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Obama Makes a Push To Add Time To the School Year
N!NJA sends in a proposal that is sure to cause some discussion, especially among students and teachers. Obama and his education secretary say that American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage in comparison to other students around the globe. "'Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas,' the president said earlier this year. 'Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom.' 'Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy and not too many of our kids are working the fields today,' Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. ... 'Young people in other countries are going to school 25, 30 percent longer than our students here,' Duncan told the AP. 'I want to just level the playing field.' ... Kids in the US spend more hours in school (1,146 instructional hours per year) than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the US on math and science tests — Singapore (903), Taiwan (1,050), Japan (1,005) and Hong Kong (1,013). That is despite the fact that Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong have longer school years (190 to 201 days) than does the U.S. (180 days)."
for a US dollar anyone? Anyone? Buhler?
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
No thanks, I waste enough time in school already. Of my 6 classes (3 of which are AP) and can already get my normal day's worth of homework done during downtime before I leave school. If anything, get better teachers and better courses. Don't waste money on longer school hours.
Kids in the US spend more hours in school ... than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the US on math and science tests
Doesn't that mean that the problem is not how long US kids are in school?
Let's be honest, students don't perform to the level they should be with what they are given. What is giving them more going to solve?
Aside from that, I'm not sure how much I like the federal government pushing for this. It's not their place to do it and I can't recall any federal level legislation related to education that has made a positive difference. I can see where it will help some students and it may be a good idea I just think it's going to be mismanaged in the hands of the feds.
Because having too much free time might just be enough to quell their rebellious streak, just like our Asian cousins have managed to do. Remember, it's not what you can do for yourself, it's what you can do for your superiors (in all areas).
...it's quality.
It's not a matter of there being not enough time in the school year to get learning done. It's a case of the pace of learning being too low (essentially zero in some cases).
He's obviously a communist Nazi dictator trying to indoctrinate our children through socialized education. He must be stopped and freedom and liberty must prevail.
... spending more time in class is going to help the kids perform better?
How about we require them to actually pass the classes they do attend before letting them move on...
Of course, he's also going to expect that the teachers
extend their hours, already at 20 unpaid per week to
compensate for the "leadership effort" and patriotically
do this while our compensation is always being slashed
from other "leadership efforts".
Many kids in Asian countries also spend a lot of time at private institutes, after their regular classes.
Nevertheless, yes, American kids no not work hard enough to compete on a global level. The Economist had an article about this very issue a few months ago.
Nobox: Only simple products.
The problem is not the length of the school year. It is the profound incompetence of the public school monopoly and the lack of accountability of the teachers unions.
an ill wind that blows no good
Most parents send their children to either a public or private institution. According to government data, one-tenth of students are enrolled in private schools. Approximately 85% of students enter the public schools,[14] largely because they are "free" (tax burdens by school districts vary from area to area). Most students attend school for around six hours per day, and usually anywhere from 175 to 185 days per year. Most schools have a summer break period for about two and half months from June through August. This break is much longer than in many other nations. Originally, "summer vacation," as it is colloquially called, allowed students to participate in the harvest period during the summer.[citation needed] However, this remains largely by tradition. The other option available and being taken up by some schools is Year-round school.
From wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States
It doesn't mean it's more quality but I think it's a start.
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
Obama I am disappoint.
Kids in many Asian counties have loads of homework for Summer/Winter/Spring breaks. So even if they have vacations planned, they need to bring the homework with them! Compared to kids here, where breaks truly mean breaks.
All that will be gained by increasing school hours will be an increase in the drop out rate. Only way to increase average smarts and graduation rates over time is to PAY the dummies and the irresponsible and the criminally minded to VOLUNTARILY sterilize themselves. Throwing more money at the issue won't do a damn thing either.
If malcolm gladwell's data is to be believed, the efficacy of extended schooling has everything to do with social class. It turns out that the upper end of the income scale actually do things with their kids during the summer increases their performance, because they're doing things like going to camp or participating in other enriching activities. The kids that don't have these opportunities by and large regress, intellectually speaking, over the summer break.
I would think that if anything is done in the US to extend schooling opportunities, it should keep this in mind. While a chicago south-sider is likely to get a lot of benefit from going to summer school, my child is likely not, because he engages in these sorts of activities, and I would not want it mandatory to pull him out of them.
See if those little brats keep singing the praises to Obama after they find out about this...
Does more of a bad thing equal a good thing?
Why not strive to improve the quality of the education they are already getting?
In South Korea, after going to "normal" school, a lot of students go for additional studying/tutoring. These are called "Hagwon" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagwon)
I believe Japan has something similar with their cram schools.
Not trying to say more amount of time in school is either better or worse, but it'd probably be useful to look at how the total amount of time in school was determined before relying on it too much.
Some people criticize these other school systems as stressing memorization and test-taking abilities over individual/creative thought. Of course, that's an anecdotal statement, so take it for what it's worth...
If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
It's also a cultural thing. While generally the Asian countries have less official school hours than the US, parents in Asian countries are more likely to pay for and cram extra after-school tuition for their children.
Also, the quality of public schooling in Asian countries aren't that different from the US equivalent.
LEAVE SOME CHILDREN BEHIND
sorry- is that too callous?
http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=338&catid=13&subcatid=82
" According to government statistics, 95 percent of all children start school but the drop out rate is high. Only 80 percent graduate from elementary school. In poor rural areas the enrollment is only about 60 percent, with only 70 percent completing the first four years of primary school. Fewer than 35 percent of China's youth enter high school, and of these the drop out rate is high."
individual circumstances aside, with limited resources, don't you think it far more likely that the really good students, somehow find a way to be among those who remain.
The evelopmentally disabled ones are the ones who fall by the wayside and do not continue their education to the point where these internationalized standard tests are taken?
drop the ten% worst performers results from the US kids "math and science tests" and you may find that they don't suck after all.. APPLES & APPLES COMPARISONS PLEASE!
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
President Obama seems to conveniently overlook the large differences in educational structure and cultural attitude between the USA and the countries producing the highest test scores. Unless having a larger economy results in more money for education that is well spent on quality teachers and actually useful programs (looking at you, No Child Left Behind), there is no reason to expect the USA's students to do better on average than other countries. Throw in the fact that the highest scoring countries include those with either a pervasive cultural respect for learning or a relatively homogeneous population for whom centralized education control is beneficial, and one begins to wonder why President Obama expects the USA to be able to compete for the highest average.
On top of that, the USA produces a fair number of top notch scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and computer scientists right now, but those top notch individuals tend to be results of family pressure, personal ambition, or sheer-jealousy-inducing talent. Forcing those top level people into more hours of classes that tend to bore the living daylights out of them is not helpful. Mandating more school time for inner city or rural kids isn't going to be terribly useful for obvious reasons. The only students it might benefit are those who are capable and talented, but just a bit slow on picking up new concepts.
Of course, the biggest issue is what happens when you multiply the current school times by 25-30%. As best as I can remember, I spent about 9.5months in school in Virginia (a state in the USA.) If that time increases by 25%, that results in students spending roughtly 11.85 months in school. Alternately, students can spend 10 hours away from home for school, which I'm sure will work really well.
All in all, no thanks, the problem isn't the quantity of time spent in school, but rather the quality of said time.
Signatures are the new names.
How about focusing more on subjects that matter. My 3rd grade daughter spends more time in art than math.
Yeah, I have to call BS on Obama's idea and theory as to deficiencies in America's education. The problem with our education system does not come from spending too little time in the classroom. It stems from numerous factors, the least of which do not include, low teacher salaries inspiring more competent people to avoid teaching, lack of creativity in teaching techniques (really, not all children learn the same and A's - F's is just a stupid arbitration), inability to inspire young kids (I would bet that 9/10 American kids view school as a combination of social time and the child equivalent of 'boring work'), and a suppression of curiosity in those who do ask questions (completely anecdotal, but I can name 7 people I know right now that were actually punished for asking too many questions in the classroom).
The article and even the summary states that countries which continually outperform America in tests send their children to school for less hours than America. That doesn't even warrant the correlation vs. causation fallacy that's just crappy incomplete analysis by Obama's Secretary of Education. Forcing students to spend more hours in the mindnumbing clusterf*** that is the modern lecture system in America is not going to educate them or make them learn more, its just going to push them closer to brainless downer activities after school like more TV. I mean really, who wants to go home and play with an electronics toy/learning kit when they just spent 8+ hours listening to someone they hardly respect drone on about a bunch of topics that they haven't been given a reason to care about?
Don't increase the schoolyear Mr. President, increase teacher salaries giving intelligent people a reason to teach other than philanthropy and find a way to inspire invention and innovation in the classroom. Increasing the time spent in a broken system is just going to increase the number of broken children's minds.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Obama is clearly paying back all the Unions for their support during the election. First it was trying to pass legislation eliminating the secret ballot (and in part the Democratic process) to allow unions to put pressure on any hold outs at non-unionized shops.
Now, our children are the potential victims as he tries to eliminate family time, time for our kids to play with their friends, and simply "growing up time" by extending school hours and the school year so that one of the most powerful unions in the nation get even more money -- and can support him even more the next election cycle.
Obama's taken all the change I can handle and if he keeps it up, I won't have any change left!
I currently have four kids in school. The problem is schools are taking too many days off. They take a day off every other week. It's not like the teachers are working all year and need the time off.
This is stupid for several reasons:
1) Countries don't do an even job testing their students. In the US, everyone gets tested, even kids with severe emotional disabilities (meaning from broken homes and such). In some countries, only kids who are in the "college track" schools get tested. Yes, in some places young kids are tracked like that. In Germany students go to the Gymnasium, Hauptschule, or Realschulabschluss depending on ability. The Gymnasium is for kids who are going to university, the Realschulabschluss is for kids going directly in to the work force. Unless they changed it since last I checked, they only test kids in the Gymnasium with these higher level math tests.
