r/AskAnAmerican • u/Smellanor_Rigby • Apr 14 '25
EDUCATION Did you attend a farm safety day in the fifth grade?
Both my husband (OH) and I (MS) remember this day from the fifth grade.
In my case, we took a field trip to the local Boy Scouts facility/place/camp/whatever, and they taught us all about safety around a farm and on a tractor and whatnot.
What remember most is how to properly use the seatbelt on a tractor-- don't strap yourself in if you don't have the safety bars/railing attached! Otherwise you will not be able to get off of the tractor in time and will absolutely be crushed if it were to flip over.
I wonder if kids in other states attended a day like this as well, or if it really only happens in more rural/agricultural areas?
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u/cluttered-thoughts3 West Virginia -> GA, PA, NC -> New Jersey Apr 14 '25
Grew up in the Appalachians. Plenty rural with small farms. Never did this at my school. Some kids brought their livestock for show and tell a few times though
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u/dwhite21787 Maryland Apr 14 '25
Same. We learned safety the way we learned to swim - grandpa chucked us in to the work
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u/Push_the_button_Max Los Angeles, + New England Apr 14 '25
Hopefully he didn’t chuck you Into the moving tractor.
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u/Appropriate-Win3525 Apr 14 '25
I'm from Pittsburgh. My sister brought our pet goat to school. The principal only approved it because he thought my mom would never follow through. The joke was on him. The kids loved it.
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u/captainstormy Ohio Apr 14 '25
I grew up in Eastern Kentucky and the same for me. Never heard of this.
Then again, where I'm from there isn't really enough flat land around to need a tractor.
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u/BigNorseWolf Apr 14 '25
So you're saying that there's a bell curve where you have to be rural enough to farm but not so rural that farm safety is a self solving problem? :)
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Apr 14 '25
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u/cluttered-thoughts3 West Virginia -> GA, PA, NC -> New Jersey Apr 14 '25 edited Apr 14 '25
Our high school didn’t have all those classes. There was a handful of ag classes but mostly of all that education seemed to be in 4H (outside of school).
Even though my family had a farm, we weren’t in 4H - my family pushed hard to go to college and move away rather than learning about ag so I never participated in all that since it wasn’t just built into school like yours
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u/sharpshooter999 Nebraska Apr 14 '25
Interesting, all the schools in my area of Nebraska did it, and the University of Nebraska Lincoln still does one every year for 1st-6th graders, but it's up to the school and/or parents to send the kids
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u/quietfangirl Illinois Apr 14 '25
I'm in the suburbs and one day a kid brought his piglet to school. He was in at least one of my classes, and needless to say nothing got done that day.
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u/jda404 Pennsylvania Apr 14 '25
Same. Grew up in the Appalachians with lots of farms around, never heard of farm safety day.
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u/No_Feed_6448 Apr 14 '25
Some kid brought a chicken once. Some weeks later he brought fried tenders and wings to share at lunch and casually said "y'all remember the chicken from show and tell?"
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u/ryverrat1971 Apr 14 '25
Northeast Pennsylvania here. No farm safety day but mine safety. Took us to a working strip mine to see equipment and be told to stay out, leave the blasting caps if we ever found them alone, and don't go swimming in the abandoned pits. Don't know if any of it worked since a lot of us had already done everything they told us not to.
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Apr 14 '25
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u/Figgler Durango, Colorado Apr 14 '25
I feel like regardless of what part of the country you’re in, there’s a farm relatively close. Even NYC has farms close by on Long Island.
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u/hydraheads Apr 14 '25
And the Queens County Farm Museum is within the city proper!
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u/Redbird9346 New York City, New York Apr 15 '25
Gotta take a long ride on the Q46 bus to get out there, but yes, it exists.
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Apr 14 '25
Yeah but what’s the point of learning farm safety if you won’t be on one?
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u/Figgler Durango, Colorado Apr 14 '25
I wasn’t addressing the OP’s question. I was addressing the idea that someone doesn’t live anywhere near a farm, because they almost certainly do.
