Field Trip Banning in Public and Private Colleges and Universities
My Thought about the Field Trip Banning in Public and Private Colleges and Universities
Educational trips give students experiences away from their regular school environment while providing alternative educational opportunities. It is a time to unwind and still learn at the same time. Implementing field trips was never an issue until a tragic Tanay bus accident took the lives of students from Bestlink Colleges. With this, the Commission on Higher Education announced that they will suspend field trips conducted by school. The said suspension will cover all educational tours and field trips in all public and private colleges and universities while a probe on the bus crash is ongoing. Department of Education (DepEd) said they will study the possibility of banning schools from conducting outdoor field trips to prevent accidents. As student, I strongly disagree in banning field trips.
What happened in the tragic bus accident caught the public's attention and cause issues nationwide. With CHED, majority of the lawmakers were eager to impose a ban on field trips. Quezon City Representative Winston Castelo said that we should immediately stop other schools from conducting similar trips pending the establishment of their relevance to their study and the assurance of the student's insurance and safety.
Not only lawmakers were against field trips but most of the parents. Field trips bring up a wide array of legal issues, most regarding liability. If a student gets injured on a nature hike, is the school liable for medical fees? What about the park, or the forest ranger leading the hike? Parents may be nervous about the safety of their children. Also, most parents were being thrifty and can't afford such expensive trip, but were forced to comply because some field trips were obligatory.
We cannot guarantee a 100% safety for students no matter how strict the rules are. There will always be students who have poor behaviour and attitudes. Some students are egotistical enough to disobey their teachers and do things the way they like which cause trips to be unsuccessful breaking the good relation between the teacher and the student. Medical risk. For example like while travelling via vehicle some children gets motion sickness.
According to De Vera, "This is being done in consideration of the safety of students and it will allow an investigating committee to look in to the circumstances surrounding the tragedy that happened in Tanay."
On the contrary, learning is not found merely inside the four corners of a room, educational trips are important in the field of learning. With field trips, students have the opportunity to determine what they learn and how they learn it. Said differently, student learning can be interest-driven, not teacher and curriculum driven. Students will experience a more holistic, integrated picture of the information that, in the classroom, may have only been presented in a textual and abstract way.
Especially to college students, participating in such activities will equip students a better understanding of topics, build cultural understanding and tolerance, and expose them to worlds outside their own. How can we say they're well educated if they would not know how to apply what they learned in real life situations? Field trips give students the opportunity to learn in a natural environment and experience things first-hand and from primary resources, rather than texts; real objects rather than photos.
A study found that regardless of gender, ethnicity or socioeconomic status, 59% of students who take educational trips have better grades, 95% have higher graduation rates from high school and 63% in college. In fact, 89% said educational trips had a positive, lasting impact on their education and career because the trips made them more engaged, intellectually curious and interested in and out of school.
Recognizing how some trips involve certain monetary costs which may be unaffordable to students coming from poor families and who therefore are not able to join, teachers should refrain from conducting tests based on these field trips. It should be decided that tests will be held based on these field trips, students who were unable to join such trips should not be penalized; they shall be given special tests or assignments as substitutes for not joining the field trip.School heads are encouraged to tap external sources to help fund educational field trips and arrange for group or student discounts in order to reduce the burden on students. Also, those responsible for organizing the field trips should secure the consent of parents of the students to join the field trip since the students are under the stewardship of the school.
Field trips have been long conducted for the benefit of learning. It should not be prohibited because of an unfortunate accident. This will prepare them of what’s ahead of them. There can be other ways to make sure everyone is safe during field trips. Banning field trips is not the solution. Let the students learn from the best teacher, experience.
Thank you for reading this article! If you want to read some of my previous articles, here's the link of them:
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