2) Standardized tests don't do a good job of measuring things that are really useful. You can have pupils that do very well on them if you spend a lot of time teaching specifically for the test, and if you have a curriculum that emphasizes memorization heavily. Yes well that is not so useful in this day and age of computers. What is more useful is the ability to creatively problem solve. So just because countries produce kids with good math scores, does not mean they are producing the kind of workers you want.
3) Studies consistently show that the biggest factor in kids doing better in school is parental involvement. If their parents care, the kids do better. A simple measure of this is books. The more books parents have in their house when they have kids, the better the kids do. Not because the kids read the books, but because owning the books is heavily correlated with bright, involved parents and THAT produces better achieving kids. So what seems to be needed isn't more school, but more parental involvement.
I get real tired of crap like this because what they seem to want to do is work hard to turn kids in to little calculators. "Oh let's make sure our kids can score really high on number crunching tests!" Ya, how about not. We get students like that in university (I work for a university) in particular some of the foreign grad students form China and India. They are great at memorizing and slogging through formulas, horrible at doing any real world problem solving.
To them, knowledge is learning what other people know. If you don't know something, the answer is to find someone who does, or find a book with the answer. You look it up and then you know it. The idea of solving a problem through trial and error is totally alien to them. Thus they have a lot of trouble understanding what our group does (I do computer support and as such trial and error is a large part of the job). If you tell them "I don't know," they look at you like you are an idiot and want to know who does know.
We really need to stop worrying about how our kids do on contrived tests so much. Yes, they have uses to make sure kids aren't learning nothing, but we shouldn't have this penis contest over who gets the highest scores. It just doesn't matter. If we want to only test our best and brightest and tell the rest of our kids "Sorry, it's a life of menial labor for you," and spend all our time teaching those bright kids how to do the very best on the test, well I'm sure we could have top scores in no time. I'm also sure that we'd find the quality of our workers would decline.
Quality over Quantity. Obviously quantity is easier to obtain, it's effectiveness is seriously in question.
What obama is saying is, hey, if your job is in competition with some place cheaper, rahter then bring them up to our level, we have to compete with them
end of that road, you have to pay for your own education to work 100 hours a week for min wage, just to compete with, say pakistan...
It seems like somebody from the Obama camp has just read "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell. There's a chapter discusses this topic -- Basically it says that kids from poor families score just as well as rich ones when they're young. The scores diverge over time because the kids from rich families are pushed by their parents to take classes, summer camp, etc. over the summer.
Not from a student's perspective, but that's one thing that is different between the U.S. and, say, Japan. In Japan, the school year is from April to March. So, the big vacation is only one month. This allows a lot more retention of knowledge from one school year to the next. They have a lot of little breaks throughout the year, but no big 3 month break during which to shut down your brain.
As a student, I thought the idea of a one-month summer break would be horrible. Many parents I've spoken to also don't like the idea because it sets limits on them on when they can set up a long vacation (1-2 weeks). However, the one-month summer break would greatly decrease the month or two that teachers spend at the beginning of every school year trying to get the kids back up to where they should be.
Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong also have longer than 40 hour work weeks. So while we're at it, lets mandate adults work longer to "level the playing field". I know, most of you already do, blah blah.
DeMarco and Lister's "Peopleware" asserts no matter how much above 40 hours a week you go, productive hours remain constant at 40 hours over time to avoid burn-out. There is likely a critical limit on how much school you can absorb before you're saturated. Make better use of existing classroom time, and don't legislate more work for children if we don't expect to do more work ourselves.
This will have the interesting side effect of removing older kids from the job market, theoretically creating more opportunities for unskilled adults to occupy those slots. Of course, this means employers will likely have to pay more to fill those positions, which they won't be happy about.
I'm not opposed to lengthening the school year if we also reduce the hours spent per day. Both in classroom and at home in the form of homework:
From here
The old problem. It is not about teaching more hours it is about getting more out of the hour taught. That starts with selecting well qualified and motivated teachers, pay them well and let them do their job. Any other approach is doomed to fail. This essentially means schooling in the US will continue to degrade. Incidentally, the US already needs to import a lot of academics, which is a clear sign of a defective school system.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Asking our children to spend MORE time in public schools misses the point! The public school system needs to be abolished. If parents want their children to learn, they should be paying for it DIRECTLY, not by asking the rest of us to pay for THEIR child's education.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. ... 'Young people in other countries are going to school 25, 30 percent longer than our students here,' Duncan told the AP. 'I want to just level the playing field.' ...
Everything is straightforward so far (except maybe where she got those numbers from)
Kids in the US spend more hours in school (1,146 instructional hours per year) than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the US on math and science tests
Wait but, kids in other countries go to school for for longer?
-- Singapore (903), Taiwan (1,050), Japan (1,005) and Hong Kong (1,013). That is despite the fact that Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong have longer school years (190 to 201 days) than does the U.S. (180 days)."
So, does that mean more days the school year longer AND reducing the number of hours per day is correlated between math and science test scores.
The secretary's statement and the title "Obama Makes a Push To Add Time To the School Year" makes to make no sense on its own. Context please?
In the book "outliers" (http://www.amazon.com/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-Gladwell/dp/0316017922), Malcolm Gladwell presents studies that show that students from the upper and class retain much of what they learned from the school year, but those in the lower class have significant drops after a summer. He chalks this up to upper class families being able to choosing to put their kids in summer camps and other summer learning programs. Given this, it might help the education divide between low and upper class to provide and require school during the summer.
Where's the money going to come from? Adding a few days onto the school year will cost the states billions of dollars. I dunno what state you're living in, but here in California we're already in such a big hole we can't see the sky. Is Obama planning to raise federal taxes for this, or is it going to be another one of those unfunded mandates?
It's not so much the time but the content. American schools are all about every student feeling good about mediocrity rather than being what they are/can be. Lake Wobegon is a myth.
1. Quality of schooling is far more important than time spent in school. Before you even think of fixing the latter, how about fixing the former?
2. Forcing kids to spend more time in school will only help to increase the divide between students and educators.
3. More of a good thing isn't always better. To take a hint from our friend Jack: "All work" isn't really any better than "all play". Let's not make school more important than the student.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Almost anyone who works here knows that their education system is practically broken for the public schools. Children are legally entitled and cannot be denied their education; this precludes disciplinary measures such as in-school suspension and detention. There are no demerit systems -- after all, if you can't be given detention or suspension, how will you punish someone? The harshest punishment is usually a stern talking-to by the principal and homeroom teacher; a referral to a parent may or may not be as harsh.
From personal experience, many of the students who go to juku go because they don't pay attention in class. They sit around and draw pictures, stare out the window, or talk to their friends. There are students who simply sit and cross their arms, refusing to do anything in any class despite coming to school. And of course, there are students who just don't come to school, because there's nothing that can be done to them; they will move up through the grades and graduate from junior high regardless. There are also students who DON'T go to juku, or go once/twice a week. These students are the ones who actually do their homework and listen in class. Guess which of the two groups generally has better test scores in my school.
I don't really believe in the whole longer school hours argument, either. We have school from 8:50 AM to 3:35 PM; at my school, it was 8:10 AM to 3:10 PM, slightly longer. On top of that, they only have six periods in a day, with a lunch break after fourth period. And on top of THAT, Monday and Friday only have FIVE periods. I fail to see how Japanese children spend more time in school unless they count club activities (generally an hour before school and an hour or two after school). Or perhaps they're counting juku, which SHOULDN'T be counted; it's completely optional and you pay for it. Basically you're paying to go to a classroom with a cubby where you're forced to do what you should be doing in school to begin with.
For another rant, a lot of students who get good grades are simply memorizing and regurgitating facts, especially in liberal arts courses. They aren't learning how things fit together, or how to apply their knowledge, or even how to use their knowledge outside of regimented series of tests. If you think the SATs are bad in America, come here for a bit. This is a land where tests are God, so you learn to please God.
If that's what Obama wants America to aim for, I don't think I approve. At all.
http://www.tenjou.net/
Yes, the educated benefit from being educated, but everybody benefits from having educated people around. The former is why private schools are seductive to many, but the latter is why we should embrace education as a public good - external to the market - and support/fix our existing socialized system.
So you're right, the problem is the incompetence of public schools. But privatization ain't the solution.
Libertarians, who are often persuasively consistent (and I really do appreciate your consistency), have given monopolies, governments, and other non-market institutions a bad reputation. Even the term for something that doesn't jibe with a market - "an externality" - belittles the importance of things like pollution, basic science, education, overfishing, national defense, a judicial system, national highways, and on and on and on.
IN MY OPINION: It's Ironic that this administration and past ones like it, blame our country's low academic standing; when compared to other countries. On our children: (Spending to much time being the children they should be, at a young age.) Enjoying a considerably short "vacation" from school throughout each year. Today's kids, are "in school" from the beginning to middle of August; until the last week of May. To the middle of June; with small breaks during that time. (If they attend a "traditional" or "public" school.)
How about instead of ridiculing the current education system and blaming, what you consider to be: "Not enough time in school" You start DONATING all that Bail-Out money (With absolutely NO government/political "rationing" of those funds) to every school in the country each year. (Instead of giving it to the greedy, financially reckless company's that you're trying to "bail-out") So that the schools have the proper funding they DESERVE, to educate our children properly. So that they as you seem to state, Mr. President: "Measure up to the rest of the worlds academic standing."
Until school's receive the funding they have been DESERVING of (Since the late 60's) to properly educate our children, by having ALL the materials they will need each year. More time in school will not improve anything. The issue will continue to degenerate, to the point where parents across the country; will lose faith in the education system and choose to home-school their children. Effectively bottoming out your oh-so precious U.S.A vs. the World, Academic standing.
