Congratulations to Casey Parks, the winner of Nicholas Kristof's contest to go on a tour with him in a neglected area of Africa. I completely agree with Kristof about mandating overseas studies. Most every other developed world has a much richer tradition than we in America have with regard to overseas travel. If we are to be increasingly involved in world affairs, as the world's only superpower, it is in my opinion, of extreme importance that U.S. citizens spend as much time as possible overseas...
The Drumroll, Please
The Drumroll, Please
In March I opened a "win a trip" contest, offering to
take a university student with me on a rough reporting trip to a
neglected area in Africa.
Some 3,800 applications poured
in, accompanied by boxes of supplementary materials, ranging from
senior theses to nude photos. After weeks of sifting through the
applications, I finally have a winner.
She is Casey Parks
of Jackson, Miss. — an aspiring journalist who has never traveled
abroad. We'll get her a passport and a bunch of vaccinations —
ah, the glamour of overseas travel — and start planning our trip.
Casey, who turned 23 on Friday, attended Millsaps College in
Jackson and is now a graduate student in journalism at the University
of Missouri. She has won a string of awards for her essays and other
writing.
In her essay,
Casey wrote about growing up poor: "I saw my mother skip meals. I saw
my father pawn everything he loved. I saw our cars repossessed. I never
saw France or London." (The essays by Casey and a dozen finalists are
posted at nytimes.com/winatrip.)
"I so desperately want to leave this country and know more," she wrote. Now she'll have the chance.
We'll
most likely start in Equatorial Guinea, bounce over to Cameroon and
travel through a jungle with Pygmy villages to end up in the Central
African Republic — one of the most neglected countries in the
world. We'll visit schools, clinics and aid programs, probably
traveling in September for 10 days. Casey will write a blog about it
for nytimes.com and will also do a video blog for MTV-U.
But
the point of this contest wasn't to give one lucky student the chance
to get malaria and hookworms. It's to try to stir up a broader interest
in the developing world among young people.
One of our country's
basic strategic weaknesses is that Americans don't understand the rest
of the world. We got in trouble in Vietnam and again in Iraq partly
because we couldn't put ourselves in other people's shoes and
appreciate their nationalism.
According to Foreign Policy
magazine, 92 percent of U.S. college students don't take a foreign
language class. Goucher College in Baltimore bills itself as the first
American college to require all students to study abroad, and the rest
should follow that example.
So for all the rest of you who
applied for my contest, see if you can't work out your own trips. Or
take a year off before heading to college or into a job. You'll have to
pay for your travel, but you can often find "hotels" for $5 a night per
person in countries like India, Pakistan, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia,
Morocco, Bolivia and Peru — and in rural areas, people may invite
you to stay free in their huts. To get around, you can jump on local
buses.
Is it safe? Not entirely, for the developing world has
more than its share of pickpockets, drunken soldiers, scorpions, thugs,
diseases, parasites and other risks.
Twenty-two years ago, as a
backpacking student, I traveled with a vivacious young American woman
who, like me, was living in Cairo. She got off my train in northern
Sudan; that evening, the truck she had hitched a ride in hit another
truck. Maybe if there had been an ambulance or a doctor nearby, she
could have been saved. Instead, she bled to death.
So, yes, be
aware of the risks, travel with a buddy or two, and carry an
international cellphone. But remember that young Aussies, Kiwis and
Europeans take such a year of travel all the time — women
included — and usually come through not only intact, but also
with a much richer understanding of how most of humanity lives.
There
are also terrific service options. Mukhtar Mai, the Pakistani anti-rape
activist I've often written about, told me she would welcome American
volunteers to teach English in the schools she has started. You would
have to commit to staying six weeks or more, but would get free housing
in her village. You can apply by contacting www.4anaa.org.
Then
there's New Light, a terrific anti-trafficking organization in
Calcutta. Urmi Basu, who runs it, said she would welcome American
volunteers to teach English classes to the children of prostitutes. You
would have to stay at least six weeks and budget $15 a day for food and
lodging; for more information go to www.uddami.org/newlight.
In
the 21st century, you can't call yourself educated if you don't
understand how the other half lives — and you don't get that
understanding in a classroom. So do something about your educational
shortcomings: fly to Bangkok.
Posts
8 comments:
I didn't read the article. I stopped at your notion of "complete agreement in MANDATING (emphasis added) overseas studies"
You may be a dreamer, and you're not the only one, but you will never have me dreaming with you until you make the mental leap that mandating programs costs tax dollars and that tax dollars are stolen from the producers in society.
You want an overseas program? Set up a foundation and get some private money. We can't even balance our budget because of the mandatory entitlement spending we've living with now....
Not to add fuel to the fire, but there are some who believe that the budget can't be balanced because of poor spending decisions by the current administration!
S. A.
To freeze--Mandating overseas studies actually costs less to colleges than college classes here. In fact there was a recent article in the Wall Street Journal in which colleges were cutting back on allowing students to study overseas as they were losing tuition money during the time students were studying abroad. Another response from some universities and colleges has been to charge American students studying abroad the same tuition rate they would have to pay if they did not go overseas.
So in fact studying abroad should cost universities less. This should lessen the taxpayer cost for public universities and should be irrelevant to the tax payer with regard to private universities.
