Field Trippin'

What would we ever do without the well-intentioned, but misguided dictates of organizations like the ACLU and RIDE? Rhode Island’s State Education Commissioner has ruled that lower-income families should not have to worry about whether or not they can afford for their children to take part in extracurricular activities such as field trips. On its surface such a stance seems reasonable enough: Why rub poverty in people’s faces? Of course, there is merit to the ACLU’s assertion that schools have no authority under state law to impose fees and that these fees interfere with the right to a free and equal public education. Under no circumstance am I advocating for a two-tiered system in the public schools. What neither organization recognizes though, is that through altruism and generosity, students from impoverished backgrounds have often had their stipend paid for them through philanthropy, a cultural norm that has existed in this country for as long as civil liberties, perhaps even longer.

For roughly twenty-five years, I have sponsored field trips to Plymouth Plantation, Old Sturbridge Village, The Newport Mansions, Mt. Monadnock, The Boston Museum of Science, and The MFA and to our nation’s capital. The unwritten rule for all of these undertakings was that all children who wanted to attend a field trip would go regardless of their ability to pay. Without fanfare or public proselytizing, teachers, staff and members of the school communities would raise money or take it from their own pockets to ensure all students participated. In a reticent manner, students were discreetly told that if money was an issue that we (a caring community) could and would take care of any financial burden. This is not a unique phenomenon. Educators who are reading this are surely familiar with this practice.

Students who normally would not have exposure to such opportunities have had a chance to share in the experience many middle-class kids take for granted. I know this to be true. I grew up in a working-class family in the Silver Lake/Olneyville section of Providence in the 1970's. My parents worked in factories doing “piece work”. It was only through the kindness of others that I was able to experience field trip opportunities. Far from being scarred by the stigma of being poor, I reveled in the doors that were opened to me through the kindness of others. Years later, as an educator in Providence, like many of my colleagues, I felt the need to pay it forward.

How sad that this too will come to pass. Another canon of public school education must be blanched from school culture, sacrificed at the altar of “progress” and pseudo equity. Both RIDE and the ACLU are cognizant of the severe limitations placed on school funding by cash-strapped municipalities. The cost of transportation alone precludes most district’s from even entertaining all of the previously mentioned field trips. Providing meaningful enrichment activities to students has become next to impossible, and yet that is what public educators do everyday. Our job has just been made that more difficult.

Who loses out in this entire charade? Well of course, the very children these institutions are supposedly championing.

To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut’s biting satire in Harrison Bergeron: “The year was 2019 and RIDE and the ACLU had finally made everyone equal.”

Rick Taylor

Gilder Lehrman RI History Teacher of the Year 2018

NBCT 2005, 2015

Social Studies Teacher Leader

Nathan Bishop Middle School

101 Sessions Street

Providence, RI 02906