...b.s. on the statistic in TFA that says Americans receive more instructional hours in school than Japan. I don't know about Singapore, Hong Kong or Taiwan, but I grew up in Japan. Their school year was longer (IIRC, they got about 1 1/2 months off for summer) and Japanese kids left for school around 7:00 or 7:30 and got home around 5:00 or 5:30. Oh, yeah...that was six days a week, as well -- they went to school on Saturday. Fortunately, I was on an Air Force base there, so I just did the normal American five-day-a-week, 8:30-3:30 school day. I remember thinking as a kid that the schedules the Japanese kids were stuck with must have really sucked.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Some people will discount this because I Am A Public School Teacher (do I get an acronym?)
People are frequently quick to compare our school system to that of other countries, but it's really not practical. The cultural and school infrastructure differences are too vast. In many of the countries that are "getting ahead" on test scores it's common practice to create a competitive environment by only allowing advancement to students who can score in a certain range on a test. This isn't limited to post secondary education, but frequently applied to 12 and 13 year olds who are having their career path defined for them at this point. And no, they aren't taking these comparative tests. Another example is how in Japan all kinds of stress and work is put into passing the exams to get to university, but the university experience itself is frequently described as the most enjoyable and least stressful time in student's lives. In the US, it's frequently the other way around.
I can't deny that quality is the issue, but quality is a little tough to pin down. Is it curriculum, method of delivery or volume of work? With it probably being a mix of all of the above, adding days, or hours is likely only to have a consequence of costing more (paying for those extra hours/days) and/or driving away quality instructors by eliminating one of the few perks of the job (loads of vacation time)
How about an increase in time for teachers to prepare meaningful lessons for students? I get 50 minutes a day to prepare lessons, contact parents, and fulfill obligations to various other clubs and responsibilities. There's no overtime pay in teaching, but yet it's one of the professions that require the off-the-clock work.
Maybe I'm dense, but in the United States aren't the school systems run on a state and local level? How exactly is the President planning to mandate this? I suppose they could hold funding over their heads (like when they threatened to cut highway funding unless states raised the drinking age to 21), but aside from that I'm afraid that's outside the purview of the Federal government.
The problem here isn't amount of time spent in class. We already have enough of that. The problem is motivation. Ever notice that the Japanese have nearly double the suicide rate of the US? Much of the time this is merely because a student did poorly on a difficult test or didn't make it into that most prestigious university that they applied to. Unlike America, the oriental countries place a higher priority on education in schools. Americans are much more happy to see the high school football team make it to state than they are to have a student get a perfect score on the ACT/SAT or both. I know, my high school had 2 perfect scores on both in one year, but the football team made the news by having a better than 50% year.
Not that I really care about any of that, I always felt that you get out what you put into your education, and in college I find that to be even more true. I have learned more than any of my old roommates and I have jobs lined up before I graduate. One of my old roommates is in South Korea teaching English cause he couldn't find a job. The other one went back for a Masters cause he spent 9 months without a job after he graduated.
Bottom line, reward students who do well, get less focus on the damned sports, and for god's sake, pay teachers a salary such that well educated individuals don't feel as though teaching will make them enough money to just skim by.
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
You think like a ReThuglican Jew
Do the nit wits honestly think an additional 10 to 21 days will make a significant improvement in our present education system? GIVE ME A BREAK! How about we try a tiny experiment first. Let's get the monkey off our teachers' backs about teaching children morals and ethics. Since that should well and truly be part of the parents' roles in teaching their children to be responsible members of our society. Second, let's have a process where teachers are assessed as well. Far too often I see teachers more interested in establishing arbitrary rules and basing grades on personal opinions of a student than of the actual performance and assessment of the student in a given subject than with actually teaching a topic. For that matter there needs to be something showing the teacher is actually knowledgeable and capable to teach the subject. Once we have the roles and responsibilities established we can then have reasonable dialogue on expectations. What should we expect from our educational system? Furthermore, what do we show as expectations from the children? Get an established set of expectations and then hold ALL involved (parents, students, teachers, administration, etc. ) accountable and THEN we might "level the playing field". Until then all we have done is some ridiculous and pointless demonstration that, in the end, achieves nothing.
Has anyone considered adding a bit of science to the discussion? Not as a curriculum subject (no doubt covered in other threads) but rather - applying a bit of science to the question of "what is the optimum schedule for learning?"
Think about it - there must be a series of attention "ramps" during the day, week and year, where the ability to absorb knowledge is better than at other times.
Do we do math better before or after gym class? Is there any point to having a math class at all immediately after lunch? Are business classes enhanced after physical competition?
Would a 6am start kick start the day or is 10am better? Note that we have evolved to have half our numbers awake and on guard at night [citation somewhere].
Should we survey people in some way to determine whether they're day learners or night learners (and teachers too, to match the learning profile).
There must be hundreds of questions and answers to this. I suspect we've refined our way into a low-energy orbit, and it isn't getting us anywhere very quickly. We need to learn smarter, not longer, from the stats in TFA.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Really, one of the most powerful unions? I guess I better get on exerting my union power and demanding wages that come somewhere within 10k of what someone with a comparable education and skill set has in industry. I won't even talk about hours.
Also, you may want to check around about the unions love. Support was more about the lesser of two evils. If the union really needed payback Obama would drop the push to link salaries to performance on standardized tests. No one's a fan of the Dept. of Ed right now in my union. Drop the stereotypes, it's sexier with out them.
I don't believe for a second that American kids spend more time in school than Japanese kids do. Japanese kids, starting from middle school (7th grade), are pretty much required to participate in after-school "clubs" (sports teams, band, language, or other activities). These keep them stuck at school until 6pm almost every weekday, and for much of their Saturdays. Then on top of that many kids are forced to go to cram school or equivalents as early as pre-elementary school.
Having worked with the Japanese education system while on the JET Program, I feel that it's horrible how micromanaged Japanese kids' lives are. They have basically no free time for themselves. There is no way American kids spend more time in school. In the classroom maybe. But that time is not necessarily spent effectively.
I've taught English in Japan for the last 3 years.
There are as many problem students at Japanese schools as there are in their American counterparts.
The difference is that lecturing and testing isn't aimed at the lowest common denominator. There is no abortion of education like No Child Left Behind. A smart student can truly excel.
Meanwhile, in America, not only do the teachers teach for the dumbest students in class, they forgo teaching anything except in preparation for a brain-dead nationwide test. It's hard for smart students to succeed in these environments. Specially when intelligence is so often denigrated in our culture.
Just my 2 cents.
Increase the length of the school year, but completely eliminate homework. Let kids have their evenings, and they'll be more rested for the next day.
Students nowadays do not need more time in classrooms. What they need is classrooms, programs, and professors who adequately engage the students in a manner that speaks to the students. Sorry, but the 'tried and true' method of straight lecture and 'You need to know this because I say you need to know this' no longer apply in this day and age. Professors need to develop programs that teach students in a way that will help them and is current. People here with kids, send your child to school with a laptop. Instruct them to use their laptop to take notes during each of their classes. I bet you that one of two things will happen: 1) The laptop will have been confiscated due to being a distraction or 2) The laptop will not have been used for notes because their professors said that they were not allowed to use them. This is NOT the way things should be. If your program cannot adequately keep the attention of the students you are teaching, then the problem is not with the student. The problem is with your program. Get with it, or get out.
If you were offended by anything I said... No, I'm not sorry. Please lighten up.
Yeah, because teachers want to extend the time they work every day and lose their vacation.
Spooooon!!!!!
But target the time to more effectively educate people. One of the things I noticed is that they kept going back and reteaching a bunch of things like American history and basic math skills again and again. The same exact subject matter over and over and over. Stupid.
I have to seriously wonder why so many people here are so passionate about not needing an education.
I doesn't matter how many hours of bullshit you add. It's still gonna have the same result.
Of course, this has nothing to do with education and everything to do with conditioning and indoctrination.
Change? Ha. I knew I was going to loathe this president, but I never imagined he'd be scoring as well as the previous asshole.
is not the length of the day or year. It is that the public school system is teaching to the lowest students in class and the bright students are bored to tears.
I see bright students pushed off to the side in favor of funding the "remedial" classes. I see really exceptional students that are never challenged, never pushed and certainly not taught to the level of their abilities.
Why you.... Back in the day we had to walk 20 miles to school and 25 back uphill both ways in 20 feet of snow. You don't know how good you've got it. I say lock their noses in a book and throw away the key!
The American government has demonstrated its utter incompetence in increasing the quality of education in America.
Increasing quality means doing a lot of things that a lot of people don't want, such as more spending, greater accountability, some extreme changes in curriculum, and so on. But even if told, by God himself, exactly what needs to be done, American politicians would still screw it up.
So, due to the inability to increase quality, we will increase quantity. And of course this will do no good.
The bottom line: if you want your kid to have a real education that will give him/her a real competitive advantage, you are going to have to fork over plenty of cash and/or take responsibility for it yourself.
To everyone who seems to think that teachers work a tiny number of hours only to enjoy an entire summer off:
You are a bunch of idiots
Your average teacher works 10+ hours a day 5 days a week throughout the school year for minimal pay. The school day may only be 8-9 hours, but there is curriculum planning, staff meetings, PTA meetings, homework grading, and many other things to extend the time. I stated 10 hours above, but that is a conservative estimate.
Then, after the long school year, most teachers have to go take classes themselves. It is a requirement in many places that teachers have "continuing education" just to maintain their pathetically low pay.
So who is going to take the brunt of these extended hours? The teachers.
Will it help anything? No.
Yes, there are bad teachers out there, but there are a hell of a lot more bad parents. A teacher can educate a student for only so many hours a day, after that it is the parent's responsibility to encourage their child's education. When a student consistently comes in without doing their homework, what are the teachers to do?
In my opinion, one of the best ideas I have seen is giving teachers the ability to grade parents. Everyone wants to hold teachers accountable for the quality of education they provide, it is time we held parents accountable for failing to foster that education.
Spooooon!!!!!
What the parent was referring to was that the upper middle class parents encouraged Summer activities like camp, music lessons, etc... You are right and that lower class parents can achieve the same thing if they valued education - a perfect example would be poor immigrants who understand that education is the key to a better life: Immigrant Asian families are stereotypical of this.
