- On a practical level, some lessons can only be learned beyond or outside of the classroom. In regard to the importance of the Elementary Social Studies Field Trips program, a Montgomery County Public Schools (Rockville, Maryland) website describes the importance of field trips to education in general: "They (field trips) provide children with experiences that cannot be duplicated in the school but are nonetheless an integral part of school instruction."
- Field trips "engage" students in studies beyond what would be the case in a classroom or lecture hall setting, according to Classroom Earth, a program of the National Environmental Education Foundation. In other words, students are more captivated by first-hand encounters with the subject matter, which facilitates learning. Students who go on field trips become more motivated to learn.
- NetTrekker's CEO Randy Wilhelm, in a story for the Reuters wire service, points out that the field trip is "a substantive way to expand students' horizons and allow them to learn experientially." In other words, most human beings tend to be ethnocentric to one degree or another, seeing the world only from the perspective of one's own community circle. Field trips get students out of their communities to experience the larger world with the potential of broadening their vision of cultural diversity and how things really are.
- A study conducted of two Maryland middle schools in regards to Thinkport online field trips showed that these experiences helped improve the reading of students and brought about greater academic accomplishment. This study demonstrates the potential benefits of enhancing the more basic skills in a curriculum or the three R's. The argument that field trips can benefit students at even the most elementary levels is supported by this study.
- One way to understand internships is in terms of academic coursework in the context of an extended field trip. Internships are designed to immerse the student in the real world of a particular line of work. That is, such temporary roles with particular companies provide important feedback to students as far as whether a particular vocation is the right one to pursue. Monster.com has a special section with numerous listings of internships. Therefore, field trips are a tool to guide students in a particular vocational direction and to help them discover personal aptitudes at an earlier grade.
