Instead of zoos and museums, schoolchildren these days are taken on educational visits to garages, organic farms & foreign locales.
Just 10 years ago, schools shoved field trips down children’s throats because the syllabus ‘demanded’ it. This inevitably meant a solemn trip to the museum or the fire station.
But, children today, products of a technology-driven generation, refuse to be fobbed off with a dreary diet of museums and zoos. To keep up with these new-age prodigies, schools are now making educational field trips fun, and exposing children to interesting and exciting locales.
Today, innovative destinations include fast food chains, malls, farms, and automobile garages. On the new list are McDonalds; The Palladium Mall at High Street Phoenix, Lower Parel; the Bombay Stock Exchange; a garage; an organic farm; and so on.
Some school trips have also metamorphosed from occasional day-long visits to week-long exotic locations, including foreign locales. Exotic foreign visits include Singapore, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. Within India too, the destinations are not the usual places of historical interest, but unexplored locales such as Ladakh, Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Kusum Kanwar, head of schools, Kangaroo Kids Education Ltd, said, “We want to make learning relevant to life through hands-on education. Such field trips provide valuable, interactive life-skill lessons for all ages in an atmosphere of fun.”
About 16 children from Std I to III were taken by the school to a farm on the outskirts of the city, teaching students about fresh food. “The trip was supposed to be an educational one, but for the first time one can say that education has never been so much fun,” said Shruti Yadav, a Std III student.
“We introduce children to healthy food. It also inspires them to eat more fruits and vegetables,” Kanwar said.
“Children learn where food comes from through hands-on, garden-based education, enhancing their understanding of agriculture and nutrition through cooking and tasting from the garden. They also learn of sericulture and compost making.”
And, considering even pre-schoolers are being exposed to field trips like a visit to a bakery unit or the local post office, the trend only promises to continue. And no one’s complaining.
Students of Kangaroo Kids are taken on a field trip to an automobile garage where children are shown different parts of a car, how they are assembled, how to change a tyre, and fix a flat, etc.
And these trips are not just fun outings. “Every field trip has a purpose. Not only should there be a message taken back with them, but also so that the students can replicate the experience,” said Nitya Ramaswami, head, child development, Zee Learn.
On such field trips the students are not only expected to observe their surroundings, but also work on projects such as skits, stories, paintings, handicrafts, etc, based on
the trip.
For instance, the students of Kidzee, a pre-school, visited a museum of history. After the visit, the children were made to do projects making jewellery, clothes, drawings, designs, tools, etc, that were on display at the museum.
With the children happy, parents are also pleased. “For once, I do not see my children complaining of going on a school trip. They look forward to it every term. Also, when they return they are filled with stories of new and exciting things,” said Meera Nair, mother of two children from Jankidevi Public School, Andheri.
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