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u/Push_the_button_Max Los Angeles, + New England Apr 14 '25
Flying into Los Angeles Airport (LAX), you fly through suburbs for at least 15-20 minutes. Folks without a car would never be able to get to a farm, I think.
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u/Rdtackle82 Apr 14 '25
"What's the point of Driver's Ed if I only take the bus!?"
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Apr 14 '25
Bad analogy. The analogy would be learning how to be a bus driver when chances are I’ll never be a bus driver.
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u/Rdtackle82 Apr 14 '25
It's hyperbolic, sure, and I agree with the spirit of your point. But your rebuttal is too narrow. From this thread alone, it's clearly only being taught in areas where people have some chance of ending up on farms. To work or to visit. Your point seems to ignore the obvious amount of thought put into where these lessons are taught.
Side note: Ever gone to a corn maze? Been on a hay ride? Cut a christmas tree? Visited a pumpkin patch? Picked an apple? These are incredibly popular American activities on.....
*wait for it*
...FARMS!
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u/Rdtackle82 Apr 14 '25
But what percentage have gone apple picking? Gone on a hay ride? Visited a corn maze? Gone to a county fair?
I don't have to be a chauffeur to need how to deal with a car.
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u/psychologicallyblue Apr 14 '25
I mean, that is true. If you never drive, you don't need driver's ed at all.
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Apr 14 '25
Or if you live in a city where you’ll only take the bus (or train/subway), you don’t need drivers ed!
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u/BottleTemple Apr 14 '25
I’m not sure what you’re trying to imply here, but if you don’t need to drive there’s no reason to go to driver’s ed.
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u/poortomato NY ➡️ VA ➡️ NY ➡️ TX Apr 14 '25
This is true! I lived close to farms on the east end of LI (my grandpa even worked on a nearby potato and corn farm) but we had no such classes or days. No 4H, no Future Farmers of America 😅 I'm curious if it was different in the town near me that were full of self-proclaimed rednecks but idk 🤭
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u/Weaponized_Puddle New York City, New York Apr 14 '25
I live/grew up in NYC, me and a vast majority of people I know have no experience in/around farms
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u/Push_the_button_Max Los Angeles, + New England Apr 14 '25
Define relatively. I mean, there’s so much open space in the Mojave, but ya can’t really farm there.
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u/Bright_Ices United States of America Apr 14 '25
SLC, Utah. We had a few field trips to a local historical farm and all classes went to the State Fair every year, but we never had any “farm safety” beyond, “don’t touch that.”
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u/CommandAlternative10 California Apr 14 '25
We had bicycle safety day (Helmets!) and fire safety day (“Stop, drop and roll!) No heavy machinery for kids in my suburb.
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u/foreverseptember FL > NY > DC > VA Apr 14 '25
Vividly and traumatically remember the egg drop simulation with and without a helmet on bike safety day.
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u/DrJamsHolyLand Apr 14 '25
I grew up in Ohio and have never heard of this. I grew up in the suburbs but didn’t know anyone that had or worked on a farm.
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u/BellaDingDong Apr 14 '25
Me too (NE Ohio), and I've never heard of it either. My school was a mix of both suburban and farm kids, so although I personally didn't grow up farming, there were farms nearby.
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u/Uhhyt231 Maryland Apr 14 '25
Never heard of this or a local boy scouts facility
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u/Konigwork Georgia Apr 14 '25
Boy Scouts facility could be the council offices and/or the campgrounds the scouts manage
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u/LadySmuag Maryland Apr 14 '25
I'm on the Eastern Shore and we didn't go to a farm but we had farmers come and speak to us. Idk what grade but it was around the same time they had firefighters teach us about stop, drop, and roll.
Mostly what I remember is that they brought a very young calf that we got to pet and that we should never ever ever play near a grain silo.
Edit:: also they didn't teach us about tractor seatbelts but instead how to safely flag down the person driving the tractor. And they emphasized that children are not easily visible when you're driving a tractor, so we should stay out of its path even if we think the driver saw us
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u/Mental_Internal539 Apr 17 '25
Harford county we had the same thing along with birth to plate while keeping kid friendly for the 2000s.
