A Proposal To Ban School Trips To Marine Parks? ⇒

Now this is some enlightened thinking (in the Philippines):

Kabataan party-list Representative Raymond Palatino filed House Resolution 2759 directing the Department of Education (DepEd) and the Commission on Higher Education (Ched) to prohibit such type of field trips.

The two agencies, he said, have moral obligations to ensure that students learn the real value of environmental conservation. “Holding field trips in ocean parks is simply not the way to teach such,” he added.

“School field trips are designed to expand the students’ learning through live interaction. However, dolphin and whale shows teach children the wrong values that keeping wild animals in captivity is acceptable,” Palatino said in his resolution.

Citing a government-commissioned study in the United Kingdom, Palatino said watching dolphins perform in marine parks generate no significant knowledge about the said animals.

“What’s more, the demand for captive whales and dolphins is the primary motivation behind the deadly dolphin and whale hunts in various countries, including Japan and the Solomon Islands,” he said.

Maybe we could learn something.