How Could We Do This?

If every student in the USA was sent to another country for a month or so, our whole concept of ourselves would have to change. This could possibly lead to a change in our behavior, don't you think? Maybe if the kids spent one month in Afghanistan, we might have to think about slowing down our bombing and droning there. Or if they spent time in a place like Palestine, we might have to rethink some of our embargoes. If the kids spent one month in a highly developed society, they might see how people can live better than we do using far fewer resources. They might see kids having a lot more responsibility and a lot fewer rights.

Maybe a national gap year could be funded by, oh, maybe, a year without using pesticides and herbicides and any deadly toxins. Or perhaps we could collect all the money usually spent on soft drinks and get the kids passports and send them packing.

Young people in most developed countries have  far more widespread opportunities to see the world than our kids. Here it is pretty much an upper class deal and often highly supervised.

I suspect that the world would see us differently as a nation if they could meet our youth just as young people trying to learn more about life and how things work and who we are in our larger relationships.

It is possible that the young people would make real mistakes...but isn't that the learning process? When my oldest daughter embarked for Europe, alone, and I drove her to the airport, I had some anxiety. She was pretty innocent. She told me not to worry. I was OK with that, but happy I was around to pick up her wallet that she left on the ticket counter as she trotted off through security. Fortunately, she had time to come back and get it. Strangely, at that moment I knew she would be OK. She also figured things out fast. Like when she went from Greece to Turkey by train and got to turkey and was groped and followed and decided to get back on the train and not be a single girl in shorts feeling unsafe in that country. If I had told her it was a bad idea, from my experience, it wouldn't have been her knowledge.

It seems to me that our kids could get very strong lesson in politics from living under different systems and from hearing how we are perceived by other people. Therefore I propose a national get the kids out of here program for kids from all walks of life, from all parts of the USA, from the streets to the mansions. I think it could be a brilliant educational movement.

I believe that the problem in our country about money is not scarcity, it is distribution. If we want to fund something that could change many lives for the better, then we might have to make the difficult choices. We might have to have a few fewer drones, or nuclear weapons, or mercenaries all over the world. It is getting harder and harder to believe that our choices are making us safer and happier and smarter.