OTH, I've talked to many lower income Americans (born and raised and at least third generation) who think that when their cable TV goes out it is a major issue. I actually has a man complain that his kids were without TV! Going to the library to read is just a foreign concept to them - generally speaking. There are exceptions, of course.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
TFA says that we already have our children in school more than the Asian societies that regularly whip us but good in testing. I don't think more schooling is the answer, I think better teachers are the answer. I also think our society that regularly rewards ignorance & makes it "cool" to be a dumbass is partially at fault.
There is a war going on for your mind.
America is quickly becoming the land of the dumb. Part of the reason is because people like you think there's no way we can't be number one. But, as a matter of fact, we are slipping in every measurable way behind the rest of the industrialized world.
More poverty. More prisoners per capita than even China. Least efficient transportation system. Least effective health care system. Worst income equality. And essentially, this is the result of a culture where intelligence does not matter. I'm not talking about anti-intellectualism, which has been part of our culture for some time, but a populace who cannot even name the branches of their own government, but can name the entire cast of Desperate Housewives. They can't solve simple math problems, or "become little calculators" as you like to say. Well, guess what. If you don't fundamentally understand what negative numbers are, how are you going to be able to comprehend anything having to do with math? If you can't look at a multiplication problem and know simply by looking at it that something is wrong, how will you ever know if the calculations you're receiving back are fatally flawed? Without a foundation of roughing out numbers in your mind, you can never use modern tools effectively, because you can't tell when the inputs or operations are incorrect. You simply won't know.
The focus solely on profits has lead to a nation of credulous, infantile football fans, who spend more time watching television than they do expanding their minds. This is because credulous people are more profitable. They are easier to take advantage of. As long as their basic needs are met, they are satisfied with whatever the TV tells them is the truth. There is a certain inevitable decline buried in this cultural norm, which cannot be addressed by pretending that it isn't a problem.
More schooling in our broken public education system will not help, but neither will privatizing them. Our society will have to arrive at the decision to make education a priority. The first step is admitting we have a problem, not sticking our head in the sand as you suggest.
"not too many of our kids are working the fields today"
Arne Duncan apparently thinks that people who work in fields don't need to know as much as people who perform other tasks. I though modern agriculture was more complicated than flipping burgers, but what do I know?
Part of the problem isn't even parents being unrealistic, it is that the options are straight to the work force or university. Nothing else is ever presented as an option by anyone.
That was how it was for me. It was just assumed I was going to university. My intelligence and academic performance was such that university wasn't a problem... But that doesn't mean I should have gone. I do computer support. That is not a degree career, it's applied, not theoretical. While going to university worked out ok for me, I didn't need to. I should have gone to a trade school, however it just wasn't presented as an option.
For starters, how about we repeal that idiotic, asinine "No child left behind" act, that does absolutely nothing of the sort. The only reason this passed is because of the name. Everyone thought, "Oh, that sounds like a good idea!".
Know what this thing really did? It penalizes those schools with the lowest test scores. If your students can't make the grades, it means you lose some of your funding.
My ex girlfriend teaches at a school that serves the lowest income demographic in my area. She had recently graduated from college and this was the only teaching job she could get anything remotely in the local area, and she still had to beat lots of other applicants. Kids come into the school not knowing how to read basic words or do any arithmetic from families with parents that are spending more time selling drugs in the evenings then they are with their kids. The school, surprisingly enough, was already one of the lowest funded schools in the area, and had some of the lowest scores in the area before it passed.
When "No child left behind" passed, know what it did? It cut the schools funding even further, when they already didn't have enough money for books and other things. The school is so overcrowded that several classrooms are actually "temporary" buildings that have been present for years. The principal started yelling more at teachers about bringing test scores up and having less money to do it with, upsetting the faculty. They didn't have enough money for school supplies. My ex started having to buy (some) of her own paper to use for class projects and other things because funding was so short. Some of the few decent teachers the school had left decided on early retirement or other career changes because they became so fed up with it.
The net result, of course, is that the students scores have not improved, they are losing good faculty left and right because everyone is tired of the crap, and their funding isn't getting any better because neither are the scores. Nice, big, circular cluster-****. Last I had heard, morale was at an all time low and things aren't getting any better.
"No child left behind". Right. As one semi-famous teacher would put it, "Crack is bad, mmmmm'k?"
One of these days i'm going to find this 'peer' guy and reset HIS connection!
For example, have some students attend on odd-months and others on even months. This might mean less time for grades to droop over the summer. Each teacher could effectively teach two school years per calendar year with substitute teachers coming in to cover the customary/derisory 2 weeks' annual vacation. That way we'd be getting more use out of the staff and the school facilities and class sizes would be halved.
Would all teachers quit if they were suddenly paid a reasonable wage in exchange for losing their super long breaks ?
Nullius in verba
I remember staying in a student hostel whilst on a school trip in Singapore. Once we arrived at the hostel, there were students in the cafeteria studying. (4 pm) After going out for dinner and returning, (8 pm) many of these same students were at the same tables with their books. After sneaking out and finding a place to drink upon return (3am) you guessed it, some students are still studying. - It is wholly a cultural thing based around the importance of education. Where I come from (New Zealand) qualifications are not counted as important as what you can do and have done. In many of these asian countries sited, where competition is high for all sorts of spots that Education and Qualifications are essential. Of course, in every culture, a little bit of who you know goes a wee way.
. .
Academic performance in America has been falling in spite of the yearly schedule remaining the same. This is not a scheduling problem, it is a problem foremost in parenting, student attitudes, and inferior curricula. What's the point in adding more time, also, if school systems with fewer hours of instructional time still outperform us?
The American educational system is rife with inefficiency, but already Obama has positioned himself to be Bush the Third when it comes to education. Adopting the attitude of the typical ignorant school administrator, he thinks that by throwing more time and money at the problem, we can just make it go away. Furthermore, how are we going to pay for all of that extra time? Teachers are overworked and underpaid as it is, with countless hours of voluntary unpaid overtime to boot. Communities are collapsing due to lack of revenue. Don't tell me this is going to be another unfunded federal mandate!
The Finnish only go to school two weeks longer than we do and have days of similar lengths. They're number one in the world, far outpacing us in academic performance. How about we start copying what they do with their time, instead of just the time spent?
Our Public Schools, as an overall demographic, have been in a serious decline. Increasing the volume of time and money dumped into the failing systems has failed time and time again. This is because those solutions do not address the fundamentals that have hamstrung education.
Entitlement Mentalities: These are the absolute killers of our education system. Kids who are Entilted to attend the public school of their choice know that teachers are absolutely powerless to discipline them for infractions short of attempted murder or a "hate crime." These kids ruin classrooms. Parents are Entitled to have their little monsters admitted to the classroom regardless of the parent's unwillingness to participate in their child's education. They are also, in some places, Entitled to see their spawn promoted through grades without merit. Teachers are Entitled to keep their jobs regardless of poor performance due to union contracts. Unions are Entitled to keep their monopoly on Public Schools regardless of ambysmal performance due to their political contributions.
The only people who get really screwed are the naive suckers who though they were Entitled to classroom environment in which a well-behaved, apt child with involved parents could thrive. These people didn't understand that the lowest common denominator and their unscrupulous lawyers and advocates are the around whom Public Schools must bend themselves.
The problem won't be solved until parents are treated like consumers and tax-payer dollars start following the children. In an environment with competition and choices the pace of education can pick up. Discipline becomes possible again if children can actually be suspended or expelled for disruptive conduct in the classroom. We'll see improvement when lawyers and politicians can't force bright children to share a classroom with gang-bangers. We'll all be better off when teachers aren't forced to hold 23 children back at half-pace to accomodate 2 kids with learning disabilities that someone, in their wisdom, decided were Entitled to be "mainstreamed." Twisted ideologies around things like "social promotion" don't just hurt "regular" kids - they also keep children with special needs out of specialized learning programs.
I look forward to the day parents can be turned away from a school for failing to hold up their end of the education equation and likewise parents take away funding from a school for failing to hold up their end. Maybe on that day I won't have to witness dozens of children whose potential is being squandered because some negligent jackass wanted to work at/enroll their kid at the closest available school that doesn't charge tuition.
http://www.indecisionforever.com/2008/02/27/the-west-wing-obama-and-plagiarism/
"I thought they were the dominant species..."
I say, "YES! More time!"
You see, middle/high school teachers get about ~40-55 minutes a day with students to teach, test, review, and discuss any one subject. Ask any teacher if they get enough time to make a difference and they will shrug their shoulders impotently. We need more time PER DAY PER CLASS. And that time needs to be immune from additional standardized testing.
Moreover, to you whiny little brats posting "Oh, no! Not more time! I'm already bored in school!", here's a reality check: Nobody cares about you. Seriously. You are foregone conclusions. If you're getting your work done and you have nothing better to do at school, then you're likely going to go to college, get a degree, and become a useful member of society.
When people talk about the "quality of education" in America, they're not talking about you. They're talking about everyone else. They're talking about the risky/at risk students. They're talking about the students that DON'T surf slashdot because they have no clue what it is.
When people talk about the quality of education, they're talking about the lowest common denominator of students which is, unfortunately, the students that get Cs in remedial courses. My students. The ones I need more time with because their grasp of English needs to be brought up to par in my Math class! We remediation teachers (basically all non-honors, non-AP) WORK for what gains we get and we would love more time in which to gain.
People in California should get a chuckle over this. State universities (and a lot of other state agencies) currently have a furlough program in place. Workers are paid some fraction of a salary and work the commensurate time. I think it's 90% for universities. So what used to be a 30-lecture class is now 27 lectures as the professor must take three "furlough" days. That's all the state can afford.
Somehow the number of credits remains the same. I'm not sure how that works. Maybe the state thinks the whole "furlough" business will be over before the accreditation agencies notice.
