the long trip
pROXIMITY
One cannot be a good citizen until you get proximate to problems in the world, because proximity teaches you things you cannot learn from a distance. When you get proximate to problems, you see things ... you see nuances that you cannot see from a distance.
Bryan Stevenson - Equal Justice Initiative
The Long Trip, originated by Lucy Sprague Mitchell - founder of Bank Street College of Education, took place each spring from 1935 - 1952 (excluding the years of World War ll).
Mitchell believed that in order to be effective teachers, students had to understand the social issues of the time. Faculty and student teachers would travel together to encounter the complexity of a distant environment and confront its social and political issues: the labor movement, poverty, conservation, government intervention programs, race relations—and the consequences for children, their education, and their families.