The Smithsonian Institution's Board of Regents yesterday announced that a new museum dedicated to black history will be built near the Washington Monument within the next 10 years.
Link.
I couldn't really care less about the museum, but the whole discussion about the National Mall (the rectangle that houses the Washington Monument, the Capitol Building, the Lincoln Memorial, and various museums) reminded me of a trip I took to DC four years ago. My wife and I went in April, for a wedding. While there, I went to the Mall, since I hadn't been there in over twenty years.
It was pretty much a waste of time. Floods and floods of school children--most of them loud and obnoxious teenagers--swept across the area, making every building a chore to enter and impossible to enjoy. Thing is, the vast majority (99.99%?) of the school children couldn't care less to be there and were just talking loud and jumping around. A handful looked like they wanted to vandalize the place.
So the question is: Why do the schools take the students there? Forced inculturation? It simply doesn't work. Such efforts just waste the students' time and ruin everyone else's visit.
Further, they say public schools need longer school years and more hours, and then they waste entire days on such field trips.
Please: Keep the school busses on the school lots. When they pull up to a destination, whether it's McDonald's or a museum or an amusement park, everyone's heart falls. Quite frankly, I didn't enjoy such trips when I was an older student. I was a "privileged" (i.e., middle class) kid, with parents who took me to such things, so maybe I don't have a good perspective, but once a kid reaches high school, he doesn't want to be on a school trip and the other people at the destination don't want the school bus there.
I wouldn't apply this, incidentally, to younger children. I'm never bothered by the little children who shriek with glee when they're on a field trip.