Fuck you. There's an inherent value to having an educated populace, even if Dave the HR dufus isn't really applying his degree in romantic literature. The world's still richer for him knowing more stuff.
You obviously need to learn how to write a sentence!
/snark
The vast majority of my learning occurred outside of school, where they were wasting time teaching arithmetic in 3rd grade. It's quality, not quantity, that needs to improve.
The AC is right.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I'm 12 years old, and a regular Slashdot reader. I'd like to offer my opinion on this: We don't need longer school days. We need more courses and teachers. Specifically, we need more separation of classes based on ability. To Heck with this 'fairness' stuff. We really need at least two classes: advanced and less-advanced. Sure, some kids will feel bad when they don't make Advanced, but it's worth it. Allow me to elaborate. Longer days don't make an ounce of difference if half the kids are bored out of their skulls. All my fancy, expensive, private school has managed to do is bump me a year up in Math. And I'm still ahead of the class. In all the other classes, I'm stuck where I am. I spent half of 5th Grade correcting other kids' work for the teacher. And it's not just me. There are plenty others in the same boat as I. We don't learn much (especially on a time-to-learning scale), and longer/more days won't help. If we separate by ability, eveyone wins (except the schools, who have to hire more teachers): The kids who are ahead have engaging and new stuff to do and learn, while the kids who aren't ahead have things tailored to their needs. And, everyone gets smaller classes and more time with the teacher. If we're going to do anything, I suggest we, in some way or another, give kids material that is at the right level for them. Maybe once we get that done, we can think about longer school years or days. Actually, I'm not strongly against a few extra weeks, as long as the school curriculum is challenging. If anyone reading this has any say in this kind of thing, please think of me. -Nathan
The last thing we need for our drugged up kids is more time in government indoctrination centers. As John Taylor Gatto puts it, We Need Less School, Not More. Also watch State Controlled Consciousness by John Taylor Gatto.
What's the history, constitutional rational, etc.
Seem like it is a local issue.
I can almost promise you that a strong enough work ethic can make up for any lack of innate ability.
It's a romantic idea but not demonstrably not true. Don't get me wrong, hard work can take you a LONG way - but not always enough to make up for an innate lack of ability. My mother is a reasonably smart lady in many ways but no amount of effort or desire on her part would turn her into an aerospace engineer. It's a very American idea that hard work can overcome any obstacle. Sometimes it can overcome obstacles and the notion is to our credit I think. Nevertheless, sometimes desire and hard work just aren't enough. I think in the US we take the legal concept "all men are created equal" a little too far. All people should have the same legal opportunities and should be able to go as far as their talents take them but that doesn't mean every person is equally talented or that hard work can overcome every obstacle.
There are some fields that require a certain amount of natural intellectual or physical talent. I'm a good athlete for some sports and completely unsuited for others no matter how hard I work at them. If you are a 5 foot tall female, you aren't going to play in the NFL no matter how hard you work. Your friend got the degree through hard work and squeaking by but you never mentioned if he is a *good* engineer. It's possible to get a degree in some field you are utterly unsuited for. The jobs that require the most brain power are probably not the jobs that can or should be done by the people with IQs in the lowest quartile. Someone with a 90 IQ just isn't cut out for a career as a theoretical physicist or a codebreaker or even as an engineer. Would you trust an airplane built by a hard working but dim engineer? If so you would be the exception.
I'm sorry, I don't care if I get modded down for saying this but I feel it's needed. The real reason students struggle with math and science is because of how much damn emphasis is on "creativity" and "art". Self expression through doing something not even mildly challenging leads kids into paying tens of thousands of dollars for an education that will, at most, get them a job flipping burgers. You want higher math and science scores, Mr. Obama? Get rid of useless classes in school like Sketching and Art History.
I used to go to a charter school that had a 10 weeks on, two weeks off schedule. I can honestly say that not only did I learn more in that school than I did in a public school, but also I was more focused on education. I think a similar system would be beneficial as education isn't really the focus of the kids of America. No education means we have less of a chance against the robot overlords... or even worse: no robot overlords =(.
In summation, "SHUT THE FUCK UP AND STOP BEING A GOD-DAMN GRAMMAR NAZI JACKASS!"
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
I think the best solution for students and to resolve budget issues, is to extend the school year more days but reduce the time per day that students spend in school. This has multiple benefits:
1) Students won't get flooded with hours of info each day and be given more time to absorb what they learn on a daily basis.
2) Students will have more time for after school studying which is equally important
3) Students will have more time for extra-curricular activities outside of school. More time to get out there and do sports and stuff so they don't get fat
4) The number of hours per year for school teachers would remain fairly unchanged since we'd be stretching what we already have out more. Which means budget concerns would be mostly alleviated.
The only downside I see to such a change would be parents wouldn't be able to use school as a substitute for daycare as much anymore. And honestly, while I know for some families that *is* a legitimately hard thing to do with both spouses working or single parents, it is very much a trend we need to be getting away from. Instead, we need parents more active in their children's lives and development, and such a school system change would allow for that too.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
If your goal is to educate them in the high demand field of biological space heating, then you are absolutely correct. Kids already spend an absurd amount of time in school for what they actually learn. Many of the fundamental premises that our school system is built on are simply flawed to the point of uselessness. Extending that time would only be throwing away good time after bad.
The President of the United States has no business deciding how long the school year should be. None. Then again, he also has no legal authority to order me to buy health care.
Revive the Constitution.
Before comparing the number of hours American and Asian kids spend in school, you might want to factor in the ridiculous number of hours the Asian kids spend in cram school (called "juku" å¾ in Japan).
Good article. The bit that caught my eye was:
A recent report from McKinsey, a management consultancy, argues that the lagging performance of the country's school pupils, particularly its poor and minority children, has wreaked more devastation on the economy than the current recession.
I wonder if that's still true. The negative economic effects of a poor education system are enormous and last for a generation; it's good that economists are finally taking an interest in this area, since government unfortunately tends to respond better to economic arguments that contract a complex world into a single dollar/euro value.
Adding more of something that is not working is bound to fix the problem! Right?
Although the facts presented are true, you have to take a look at what's behind the facts before making an accurate observation. Asian culture is different than that of the United State's culture. One example is that in Hong Kong (China in general) there are a lot more people in that country than in the United States, therefore the competition for jobs is much greater. For most Chinese citizens, the only way to get out of poverty is to find a good job, therefore they focus more on their studies to out-compete others. Also, many Asian countries offer tutoring outside of school. So even though Asians spend less time in school, they spend additional time in tutoring to enhance their knowledge and testing skills.
Amazing how many haters there are of education, seeing as how this forum is supposed to be for educated people. Yes yes, you were bored in school and it was too easy, woe is you. For the rest of the people, the current school system works a lot better than no system. It seems that Obama is taking a cue from the evidence given in The Outliers. Our school system is based on an agrarian society where kids needed to be home to work the fields in the summer so we have an extended summer vacation. The studies outlined in the book have shown that kids of all backgrounds advance similarly in reading comprehension during the school year. It is only during summer vacation that poorer kids start falling behind because they aren't encouraged to read in their homes, as opposed to children from wealthier parents who continue to encourage their children's education outside of class. As the write-up said, we don't need longer school days, we need a longer school year. If that's what Obama's proposing, then it should be encouraged.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
I have an 11 year old daughter and the homework she shows me is absolutely ridiculous. I'm a math and computer geek, so this hits close to home. They are told not to solve the word problems, simply explain how to do it. I say, with no outcome, the work is moot. I mostly blame the parents of the children just before this generation. Allowing their children to become stupid. Then in steps the government with "no child left behind". There are cases where some children need special attention, and need to repeat the material. Let's not eliminate the bell curve to accommodate for the lowest common denominator. Just as in every aspect of life, some will succeed and some will fail. The only way to learn how to succeed is to fail occasionally. We as parents need to bust our asses to make certain that our children are prepared for the "real" world. There is not coddling out here.
People seem to forget that if the test is what matters, you can study for the test. This doesn't improve you in anything other than the test. So having schools that teach for the test are worthless in terms of making people better educated individuals, all it does is make them better at taking tests, and that test in particular.
Let's talk about the SAT since everyone likes that one so much, and because of my personal experience with it. Originally it was called the Scholastic Aptitude Test. That's where the name comes from. It supposedly tested how smart you were in terms of academics. Ya well not so much, so they changed it to the Scholastic Achievement Test, implying it was how well you'd done. Later it was changed to just SAT. However, the idea was it was supposed to be a measure of your academic ability.
So I took the test, got a good score, and so on. However, one of the places I was looking at going had somewhat exclusive admissions and since I am a bit of a slacker my grades weren't hot. They said I ought to see if I could get a better SAT score before I applied. According to ETS (the people that make the SAT) that wasn't likely. They said normally people who score as I do get slightly less on a retake.
Well what I did wasn't try to learn more in general, what I did was study the test. I got a book from the Princeton Review that was focused on the SAT. It covered precisely how it is scored, how the questions are formulated, how the answers are chosen, etc. So I learned useful things such as what to guess depending on the question's location in the test (harder questions are later in a section, as an example). Also I studied the specific things that'd be on the test. They had a hit list of 275 words that ETS just loves to use on their vocabulary section, so I memorized all those.
The result? A 110 point improvement (of 1600, this was the old school SAT like 12 years ago). It was over a standard deviation of change in my percentile rank.
That should be "impossible" according to ETS. After all, I didn't get any smarter, and it wasn't like I learned anything new in school that was relevant to the SAT, I'd already gone beyond that. My score should have been static. Well it wasn't and the reason was because I committed time to learning about that test. Didn't teach me anything useful for the real world, and not even really for academics (it did help me become an ace at analyzing tests in university and figuring out what teachers liked to ask). I learned what I needed to for the test, to "beat the system" so to speak.
