School trips were very important to me

R

Rose65

Well-known Member
Location
United Kingdom
They are discussing the expenses of school trips today on This Morning .

I always enjoyed and valued them because I came from a poor family who never really went anywhere. The museums, castles and culture, camping etc I got to experience were very important to my education. It was so exciting to take your packed lunch, sit on the coach with your best friends and set off. Coming back tired but still excited after. Then writing or drawing about what we had seen.

Did you like school trips? I don't know if they are too expensive nowadays. My parents found the money for day trips usually but I couldn't go on week long trips abroad as it was too much money.
 

I honestly cannot remember any school trips,.!! Maybe my
memory banks are too dusty...!!! Lived in very small farming
town, ....
 

My wife was an elementary school teacher for over 40 years. School trips (we called them "field trips") still take place here, but I've seen a shift in their character since I was a kid.

In the 1950s/60s, my field trips often dealt with industry. I recall trips to a Ford assembly plant, a Kellogg's cereal factory, both newspaper and book printing houses, a milk bottling facility, and a ride on a train to visit the train yard, to list a few. The emphasis was to acquaint us with "modern" technologies and show us how things work.

More recently, my wife's field trips were more often to things like a "living history" museum/site, a textile museum that includes 100+ year old mill, the USS Constitution in Boston, &c.

My early field trips were all positive and encouraging, highlighting the marvels of "modern" times and a bright future. These days, there seems to be a negative thread running through them, describing our past as uniformly oppressive and self-serving, and providing little hope for the future.

This concerns me. :(
 
Rose65 said:
They are discussing the expenses of school trips today on This Morning .

I always enjoyed and valued them because I came from a poor family who never really went anywhere. The museums, castles and culture, camping etc I got to experience were very important to my education. It was so exciting to take your packed lunch, sit on the coach with your best friends and set off. Coming back tired but still excited after. Then writing or drawing about what we had seen.

Did you like school trips? I don't know if they are too expensive nowadays. My parents found the money for day trips usually but I couldn't go on week long trips abroad as it was too much money.
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I never went on school trip, parents wouldn't pay for anything...except once...

I was 13.. there was to be a day trip to a park in a place called Croy bay Scotland , nature studies, and a picnic. We just had to take our own sandwiches.. and it was a small payment for the coach fare.. so for once my parents paid it.

I didn't know the place, as far as I know no-one did either .. about 50 miles away..

We had a great day, sunny, and we had a picnic with our sandwiches and water, sitting as a class under the spreading oak tree...

I was full of info to tell my mother as I walked through the front door.. and I was met with a punch to my head from my father, who was screaming while he was hitting me, punching kicking, , that I'd never been on the trip, I was a liar, I;d stolen the money they'd given me for the fare..


Transpires as I found out much later.. he'd looked up Croy bay on a Map, and had found a different one, similar sounding name .. in England and so it would have been impossible for me to have gone there.

Many years later I just wondered why he couldn't have just asked my school....:(
 
Conversely.. even tho' I raised my daughter alone from the time she was 8.. and money was extremely tight, I made sure she went on every school trip there was.. except ski-ing.. they wanted an astronomical amount for that.. but otherwise .. she never missed a trip.. even a week's holiday with the school. I still have the little postcard she sent home saying how much she missed me...
 
Pepper said:
I am so very sorry @hollydolly for the bad males in your life. I wish it had been different. Your stories of your dad are shocking and hurtful. Please forgive me for hating him.

Kudos to you, a single mom, raising an independent, wonderful daughter.
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NO need for forgiveness Pepper.. but kind of you to say. 🥰

he was an awful father, the worst, and an awful man.. things I can't tell on a forum... he was just a piece of poison on earth, and the sad thing is that my mother died at just 39 years old due to his behaviour.. and he outlived her by 45 years.. so unjust..

When I'd heard he died, 4 years after his death in 2008... I sobbed, not for him but that the world was free of him, that he could no longer harm another person...
 
I enjoyed all our "field trips" except for the one to jail.

I can't remember what class it was for but someone in charge thought it was a great idea to take us on a "Scared Straight-type" trip down to the jail, where we were yelled at by really scary inmates and informed of what would happen to us if we were incarcerated.

Some of the girls got hysterical, all of us were crying (including some of the boys), and there were a lot of unhappy parents.

Needless to say, that experience was never repeated.
 
hollydolly said:
I never went on school trip, parents wouldn't pay for anything...except once...

