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Mind the gap: why student year out may do more harm than good radical activity turns into tourist trip for ambitious young people




 

For the teenagers who cast off their daily lives and head off for South America, Africa and Asia, it may offer the time of their young lives. But research published yesterday shows that the so-called "gap year" between school and university is not as beneficial as has been suggested. In five years the gap year has metamorphosed from a radical activity of a rebellious student generation into an obligation that must be fulfilled by ambitious future professionals. It has spawned in the process a lucrative commercial market providing tourist style trips. Prince William's gap year venture to Chile in 2000 created institutional acceptability, and about 200,000 people a year between 18 and 25 now take 12 months out of study. "No longer were gap years for rebels and dropouts and people with nothing better to do; now they were for hopeful professionals and future kings," said Kate Simpson, from the School of Geography at
the University of Newcastle, who based her research on projects in South America and talked to hundreds of students on their return.

"A gap year has become a requirement for success. It is now part of your progression to employability, as necessary as your A-levels and as inevitable as your degree. As the gap year has been professionalised, so it has increasingly been marketed at future professionals, with an assumption that further education and successful employment are to follow."

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Ms Simpson said that without explaining how values such as "broad horizons" and "character building" are supposed to be achieved by gap years, they have been promoted by people such as the foreign secretary,
Jack Straw, and the University College Admission Service (UCAS). Mr Straw said: "Our society can only benefit from travel which promotes character, confidence [and] decision-making skills."

According to UCAS: "The benefits of a well-structured year out are now widely recognized by universities and colleges and cannot fail to stand you in good stead in later life."

However, these sweeping statements did not always reflect the reality, Ms Simpson said. Many of the 50 organisations providing package trips for 10,000 gap-year students this year designed them to be acceptable to parents and future employers, and had little concern for the communities the students were volunteering to help. One example was in Ecuador where a team of students had been sent to "help the local community". The villagers returned home from work to discover their houses had been painted by the volunteers without prior consultation.

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"Groups of 18-year-olds arrive somewhere with no skills and set about building a bridge or school often without proper consultation with the local community and what they might want or need. They get a level of experience and decision-making which they would not get at home, but also doing things in other people's hospitals and schools that would never be allowed at home."

Gap students had been involved in delivering babies, construction projects and teaching without prior trainingsomething banned by law in Britain. The students themselves were delighted by the idea of getting away from books, parents and lectures for a year, and getting off the beaten track with a little "danger" thrown in. The advantage for the parents, who were largely paying for the experience, was that the degree of danger was care-
fully controlled.

A typical provider advertised: "Are you looking for a travel adventure with a purpose, one that gives you experience beyond tourism and provides practical help to local communities?" Its slogan was: "Develop people. Share cultures. Build futures."

For Ms Simpson "this implies there is indeed a relationship between international travel and international development, a relationship that is proving economically lucrative for the booming gap year industry".

The industry "appears amateurish and outdated", she said. The idea seemed to be that ancient highly civilised cultures could benefit from the introduction of large numbers of unskilled 18-year-olds.

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"While such an approach may produce some valuable contributions, the risks are high. The gap year industry cannot rely on its good intentions to assure the quality of its work.

The projects are often used to the benefit of the visiting students as opposed to the residents. In many projects, the students practise being adults and professionals using local people as guinea pigs. Projects did not have to be based on "such exploitative and dehumanising relationships," said Ms Simpson.

"I am sure that many students gain a great deal from their gap years, but they could gain so much more if they engaged with local people." The best projects were those researched in advance in which the local people participate and ask for what they want. "If the students and locals work together and form friendships, some of which are long lasting, then the true potential of the gap year could be realised," Ms Simpson added.

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C. Comment on the following:

1. "It is a pity that people travel in foreign countries; it narrows their
minds so much." G.K. Chesterton

2. "The great and recurrent question about abroad is, is it worth getting
there?" Rose Macaulay

3. " You don't look in the mirror to see life; you gotta look out of the
window." Drew Brown

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I agree with this statement, you never learn life if you are in the same place, to learn life it is necessary to leave the circle, it is necessary to travel. How to learn life if you know only that that here, to learn life you have to see everything and only then you will understand what it means to live





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