That is NOT what we want our kids to spend their time on. Good test scores may look impressive and make you feel good, I certainly liked the kudos I got for doing so well, but they don't do shit for real world problems. You don't design a better microprocessor by cramming, you do it through creativity and integrating knowledge from different sources in to novel solutions.
Quality over quantity. If we need more time to teach, make more, but I don't think that's the problem.
I'm in my 13th year of reaching. It would help if 1) parents cared about their kids education as much as they cared about their team sports, 2) schools cared about education as much as team sports, 3) kids didn't have unrealistic expectations of the classroom being an entertainment venue (good luck at work) and 4) more kids could actually speak English.
Extra days will solve none of these problems.
Did everyone miss that the article says that the countries where the children spend *less* hours in school do *better* in scinece and math?
0) The world is progressing. Why is it that when they get close we think we need to go higher? At some point there should be a reasonable limit to what education can do alone. Language, culture, family, become more important as education gets more "equal". It'll never be a level where one can completely rule it out and only look at other factors-- this is in the realm of soft science. Could be ours is the best already but the other factors are knocking it down... (not probable; just making a point.)
1) PUBLIC schools should be funded by the number of students, federally without any strings other than they must be public schools. This will lower the taxes we have on shelter (aka property tax or renter's included property tax.) It will increase income tax; however, it is NOT equitable to punish kids by underfunding their schools simply because they are located in a poorer area. (I'm not talking inner city either, we have poor rural and rich rural depending on what properties are in that area and local tax codes.)
2) Technology in education is unproven. it needs more pilot programs and less political stumping. The public is part of the whole gaming of the numbers system we have. Test scores are a poor measure; any systematic measurement system is going to get hacked by people like win98 on an open network. Other nations measure scores differently; they also filter out kids-- our system accepts everybody. My city's schools do about as well as the rich suburban schools -- but have less money and TONS of disadvantaged kids of every kind to deal with.
3) Simply BEING A STUDENT does not make you an expert in education. Its like saying you can advise airplane design because you ride on jets. There is serious work done on learning, the brain etc. in academic institutions and by profession educators already. But forget that, a couple stats make us look bad so lets ship the kids off to more schooling and give them all laptops! Just how long have we known its better for children to have different school hours than we do now? We still have the same hours-- to keep the parents happy and their dreams of their kid getting that sports scholarship they didn't get. (college funding being a separate issue best solved instead of the lotto scholarship mess. Don't expect that CHANGE since college loans handle more money than the credit card industry!)
4) Children, like all mammals LEARN and develop by playing. Sure, TV robs them of this--- thats not the fed's business; if parents suck. (unless you are in the UK...where they want to monitor parents!) I LEARNED far more things in the summer that were useful in the "real world" than I did in school. I didn't have to work on a farm, but I worked on other things and learned, played, and developed my imagination. Many of my peers went to "camps" so they'd get an edge the next school year while the flunkies went to catch up so they'd not have to drop a grade.
5) Just HOW long should kids be in school? how about some REAL numbers? We already know health wise its better to take a long nap in the middle of the day but other than a few countries nobody does that... (BTW, the WTO is pressuring those countries to change their ways.)
6) America rose to the top (FYI we are not there anymore) and went to the moon with people who didn't have technology or even went to those "shameful" rural schools where 1-6 grades were in 1 room with the same teacher. Now we can't do math without a calculator-- even then we can't do math. My father had a shooting range in the basement of his high school; kept a gun at school too! Yes, this points to cultural degradation-- but THAT is the point! The real big issues are the elephants in the room nobody dares mention! I do credit Obama a bit having touched on a few... I am not saying we need to go back to those idealized times and "get off my lawn!" More social science is needed.
7) American kids are F***'d up. School psychologists are needed. #1 problem for any student is mental. We expect teachers to do everything and moder
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Yet again another round of yammer comes around about the public school system. Immediately the response is, "more time in school is better." No. Let us all remember that most phenomena do not respond linearly to inputs.
What is wrong with the schools has little to do with instructional time. Look at the organizational model used by schools. It greatly resembles that of a late 19th century sock factory. Most modern world-class organizations have fled from this model. And rightfully so.
School management is stupidly hierarchical. We fill "central offices" with lots of busy expensive functionaries who second-guess the faculties who actually teach in our schools. We create endless useless credentials vended by the ed schools that pigeonhole people in the silliest of fashions. "Experts" minted by these programs create loads of paper that goes into filing cabinets and which is never read. Curriculum "experts" create rigid formulae for classes they never visit nor teach. These expensive managerial layers need to be blown away. These are just an impediment to progress.
Responsibility for what goes on in the classroom needs to be put where policy in implemented: to the faculty and their department chairs. We need to get rid of state textbook committees brimming with bluestocking bawlderizers and allow the people who teach the classes to pick the tools they use to do the job. Teachers need professional autonomy so they can bear professional responsibility for the choices they make.
Teaching needs to be professionalized and needs to shed its blue-collar heritage. The profession is an honored and learned profession in most countries; here we treat teachers as interchangeble light bulbs in a marquee. We need to make the profession attractive to smart, creative people. Current policy makes America's teachers foie gras farm workers who force feed premasticated curricula created by far-off "experts" who haven't a clue.
Had we made computing a profession like teaching, America would a computing jerkwater, instead of the cyber-powerhouse it is today.
A big effort is needed to chaange the teaching profession for the better. I am afraid that most Americans don't give a damn about what happens in their schools, beyond the babysitting services they receive. Therefore, I harbor little of Mr. Obama's unwarranted optimism that throwing more resources at the same old dysfunctional systme will do an iota of good.
I went to a school that had the most (or 2nd most) days in the school year in the entire state of MN. There were plenty of idiots there.
Also, where's the money going to come from? Teachers already aren't paid enough (so they say). They'll surely demand more. It looks like another one of Obama's hair-brained schemes that will only serve to dig us further into this money hole.
Instead of wasting the time of gifted students in order push the herd through a longer school year, we should spend money on more programs to help the high achievers. We don't need to waste more time on the many who amount to nothing, but we do need to nurture the intelligent and motivated, for it is they who move society forward.
If they're so intelligent and motivated, why is it they need more nurturing? So much more that you'd apparently recommend a focus which would yield more effort out of, what, a rough 5%-30% of the population (depending on whether your definition of "the herd" includes 1 standard deviation from the mean or 2)?
An educational program which results in a 20% increase in productivity out of the "intelligent and motivated" (let's say around 30% of the population) is actually likely to not even reach break-even yields of a program that results in 5% increase in productivity out of "the herd" (let's say around 70% of the population).
Some investment in gifted kids is definitely a good idea. I certainly benefited even small efforts that the public school system made to keep my education interesting and challenging. But the idea that the bulk of the resources should be refocused on people who already have a lot going for them is a formula for lower yield.
We also need more school choice legislation so people can rescue their kids from the public school system and the thug trash that often infests it.
I'm fairly familiar with the problems with the school system and with primary/secondary education profession. In fact, I probably have more experienced and detailed perspective as someone who stepped inside the threshold of a career as a Math Teacher and left because I didn't find it germane to the personal philosophy I wanted to pursue as an educator and the lifestyle I wanted.
But based on my experience, the ratio of committed and thoughtful people who were there because they wanted to do their job well to coasters who are there to get through the day and collect a paycheck is pretty much in line with my experience in the private sector. And I can't say I've had many encounters with "thug trash."
And really, when I'm honest with myself, *my* public education, at least, offered me a lot more than I took advantage of. If I have any regrets, I wish I'd had some smarter and more involved counseling, but from an academic standpoint, even with all the weaknesses the system had, I was the throttle on my own achievement. I could have learned a lot more about C and Unix if I'd wasted less time my senior year, I could have actually reached a conversational level of Spanish instead of just going through the motions, I could have had experience with broadcasting on the school radio station, I could have done any number of things. All from a state school system that's historically in the bottom five nationally in terms of spending-per-student.
I recognize some public school systems are afflicted with problems mine didn't have, and I don't think there's anything wrong with efforts to improve them, and perhaps even a well-balanced voucher system would have real merits. I also think there's always room for continual efforts at incremental pedagogical improvements for both gifted and "herd" students. But a lot of blanket negative generalizations about the public system don't match up with my experience.
Tweet, tweet.
Let me ask you this: Do you think kim kardashian coulda stand to use more schooling? I think so.
You fuckers have too much time on your hands. You can stand to use more schooling.
It's what is put into the time in class. Trying teach one class composed of bright students, dull students and don't care students wastes everybody's time. The concept of grades needs to be rethought into levels of achievement, and students should be supported if they can work and learn faster. School has gotten dumber over the years- it's time to reverse that trend. I think that school days should be longer, but they should add arts classes, and, above all, classes in critical thinking, and how to think, both conceptually, and linearly. Oh yeah, and reduce the emphasis on football. School sports are fine, but to a limit. One more thing: double the teachers' salaries & make sure they can teach. Eliminate the dumb ones, the ones with personality problems, and keep the ones who care and are of sharp mind and quick thinking.
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
Burn more carbon in the summer keeping all those kids from getting heatstroke and send them home in the dark. Add to every local school district's faculty payroll overhead.
I believe this president fears success.
You know nothing about clowns if you think Moe, Larry or Curly were stupid.
Curly Joe should never have been a stooge. Had it in his contract that they weren't even allowed to smack him.
Shemp was OK but no Curly.
I bet you think Benny Hill was stupid too?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
EEG's wired into the seats looking for attentive brain waves vs. not paying attention.
Built in crotch Tazer triggered after more then 10 seconds of inattention.
That will engage the little savages.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
During the summer months, our system is not to "send the kiddies to the field" as Obama's inept education administration official claims
I don't think that's the claim they're making. The only marginally close statement I can find is one by Duncan which agrees with you: "Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy and not too many of our kids are working the fields today," e.g., our calendar has some agrarian roots, but by and large we don't have that population anymore.
