What Field Trips Teach Us
by Oliver Carlos
Many people, including school administrators and government bigwigs believe that we will never go back to the traditional face-to-face mode of teaching. Aside from the usual classroom meetings in the old days, it looks like we would also say goodbye to field trips. It’s unimaginable to bring students in a crowded bus to some far-away venue when travel restrictions and the prohibition of mass gatherings are parts of the new normal.
Students now would just have to be content surfing the internet for pictures and write-ups about the field trip places of the pre-pandemic era. In the future, when we become senior citizens, the field trip stories we would tell our grandchildren would be just like their bedtime fairy tale stories. The term “field trip” may not be in the dictionary or vocabulary of kids 50 years from now.
For us who got to experience field trips when we were students, it’s natural to say that the next generation would be missing out a lot. Being at the actual venue, and using your 5 senses to absorb as much knowledge as you can, is irreplaceable by photos and readings dug up in the internet.
When I was in elementary school, the vivid field trip memories I had was when we visited a soft drinks factory in Calamba, the underground cemetery in Nagcarlan, and the old church in Magdalena where Emilio Jacinto was shot. His blood stains were still there, along with bullet holes on the wall. In college, the Ilocos fieldtrip was memorable. As a professor, I also brought my Development Communication students on field trips to TV stations in Metro Manila. On other occasions, I brought my History students to the National Museum and Intramuros. Field trips can be memorable road markers in our education journey.
Recently, I found an old 1960s picture of a UPLB P.I.100 field trip. The one in the photo is my paternal uncle, Tomas “Tommy” Castillo, Jr. The course P.I.100 is the Rizal course in UP. Uncle Tommy said that their professor was Jose “Peping” Blando, who incidentally became my maternal grand uncle years later after that field trip. During that tour, nobody would have thought that the 2 families would be united one day in the marriage of my Mom (a Blando) and my Dad (a Castillo).
Another interesting thing in the photo is the statue of Rizal in the background. I haven’t seen any Rizal statue like that. I asked Uncle Tommy where they had this picture taken, but he couldn’t recall the exact place. He said it’s either at Luneta or at Paco Park. But the weird thing is that neither park had such a statue. If he’s correct, then that statue is no more today, it’s an extinct sculpture. Will our fieldtrips be as extinct as that statue?
The apostle James mentioned in his book how short life is. Everything we are experiencing today, including life itself, will soon be gone, sometimes unexpectedly or too soon. He compared human life to the morning mist. It is fun seeing it and feeling it on our faces in the early morning. But as the sun goes up, it disappears.
“You don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Your life is like a fog. You can see it for a short time, but then it goes away.” (James 4:14, ERV)
Life indeed is short and unpredictable. A couple of years back, who would have thought that field trips would be stalled like this and there’s a big possibility that it would be a thing of the past? Nobody ever imagined that our lives would be on a drastic and sudden turn-around because of a virus.
So before the next unpredictable life turn-around would happen, we might as well make our hearts turn-around towards God. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus and dedicate our life to him, while there is still time.
