Guest Viewpoint: The school field trip – collateral damage from Sept. 11

By Charles Tampio

2/5/02 – Developmental psychologists point out that human social and individual development is not plotted on a graph as an arc or curve, but rather as a series of steps and plateaus.

Key experiences shape one's consciousness and one's life. On a more spiritual level, it can be said that they shape one's destiny.

It has often been noted that travel, for many of us, has provided more of these key experiences than any other activity. The idea that travel is a university is widely shared by educators and poets.

The class trip to Washington, D.C., the annual outing to the state capital, and even the post-college sojourn to European capitals are all examples of travel as an adjunct to the educational experience.

The restrictions on school travel imposed as a result of Sept. 11 and the subsequent anthrax episodes were protective reactions on the part of school boards, superintendents, principals, and other local officials borne out of legitimate concern for the safety of their students. Some school districts, on the other hand, reacted from exaggerated concern for liability and legal exposure.

With respect to class field trips, there are at least seven loci in the decision-making process: the student, the parent, the teacher, the department chair, the principal, the superintendent, and the school board. A veto by any of them is the deciding vote.

Unfortunately, the post-Sept. 11 travel bans imposed by school districts were made in haste and often contained absurd elements. A bedroom suburb of Washington, D.C., for example, explicitly forbade travel into that city where many of the students' parents commuted to work each day.

Some districts banned out-of-state trips to communities next door but over the state line. Some chose arbitrary mileage limits and some even banned longstanding traditional Halloween trips into the neighborhood pumpkin patch.

While many school districts have rescinded these restrictions, others have not. Bans on international travel are still so widespread that a number of distinguished study abroad and exchange programs are in jeopardy. Once eliminated, it is hard to restart them, since many of these programs have been painstakingly developed over time through carefully developed relationships.

It is impossible to estimate the number of students affected by these restrictions. What is clear is that hundreds of thousands of young people will be denied access to these highly formative experiences and opportunities that they may never be able to duplicate later on.

The eye-opening, mind-opening, and even heart-opening experience of a young man or woman on a first trip to the nation's capital when he or she confronts the meaning of citizenship might not be recovered.

Years after her 1981 Close Up Washington week, Sherry Campbell put it this way: "I learned how far our country has come, how the political process works, the responsibility of being a voter and staying involved. It's an experience that touches you in so many ways--like a ripple in water; the effect starts small and spreads."

When I was 17, an essay contest sponsored by the Oddfellows won me a weeklong study trip to the United Nations. The train from Buffalo to New York City took me 300 miles farther than I had ever been before. Since my family of seven had to be supported on a steelworker's salary, there was no money left over for travel or vacations.

When I returned from the U.N. as the school's foremost authority on international affairs, my fate was sealed. A college was chosen (wisely) on the basis of its study abroad program, which led to a junior year in Florence, the mother of all eye-opening experiences.

A side trip to Sicily, from which my parents were brought as children, confronted me with a level of poverty I had never imaged. There, in the shadow of Monreale cathedral, I pledged to devote a portion of my life to working with the poor. Immediately upon my return, a personal invitation to me by President Kennedy, also extended to every other member of my generation, led to a two-year stint in the Peace Corps in Central Africa.

That first high school trip set in motion wheels that continue to turn today, more than 40 years later. Many friends and colleagues can trace similar trajectories in their own lives on the impact that travel had on future educational and career choices.

Sometimes we trivialize the educational importance of these experiences. Few remember individual weeks of their school year, but who can forget the day one first stepped foot into the Smithsonian or laid one's eyes on the Capitol or flew on a plane?

The very term we use, "field trip," does not properly reflect the educational significance or importance to individual development of so many of these opportunities.

Everyone in the chain of command in the educational community should take stock immediately of opportunities already lost and take remedial steps to reverse these losses.

It is especially important to understand that wealthier students will continue to have access to educational travel. Less fortunate students, who often are afforded access through scholarship assistance or fundraising programs, might never have another chance to enjoy the life-changing benefits of the educational travel experience.

Educators agree that young people need greater levels of civic engagement and global perspective now more than ever before to cope with the challenges ahead. It would be a further tragedy of Sept. 11 if this generation of young people were denied the study travel opportunities that have served preceding generations so well.

Charles Tampio is vice president of the Close Up Foundation, Alexandria, Va.