Learning Without School

Trips to the Airport Taught Me More than Any Classroom

I know you’ll think I’m crazy, but I actually learned more from Philadelphia International Airport than I did from 6th grade. It sounds ridiculous. I should apologize, especially to Mr. Johnson, my social studies teacher.

I didn’t realize this until my flight to Indianapolis. I wasn’t teaching, yet, but I needed to make bank for my growing family.

This epiphany must have been twenty-three years ago. Was I really still in my late twenties?

Why was I arriving so early? Was I worried about missing my flight? Philadelphia traffic? Increased security? It was, after all, still 1996.

But getting there early allowed time to explore — to relive childhood memories. The airport stimulated my interest in the world.

Pop Pop’s Lessons and Adventures

When I was a young lad, my grandpa and grandma would take us on visits to the airport.

The airport wasn’t far. They lived a few blocks from Island Avenue. A power-walk from the front porch to the terminal could be done in under an hour.

In fact, my grandfather grew up on a farm called The Meadows — now the airport. His old homestead is economy parking.

So maybe our visits had to do with him “going home.” He never seemed saddened to see his stomping grounds as acres of concrete. I think he always appreciated progress and growth and accepted change as natural.

Our visits were always special. We would watch the planes depart and arrive, get a snack, and walk through the terminals. Can you imagine such trips in the days of COVID-19 and Post 9–11 Security?

He would drive us around and show us new developments and construction — like the new SEPTA line connecting Center City with the airport. For a man who rarely flew, he sure knew his airport.

What made him take us so often? Was it just a neat place to go? Better than a night in front of the TV? How much did such an adventure cost?

Plus, it had a powerful educational impact.

PHL: Educational impact of the visits to Philly’s Airport

We never flew anywhere then, but it was the lure that we could that made the airport so special and the world accessible. Those early visits to the airport contributed to my world citizenship.

I was no longer that shy introvert who rarely spoke in class from a comfortable suburb in New Jersey.

In the airport I was now a young man, excited, enthusiastic about the world, walking through the terminals, reading the exotic names: London, Paris, Bombay.

My world did not seem so protected and insular. I knew that I could awake in Paris the next day if I just walked down the corridor and boarded the plane.

Also, the people in the airport did not look like me or dress like me. Some spoke strange languages, and I wanted to understand them. Some wore colorful robes and gowns. Some smelled of expensive oils. Many had different hairstyles. Many others had different skin colors. No one looked that much different from me in Voorhees, New Jersey in the 1970s.

For a boy living in white bread USA, this was overwhelming and well-needed. My family never knew I did this, but I would memorize the names of these cities. As soon as I got home, I would rush to our World Book Encyclopedias, pick out the books with the letters I needed: L, P, and B.

I sealed myself in the bathroom, which acted as my study then as much as it does now, and I would read first about London, its people, its geography, its customs, its history.

Then I would take up Paris. Then Bombay. Did my mom worry about the hour I spent in the bathroom alone? I would keep the volumes next to the toilet for the next day. Then I would read about Lisbon, Panama City, and Berlin.

I constructed personal lesson plans. I learned math from calculating pounds to dollars. I learned history from reading about William the Conqueror. I learned social studies from studying the latitude and longitude of London and about Greenwich and the Prime Meridian.

I learned science from understanding the weather patterns of the North Sea and why the area is so wet and mild and why the White Cliffs of Dover are white. And of course, l had a greater understanding of English due to the mixture of French and Anglo-Saxon, and I knew everything a 6th grader ought to know about Elizabethan Theater and the Romantic Poets.

All of this derived from my visits to the airport.

The impact of those visits

Upon reflection, perhaps I’m not so crazy. I love flown to London numerous times; Paris four times; Milan and Rome and Venice once, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, Dallas, Des Moines, Boston, Chicago, and Indianapolis.

Those non-exotic and exotic locations, when announced in the terminal, still thrill me. I was thrilled when in major train stations in Europe, with my Eurail Pass, that I could leave Paris and watch up in Rome. It thrilled me when my wife and I boarded the train in Paris for Barcelona. I just wished I brought me to eat. It was the one time I almost starved my wife.

When traveling back then, still young, I sometimes forgot to eat.

And now, when I hear the name Istanbul, I suddenly smell the bazaars, feel the rich fabrics, and I say to myself, once COVID-19 is over, or at least, controlled, and the world is open for business again, I will take my wife there for our next vacation. Or will it be Dublin? Or Athens? Or Tokyo?

And I still love to learn.

With all due respect to my teachers, even to old Mr. Johnson who tore his hair out in trying to reach me in structured lines of desks and memorization quizzes, without a doubt, my airport visits kindled my love for travel and adventure and learning that no classroom could offer.

Thank you for reading! Follow me on Medium at Walter Bowne. Read other essays of mine on Age of Awareness: