Letter from Rome: There was a time, in the far-off days when pansy meant a flower, that the term "school outing" conjured up something along the lines of a visit to the local natural history museum or maybe a day on the schoolboy terraces struggling to see anything other the backs of raincoats at a rugby international at Lansdowne Road, writes Paddy Agnew
For the daughter of this household, brought up in the liberal environment of an American international school in Rome, school outings are not quite the same.
They include an annual week's skiing in the Dolomites, as well as week-long visits to centres of European culture and learning such as Prague, Seville and Venice.
Even day trips are not quite what they used to be. For example, recently Roisin's class headed off to visit the workplace of the father of one of her fellow students. The workplace just happens to be the film studios of Cinecittà and the father in question, actor Mel Gibson, currently in Rome to shoot his latest film.
Set up in 1937 by Il Duce Benito Mussolini as a propaganda tool for his Fascist regime, Cinecittà enjoyed a legendary post-war boom during a period when it was used by all the greatest names in Italian cinema, including Rossellini, Fellini, Visconti, De Sica and Pasolini.
Today Cinecittà is still busy, as evidenced not only by Mel Gibson's presence but also by the fact that much of Martin Scorsese's recent film, Gangs of New York, was shot there.
Indeed, first stop on the school tour was a visit to the Gangs of New York set, obviously still in place and looking rather less than real to difficult-to-impress 14-year-old eyes. "After you've seen a film set, it makes you think everything is fake", pronounced Roisin the other evening.
Now, that is an education, being able to teach kids that most of the stuff they see on their screens is fake. We should complete the process by taking them to visit the White House where they might finally discover that President George Bush is in fact a cardboard cut-out, ordered years ago out of a Sears catalogue. But, that's another story.
Seriously, folks, cinema does form part of the national curriculum in Italy. Visit any scuola media (middle or secondary school) and among the many "projects" adoring the classroom walls you will find several devoted to cinema.
Last June, while waiting in a secondary school hall for Roisin to do her annual Italian national curriculum exam (the poor child does both US and Italian exams), I remember reading a fascinating "project" by a 13-year-old pupil on Rossellini's Rome Open City, putting the film in its historical context and highlighting its heartrending re-enactment of the Fosse Ardeatine reprisal massacre of 335 Romans by Nazi-German forces in March 1944.
On Roisin's trip around Cinecittà, there was reference to an even bigger, if more distant, historical moment, since Mel Gibson's film is set in New Testament times. The kids got to see Jerusalem ("quite impressive, the walls looked real"), Jesus on the Cross ("It was a plastic body actually, not a real human" - and we are glad to know this) and the Garden of Gethsemane ("a bit fake").
They also got to meet both the chief make-up artist (he worked on something called The Grinch) and Jesus himself (his name was Jim and he "looked like Jesus").
The make-up artist went down a real treat since he offered to put a nasty scar on the faces of one or two of the children.
Young Jay enthusiastically moved into line to get his very realistic, ugly scar stuck on, probably thinking to himself that he would scare the life out of his poor mother when he got home from school (which did indeed happen, according to reliable reports).
Finally, of course, the horrid brats got to meet Mel Gibson himself. Well, actually, he was sort of busy on the shopfloor but he did turn to the kids and make a silly face at them, adding: "Did you all get that?"
They certainly did, and he had just made their day for them. Maybe, too, the visit to the film studios might have proved a useful little piece of learning.