Tourism is an important and most powerful tool to promote national integration and bring people from different parts of the country or sub – continents close together. Advantages of tourism are remarkable if it is accompanied with education. Traveling is considered as the most delightful experience in the life of students. People have enjoyed and learnt a lot while traveling on their educational tours. Students eagerly look forward for such kind of opportunities when they are taken out of the four walls of class rooms to distant places. Englishmen consider their schooling complete only after a tour of the continent.

Geography is considered a very dull and uninspiring subject if it is read sitting in class rooms and just going through various books. The Great Ganga may be thought of a snake line running along the map. The Taj Mahal may be taken as a monument just like many others without actually visiting it. The dull subject of Geography will definitely become interesting and absorbing once these places of interest are visited by the students. History is very boring for students because they think of it as a story of dead kings and their period of kingdom and which is not going to pay student of today anything. However, if students are taken frequently to the sites of glories and defeats, architectural master – pieces constructed during periods of these great dead monarchs, the subject of History becomes more interesting and exciting than any other subject.

Really we can learn a lot more things when we actually come in contact or see such things or sites associated with such happenings. Sitting at home only will make our outlook a narrow one. Any student will fail to understand the effect of environment on the life of human beings. In day-to-day life, reading and getting lonely theoretical knowledge cannot make any student successful. They must know the habits, manners, cultures and way of living of people in other places. Traveling takes students to the sphere of practical knowledge. They come down to reality from the realm of dreams and imagination. While traveling, students learn to adjust to the changed conditions of living and foot-habits and the environment also. Different and varied difficulties encountered during traveling make the students readily adjustable. As such, tourism gives far more valuable lessons to students than the lessons of text books.

There was a time when crossing the seas to acquire higher education was considered highly sacrilegious. Foreign travel was not encouraged. It was this kind of ostrich mentality which brought about the worst type of intellectual stagnation and caused an ignominous fall in the country. However now in free India students have become alive to the need of learning more languages and acquire higher education in latest technologies. The latest method to learn a new language and understand the different culture is to live and more among the people whom we want to know. The learning of Chinese language and culture is best possible by living for a short duration in China than going through longer courses in institutions in our country only. The learning of a foreign language is the first step towards understanding of a nation. International understanding is possible for students of our country through taking tourism packages all over the world.

A student has to keep his eyes and mind open while on educational tours. Tourism provides an experience of the world and calls into action and practical use of various qualities of mind and intellect developed by education. Tact, engaging personality, firmness and lively conversation are some of the products of traveling across length and breadth of country and the world. A student need not initiate the habits, manners or fashions of other people whom he visits. Only good and proper attitudes must be adopted from others. The student must understand the economic problems faced by rural people when he goes to the villages and see how without proper schools and hospitals, people are surviving. The students may make a decision to serve the poor and innocent folks in villages after completing their studies.

Traveling must be made a part of the education system at each level of studies. Students will not only become more educated about their country’s all walks of life and culture but will be liberal in outlook. They will have maturity of judgment and clear in their understanding of people and their minds. Tourism is the quickest and the best if not the cheapest method of learning new things.

By: Rajesh Mohan