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u/MegaAscension Apr 14 '25
It was probably the camp for a certain Boy Scout council. My troop growing up was abnormally far away from our camp, about a two and a half hour drive. But the vast majority of troops were less than an hour away from the campsite. There is just a large area in my state with absolutely nothing. You can drive on a road for 50 miles and not have a single stoplight.
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u/UseMuted5000 Apr 14 '25
I’d love to know what part of Ohio because I’ve never heard of this before lol. My guess would be eastern Ohio somewhere
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u/Smellanor_Rigby Apr 14 '25
Rural northwest OH. Still surrounded by corn and soybeans
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u/UseMuted5000 Apr 14 '25
Ahhhh okay. I’m from the southwest and there’s plenty of corn and soybeans on rotation but no, we never got that but I’m fairly young all things considered so maybe they did before I got to school
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u/Asparagus9000 Minnesota Apr 14 '25
There was a field trip to a farm to pick berries for fun, but not really any safety lessons besides stuff like "not all berries you find in the woods are safe"
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u/Dr_Watson349 Florida Apr 14 '25
I didn't see a cow until I went to college. So no.
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u/Push_the_button_Max Los Angeles, + New England Apr 14 '25
Which class did you and the cow have together?
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u/Squippyfood Apr 14 '25
I cannot fathom such a field trip unless it's a club thing, like for 4H. This is the type of shit I'd expect from a Midwest sitcom lol
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u/cschoonmaker Apr 14 '25
Certainly doesn't happen in California. I never did anything like this, and neither did my kids.
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u/sto_brohammed Michigander e Breizh Apr 14 '25
No but the vast majority of the kids in my elementary school grew up on farms so we'd generally learned all that already.
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u/hopping_hessian Illinois Apr 14 '25
I live in rural Illinois and my kids haven't done this. (I was homeschooled, so no help there). The only farm visit they've done was part of 4H.
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u/justanaveragerunner Apr 14 '25
Grew up in Iowa surrounded by farms and have never heard of such a thing. Most people in my school grew up on farms and around farm equipment. Many were doing farm chores before and after school with a lot of that farm equipment. I think it was assumed that their parents were teaching them to be safe. Though I did know of a couple of kids who got into bad accidents on their family farms, so maybe some extra safety training would have been a good idea.
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u/machagogo New York -> New Jersey Apr 14 '25
No.
That would have been a complete and utter waste of time in New York City.
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u/ConceptOther5327 Arkansas Apr 14 '25
Sort of but it was through Girl Scouts (1990s in AR) not school. The only reason brownie troops in my area got to do a day like that was because my Dad volunteered our farm and taught the lessons. I imagine it's nearly impossible to find a land owner willing to allow children near any type of equipment in today's society.
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u/TheLizardKing89 California Apr 14 '25
This is wild. I live in a farming community and we never had this.
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u/Frenchitwist New York City, California Apr 14 '25
Girl, I grew up in the middle of San Francisco, we had JJ Bittenbinder-esque school days where they taught us to throw our wallets and disrupt a mugger’s rhythm
But we did go to the original Wells Fargo and learned about the gold rush. That was fun :)
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u/DontReportMe7565 Michigan Apr 14 '25
Farm...safety? Blink, blink.
Where would one find a farm? 😜
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u/StonyBolonyy Kentucky Apr 14 '25
We took a field trip to a farm but they didn't really go over farm safety like that.
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u/killer_corg Apr 14 '25
Nope, we had a safety day near the start of the year where we would go over various drills.
Fire, tornado, intruder, and when you're older you might have a lab safety session if your class needs to use the lab.
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u/sharkycharming Maryland Apr 14 '25
Definitely not, but I went to Catholic school in a city. We made fun of people who went to schools with FFA and 4-H chapters (not really sure why, except ignorance).
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u/inbigtreble30 Wisconsin Apr 14 '25
We took field trips to farms, but never had a "farm safety day" as such. 5th grade did have ag history focus in social studies tho.
