David McCullough III believes young people today are growing up in a divided nation, one where youth aren’t able to empathize or see other viewpoints different from their own.
“That’s coming at a detriment both to their own development, but also to the unity of our democracy,” McCullough said.
McCullough is the executive director of the American Exchange Project, a program connecting recent high school graduates from across the country with other students to take part in domestic exchanges.
The one-week trips are free and available to any recent high school graduate. This past summer, AEP piloted the in-person program with students traveling to locations across the U.S., from Palo Alto, California; to the Boston area; to Kilgore, Texas.
“The whole idea is for our American young people to learn a little bit more about their country … and to dive into another culture, another socioeconomic class, another set of political beliefs, and maybe build a little bit of empathy for people who are different from them,” McCullough said.
Seventeen-year-old Matthew Murray, who is from Stamford, Connecticut, traveled to both Kilgore, Texas, and Palo Alto, California, this past summer.
“As a liberal person from Connecticut, I guess I had a viewpoint that was — at the beginning — I was negative about Texas,” he recalled.
Murray said that changed as he began to realize Texas was much more “nuanced” than he thought. Initially, he thought the experience of going to Cavender’s Western Wear and buying cowboy boots was one of the more interesting parts of the trip to the small town with a population of fewer than 15,000 residents. But as he has had more time to think about it, he thinks the interactions between the youth were what set it apart. He also had first-time experiences like wrangling cattle.
California, meanwhile, reminded him of some aspects of Connecticut, he said.
American Exchange Project
Jordan Hoffman, left, and Clarrisa Ko, right, enjoy a swamp boat ride on Lake Martin in Louisiana with the American Exchange Project.
“It wasn’t so foreign to me,” he said. However, he added, at times he still felt self-conscious.
Still, what he learned more is that one can’t make assumptions about a place simply by what they have seen on television or some other medium.
That’s the sort of conclusion that McCullough and his team hope others come away with during the trips.
“If our country is going to rebound in a positive direction from these years of division, domestic instability, then we need lots of programs like this to come out of the woodwork,” he said “And new programs with big bold ideas to take hold and motivate Americans across the country.”
AEP started in 2019 as a series of virtual discussion sessions between students. Hundreds of sessions were held in which a group of students would talk about topics like food to issues of gentrification.
AEP receives funding from a variety of sources, including foundations and individual donors.
The organization’s team plans to scale to 40 communities this coming year, impacting several hundred students. Eventually, McCullough hopes the program will become legislation and sponsored at the local, state or federal level.
“Change needs to happen and it needs to happen now, and I think more Americans need to be motivated to take part in programs like AEP and to get our country back on track,” he added.
