in the educational benefit of travel for your students . . . above all, we are an educational travel organization (ACIS, 1997, 5, 7).

Our student participants are our motivational force . . . we love to see the sparkle of discovery and appreciation in the eyes of our young travelers — it is our reward, our reason to exist and our goal (CHA, 1998, 5).

We believe that every student should have the opportunity to broaden personal and academic horizons through international travel (EF, 1998, 3).

Educators . . . find immeasurable value in . . . enhancing their students' understanding of course material, while broadening their personal perspectives and enriching their lives (NETC, 1998, 3).

Travel by the young (of all ages) to foreign destinations is an education in itself, and serves the cause of international understanding between peoples (passports, 1997, ii).

We are dedicated to building bridges of understanding between the USA and other nations of the world through travel programs that allow participants to understand and experience firsthand the cultural diversity of the "Global Village" that we all inhabit (Voyageur, 1998, 96).

But as poetic as these statements might be, perhaps no better description of "mutability" exists than in the following story:

A moment I'll always remember is when about 10 years ago I was leading a group consisting of high school age kids and I was on a vaporetto in Venice next to one of these All-American 16-year-old boys . . . .I took a quick look at him as his voice broke . . . and I was noticing that there were tears running from his eyes and he said "This place is just unbelievable and I want more than anything in the world to be able to bring my Mom here to see this. And I knew that at that moment, something clicked in him . . . that had he never been able to leave Seattle to actually be in Venice . . . it may not have had the same impact on him . . . .the fact that he was actually there that that effect on him, and his world was no doubt never the same after that.

Certainly, this perception of human nature as being "mutable" or "teachable" is directly traceable to the industry's founding. It will be remembered that "student" travel as a distinct industry "is traceable to the Mormons [whose] missionary zeal required their young to travel overseas for mission work" and who eventually "turned their experience with missionary work into a company called FSL, in the early sixties." Also, the company known as AIFS, founded in 1964, made its mark in "campus programs" and "hit upon the idea of teachers as group organizers" (Z, 1-15). Thus, the assumption of "human nature" as being "mutable" may be described as the proverbial "ground zero" in terms of assumptions held in common across the industry. However, according to one informant, the ALSG culture put a slightly different spin on this notion, and hence upon the concept of mutability, as perceived by this industry's members:

ALSG shifted the focus . . . to culture in a broader sense . . . it was a very contemporary shift, very 60s. Take a theme and learn from it. Very much a part of the "discover yourself" inward-looking kind of universal cultural pattern that the 60s . . . represent. In short, ALSG stood for the romance of travel, the romance of learning. In doing this, in effecting this cultural shift, as it were . . . ALSG [created] this core idea, the discovery of "foreign cultures" through travel.

This notion of a "baptism" (as it were) into a "new world" resulting in self-discovery would have been unique to the ALSG culture; moreover, this language is still relevant to (and is reflected in the performances of) informants' perceptions of human nature today. Thus, it may be argued that ALSG's "version" of the mutability of human nature — "redemption" of self through education, as it were — undergirds contemporary assumptions.

Another very interesting incarnation of the assumption that human nature is "mutable" is reflected in informants' stories about their own "baptism" or initiation into the "family of believers" (e.g. the industry). To a person, informants described their initial "ignorance" of the industry, and explained how their association with it resulted from, as one informant put it, "a totally serendipitous falling-into" (L, 1-4):

I had . . . plans to be a teacher; however, during the summer of 1974, the founder and owner of [Company Foxtrot] offered me a job. And I thought, "Why not? I'll try it for a semester" and that semester is still going on 23 years later!

In 1983 I got out of Berklee College of Music, and a former girlfriend worked for Gil . . . [so I went to work for] Long View Farm [recording studio] . . . [later on], Gil said . . . why don't you come in and negotiate airline contracts for ALSG? So I started doing that . . . and then one thing led to another and I went full time with ALSG, and that's how I got started.

About 11 years now I've been in this business and like most of the people . . . I fell into it. Really. From a business point of view, so many of the [industry's executives] were never trained in travel in any way, shape or form and kind of fell into it, and I as well just fell into it.

I got into the travel business by a fluke.

Indeed, one informant observed,

[Many] companies . . . are improvisational because none of those people has a business school background. They founded the companies with their heart and their kidneys, and that's . . . how they run it . . . .So it starts as a kind of gospel-rally . . . like ALSG did.

Of special interest are stories the historical informants tell about their own "redemption."

The original recruits were getting in on the ground floor of an industry [but] . . . there was no idea that anyone was a professional, let alone a marketer or salesman. God forbid! All of us were graduate students in the very early days. Some are still graduate students nearly 30 years later, if you consider the fact that they gave up seeking their degrees and followed the Pied Pipership of Gil Markle . . . .And this travel enterprise, this ALSG, was only supposed to be a diversion until we all settled down as professors. Well, you can see what happened to that notion! . . . But that's how I got into it, and learned something about business, as we all did by doing it . . . .[and] since we were entering at the ground level of what was to prove a very high growth industry . . . our business bloomed and blossomed and very quickly took on a life of its own to the extent that we quickly found it to be a lot more exciting and challenging and stimulating and indeed more of a teaching venue for us than our originally-intended work as professors.

I was working as a stockbroker and bartender while attending Holy Cross College, and I happened to be . . . talking about Saturn Airways' stock and up walks this person who turned out to be Gil who said, "I flew on that airline last summer!" This was in the fall of 1967 . . . .Then in April of 1969 Gil called me and asked me to come aboard and to run [his travel] company because it had grown so much . . . I'd never even been to Europe and here I was . . . hired as managing director of ALSG.

Most striking of these "redemption" stories, however, may be Markle's own:

I did it [ALSG] because it was there. There was no prior intellectual commitment to something called "educational travel" or anything like that . . . . It was a time when Timothy Leary, this brilliant Harvard professor, invited a whole generation to . . . tune in, turn on, and drop out. Our way of dropping out was in a sense this travel agency, this creation of a reality we called "educational travel" but which was no more than a lark, than a way . . . to put raw materials at our . . . disposal into some kind of enterprise. . . . Anyway, this is the situation in which ALSG was conceived . . . and what we did, what ALSG did, was put the best spin on what was already happening [at the other companies in existence] . . . . It was logical to capitalize on the academic origins. Ted and I were both Ph.D.'s [and] the others were in various graduate programs, mostly in philosophy, so that is where ALSG focused attention . . . . So here we were, all these young men with useless degrees ending up in a travel agency and saying we were the "educator's choice" — that made it real, and it sounded plausible, still. The fact is that . . . ALSG's tours were no different than anyone else's in the beginning; we just said they were. So as I said, the reality was already there, we just put a spin on it. But then, we had to believe our own spin, of course, and to a large extent, that dictated where we went from there. [Our overseas campuses, for example] were part of the academic gig, part of the fantasy, even the romance if you will. Part of the frame . . . . It was a style, a mode of presentation (emphases added).

In sum, the root metaphor is enacted by and reflected in the informants' use of the "language of redemption" in describing their collective assumption that human nature is basically "mutable' — and the assumption of mutability, present from the industry's beginnings, was "spun" by ALSG/Markle as a self-redemption through cultural awareness. Indeed, these performances recall Underhill, who wrote in Mysticism:

the self, abruptly made aware of Reality, comes forth from the cave of illusion . . . and feels in her inmost part a new presence, a new consciousness — it were hardly an exaggeration to say a new Person (Underhill, quoted in Gaskell, 1981, 147).

All dissertation material copyright © Linda Gayle Lyle, 1998. All rights reserved.