In the late-1970s, at high noon of the 17-year military rule in Chile, the Pinochet government undertook a massive “eradication” program that uprooted tens of thousands of squatter families from across the capital of Santiago and relocated them to uninhabited tracts of the city’s periphery.

For six years, the eradications collectively punished the city’s poor: They were cleansed from upper-class neighborhoods, segregated to the hinterlands, and left to build their own homes, hospitals and schools. Some very brave individuals have begun to patch the wounds, but the scars remain and are well-known.

Yet there is one place where the eradications should be well-known, and aren’t. It is at Stanford-in-Santiago (SIS), the only Overseas Studies Program in Latin America. I studied there from September to December 2003 and never learned that I inhabited the very districts airbrushed by the eradications; and more generally, that the comforts of foreign study stand largely on the shoulders of the poor and indigenous of Santiago.

A decent education must first present the unknown, and next weigh it against the known. Tension, debate, “teaching the conflicts”—however termed, these are the necessities of a vital education, and they are nowhere to be found at the “Stanford-in” centers. Cloistered and unchallenging, the OSP’s “Stanford-in” centers are failing in their educational mission.

To begin, it must be said that the road abroad is paved with good intentions. Here is how OSP Director Amos Nur opens this year’s outreach brochure: “Whatever path you choose, you will be immeasurably enriched by time spent in another country. Achieving cultural literacy in another society, gaining a substantive understanding of another perspective on the world, will in turn deepen an understanding of yourself, your own society and your education goals.”

These worthwhile ambitions are, at SIS at least, largely unrealized. Some students became proficient in Spanish, immersed themselves in Chilean social circles, and felt, after 10 weeks, personally galvanized. They, however, are the outliers. “Cultural literacy” and “substantive” new perspectives do not await the bulk of “Stanford-in” students.

If cultural literacy were measured solely in travel miles, then SIS could only be deemed a success. Frequent weekend trips did bond SIS students, even if they spawned a cliquishness that alienated other students. Traveling may have provided us with the tourist’s “perspective” into the country, but it primarily hardened the boundaries between Stanford students and Chileans.

Remaining free time quickened the cultural immersion, but only slightly. In Santiago, the draw of numerous computers, free telephone use, all of our class sessions, and other Stanford students kept many of us in the center up to its closing hour.

To be sure, few students had computers in their guest homes on which to type class assignments, and almost all students had much online work to do related to their imminent return to the home campus. Yet what becomes of “cultural literacy”? With the OSP, the “Stanford bubble” simply floats abroad.

What’s more, SIS was a largely English-speaking bubble. After the Spanish-taught classes, students usually reverted to English. We all improved our Spanish while in Chile, but for most of us, not to a satisfactory degree. The few SIS efforts to counteract this linguistic isolation — namely, meet-ups with Chilean “language partners”—were, by SIS adminstrators’ own admission, failures.

This linguistic isolation can only be worse in other “Stanford-in” centers. After all, the Santiago applicant pool emerges from the half of the Stanford studentry that satisfies its language requirement with Spanish. Santiago is the only center (except Australia and Oxford) whose classes are unvaryingly taught in the native language. Berlin, Florence, and Paris all offer English-taught classes. In Kyoto, according to outreach materials, education is strictly in English. The newest center, in Beijing?: “Primarily English.”

No fair study of the OSP can overlook homestays, which mitigated the social and linguistic isolation for most of us in Santiago. For me, though, even the pull of a delightful host family was only as strong as that of my Stanford comrades.

In 10 weeks, we went to museums, theaters, gyms and clubs — and virtually always with each other. Indeed, I spent more social time with Stanford students in Santiago than I do in the average quarter back home. I’m tempted to suggest that Stanford run its freshman orientation in Santiago — and scared to think that I might be taken seriously.

Conversations with other OSP alums suggest that what I have said of SIS could fairly characterize any of the other seven “Stanford-in” centers. If a quarter in Santiago glosses over the military-era eradications, then what goes unseen in Paris? What remains unknown in Berlin? What of Beijing cannot be translated to English? In a 10-week OSP blow-by, you’d never know. One final question, then: Is that really an education?

Christopher Vaughan is a junior majoring in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. E-mail him at chrisv@Stanford.edu.