I was 13.. there was to be a day trip to a park in a place called Croy bay Scotland , nature studies, and a picnic. We just had to take our own sandwiches.. and it was a small payment for the coach fare.. so for once my parents paid it.

I didn't know the place, as far as I know no-one did either .. about 50 miles away..

We had a great day, sunny, and we had a picnic with our sandwiches and water, sitting as a class under the spreading oak tree...

I was full of info to tell my mother as I walked through the front door.. and I was met with a punch to my head from my father, who was screaming while he was hitting me, punching kicking, , that I'd never been on the trip, I was a liar, I;d stolen the money they'd given me for the fare..


Transpires as I found out much later.. he'd looked up Croy bay on a Map, and had found a different one, similar sounding name .. in England and so it would have been impossible for me to have gone there.

Many years later I just wondered why he couldn't have just asked my school....:(
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Oh my goodness, what brutal trials you endured. You are one strong lady.
There are surely people who should never have had children.
Yet you have that one golden memory and nobody can take it from you.
 
jujube said:
I enjoyed all our "field trips" except for the one to jail.

I can't remember what class it was for but someone in charge thought it was a great idea to take us on a "Scared Straight-type" trip down to the jail, where we were yelled at by really scary inmates and informed of what would happen to us if we were incarcerated.

Some of the girls got hysterical, all of us were crying (including some of the boys), and there were a lot of unhappy parents.

Needless to say, that experience was never repeated.
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Are you from New Jersey? That's the only state I remember that pushed 'scared straight' to that extent.
 
Pepper said:
Are you from New Jersey? That's the only state I remember that pushed 'scared straight' to that extent.
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Nope, Indiana at the time. This wasn't the actual Scared Straight program per se, just somebody's local imitation but it was scary enough.

Other field trips were to the newspaper, to a plant and, in the 3rd grade, a short train trip for a couple of hours. All I can remember about that one was getting little cups of ice cream with threats of instance death if we got any on the seats.
 
jujube said:
I enjoyed all our "field trips" except for the one to jail.

I can't remember what class it was for but someone in charge thought it was a great idea to take us on a "Scared Straight-type" trip down to the jail, where we were yelled at by really scary inmates and informed of what would happen to us if we were incarcerated.

Some of the girls got hysterical, all of us were crying (including some of the boys), and there were a lot of unhappy parents.

Needless to say, that experience was never repeated.
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I saw that once on TV...but it was a bunch of cocky out of control teens from a school.. somewhere in the USA

They went into the prison still cocksure.. until the inmates were given Carte Blanche to scream in their faces... didn't take long for those teens to be crying for their mother...and promising to behave in future.
 
Living close to NYC we got to go on interesting field trips. I remember a couple to the Metropolitan Opera and the United Nations. Our French class went to a French restaurant and one of my classmates had a father who worked for the NY Times and we got to tour the building.
 
hollydolly said:
NO need for forgiveness Pepper.. but kind of you to say. 🥰

he was an awful father, the worst, and an awful man.. things I can't tell on a forum... he was just a piece of poison on earth, and the sad thing is that my mother died at just 39 years old due to his behaviour.. and he outlived her by 45 years.. so unjust..

When I'd heard he died, 4 years after his death in 2008... I sobbed, not for him but that the world was free of him, that he could no longer harm another person...
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I can't imagine how you dealt with the physical and psychological pain you must have endured. Somehow you rose above it and turned into a caring and responsible human being. You are to be admired.
 
Alizerine said:
I can't imagine how you dealt with the physical and psychological pain you must have endured. Somehow you rose above it and turned into a caring and responsible human being. You are to be admired.
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I won't spoil Rose's nice thread by saying anything more in that regards.. just to say thank you, you're very kind.. 🤗
 
I enjoyed school trips. Most were DAY trips but two of them were longer than a day and those were my favourite. One was a camping trip for a week and another was a long distance trip out west to Vancouver and was for three weeks. We did a student exchange in grade 8 that was wonderful. I wrote about it in another thread. My parents were financially supportive when needed.
 
Only been on one as the country school I went to I guess wasn't big on them. Teacher paid for it out of his own pocket. Bought all of us backpacks and entrance fee to go on a hiking trip to a wilderness park that was located a few miles away. Best teacher I ever had! God bless his sole.
 
More fun than important for me.

No trips before high school. Only trip ever that I can remember was to Pittsburgh Pa. to attend a conference about shared experiences with the new concept of D. E. <--- Distributive Education. Several schools throughout Pennsylvania were present. The overnight stay was in a hotel in downtown Pittsburgh.

