Cross-Cultural Experience and the Development of Students' Cognition

School trips abroad became popular among Japanese high schools during the bubble economy in late 20th century, and are no less so even during the recession afterward. Countless reports and essays have been written either by the teachers or by the students who took part in the school trips abroad. Yet the argument has been neglected: how the trips works on students' development, or, even, if they works at all or not. The situation which caused the lack of the argument is very easy to understand. Under the pressure and stress from cons, who outnumbered pros in the closed Japanese society, the pros had no choice but to praise the trips. It is usually the case that pros try to praise one idea to the skies while cons try to beat the hell out of it. No reasonable argument. Yet, this is high time, I believe, we started arguing reasonably.
There may be 2 ways which may enhance students' cognition by encountering another culture. One is caused by moving one's view point: the other is learned through communication with another culture. First, we enrich our cognition by seeing things from different view points. When you move, your viewpoint moves. It is obvious that if you move your viewpoint physically, your object looks in a different way. If you move one step aside, what you see shows you another facet. What happens, if you move your viewpont culturally? When you move geographycally, you may see different nature and culture. Seeing another culture doesn't mean you are seeing things in a culturally different way. Stay in another culture for a while and go back home afterward, and you may see your own culture in a new way. This is what I want to call moving one's viewpoint culturally. It should be an aftermath to see things in a culturally different way. You must have moved your viewpoint culturally during the stay in another culture. The question is how the process have made its way. That is how your cognition has been changed. We see things in a culturally biased way, and would never realize our bias unless we encounter another culture.
Second, other people's cognition might enrich our way of cognition. Each culture provides its members with certain cultural schemas to help its members cognize their surroundings efficiently. In other words, we become members of some culture by learning corresponding cultural schemas from the earlies stage of our lives. We may be able to import other cultures' schemas by communicating with the people from other cultures, and to enrich our recognition. The question is whether the number of schemas will increase or the number of the sets of schemas will increase. People from different cultures cognize their surroundings with different schemas. If we can import schemas other than ours, we can increase the number of schemas we have. That is so called "to widen our perspective."