Times certainly do change. One of my father's favorite stories to tell is of his high school band traveling to Washington, D.C. He has told us of some of the high jinks he and his bandmates got into while they were in the city. They even managed to generate a suspicious person's report after they snuck out of the hotel after curfew to "see part of the city."

I suppose I must have come through school when such exotic trips were out of style.

I don't recall such trips when I was in school, although the football team once played in a playoff game in Shallotte, which is somewhat close to the beach. We rode a charter bus to Brunswick County for that game, which was a huge upgrade from the faded blue activity buses we drove to other games.

My sister, a good eight years behind me in school, went to Florida for a week with her senior biology class.

I went to Chapel Hill for journalism camp.

Somehow, the scales just seem tilted against me.

Today's students have all sorts of opportunities to go to interesting places and see and do things they might not ever have the chance to do again.

The East Wake band and choral students will be traveling to New York City in the spring to see some Broadway musicals and visit some of the sites we see on television. Like my father's band, the East Wake National Honor Society will travel to Washington, D.C., in February for a conference. It is going to spend an extra day in the nation's capital to see some of the sights because the rest of their schedule will be filled with NHS meetings.

At one point in my life, I thought such trips were rather sad excuses just to take a fun vacation and that they didn't really fulfill a school's mission to educate the students.

But I've begun to rethink that.

To be sure, the students who go on these trips will do something - no matter how small - to learn something that is part of the curriculum. But these trips will surely be more pleasure than work.

That used to stick in my craw.

But now I think it's not such a bad thing if our young people have a chance to see more of the world outside their own community.

Field trips to the museums in downtown Raleigh are fun and informative. Visiting the planetarium in Chapel Hill is fun and informative. But our world is so much bigger. Some children are fortunate enough that they will make longer trips like these with their families. They will get to see some of the institutions and historical sites that played pivotal roles in our country's development. And they will learn that there is a bigger world out there.

Interestingly, I learned that five of the seven NHS students slated to visit Washington, D.C., in the spring have never been.

If Washington was on the west coast, I might not find that so surprising.

But when you consider that our nation's capital is just a five-hour drive away, it's remarkable more students haven't been.

Thanks to this school opportunity, they'll be able to see some of the places they read about in the history books.

It will have a greater meaning for them and the importance of the history they are learning will be less likely to be lost on them.

That, I believe, is a good thing.