I think it is besides the point that they were pampered upper middle class kids. The things they saw were horrible. In the danish edition, they went to India where there was a whole town build up around a mountain of trash. The folks there would drink black water from the mountain.
I think a dose of reality is what most middle class kids need. Otherwise many of them grow into arrogant right wing adults with no real clue about how much of the world works.
I suspect your inclusion of "right wing" probably derailed your comment - particularly as self-proclaimed "left wing" people can be just as arrogant and out of touch as their "right wing" counterparts.
Well, you don't hear that too often from right wing people, either. (Except caricatures, perhaps built by left wing people).
(Yes, there are similar or mirror caricatures built by right wing people about left wing people. However, even as a right wing person, I might admit that not everyone in the left wing is Pol Pot).
To show how silly the "right wing" vs "left wing" split can be, the UK under the government of Mrs Thatcher ("right wing") gave military assistance to the Khmer Rouge ("left wing") - presumably as the latter were the enemies of the Vietnamese ("left wing").
I think it is besides the point that they were pampered upper middle class kids. The things they saw were horrible. In the danish edition, they went to India where there was a whole town build up around a mountain of trash. The folks there would drink black water from the mountain.