Special issue with the Sunday Magazine
From the publishers of THE HINDU

TIME OUT : May 2, 1999

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Exhilarating excursions

Prema Raghunath

Imagine a bus full of young people shouting their heads off, singing and generally seeming to be having a wonderful time. The bus stops from time to time and offloads them at various points, when adults take over and try and breathe some order into the chaos and, further, make them see certain sights, chosen by them, the adults. The children, or at least, very few of them appear to be interested in these chosen places. They stick together in large or small groups and feign enthusiasm. Back they get into the bus and go on to the next tourist spot of historical, cultural or political importance and the same thing is repeated.

The bus need not be only a bus - it could well be a compartment in a train. This is an excursion and is organised by educational institutions as part of their outward bound programme designed to add an extra dimension to the child's personality. The most apparent reason for teachers taking on the tremendous responsibility - for dangers lurk at every corner - of escorting their students on trips lasting from anything like a weekend to as long as three weeks is that they want the children to see at first hand what they may have only read about or heard of. Names of places become a magical reality when visited and when seen in the company of the peer group. There are other things which become nearly as and sometimes more important than the place itself.

In the school's curriculum, books are not the only sources of information, nor is the classroom the only place to acquire it. Any subject becomes more interesting and comes alive when visited. The classroom is also limited in that learning is a personal affair and a child will get out of academics only what he or she wants from it. So to make learning a more participative and democratic affair, children are taken out of the classroom and into the outside world to experience at first hand what they have been taught and to look at certain things through the eyes of the collective number. For, often, reactions are learnt from others and ignorance is replaced with experience. As an example, take the station. Inexperienced travellers look to the more seasoned or the more confident and take their cues from them without any intervention from the adults in charge. Because it is absorbed so readily, information has become knowledge.

Dinesh Khanna/Fotomedia

A large group has very amorphous dynamics. It changes by the minute and leaders in the class have often become the led in excursions. Often, for the academically gifted, who are sometimes too bookish to be practical, an excursion gives the more practical members of a group an opportunity to show their talents in various fields of everyday life. Boarding and lodging are generally arranged beforehand but it is these pragmatic members who organise the group into subgroups for easier handling or at other times bring them together for an activity.

Leadership qualities come to the fore and it becomes evident that there are more ways to be a leader than just getting the highest marks. Levels of self-confidence rise and often after an excursion, new leaders emerge, who are looked up to and the old truth re-established that there are certain qualities of the heart and mind that are as important as the head.

From the point of view of the child, an excursion is a tremendous learning experience. The first thing is, of course, the discomforts that have to be surmounted and tolerated for a few days. There are no home comforts, to put it mildly. Bathrooms can be dirty, running water may not be available. After a long journey one could be faced with cramped quarters, not clean and comfortable beds. The food is often completely different from the way mother makes it. There have been excursions when the boys have had to sleep in a leaky bus. What happens then is a test of everyone's higher nature. Is there a fight or a mutiny or sulking? Sometimes when tempers are frayed because of bad weather or food, there can be. Mostly though, there is an amazingly cheerful acceptance of the circumstances, which teaches everyone that crises can indeed be managed and that nothing is better than rising above onself. Though this may not be overtly stated, children feel pride and pleasure in new and positive discoveries about themselves.

The practical skills of everyday living are also brought out during an excursion. Living within a budget, not having too much spending money, accounting everyday for what has been spent are all managerial skills that are required as part of the educated person's dossier. Carrying luggage from platform to platform, keeping an eye on the totals, making sure they tally after every leg of the journey requires the same kind of dogged patience and alertness that a difficult exam takes to pass. Each excursion sharpens qualities that are immensely important in the journey of life - not the least being the ability to get on with varied kinds of people at very close quarters - not quite the same thing as just saying hi and bye in school. Several times, the composition of groups are quite different at the end of a trip than they were at the beginning, because the trip would have brought out some bonding qualities.

Day trips have also got to be mentioned as the precursor to excursions in higher classes. The goals are clear, unlike longer trips when some unexpected and unplanned equations are formulated. Day trips are educational or relaxational and have to approximate as closely as possible to intention. A trip to an estuary is definitely ecological and environmental learning, while a lazy day spent at someone's farmhouse is an opportunity for students and teachers to get closer.

In earlier times, school excursions were often the only way to see distant places. Today with the idea of family holidays becoming popular, the structure of excursions too is changing. Students' expectations are rising while at the same time their threshold of discomfort is getting lower. Tour operators who provide a package deal are becoming popular because not much is left to chance. This also means less spontaneity and self-improvisation, but increasing levels of consumerism has made itself felt in school excursions too. Cans of Pepsi have replaced water bottles, packets of chips in a dozen different flavours, each more exotic than the last, have replaced "mixture".

Leaving home even for a few days holds tremendous excitement for children because it gives them a chance to test all that they have learnt, or have thought might be fun. It also gives them an opportunity to make mistakes in a controlled atmosphere with people of their own age. Excursions are encapsulated life situations. This is what makes them invaluable tools of real learning.