The speaker was invited to speak to students at a college about overseas internships and summer programs. When discussing reasons the students gave for not going abroad, the speaker heard many negative excuses including that their parents couldn't afford it, it wasn't safe abroad, or they would face discrimination. However, the speaker believed these were just excuses and that parents need a new way of thinking to better prepare their children for an increasingly globalized world, though admitting they don't know how to make that change when parents also make up the government. The speaker asked for help resolving how to improve the situation.

1. I am not sure why I forgot to write about this, for some reason it just seems that the event I went to was
not material enough to be mentioned. In actual fact it was a very clear example that we are not doing
the right thing in our education system. Now i am sure that i didn’t mention it because i wanted it to
sink in and to think about it a little bit more.
Sometimes in May, I was invited to provide some insights into overseas internships and summer
programmes to the girls in one of the higher colleges of technology. It was a good day, the drive was
brilliant, and the sun was not killing me. I took my time, and reached few minutes prior to the event. I
had to talk to two groups of students. The first group was 80 students, and the second one had only 20
students. Never expected it to be a full house but it was.
Well I will not delve on what I explained to them, I will just mention here the reasons they had given me
of why they cannot go overseas. one, their parents do not have the money to send them abroad; or it is
not safe to go abroad, or the foreigners will discriminate against us, or they will not be able to wear a
scarf over there, our English is not up to scratch so we will not know what they are saying. The or’s went
on and on, full of negativity to the extent that I started to believe that maybe this is true? Of course it’s
not true. I told them that my parents let me go abroad in the 70's, did they not love me enough then to
send me overseas? Also I said that I cannot believe that the parents do not have the money. All of us in
the uae are thrifty, but we spend our money on the wrong things, for example, i would rather give my
son a slx Mercedes to kill himself with rather than train him during the summer, so when he looks for a
job later he is not told that he is fresh grad. Also i would rather let my daughters loose in the shopping
malls than train her on something that she will not have time for later on in life.
Unbelievable excuses that proves that us the parents need to have our brains drained and a new type of
thinking poured inside it to be able to upbring our children in a world that develops so fast and changes
faster than the speed of light. However how can we do this? I dont know?
And since us the parents make up the members of the government too, then of course we are not able
to equate our education system to that of the western world, and continue to spend more money than
necessary when we send our kids over seas ( that is if we agree to send them).
Well, help me solve this please.