Is there a point to public education?

[petmoosie]

Beyond the goal of teaching the curriculum. Is there a set of actions that we want all children to have experienced? Are there values that we want to share?

Another blog was talking about overnight field trips (8th grade). Those are boondoggles from one point of view (particularly here). We have all the resources to provide everything locally with no need for an overnight trip.

On the other hand, an overnight trip provides a world of experiences that are unique to the experience of having an overnight trip with your classmates.

Comments

[petmoosie.livejournal.com]

I'm not 100% sure that the character-building and value-sharing goals would be reliably achieved on a purely secular trip. I know from discussion with my peers who did not have a religious education that individual students came away from these trips with character-building and value-sharing, but it's not clear that the other students in their groups did.