A social science field trip program

Abstract

Educators have long been cognizant of the limitations of confining all teaching to the classroom. In subject matter areas such as social science the shortcomings of an approach that involves no first-hand utilization of the resources of the outside world are particularly pronounced. Special problems are encountered at the secondary and college level, however, in the effective utilization of field trips. One of the problems is the difficulty of finding adequate blocks of time. Few outside experiences are feasible which can be confined to a single class period. A great many require a full day; and as a consequence students must be excused from several other classes when an instructor plans such an activity for his class. Those instructors whose subjects do not lend themselves so well to field trips, along with those whose educational outlook makes them skeptical about their worth, may be particularly disconcerted at having their classes cancelled to accommodate someone else's trip. At the college level one sometimes hears the accusation that a cavalier attitude toward attending classes is engendered by the condoning of frequent field trip absences. At Jersey City State College an experimental program for senior social science majors was recently undertaken which involved the setting aside of one day per week exclusively for field trips. In this way the aforementioned difficulty was eliminated. The trips were designed to provide supplementary insights into all of the social science areas. Time was set aside to give students background information about places they were to visit, as well as to permit discussion of what was seen on the previous trip. Preparation for trips also involved required and suggested reading. The program was unique, to the best of the writer's knowledge, in being a required part of the program for the preparation of high school social science teachers. It was not the intention that it should replace