Being 17 & 18 year old teens checking out girls from other schools began early in the day. That proved successful since the girls were doing the same. Plans in place to party later were made. In order to party finding an adult to buy booze for us was easy. Condoms no problem. No regret one night stand was a nice experience.
 
The Spousal Equivalent was sent home from his senior trip to New York. Because he was already 18, one of the girls on the trip asked him to buy her some booze, so he did.

Then she got an attack of conscience and told one of the chaperones. For some reason, SHE didn't get in any trouble but he was sent back home to D.C., where he was picked up by his father, who needless to say wasn't happy.

The worst part was that he wasn't allowed to attend prom the next week, which put the kibosh on his relationship with his girlfriend.
 
jujube said:
The Spousal Equivalent was sent home from his senior trip to New York. Because he was already 18, one of the girls on the trip asked him to buy her some booze, so he did.

Then she got an attack of conscience and told one of the chaperones. For some reason, SHE didn't get in any trouble but he was sent back home to D.C., where he was picked up by his father, who needless to say wasn't happy.

The worst part was that he wasn't allowed to attend prom the next week, which put the kibosh on his relationship with his girlfriend.
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good thing it did or he may not have been available when you came along...:sneaky::LOL:
 
Tommy said:
My wife was an elementary school teacher for over 40 years. School trips (we called them "field trips") still take place here, but I've seen a shift in their character since I was a kid.

In the 1950s/60s, my field trips often dealt with industry. I recall trips to a Ford assembly plant, a Kellogg's cereal factory, both newspaper and book printing houses, a milk bottling facility, and a ride on a train to visit the train yard, to list a few. The emphasis was to acquaint us with "modern" technologies and show us how things work.

More recently, my wife's field trips were more often to things like a "living history" museum/site, a textile museum that includes 100+ year old mill, the USS Constitution in Boston, &c.

My early field trips were all positive and encouraging, highlighting the marvels of "modern" times and a bright future. These days, there seems to be a negative thread running through them, describing our past as uniformly oppressive and self-serving, and providing little hope for the future.

This concerns me. :(
Click to expand...
Most field trips in the local school district still focus on industry...also science, mostly environmental science and conservation. My granddaughter's last field trip was to a water plant, and then they were each given water test kits and taken to a live stream and then a reservoir, where they tested the waters and recorded & compared the results.

When I was a kid living on my grampa's dairy farm, our farm was a field trip a few times. Buses full of city kids came to see how an "ultra-modern dairy farm" worked. Each kid was given a schematic of the layout of the dairy, showing the A-Barn, B-Barn, C-Barn, Hay-Barn, etc., with a brief explanation of the purpose of each one.

One of the kids gave his to me before they left, and I still have it somewhere. (I was home from school that day because I'd sprained my ankle and had to wear an ace bandage.)

My favorite field trip was in high school. My art class went to the Crocker Art Gallery in Sacramento, and then the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. We left at 8:30am and got back at 4:30pm, and our teacher bought us lunch at Fisherman's Wharf. (thank you, Mr. Young!)

I was an art-lover who'd never been out of the Sacramento area, so that was an awesome day for for me.
 
jujube said:
I enjoyed all our "field trips" except for the one to jail.

I can't remember what class it was for but someone in charge thought it was a great idea to take us on a "Scared Straight-type" trip down to the jail, where we were yelled at by really scary inmates and informed of what would happen to us if we were incarcerated.

Some of the girls got hysterical, all of us were crying (including some of the boys), and there were a lot of unhappy parents.

Needless to say, that experience was never repeated.
Click to expand...
I went on the exact same field trip, up in central New York. I don't remember anyone crying, but the inmates were shouting, and the cop was very threatening. This, too, was just a regular school field trip and not part of a particular program.

My and my kids' school trips were associated with being in the band. I got to go to Quebec, Boston, etc. They got to go to California and NYC. The latter trip was in 2016. I'm so glad they got to go when they did because the city sounds like it's gotten pretty bad in terms of crime lately.

My parents would not pay for any trips; I had to pay myself out of my paper route and, later, cashier's job money. I made sure to financially help my kids to a much greater extent.
 
I attended a rural K-8 elementary school. Every year the 7th and 8th grades got to go on a field trip to the State Fair which was a three hour drive away from our remote "school in the woods". Teachers threats to ban us from going on that trip served them well with regard to modification of student behavior.😆
 
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Primary SchoolWe only ever had day trips…to Barry Island,Bristol Zoo or Weston-Super-Mare.
Places we went to all the time.
Did get a day trip to London in Secondary school.
 

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