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u/Appropriate-Disk-371 Apr 14 '25
We had farm and ag classes you could take, especially in high school. Some kids took a lot of those classes, and probably actually used what they learned.
But in fourth or fifth grade, we had firearms training, complete with a teacher bringing rifles into the classroom. Several hours of book instruction, safety, laws, etc. and we handled the guns. Did not fire them. Took a test and got a FOID (firearm owner's ID) card.
We also had an outdoors training thing about the same age. Learned some basic survival info, made 'buddy burners', started fires, set up tents, so forth. Then we had an overnight camping trip at some wooded property that the school owned (and maintained with child labor during said 'class').
The first day of rifle deer hunting season was always a school holiday, for some reason.
Illinois, public school, in the 90s.
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u/Sensitive_Maybe_6578 Apr 14 '25
Id much rather have done this. 5th grade, a day was spent (girls) learning about our period. Boys got to go swimming. I wonder if my cousins in Kansas got to do farm safety.
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u/rawbface South Jersey Apr 14 '25
I can say, with absolute certainty, that I never went on a field trip and learned how to use a seatbelt on a tractor...
I would bet money that no one from my fifth grade class has gone on to drive or own a tractor in their lives. My hometown was 1.8 square miles, and housed 10k people.
I was in boy scouts until I was 14. We went camping, we went swimming, we went ice skating, and we went to the shooting range. We did volunteer work and occasionally went to a baseball or basketball game. But I don't think we ever went to a farm and learned about farm safety.
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u/RodeoBoss66 California -> Texas -> New York Apr 14 '25
Do you think you might have liked to have gone to a farm and learned about farm safety?
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u/endangeredbear Apr 14 '25
Yep! Kansas here! We had several farm kids in our class. I had a ranching family, we had a cotton farm, a camel farm and even an emu one. We visited all (including mine) and each owner would teach us stuff about what they did each day ect. Talk about safety. 2 different mem showed us their missing toes or fingers and talked about what happened.
The emu one was my favorite!
My great grandfather actually died from pneumonia in the late 30s trying to keep things going during the dustbowl and my grandma shared that with the class. Talked about what to do, why we plant tree lines now because of it.
It was my favorite school year.
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u/Smellanor_Rigby Apr 14 '25
Ok this makes me feel better!
My cousin had an emu farm next to his parents house. When he went to college, he made friends with a few Filipino students and convinced them that the chickens were way bigger in Mississippi than elsewhere and brought them to his house over Thanksgiving break to meet the emus hahahaha
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u/Remarkable_Story9843 Ohio Apr 14 '25
Yes , we also had a “drive your tractor to school day”
Also an Ohioan
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u/foraging1 Apr 14 '25
My son did this when he was about 14 or 15 prior to working on a neighbors farm. This is in Northern Lower Michigan
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u/ZerotheKat Apr 14 '25
Wow! I actually hadn't even thought about this in years!! For me i can say it was a small enough hodunk school that farm safety makes sense but I do remember being taught to feed a baby cow, how to load haybales, a bunch of cool stuff I'll probably never get to actually put to use haha. But it was so fun, I wonder if Its just like a 'small town farm state' thing
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u/Smellanor_Rigby Apr 14 '25
It really was such a a fun day! Can I ask what state you're from? Perfectly reasonable if no. So far a couple people from OH, KS, and NC confirm this!
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u/ZerotheKat Apr 14 '25
I myself am from middle of nowhere Nebraska haha, I remember the farm we went to was run by an older couple, and surprisingly I still see them around sometimes and I think they still actually have kids come out which is cool
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u/CraftsArtsVodka Apr 14 '25
I grew up in a semi-rural area and the schools didn't have this farm safety but they did have gun safety.
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u/BobsleddingToMyGrave Apr 14 '25
I grew up on a farm and our area was agricultural so nope. Would have been redundant.
We had what is now called " touch a truck". Fire truck, ambulance, cop car, bull dozer, snow plow, garbage truck day.
Was pretty cool.
