Springtime in Havana, courtesy of your local high school

We homeschoolers like a field trip as well as the next person, maybe even more so. I know I've been on my share of them during many years of homeschooling.

Some of the trips were for fun, and all were educational. We went to museums, performances, fire stations, you name it. But the one place we never went was Cuba.

Who, you might ask, would go on a field trip to Cuba? Well, try students at Beacon School, a public high school in New York City. According to writer Andrew Wolf, Beacon School history teacher Nathan Turner just took a group of teens to Cuba, and it wasn't the first time, either. He took groups in 2004 and 2005 with the school's approval. (This year the school did not approve the trip, but did promote it on the school Web site. How's that for showing disapproval?)

I'm not sure what Turner is trying to teach the kids by taking them to Cuba, beyond praising communism and breaking the law. (Since 1962, it has been against the law for Americans to travel to Cuba.)

I wonder how many New Yorkers know they're paying teachers to take students to visit communist dictatorships in violation of U.S. law?