Dad's 'Time Travel' Letter Slams Sexist School Field Trip

A sixth grader in Australia came home from school one day in 2017 with news that made her dad think he'd slipped through a time portal.

Ruby Callaghan told her father Stephen that the boys in her class would soon take a field trip to Bunnings, a local hardware chain, to learn about construction. The girls would stay behind at the library to have their hair and makeup done.

Stephen Callaghan couldn't believe what he was hearing. Were they really living in 2017, or had his daughter somehow been transported back to 1968?

Instead of firing off an angry email, Callaghan decided to use humor to make his point. He wrote a letter to the school principal asking them to search the buildings for "a rip in the space-time continuum" or "perhaps a faulty Flux Capacitor hidden away in the girls toilet block."

"I look forward to this being rectified and my daughter and other girls at the school being returned to this millennium where school activities are not sharply divided along gender lines," he wrote.

When Callaghan shared the letter on Twitter, it exploded overnight. Hundreds of people applauded his creative approach to calling out what he labeled "everyday sexism."

Not everyone agreed with his complaint. One commenter suggested it was fine for girls to do "girl things," but Callaghan had a sharp response ready. "Why 'girl things' or 'boy things'... Why not just 'things anyone can do?'" he replied.

Why This Inspires

His point goes beyond one bizarre field trip. When schools divide activities by gender, they send a powerful message about what boys and girls are supposed to be interested in. It's like telling kids that pink is only for girls and dinosaurs are only for boys.

The school later claimed students could opt in and out of activities, but Callaghan argued that gendering them in the first place creates the problem. Girls might feel pressured to skip construction even if they're curious, while boys might avoid creative activities.

What really drove Callaghan to speak up was watching his daughter's experience. "At 12 years of age my daughter is starting to notice there are plenty of people prepared to tell her what she can and can't do based solely on the fact she is female," he wrote in a follow-up post. "She would like this to change. So would I."

His clever letter reminded schools everywhere that the days of shop class for boys and home economics for girls should stay firmly in the past where they belong.