I would argue conversely and getting back to the point of the article, that U.S. citizens need to have a serious understanding of other countries foreign policy, culture etc...as long as our government is increasingly involved in the affairs of other countries. Based on my experience, this understanding can best be had by spending time in other countries. My opinion is that the U.S. citizenry is woefully ignorant of much of the rest of the world compared to most of my friends from Europe, Asia, and Africa. This is all the more ironic considering we are the world's only remaining superpower...As S.A. alluded to, perhaps if the U.S. citizenry were more aware of the Middle East, we wouldn't have fallen so readily for the Al Qaeda--Iraq connection promoted by the administration and various media outlets. This would have saved our country and future generations trillions of dollars, not to mention the political fallout of the Iraq war...
Another irony is that perhaps reflective of our administration, there is a certain arrogance of much of our citizenry at an individual level regarding foreign policy that is astounding to me given the lack of knowledge and experience such individuals have in terms of foreign affairs.
I am not going to address the numerous implications inherent to your "tax dollars stolen from the producers in society,"comment.
I can agree that no government entity should be in the business of mandating overseas studies. However, nowhere in the text of the article nor in uveal_blues's comments is any government-mandated program referenced. To the extent that uveal_blues thinks overseas studies should be mandatory, it's not clear that he thinks the government should fund them.
When a college mandates that its students do thing X, the State doesn't pay for thing X. Even when the college is a state school, sending students abroad is almost universally less expensive than educating them at home.
Finally, I wasn't aware that waging multi-hundred-million-dollar wars against small oil-producing nations was considered 'entitlement spending'.
- J
http://www.cato.org/research/fiscal_policy/bush/factsfigs.html
I can't get the graph to copy here. Look at the Discretionary vs. Mandatory Outlays, Annual Changes and Cumulative Real Nondefense Spending Increases in First Four Years of Presidency.
The current Administration and more importantly the CONGRESS has spent like drunken sailors. Its disgusting. However, to focus only on the war spending is shortsighted and screams your political bent aloud. Medicare part D will bankrupt us far before any war...
I guess I haven't made my point about mandating. When you require something that you think will benefit a group of people, yet some of that group may not want to participate in it this represents an oppressive paternalistic policy that is anti-liberty.
For example, one could argue that it is best for citizens to have a health insurance plan that covers experimental drugs. If a state then required this, it might mean that some people who otherwise would purchase insurance no longer can due to the increased cost of the government mandate. Is this really for the greater good? i feel the same about helmet and seatbelt laws. We justify them because of the cost to society when idiots get injured. If there were no financial implications, then it would be quite unjust to mandate these measures.
I'm not really arguing the inherent value in travelling abroad- in fact, its a fine idea. I just hate the concept of making it a governemnt mandate.
Even if college costs were less as students studied abroad, it should still remain the choice of the student to do so. Some universities may decide that a year abroad would be part of their curriculum and the student would then factor that into their choice of school. Perhaps they simply don't want to travel- you suggest this should be mandatory?
Would you also institute a couple years of national service? Many countries do this.
If the Congress actually were in charge of public policy, I'd be in complete agreement that the spending debacle could be attributed there. However, even looking at your stats from the Cato Institute, it is clear that the experts break spending down by presidencies. The title of the page that you link to is 'Bush Budget Charts'. The Chief Executive sets the tone for public policy and for spending.
The Congress of course is not to be absolved of blame; the House, especially, as the sole body allowed to introduce spending bills, needs to be scrutinized. But power and responsibility is diluted in that chamber. Executive suggestions carry more sway here than in the more elite Senate.
Point being: Look first to the president when you want to see why spending is so high.
Regarding mandates: It is axiomatic that you can't make people expand their world view unless they actively want to do so (well, maybe with enough force...). But your point is well taken, and I think we can all agree that, whether we are in favor or not, mandatory foreign travel is not going to happen. Period.
There are already private programs that offer a similar experience. One that comes to mind is Birthright, which takes young (and maybe older?) Jews to visit Israel free of charge.
- J
Well, I am glad I used the word "mandate" as it generated an interesting response by pushing some buttons.
It is quite clear that no one is going to mandate overseas travel at a governmental level. I never stated that I favored such a program. It is also quite clear that a majority of Americans, as has been the case in the past, will not travel outside of our borders for a number of reasons, including general apathy towards global affairs.
In general, there are educational mandates set up by educational institutions from nursery school to universities. Perhaps that is anti-liberty, but such educational mandates are set up by "paternalistic" boards to give structure to education. Obviously, at a university level, one can assess these mandates, "core humanities" or whatever you want to call them, and if they offend your sense of liberty one can choose not to attend the institution. However, nearly every university that I know of, unfortunately, will stomp on student liberties by
mandating certain courses.
I don't see how stating an antiwar sentiment, as I have before the war started, bespeaks of a political bent. Citizens of all political stripes are at least now speaking out against the war. Bush's approval rating now stands at 29%, largely because of the war. Take out the 20% or so who will be Bush supporters no matter what and you have about 9% of the public in favor of the war.
To reiterate, people of all political leanings are against the war. (By the way, here is a link to a graphic that nicely shows a breakdown of government spending in a single view as opposed to the Cato graphs: http://www.deviantart.com/view/9410862/
Regarding Medicare Part D, if I recall correctly, I was the one who initially expressed to you my shock at the recent pharmaceutical benefit bill. Your response was something to the effect that it's better to go with the republican sponsored bill than to vote a democrat in office. I think that this sentiment was based on party specific spending proclivities. Well, the Bush administration and republican based congress have totally blown away any assumptions on party specific spending priorities.
J- hits "the nail on the head" when stating that "the Chief Executive sets the tone for public policy and spending."
PS - I want my old Republican party back. You know, small government, small spending - and smart spending.
I'm in favor of some entitlements, so I know I'm no libertarian, but I still recognize that far too much money is going to what amounts to little more than paperwork (or maybe 'administrativia').
- J
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