Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2005 > December > 30 > Entry
Farris Hassan’s day off
I can’t resist blogging about this. Have you read about the 16-year-old Florida kid who went to Baghdad to research a high school paper?
This is story is both amazing and insane, but I have to admit part of me admires the kid. He’s probably going to make a great journalist.
Here’s what happened in a nutshell:
Farris Hassan is the American son of Iraqi born parents who was taking high school class in “immersion journalism” and reading the likes of John McPhee, the famed journalist who writes about experiences other parts of the world through his own eyes. Hassan wanted to write about Iraq. So on his own and without telling his parents, he got a flight from Florida to Kuwait City, took a cab to the Iraq border and tried to get a ride from there to Baghdad.
Luckily he failed, because the road from Kuwait to Baghdad is incredibly dangerous. Even so, he ended up flying to Beirut, where he has family, and then on to Baghdad, where got a hotel room and then walked into the Associated Press’ bureau office and began interviewing journalists.
Now, I’m an advocate of studying abroad, but this is taking it to a whole new level.
The cool part of this story is that it shows you how easily anyone can just go and experience the world. With a credit card and enough guts, you could be in Baghdad in just a few days. And part of me likes the fact this Farris had the guts and the passion for the subject to give it a shot. These are great attributes for an aspiring journalist.
The scary part is that a 16-year-old could pull this off without the help or permission of his parents, or anyone else for that matter. His original plan was incredibly dangerous. A cab driver threatened to assault him and a crowd started to gather when he began asking questions using an English-Arabic dictionary. He really could have been killed.
But, the Associated Press says he also learned:
“Dangerous and dramatic, Hassan’s trip has also been educational. He had tea with Kuwaitis under a tent in the middle of a desert. He says he interviewed Christians in south Lebanon. And he said he spoke with U.S. soldiers guarding his Baghdad hotel who told him they are treated better by Sunni Arabs than by the majority Shiites.”
Forget the school paper. I think Farris can get a book deal!
How would you react if your kid tried something like this?
Update: The New York Times has more on this story today.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Foreign Language and Study Abroad
Comments
By Mary
December 31, 2005 11:59 AM | Link to this
Actually, according to a television interview I saw yesterday with his Mom, it sounds as if the dad was aware at some point of what Farris was doing and actually coached him on going to Beirut where relatives would help him get a visa for Iraq. (Don’t know whether or not the parents are divorced.) Farris appears to be from a wealthy family and had access to money through his own investment account. His Mom said she would be confiscating his passport. We touched on some of these issues with “helicopter parent” discussions. I pointed out my son, when 16, wanted to go to Japan by himself. We (parents) went with him and landed in Japan on 9-11-2001. You can have a genius and curious kid, but as pointed out by some research on why 16 year olds have so many car crashes and high fatality rates, the judgment center of the brain does not fully develop, if ever, until around age 26. It sounds as if his dad and some Beirut relatives never fully developed their judgment center. The mom seemed to “get it”. Why older men send younger men into harm’s way is another topic.