Dr. Laura says to skip the field trip!

I used to be a big Dr. Laura fan, and we even went to her 50th birthday party when it was here in Atlanta.

My views on education have always been, um, different from hers, though, and the disparity now is probably even bigger than it was ten years ago.

Today there was a call from a woman whose 8 year old attended a private school, and the entire school was getting ready to take a five-day camping field trip where they visit a farm and get to milk a cow, learn how to pitch a tent, that kind of thing. It was considered a "life skills unit" in the curriculum.

Since this what was the entire school was doing for that week, the actual "school" would not be open, and if a student did not attend the camping trip for whatever reason, they would simply stay home from school that week.

Sounds fun and interesting to me.

Well, DL said that was just "ridiculous," and that they should re-think paying tuition to this school. She said they should keep their 8 year old child home and "home tutor her in academics" for those five days, instead of going on the trip with her class, because "math and science is what she needs to get into college. She doesn't need to learn how to milk a cow."

That poor child, if the woman takes DL's advice! She has to miss a fun, cool, unique trip with all her school buddies so she can sit home and do math worksheets?? Is DL out of her mind??

Does she really think that five days of not doing math and science assignments is going to make any difference whatsoever in this child's education, or life, or anything?? Is the world going to crumble because she missed two pages, or five pages, or whatever, in her math textbook?

And even if it would -- which it would not! -- couldn't she still take the trip with everybody, and just catch up on her math on the weekend or something? Why does she have to miss the entire trip? This is making me more and more sad for that poor kid the more I type.

And!

DL said they should skip this trip every year that the school does it, "unless they spend five days going to NASA, because that would inspire them."

Excuse me?? So learning about farmers and horticulture and such is a total, ridiculous waste of time, but going to NASA is fine? How do you figure that?

She even made the point of saying that she completely respected people who raised chickens, etc, but that kids don't need to be spending five days learning about it, because most people don't need to do that anymore.

She said that they could spend an hour of classtime watching a video about the career of farmers. Yes, really. That's what she said.

She and I have no common ground in that area of thinking, that's for sure.

I still feel so sorry for that child. Imagine what she's going to have to tell her teachers and friends: "No, I have to skip the entire trip because learning about farming is such a ridiculous waste of time that I can't even spend five days of my life learning about it or seeing it. I'll have to spend that entire time doing math worksheets, because if I took this trip instead of doing math, I might not be able to get into college in a decade."

That poor kid. I hope the parents don't listen to that.