The key in where the president is actually coming from is probably in this paragraph:
"The president, who has a sixth-grader and a third-grader, wants schools to add time to classes, to stay open late and to let kids in on weekends so they have a safe place to go."
It fits with the President's roots as an activist for the urban poor, which probably shape his perspective. And a lot of the research does say that poor/disadvantaged kids do the worst in making progress during the summer. Institutional support during summers could do a lot to help them become more productive and self-sufficient adults.
Those differences aside, I'd say you have a good point. Summer vacation isn't just downtime from school, it's still an opportunity to work (even if it isn't in the fields) and learn. Moreover, slack has value as recreational time and as a catalyst for creative foment -- not just for the kids, teachers use the time to refine their approaches as well. Extra days could put more into the curriculum for achievers or allow for a gentler curve for stragglers, but narrowing it down is going to have tradeoffs.
It sounds to me like the fifth grader in the article seems to have the balance about right: summer programs offer opportunities to kids that they might even enjoy (and which would meet Obama's goals), but don't force everyone into one particular tradeoff.
So: are we smarter than a fifth grader? :)
Tweet, tweet.
Has anyone considered adding a bit of science to the discussion? ... they're at least diping their toes in the water on the topic:
Not necessarily the optimal-schedule-for-instruction research you may have been looking for, but at least someone's looking at evidence that more time yields increased scores.
Tweet, tweet.
An individual's education is a rival, excludable good. Thus it belongs to the free market.
An educated populace is a non-rival, non-excludable good with a moderate network effect. Thus it belongs to state-run monopolies.
There is another market that exhibits the duality: newspapers. Having an informed populace may be in everyone's interest, but you don't see many government run newspapers (at least in the USA).
On the other hand, I acknowledge that other goods like fire protection exhibit this same double nature, yet are usually public monopolies.
There is likely some other variable or property that would explain the difference between newspapers and fire protection. I don't know what it is (I only took Micro. Econ. 101), but I would love to hear from those who do.
Quality of education is important, not quantity.
It's true! 30 seconds of technically focused, high quality education can obviate the need for months of practice! I know kung-fu!
OK, I'm exaggerating for effect (and for the chance to make a Matrix reference), but the fact is, there's research that shows practice over time is essential and that increased time devoted will in fact raise scores. Some of it's in TFA.
Tweet, tweet.
Unemployment is almost 10%, Foreclosures are getting close to 10 Million. 2 Wars. Bailouts. So I guess extending the school year for other people children (not his own) and trying to get the Olympics in Chicago are this weeks news. Well, all liberals can now say, yes we did. Nice piece of work.
Standardized tests are blatantly anti-education. They measure the ability and motivation of a kid to memorize answers from other days, and fill in those answers on one day out of 180.
1) If standardized tests are so bad, why do educators constantly use them to tell us how bad US students are? We constantly hear that we are ranked low compared to other countries. 2) If standardized tests are so bad, why do our universities use SATs and ACTs? 3) If you don't have some sort of standardized test, how then do you tell whether teachers are doing a good job? 4) I haven't taken a NCLB test, but I took plenty of standardized tests in the 80s growing up. Sure the science was more memorization, but you can't memorize your way out of math and reading comprehension. 5) Most importantly MUCH OF LEARNING IS MEMORIZATION. I've had to memorize a ton of facts just to do my daily job. Bits in a byte, Java keywords, fundamentals of OO programming.
If you are really concerned with having a better outcome, and better education, with kids learning more - give us vouchers.
Let people go to private schools who would never be able to otherwise.
Let families afford to be able to homeschool, where learning can really be around the clock with committed parents.
For whatever reason, private education is poison to the current political leaders (like the whole DC voucher fiasco). If you care, let us have more choices for how we educate our kids.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The quality of American education needs to be increased as opposed to its quantity. Two pounds of shit may weigh more than one pound of shit, but it's still shit.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
I could barely make average grade in some courses... Then I came to the U.S. and became an Honor Roll student. I don't know what exactly is wrong with the U.S. educational system, but the problem is huge and won't be easily solved.
I guess I better get on exerting my union power and demanding wages that come somewhere within 10k of what someone with a comparable education and skill set has in industry. I won't even talk about hours.
Union power has nothing to do with benefiting the members. The rank and file are victims of the thugs, too.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
If the time spent in school was spent on serious learning instead of touchie-feelie BS the amount of time we currently spend would be more than sufficient. This is more about the $$'s/day for each student and funding than it is about quality education.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Our schools don't teach very well, so let's fix it by making students sit in badly run schools for more hours. That will do it.
My kids are home-schooled. It's the best thing we've ever done. When I think of all the hours of my life I wasted scribbling on meaningless dittos I feel so jealous of the life my kids have. They do school work for 3 hours a day, really do the work. Then they work on their choice of project for a couple of hours, then they have all the rest of the day to play with other home-schooled kids. All three of my kids are approximately 2 years ahead of kids their age in the local public school, which is among the highest ranked in the country.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Take a gander at John Taylor Gatto's book, An Underground History of American Education . Gatto is an award-winning former New York public school teacher, so he knows the system from the inside out. Simply put, public education was never designed to educate, it was designed to indoctrinate. It has as its basis the Prussian model of schooling. Basically, the idea is to mold young minds to serve the desires of their political controllers. It exists to make them subservient to state interests. At this it succeeds remarkably well. More time spent in schools is more time wasted by students, and more state-sponsored indoctrination of children.
Stephen Hawking isn't British, that's obvious to anyone. He doesn't have an accent.
The television will not be revolutionized.
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
I like microcars
His hatred of United States of American Citizens has no bounds.
Every wakeful and in-dream moment in the life of Barak [formerly the symbol called Barry] Hussain Obama] revolves around answering the question, "what can I do to kill more United States of American Citizens?"
Now, his legons of doom, from the halls of Montazuma to the Shores of Tripolie, e.g. the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security, are feverously planning attacks against United States of American Citizens -- their hated throng.
Remember, that the 20th Century traitors of the USA, were within, FBI, CIA, and the Department of the Navy, not Saudi Arabia, USSR, GDR, Egypt or Pakisatan -- the so called Taliban and Al-Quida and ghost "Osama Bin Laden" are the inventions of the FBI, CIA, State Department and the Minds of the United States of America Presidents --- funded by tax payer dollars -- thru various carrior trade deals.
Toodles
9
Being from Singapore, let me vouch that the number of hours are vastly under-reported - students are expected to cover the non-schooling hours with self-sponsored private tuition and co-curricular activities, which can really consume alot of time. Education is all about catching up with your neighbors, and catching up is an obsession with parents, so what was supposedly optional becomes mandatory.
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
no thanks, you're already taking enough of my money. Please let people with children look after their own children, w/o fobbing the (fiscal) responsibility off on the rest of us.
We didn't ask you, asshole- we won in 2008, and you didn't. If it's decided that we want to spend a little more money and time on education, that's what's going to happen. And you get to help out(with your taxes). The only choice for you is whether you do it with joy, or quietly grumble to yourself and post empty comments on internet message boards ^_^
It takes a village, dickface.
This is specifically about software engineering, but I think it applies equally well to school in general...
-----
We can get good designs by following good practices instead of poor ones. Good design practices can be taught. Programmers are among the most intelligent part of the population, so they can learn good practice. Hence, a major thrust in the United States is to promulgate good modern practice. New curricula, new literature, new organizations such as the Software Engineering Institute, all have come into being in order to raise the level of our practice from poor to good. This is entirely proper.
Nevertheless, I do not believe we can make the next step upward in the same way. Whereas the difference between poor conceptual designs and good ones may lie in the soundness of design method, the difference between good designs and great ones surely does not. Great designs come from great designers. Software construction is a creative process. Sound methodology can empower and liberate the creative mind; it cannot inflame or inspire the drudge.
The differences are not minor--they are rather like the differences between Salieri and Mozart. Study after study shows that the very best designers produce structures that are faster, smaller, simpler, cleaner, and produced with less effort. The differences between the great and the average approach an order of magnitude.
--[snip]--
Hence, although I strongly support the technology-transfer and curriculum development efforts now under way, I think the most important single effort we can mount is to develop ways to grow great designers.
-----
Draw your own conclusions from Mr. Brooks' comments vs. Pres. Obama's. Seems to me one is looking at the trees and missing the forest.
The numbers they put in the article seem like bullshit. Elementary school in Taiwan for my wife was 8-5 (1hr break for lunch). In high school (inc. junior high) you had to be in for quizzes by 7:20 and from 5-5:30 there were often extra review sessions or quizzes. Then kids usually go to 'cram school' (basically tutoring, but it is a huge business there and once everyone is doing it, it becomes less optional if you want to do well in school) from 6-8 or 6-8:30. So, the article says they have more days in school per year, and from my wife's personal experience she was in official school from 7:20-5:30 (which is more than here) and then in cram school until 7 or 8... I think it is a joke they try to make the argument that our kids are in school longer than asian countries and try to call out Taiwan as one of those.
It would cost only 3,000 dollars a year to educate a child in China, plus air fare both ways for summer break would be a little over 4,500.00 dollars.
In Washington D.C. taxpayers pay 10,000 per child. Clearly the best solution is outsourcing. Plus punishment can be handed out byt the Red Chinese, when you kid gets suspended they get sent to a weeklong shift in a factory. It lowers labor cost and kids learn discipline and when they get back they will respect their elders, RESPECT THEIR ELDERS!!!!!!!
Plus during the School year you won't have young punks all over town, instead they will be in another country wrecking that place up. DOUBLE WIN-WIN
Now get off my damn lawn you whippersnappers!!!
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Or we could reduce the number of failing students. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-T7yPJVvXw
Those numbers for Taiwan are incorrect. Children go to government funded school from 7am until about 4pm, but then they shuffle off to various "cram" schools until 9pm (some of these schools stay open until midnight). What do they do during summer "vacation"? That's right, all day cram schools. How about weekends? Cram schools. You get the idea.