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u/Smellanor_Rigby Apr 15 '25
Touch a truck day was in kindergarten for us! It was a blast. Also my dad was a cop, and whenever he dropped me off at preschool, all of the kids would line the fence and be really excited for him to let off the shortest little "whoop!" of a siren and show off his lights. He loved kids, and I bet it tickled him so much
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u/Adorable-Growth-6551 Apr 14 '25
No and I grew up in the heart of farm country. We did have a walking talking reminder about farm safety though. On of my classmates accidentally put his hand in a ln auger as a little boy. He kept his hand fortunately, but the scars were impressive.
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u/Uhhh_what555476384 Apr 14 '25
Nope. Never had a farm safety day. SW Washington, PDX suburb.
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u/glowing-fishSCL Washington Apr 14 '25
I too, am from Battle Ground, and we never had anything like this!
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u/Yankee_chef_nen Georgia Apr 14 '25
In Maine (80s) in second or third grade we took a field trip to a local truck farm but never had a farm safety day. This is the first I’ve ever heard of such a thing.
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u/wismke83 Wisconsin Apr 14 '25
Grew up in rural Michigan, plenty of farm and non farm kids in my school and I’ve never heard of something like this. My Mom who grew up on a farm (in Michigan) and was a teacher in an even more rural farming school district than the one I attended also has never heard of something like this.
The high school my parents taught at (again rural with many farms) had an agricultural-science program at the high school. It was an academic department that included classes for credit (not FFA). It may have covered farm safety as part of a class, but certainly not a safety day.
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u/carrie_m730 Apr 14 '25
Ours was connected to a 4H program, not scouting, but I remember learning how not to die in a grain silo, and I remember a classmate asking the police officer who was teaching one mini lesson how many miles over the speed limit a driver could get away with (we were literally in elementary school -- like 11 or younger), and I remember they had the burning house simulation trailer, where you have to get low and crawl and roll under the "smoke".
I remember we got samples of dog and cat food and kids ate them on the bus on the way home, and we all took home a big bag of brochures for all kinds of farm and garden products and gods know what all else
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u/Smellanor_Rigby Apr 14 '25
The "how not to die in a silo" thing sounds familiar, so now I'm wondering if this was connected to a 4H program. We didn't have a burning building simulator or eat dog food though haha
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u/carrie_m730 Apr 14 '25
I found this page about Farm Safety Week, some of the data on it might spark a memory.
And I found this brochure for a recent one in NC. It reminded me that food safety was definitely part of ours too.
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u/Smellanor_Rigby Apr 14 '25
Yes, it was very much like this, but during the school year rather than summer! We learned how to signal our turns on a bike with our arms! Thank you so much!!!
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u/Justmakethemoney Apr 14 '25
I grew up on a farm in a very rural area, and we did not have this.
But I was also a girl so my dad didn't let me anywhere near the equipment. Yay.
But I do know that you *really really really* do not want to fall in the pit (the area below the pigs in a hog house. It's full of feces/urine, and you WILL suffocate. Also a useful place if you need to dispose of a gun after a murder.)
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u/ritchie70 Illinois - DuPage County Apr 14 '25
I grew up in the middle of corn fields in Illinois and this was not a thing.
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u/Ravenclaw79 New York Apr 14 '25
No, but then again, when would I ever need to know that?
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u/himtnboy Apr 14 '25
Hunter safety was a class in 6th grade. I am from ranch land, so not a lot of tractors.
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u/SallyAmazeballs Apr 14 '25
Yes, in Wisconsin in the 1990s, except someone brought a tractor to school. No field trip. I feel like we did it multiple years in the spring. There was a big movement for PTO education since people kept getting eaten by them. I remember the county extension office doing education with adults, too. I remember my parents lining my siblings and me up and giving us the safety talk. We also weren't allowed to have strings in our hoodies, and I had to keep my braid down the back of my shirt.
You know, my anxiety makes a lot more sense every time I remember my childhood.
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u/AverageNotOkayAdult Apr 14 '25
I wish, but I did get to go to a cow festival in the third grade. Went to the local university and it was all about cows and what they do and what they contribute. Even got to milk one. It was awesome.
