I think happiness is a reasonable measure - as long as you are talking about long-term overall happiness for all sentient creatures, as opposed to moment to moment selfish pleasure sensation seeking. That tends to encompass all (non-religious) values. Ecology, for example, is done for the sake of animals, which also (probably) feel pleasure and pain and want to have good lives (not about "the planet" which is really just a big space rock)
Being a hunter-gather seems like it would get pretty boring and repetitive to me. I'd love to spend a few months, maybe even a year, in deep wilderness learning nature first hand and not relying on human technology. But not more than that.
I am aware of the history of formal education, and I don't disagree with 2hands interpretation...
But see, this is why I said it depends on the individual teachers.
My mother went to the school before each new semester and sat in on the class of every teacher of the grade I was going into, and then told the principal which class she wanted me in from kindergarten to 5th grade.
My school experience had basically no busy work, ever.
I remember very clearly the one time we did - it was under a long-term sub in 5th grade. I lead the entire class (in two groups) to the principals office during recess to file a complaint about him. The principal said our real teacher would be coming back next week, so just try to stick it out - but the last couple days we actually did get a different sub.
We had several recesses per day, and we would get up and do hands on projects during class time.
I would guess this could be different know, with the schools being mandated to teach to the test - although last I heard Obama was doing away with no-child-left-behind.
The only thing I didn't like was homework, and in junior high and high school I did exactly enough of it to get the grade I wanted.
It definitely helped that my (public) high school was on a college campus, and we were allowed to take college classes that counted toward both HS and college. But some of my favorite classes at that school were actually the HS classes, because of the hands on work (I'm not 100% sure we even had a textbook in science class), and the projects (we could turn in movies we made instead of reports!), and the teachers (my history teacher would sit on his desk crosslegged and tell us the "history" of his personal experience of the 60s)
You should read Summerhill. Its a book about a boarding primary school (of the same name) where all classes were voluntary, and all the rules were set democratically (all staff and all students, one vote each). And indeed, most new kids would spend the first semester or two fucking off. But after a while, they would get bored, start going to class and end the end they had a similar graduation rate as traditional schools.