Building a Well-Rounded Education: Field Trips and Hamlet with Dr. Jay Greene
Sometimes my mom pokes fun at my dad for being a little portly. His response is always the same: “I’m just a well-rounded individual.” But while my dad’s goal (every year) is to make himself narrower around the middle, that may be exactly the opposite of what we want to see in our children’s education. Jay Greene, already one of my favorite academics due to his work on school choice, has most recently taken to arguing for wider ranging liberal (no, not that kind of liberal) education in American schools. He begins a recent post on the topic thusly: Some people seem determined to narrow education. I’ve been trying to make the case for a well-rounded, liberal education, but that idea has less support than I realized. In their effort to maximize math and reading test scores, schools have sometimes narrowed their focus at the expense of the arts and humanities. That narrowing focus often cuts programs like art, music, drama, field trips, and extracurricular activities.
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