TRAVELLING AS A PART OF EDUCATION

TRAVELLING AS A PART OF EDUCATION

Points: Introduction – Desire to know the different culture – Great travelers of the past – Travel is meant for benefit of man – Book knowledge is half knowledge – Conclusion.

By travelling is ordinarily meant going from one place to another for domestic, business or similar other worldly purposes is not really travelling. Travelling, as the real sense of the term indicates, is going from one interesting place to another to see and learn more and more. It has, thus, an educative end in view.

The world is very wide place in which prevail different cultures, manners and customs. So a man living comfortably at home can have no idea of these. He remains narrow in mind, narrow in thinking and narrow in appreciation. But man has a natural heart-hunger to know how others think, feel and live. This impels him to move out of the limited sphere he lives in. Even when there were extreme communication difficulties, there were men who left their cosy home in search of knowledge and experience. All of them had to walk on foot and pass through perilous places infested with wild animals. They had to pass over insurmountable mountains and cross impassable and roaring rivers and seas. The allurement of the unknown was so irresistible with them that they went on and on with a hungry heart and without caring for dangers and difficulties.

History records examples of such knowledge-seeking and daring travelers. The Greek travelers Homer, Pythagoras, Herodotus and Megasthenis, the Chinese traveller Hiuen Tsang, the Venetian traveller Marco Polo, the Egyptian traveller Ibn-e-Batuta, the Persian traveller Sheikh Sadi and the English traveller Mungo Park were so great in their knowledge and wisdom because of their wide and adventurous travels. The work they have left are a testimony to what they saw, learnt and felt.4essay.blogspot.com

This shows travel is meant for the benefit of man. It broadens the outlook by bringing the traveller in contact with people of different tastes, cultures, manners and customs. Our narrowness and angularities may wear away and we may be liberal in everything when, by travel, we are inclined to know and appreciate others. This gives us an opportunity to be relieved of the prejudices that we usually have about others whom we do not intimately know.

Book knowledge is often half knowledge theoretical in nature. Knowledge acquired through travel is practical. Travel thus supplements book knowledge and can make man a complete whole. It is for this reason that so much stress is laid on travel for students. It is said about Sheikh Sadi that he travelled for thirty years after finishing his education to be able to say only what was correct and his Gulistan and Bostan are a combination of his book knowledge and what he saw and learnt abroad.4essay.blogspot.com

The communication difficulties of the ancient days do no longer exist. So travelling now-a-days has become easier and less expensive. But its necessity has become all the more great. What the ancient travellers acquired in years we can now acquire indays. So undertaking travels during and after education is imperative for us all. The present-day world has become smaller for communication facilities and people all over the world are eager to know one another and become closer. One who lags behind will assuredly be denied a share in the universal brotherhood that is in the offing. Like Ulysses's our yearning spirit should ever desire to follow knowledge like a sinking star beyond the utmost bound of human thought.