Saturday, October 27, 2012

Never been to Wellington?

To be honest I am surprised that so many children from the lowest income deciles have never been outside them.

Naenae College principal John Russell said that of 26 pupils in a recent year 9 class, 16 had never been to Wellington.

My surprise is due to the number of school outings that children go on. Visits to Te Papa, the Carter Observation Centre, the Zoo,  Capital E, for instance. I've got a Year 9 student and was forever being invited to do parent accompaniment on trips right from kindergarten. Yes these children come from poorer families but their schools get more funding. So I'm taking this assertion with a pinch of salt.

If education is about broadening horizons perhaps the schools should be doing more about this shortfall.

4 comments:

Mark Hubbard said...

I cynically wonder, upon observing groups of children these days, if it is simply a matter of teachers prudently being not brave enough to take children out of the secure enclosures of their schools. Note, two aspects to this: either the kids are out of control, or, parents not seeming to understand risk anymore, if a kiddie should happen to get hurt on such an outing, then the legal consequences just aren't worth it anymore. A vocational teacher might still risk it, but one picking up the pay cheque won't.

Manolo said...

A generation of timid, risk-averse children Is it that?

brian_smaller said...

In the 1980s I was a volunteer in a program that took kids on holiday outings - in Palmerston North. We had kids that lived in Takaro on the edge of town who had never seen a sheep, despite paddocks full of them about a hundred metres from their homes. Their natural orientation was towards town and the shopping centre, not away from it. We used to take them up to the Massey Farms and it was like they had just been to Mars. This doesn't surprise me. Also, can you imagine taking some of these kids on an outing? Teachers probably thought discretion was the better part of valour and stayed at school.

Anonymous said...

I think Mark and Brian have nailed this.
A lot of children nowadays are so out-of-control that taking them on school trips would be like herding cats.