Do these students participate in group projects? My 10-year-old's class was assigned a project for a social studies project on ancient Egypt. My daughter and her two little partners researched the game Senet, created a board and pieces, a set of rules, and taught the class how to play. They also learned why the game was important to the Egyptians, and they game a presentation to the class. Educationally, the project was successful in multiple ways. The girls also interacted socially, discussing the information they had found, deciding who would build what, etc. Yet, if these girls had been attending the school in this letter, none of this interaction would have shown in the lunch room.
That was a good project educationally. Yet, socially I am skeptical of its merit. I have yet to be in a situation where I have to teach a class of people who are commanded to look at me as I stand in front of the blackboard. If you are a corporate trainer or other educator, this is good training. Yet outside of that, there is no applicability of this sort of school exercise to the real world. It is good that the students interact with each other, I guess, but even that is in such a controlled manner, ie, 10 year olds interact only with 10 year olds. They are in teh groups that the teacher assigns, ie, they can't recruit an optimal team (that would be unfair). They can't just work with their friends (unfair). This sort of exercise, then, has little relation to the real world, at least to the real world where people to choose with whom they want to associate and do business, ie, not determined by The Teacher.
My only point being this: school is not the place to become socialized....unless the meaning of "socialized" is closely tied to "socialist". Then what happens in school seems to me to be headed in the right direction. I, however, don't want that at all and wish I had never partaken of it, at all.
And for twelve years these children won't receive any explicit religious instruction.
This strikes me as insane. Profoundly insane.