Field Trips

Scores of second-graders scrambled through the airy Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana, huddling inside simulators to feel the shaking of an earthquake, building mini-ski jumps to learn about speed and shaping wet sand into riverbanks to observe erosion. The hands-on experiences allowed them to test theories they had only read about in textbooks or heard about from teachers. "A couple of kids have asked me, 'Is this really science?'

My future husband spoke his first sentence to me through an intermediary in the back of the school bus during our freshman-year field trip. The bus had carried us from Riverside to various Los Angeles County museums and then to the Los Angeles Zoo, where legend holds that our boys were so obnoxious that the insulted primates actually threw stuff at them from their enclosure. We were on our way home, and the noise level was astonishing. It was 1975.

Yuma, Ariz. April 20-23: Nature lovers can feel as though they're back in school -- and studying only their favorite subjects -- during a weekend of seminars and field trips at the Yuma Birding & Nature Festival. Seminar topics include optics, bald eagles, bats, desert bighorn sheep, butterflies, desert lizards, wildflowers and more.

A recent string of decisions made by officials at the Arlington Independent School District in Texas has ensured that there will be no politics in the classroom there. And, apparently, there will be no fun, either. It all began when district Supt. Jerry McCullough denied students a chance to watch President Obama's speech to the nation's schoolchildren about the importance of education. McCullough banned the address because, he said, it might interfere with lesson plans and cause a distraction.

Re "L.A. schools chief will leave job to head off fight," Dec. 9 Once again, the students of the Los Angeles Unified School District lose out. Just how many field trips, textbooks, computers and other much-needed educational supplies could more than $517,000 have provided for the underserved students of the district? How many teachers or classroom aids could be provided for the most at-risk students? In this time of extreme financial crisis for the school system, throwing away half a million dollars to force out Los Angeles Schools Supt.

At some point toward the end of a recent board meeting, the trustees of tiny Ocean View School District in Huntington Beach flipped the page on their agenda packet and found "the list." Eighteen pages long, it detailed the 500-plus places in Orange and neighboring counties the district has deemed appropriate for student field trips. And as they do each year, the trustees approved the updated list with little fanfare and moved on. Not so fast. Let's have a look at this.

Scott Tucker (letter, March 10) asserts that the students and professors who participated in the recent class walkouts to protest the idea of war in Iraq "shunned higher education." I beg to differ. The students were learning about one of our country's proudest traditions -- principled dissent -- in a hands-on way. It's not like they were cutting school to go goof off. Not all education takes place in classrooms. Do the people who are complaining about these demonstrations complain when students take field trips?

"I learned that sharks have rows of teeth. I learned that seals have ears like us. The thing I enjoyed the most was touching the sea urchins, sea anemones, sea star and abalone. I also liked the tiger shark's teeth." -- From an elementary school girl after her visit to the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro. * Many children grow up in Southern California without ever seeing the ocean.