Australian students have not been able to travel for a number of years now due to the pandemic that we all experienced but now that it seems that it has come to an end, it’s time for all of us to move on and it’s time for students to travel again. There is a lot of lost time to be made up for and although many parents and educators alike may think that school tours are just a reward for a job well done, there is so much more to them than that. Schools should actually be encouraged to add international travel to the curriculum because it allows students to have real-life experience in other countries.
There are so many educational benefits to organising education tours and they allow students to develop themselves personally and to use everything that they have learned in the classroom and bring it to life out in the real world. Students tend to remember a lot more from what they learned on education tours than what they learned from books in the classroom and so this is a testament to how beneficial these trips really are. If as an educator or as a parent, you are still reluctant to accept that travel certainly does broaden the mind then maybe the following benefits of school trips can help to convince you otherwise.
- Trips bring actual subjects to life – Teachers use books and also modern technology to get their point across when it comes to any particular subject but the really is no substitute for getting the students out there and experiencing everything first-hand. It is also important to note that students learn in many different ways and while some react to just learning things from books, others need to experience it in order to be able to appreciate and learn from it.
- They encourage new interests – If a school educational tour involves travelling to a completely different country, then it might be the case that a different language is spoken there and not the traditional English that is spoken here in Australia. Dealing with a new culture and a new language can wake something up inside students and encourage them to learn this specific language and to want to learn about other cultures.
Going on some kind of school trip or expedition provides the students with a break from the classroom environment and many teachers find that when they return, they have changed and the relationship between the teacher and student improves.