Field Trip

Mark & his class are going to Charlotte on a field study today. They leave in about a half an hour --- 7 a.m.

They don't call them field trips any more. Somehow that doesn't give it the educational significance "field study" does. And it's all about education.

Not really. It just has to sound like it is.

Like, they cut out recess because that doesn't sound like education, even though anyone who has ever been near a child knows you can't teach a child who has been cooped up in a seat all day. And they cut out music and art because they can't test it with a number two pencil. And they are going to cut funding for supplemental salaries for Nationally Certified Teachers because they don't want to throw money at the problem.

Then they are going to bureaucratize the laws relating to charter schools so that what should be innovative schools will be just as hide-bound as the traditional public schools rather than freeing the traditional public schools to be innovative and entrepreneurial.

And then they will send their children to segregated, elitist private schools and bemoan the complete failure of public schools and the terrible parents, teachers, and children who are a part of it.