Subject:
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Educational value of travel (was: More Orwell, for everyone!)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 11 Jun 2004 09:46:13 GMT
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Viewed:
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2199 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Richard Parsons wrote:
> > > The other thing I have long advocated is giving every Australian who
> > > completes a tertiary course of studies a round the world airline ticket,
> > > so that they can actually go to a few other and far flung countries, and
> > > see how things are different there. Its powerful mojo for getting
> > > people past the mindset that thinks that 'everyone does/should/must
> > > think like me'. And it creates a deeper respect for how we do things at
> > > home. There's a bunch of other cool outcomes
> > > too
> > ...it costs a lot of money to do that. Who is going to pay for it?
> ...there's no reason one could not means test it, loan the money and
> suspend repayment (as we do with our Higher Education Charges already) and
> do any number of things to reduce the cost if we were of a mind to do so.
You know, I'm not immediately opposed to the idea of including a two year stint
abroad in every undergraduate education. I don't know about an
around-world-tour, but two years in another nation -- half study and half peace
corps like service (amounting to a year-long senior synthesis project) would
probably be tremendously valuable for helping to dash the insularism that we
suffer. And if it were laid out right it could at least partially be paid for
by our foreign aid budget. Sounds like a win-win to me. After their time away,
the soon to graduate student would prepare for and then take the comprehensive
finals that we also should implement.
A round-trip or two to Vietnam, Spain, Algeria, Russia, Madagascar, or wherever
isn't _that_ expensive. The military seems to manage. And so to missionaries.
When an inexpensive undergraduate education is costing US$50K already, what's
another two thousand?
Chris
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Message has 1 Reply:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: More Orwell, for everyone!
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| (...) Oh I don't know. I'd put it somewhere around the $300m mark. I never cease to be amazed at how much money we spend on advertising programmes to alert the general public as to how nice and clever the government thinks it is, particularly with (...) (20 years ago, 11-Jun-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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