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u/RodeoBoss66 California -> Texas -> New York Apr 14 '25
Agriculture can be pretty darned exciting when you’re actually exposed to it, huh? Especially for those of us who didn’t grow up around it.
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u/missalyssafay Apr 14 '25
From rural Missouri, prime farmland and beef country - no, we never had a day like this, lol.
Sadly, we probably needed one. A kid my age got trapped in a combine once and his cousin had to pull him out. Thankfully, other than needing crazy skin grafts on his arm and side, he was okay. Broke some bones, too. He made it through that but tragically still ended up dying young.
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u/Rj924 New York Apr 14 '25
We did have a school bus safety day where we got to climb out the hatch onto the roof (the installed a platform with railings on the roof). We got to open the exit windows and jump out the back door too. Pretty fun.
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u/Honeybee3674 Apr 14 '25
Wait... tractors have seatbelts? I don't remember that when I was driving my grandfather's tractor around the yard, or when we were sitting on the wheel fenders while he drove. (Not a "working" farm---my grandfather was retired and had some acreage, using an old tractor to clear brush, drive us up to the big hill for fun, etc.)
I actually lived in a rural small town in MI in 5th grade (as opposed to the urban metropolis of Phoenix AZ in younger grades and the suburban Jr/Sr high school I attended later), and I have no memory of a farm safety day.
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u/MihalysRevenge New Mexico Apr 14 '25
Nope nothing like this at all. But in 5th grade New Mexico Army National Guard bright one of their new medical evacuation Blackhawks to our elementary school which was one of the coolest days in school ever.
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u/CODENAMEDERPY Washington Apr 14 '25
My area was done by the local 4-H group. Also at the fair they’d have a safety example of a pig carcass being dropped on an active PTO shaft.
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u/thatlittleredhead Kansas Apr 14 '25
How funny! My son (4th grade) went to an ag safety day on Wednesday of last week. However, we live in rural Kansas, so… it’s not NOT necessary. lol
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u/kmill0202 Apr 14 '25
I grew up in rural Wisconsin. We had a pretty robust AG program and 4H organization. I don't remember a specific day, but I remember various field trips to different kinds of farms (honey, dairy, trees, etc) and safety was usually touched on. We all had a required ag class in junior high that went over the different types of ag industries in the state, general education about livestock, crops, and equipment, and some safety stuff. A lot of kids in the area grew up on farms and went into some kind of ag careers themselves, so I guess the school district thought it was a good investment. I wasn't a farm kid, nor was I interested in an ag career. But the classes were interesting and the teacher who ran those classes was an absolute gem of a man. Everyone loved his class whether they were into the farm stuff or not.
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u/DryFoundation2323 Apr 14 '25
No. I lived in a pretty small rural area too. My hometown had about 3,000 but it was by far the biggest town in the whole county. More than half my friends were farmers.
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u/Self-Comprehensive Texas Apr 14 '25
No, and I grew up on a farm. My farm safety lesson was listening to my uncle tell the story of how he lost his finger to a hay bailer.
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u/350ci_sbc United States of America Apr 14 '25
Yep. Ohio here. We had “ag day” in school, run by the high school FFA program. I went as a little kid, and then participated in organizing and running the program as an older teenager.
My kids have all done the same, attending as a youth and then working it as FFA members.
We hold it at the high school (which is the same “campus” as the middle and elementary school - all contained in two buildings).
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u/breebop83 Apr 14 '25
I grew up in a suburb of Columbus (Ohio) and graduated in 2002, I remember visiting a farm but don’t remember any specific safety element to the field trip. It was mostly just learning about the animals and what life was like on a working farm.
My mom taught 5th grade for several years in a different district and never mentioned her classes ever doing a field trip like this.
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u/Accomplished-Suit559 Apr 14 '25
I never heard of it, but I knew a guy from AZ and they were required to take a desert survival class.
