  Why study astronomy, why teach astronomy? We give answers to these
fundamental questions based on our experience with the Astronomical Camp "Beli
Brezi" (White Aspens; Kardzhali, Bulgaria). It has been a place for teaching
astronomy to high schools kids for nearly half a century. We describe shortly
the history of the camp and draw some conclusions based on nearly five decades
of experience. Major among them is that the camp has gone further than just
distributing astronomical knowledge - while this is an important and worthy
task, the main achievement has been the cultivation of critical thinking among
the pupils and we think that that is the main motivation to give positively
reassuring answers the questions we asked at the beginning.