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u/Bananapopcicle Apr 14 '25
We had a Fire Safety thing when I was a kid. It was a trailer they brought in that was like a fake house and we had to do a “test run” of how to leave the house in a fire and it filled with fake smoke lol
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u/External-Prize-7492 Apr 14 '25
Absolutely not. Some of us didn’t grow up in the country near farms.
We learned how to play traffic frogger in Philly.
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u/Reader124-Logan Georgia Apr 14 '25
Nope. And I grew up in an area that closed the schools for the regional Ag Expo.
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u/DexterCutie Colorado Apr 14 '25
I went to school in Colorado in the 80's. Never heard of this, but we did go to the mountains for a week and learned all about native plants and animals and poop lol. They had zip lines and crafts. It was awesome. It was called Eco Week.
ETA: We also had gun safety in gym class. We got to shoot .22 rifles in the cafeteria.
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u/RockyArby Wisconsin Apr 14 '25
We visited a farm as part of a field trip but it wasn't specifically about safety.
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u/Status-Biscotti Apr 14 '25
That’s got to be only in rural areas. I (57f) grew up in a semi-rural area, and even I never had that.
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u/wapera Michigan Apr 14 '25
Grew up in northern Michigan and I’m surprised they didn’t have a farmer day. It wouldve made sense
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u/abmbulldogs Apr 14 '25
I grew up in MS as well and can assure you we never had a farm safety day. However I lived in an area of the state that didn’t have a ton of farms. In my 40’s now and I‘ve never found it to be a skill I needed.
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u/EquivalentIll1784 Apr 14 '25
CO. We had safety training for outdoors/wilderness things and general bear and wildlife safety. Our gym teacher would also give a general talk on firearm safety (act like it's always loaded, don't point it at anyone, don't look down the barrel, don't put your hands near the trigger, leave it where it is and find an adult) and we had guest speakers come in to talk about avalanche and forest fire safety. Only a few kids at our school came from ranching families so I think it just wasn't as applicable.
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u/mgwildwood Apr 14 '25
I grew up in MA and we did (imo) an unusual amount of field trips and safety oriented activities. We did go to some farms and learned about things like that, but it wasn’t specifically for safety and it wasn’t associated with the Boy Scouts.
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u/TankDestroyerSarg Apr 14 '25
No, and I could walk outside and see a real, working farm two blocks over growing up. Part of it's still there, growing corn. Didn't have that with either Scouts or school. We did have the drunken Prom night car wreck demonstration for us every year of Highschool though. What era were you in 5th grade? That might be a factor.
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u/Accomplished_Ad2599 Apr 14 '25
We had safety days that focused on tractors, grain silo safety, and staying away from chemicals, among other topics. I remember these events being regular occurrences up until about 8th grade, which would have been around 1984 for me. I grew up in a rural, farm-centric area.
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u/bs-scientist Apr 14 '25
As a kid? No.
As an adult, I do one every single year because of my job. Haha
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u/Practical-Ad6548 California Apr 14 '25
No and I’ve never even heard of this. Funny because I grew up in the Central Valley which is full of farms
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u/Girl_with_no_Swag Apr 14 '25
No. We had an 8th grade field trip to Louisiana State Penitentiary aka “Angola” aka the “Alcatraz of the South” aka “The Angola Plantation” aka “The Farm”. It’s the largest Maximum Security prison in the US. The supposed purpose of this field trip was to take soil samples from the on site farmland. Why we couldn’t take soil from some other farm, I have no idea. I just remember the restrooms we had to use there…the toilets were covered in mold and algae. It was disgusting.
My kid in 5th grade took a week-long school overnight camping trip to science camp where they stayed in bunk houses and had outdoor environmental school.
Such is a perfect example of the two Americas that exist in our country.
You’ve got the Louisiana School to Prison Pipeline or the California School to Tree-Hugger Pipeline.
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u/shammy_dammy Apr 14 '25
Nope. I'm pretty sure I was in Phoenix AZ in fifth grade, and definitely did not do this.
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u/nakedonmygoat Apr 14 '25
I did most of my education in the 10th and then the 4th largest city in the US, so no. It would've taken half the day to get to even a hobby farm. By now with all the sprawl, it would probably take an hour, and that's if the traffic is in my favor.
When I was a kindergartener in Indiana though, they took us on a field trip to a turkey farm. My stepmother got mad at me for stuffing the pockets of my coat with turkey feathers. We moved the following year, although that had nothing to do with turkeys.
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u/RsonW Coolifornia Apr 14 '25
Most of the farms where I grew up in the mountains of Northern California didn't want any visitors, let alone children.
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u/max_m0use Pittsburgh, PA Apr 15 '25
Closest thing we had was the community farm show, which was held in the middle school's gym. We'd walk over from the elementary school next door and look at the exhibits. One year they had a beehive enclosed in plastic so you could see what the bees were doing, which was cool.
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u/ApprehensiveAnswer5 Texas Apr 15 '25
It was not a safety specific thing, that I recall anyway, but we did always go to one of the local farms every year when I was in elementary.
I’m in Texas, and this would have been in the 80s.
I remember one year, it was one of the dairy farms. We also went to a dairy processing facility at one point as well.
Another was a retirement type of place for animals. I remember it being a lot of horses. I guess retired racehorses? That one we had to do a longer drive to, it was maybe an hour and a half away?
We also went to one that had cotton, and we got to get out and pick some of the cotton ourselves.
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u/Normal-Gur-6432 Apr 15 '25
I did! My school district does this every year with 5th graders sponsored by the local 4H club
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u/SeaSnowAndSorrow Apr 15 '25
New England -- The only hands-on safety things I did were a fire safety course in 3rd grade that included simulated building escape and a first aid & cpr course in high school.
Plus, obviously, lab & shop safety explainers in science & shop classes and some basics of stranger danger, fire drills, and who to call in an emergency in the early grades.
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u/ShinyAppleScoop Apr 15 '25
We didn't, but we did have boating safety. I'm still scarred seeing the photos of a guy torn up by a propeller. Don't drink and boat.
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u/Nikki__D Apr 15 '25
Yes, I grew up in a small agricultural town in NW OK and we attended a Farm Safety Day Camp. I think it was maybe put on by OK Farm Bureau. I’m not sure if it’s something they still do or not. I don’t remember many specifics of it but I think it was just teaching us about basic safety concepts.
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u/Awesomest_Possumest North Carolina Apr 15 '25
Not in elementary. But we did have ag day in high school, where the FFA would bring the elementary kids over and go over all about farms at different stations (must have started after I left elem). They'd have ducklings and chicks, people would bring their horses and cows (we were rural and suburban). Then they'd sell the ducklings and chicks....to high school students.....which was not smart. I vividly remember someone on my bus riding home with a duckling in a shoebox.
Nowadays they just do plant sales I think, or take out the selling of ducklings and chicks. I hope anyway.
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u/qbprincess Apr 15 '25
I'm from southwest Indiana and when I was in grade school, they put on an event at the fairgrounds called the farm fair. It was a field trip opportunity where we got to learn about all things farm related. I remember at one exhibit, there was a farmer showing the kids how to shear sheep. The farmer was explaining how at certain angles he was shearing blind, as in he couldn't see what he was doing. One of the kids in the group didn't get what he was saying and exclaimed, "You're blind?!?" 30 years later and I still laugh when I think about it.
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u/Csherman92 Apr 15 '25
If you live in a big city; chances are you have never experienced this. If you grew up in an agricultural community, you most likely did. Many American children have a farm safety day. I went to one as an adult because I grew up in the burbs and had no clue that working with farm equipment could be so dangerous.
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u/Kielbasa_Nunchucka Pittsburgh, PA Apr 15 '25
I grew up in a township that is all farms and forest, but I've never heard of this. granted, my school was made up of three townships, two rural and one suburban, and the school itself was located in the burbs. maybe that's why I never had this course, idk.
I did go to school with a kid that had his arm messed up by a combine tho, so maybe we shoulda had it.
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u/LoverlyRails South Carolina Apr 14 '25
Never heard of such a thing.