In short, that 1,050 hours is more like 3,000 hours. I'm sure other Asian countries are similar.
Adam
The more school, the better. I say do away with summer vacations altogether. Let the little shits work their asses off all year around, that'll toughen them up and prepare them for the REAL world. Moreover it will mean nerds will have no respite, ever.
I'm all for it. Work, work, work and more work. Stress them until they snap. Break them. Some will win, some will lose, some were born to sing the blues.
That's the way it should be. No mercy.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
that Obama wants to increase hours, its in order to lower the influence of the parents on their children. Clinton has for a long time opposed "unregulated child-rearing". In general the government would prefer more time with your kids.
I hate to nit-pick on style or grammar, but your post made no sense until I saw the title. It would have helped greatly if a sentence to that effect had started the comment proper.
other than that, very interesting comment!
Please mod parent up.
I will respond to you like an adult, a typical one who posts opinions and complains, and wants someone else to solve their problems instead of taking the bull by the horns. Any solution imposed from above or outside will come too little too late to help you. You have to take charge of your own education. Start now.
Keep in mind that there is a lot more to education than you yet understand. This includes, among other things, socialization, learning many nuances of various social skills, and multiple intelligence(s) beyond math and reading. It also includes figuring out how to learn and excel in any situation. Look into these other components of education. Evaluate yourself honestly and develop the skills you are weaker in.
Each day in the school situation you describe is an opportunity to learn many, many things (and many details and nuances of the things you think you already know.) For example - work on your writing. (Start by using paragraphs and complete sentences.)
As to the rest of your courses - don't just learn the material - master it, and master the details and avenues that the teacher does not have time to go into. Master all subjects - not just those you are interested in or think are important. Learn how to learn even when you don't care about the material, you will be surprised how often this will be useful later.
Read, research, think. Bored? List questions to ask or research in your notebook, solve extra problems that you pose to yourself, write a journal on alternate pages of your notebook, etc.
There are hundreds of things you can do, yourself, to make your classes more interesting and productive. You get out what you put in - each and every minute. Read about Gauss and Polya and Feynman and others like them to get some inspiration. Truly intelligent people are never bored. Never. If you claim to have a brain - use it for goodness sake!
The opportunity to teach others, starting with grading, is a golden one - take advantage of it. Volunteer to work with the slowest students, so the teacher can concentrate on the middle of the road students. Ask good questions, in or out of class to help yourself and others understand the material from points of view different from the teacher's.
If there are so many of you "bored out of your skulls", then you in fact can create the multiple class levels you want someone else to hand you on a silver platter (and pay for.) Some teachers may be open to helping you set this up during class. Some other ideas include creating study groups and after-school clubs to go into material more deeply, or to follow tangents that are not covered in the regular curriculum.
Nothing is stopping you from improving your education yourself, or in concert with the other students in your situation, or even (gasp) by working with your teachers. What have you pursued in this area? Talk to your teachers, or other teachers in the school, the librarian, the department heads, etc. Work with other students, the student government and/or PTA or similar organizations.
To paraphrase a wag - if you are so smart, why aren't you getting more out of your education?
Family portrayals seem to reflect the aspirations of American families more than the reality.
People watch them for escapism. You know. To ESCAPE from the drudgery and unpleasantness of daily life. What did you expect.
Working-class people living in well-to-do suburbs in big houses. I'm not a big TV watcher, but I can think of a couple: the Cosby show and Fresh Prince.
And what would a realistic Cosby show look like? The kid's friends getting shot in Harlem? If you're going to write a TV show about a black family living in a ghetto you better be writing it to show how they're getting out of it or no one will watch (who needs to be reminded?) except those who'll moan about rascism.
The Fresh prince was about a rap star who made it big living with rich relatives. How do you expect the rap star to live? In squallor? Who wants to see a show about a rap star that didn't make it and ended up working at the local gas station???
I haven't seen much of either show,
On slashdot this makes you an expert of course. Hey so am I. I hated Cosby and never much got into FPOBA
but I think the Fresh Prince guy would have to be in very rare company even among lawyers to live like that
It's called a Cinderella story. It's fiction. It's suppose to be fun not real.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Discipline is an important aspect of education.
Headmaster [leading the school in prayer]: "Oh Lord, we give thee humble and hearty thanks for this, thy gift of discipline, knowing that it is only through the constraints of others that we come to know ourselves, and only through true misery can we find true contentment." - from Tomkinson's Schooldays, a Ripping Yarn by Michael Palin & Terry Jones http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075568/
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
America has to start producing better basketball and football players!
The RoTW is catching up!
-
Extracting sunbeams from
"Revenge of the Nerds".
Give nerd a bodyguard allowance of $1000 so that any jerk jock will get vaporized. Then their motivation will be just fine.
Oh, you wanted money? Call it Think Of The Nerd.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Separate out the cost from the vacation. Education and Medicine are the next two industries to plummet. A Business education should basically cost only $5000 because it's just books, lectures, and an honesty test. Give each kid his allowance of 25 office hours per semester or something to ask the serious questions that aren't in the lectures.
Those long vacations have another name: "Sabbatical". I believe they'd be better split into separate weeks, but the Summer Job thing has its merits. People grovel for 3 days of vaction at work.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
When I went through high-school some years ago (actually almost 20), the time spent at school where I lived and studied (Portugal) was comparatively the same as in the US only distributed differently (at the time, summer school vacations in Portugal lasted 3 months, while all other vacation periods where about 1 week each).
At some point during my high-school years, one of my class-mates went to do a year's high-school in the US as part of a student exchange program and then came back. Now, in Portugal this was a slightly below average student, usually ending his year with (in a scale of 20) average grades around the 11 mark (10 is pass). After a year he came back from the US and proudly announced that over there he got A grades in almost all subjects.
That pretty much formed my opinion that high-school in the US was simply not demanding at all.
I very much suspect that, even now, the problem with US education is one of poor quality of teaching and ever lowering standards of evaluation for pass grades than one of how much time students spend at school.
Because of no child left behind teachers spend more time preparing the students for the big test, than they do actually teaching.
They need to start from scratch. If a child can't read, write, and do basic math. They should not be out of elementary school. That is what elementary school is for, is to get the basics down pat, and then move on to 7th grade.
Thanks to the big test our kids are learning to cheat earlier too. This is not "I think they are", it is fact they are. My own neighbors daughter said her teacher was giving answers out during the test. Have you been around a family during the week of one of these test? The pressure is just over whelming.
Will it help to extend the school year? No. I don't know how many times I heard from teachers stating they wish they had more days, so they could have more time to study for the big test. Plus i wonder how much money this will set us back? Many of our schools now are strapped for cash, and have cut back on a lot of stuff that is considered non essential. Like band, computer class, sports. A lot of the elective classes are gone. All because of lack of money.
Adding time in school won't help, because the problem isn't the number of hours or days spent in school.
In fact, there are a host of problems which all contribute to the issue, none of which will be addressed by keeping children in school longer.
The issues as I see them are:
1) Fundamental flaws in the theory of education at the policy making and administrative levels. An example of one such: I am old enough to have been in school when grading systems began to be changed from A-F to E(xceeds expectations), S(atisfactory), and U(nsatisfactory). The reason given for the change was that children who got poor grades felt inferior to those who were doing better, and that this was bad. Some time later, the 'E' grade was disposed of for the same reason. While that grading system is gone, the fundamentally flawed premise that caused it remains to this day. American education became for a long time, all about making students feel good about how much they didn't know. The flawed premise here is the same as in Communism - when you remove the rewards for doing well, you also remove the incentive to excel.
2) Use of schools as a platform to indoctrinate students with the current popular ideology. Whatever the ideology in question, this -always- happens at the expense of useful learning, both because the 'facts' presented by the curriculum tend to be skewed to present that ideology in the most favorable light, and because students are discouraged from questioning the 'facts' presented (as that represents questioning the ideology itself).
3) Fundamental flaws in the theory of education at the classroom level. Schools used to use rote memorization only for the purpose of teaching the basic building blocks of a subject. The next step was to teach critical thinking and problem solving to allow students to figure out how to solve problems given the basic information. As a result of the second point above (and the reliance on teaching to the standardized tests), critical thinking is now discouraged.
4) Standardized tests are presented in such a way that teachers (and those who create the curriculum the teachers use) are able to teach to the test, and spend a large portion of the school year doing so via rote memorization. The concept of standardized testing being necessary grew out of the poor performance of American students. Unfortunately, the manner in which it was implemented allowed rote memorization to be used to prepare for the tests, rather than teaching the fundamentals of the subject and encouraging the development of problem solving skills.
5) Colossal waste of money in education. Most of this money is wasted in administration and bureaucracy, some in fraud, and some to genuine attempts to improve the quality of education at the student level. A problem here is that (except for the poorest school districts where there is not enough money to cover essentials), spending more money per student does not increase the quality of education. Some experiments were done to vastly increase the amount of money being spent per student - those experiments universally resulted in no measurable improvement in test scores. When the educational process is flawed at its most basic level, throwing money at the problem is not the answer.
6) Failure of certain American subcultures to value education. When you are told from birth by the people who are raising you, the people around you, and the leaders in your community that you aren't good enough to make it without handouts; that you are by virtue of your ethnicity or skin color doomed to substandard employment and a substandard lifestyle; that people who succeed despite that are traitors, and that crime is the best way to get ahead... then the students tend to see education as a waste of time. They know that if they choose to avoid crime as a way of getting ahead, that jobs in menial labor will always be available, and require no education. Since they don't believe they can do better, they don't see t
Rote learning has been de-emphasized in the US for a few decades now, to the point that many of us believe that American students could benefit from some boring memorization. Multiple choice is not used for learning, it is used for tests in the US because they are very easy to feed into a computer. Teachers that are serious about their topic tend to have assignments that are hand checked. Other teachers just lecture then test with a scantron or equivalent.
We have entire units in school about how to use a library, how to find information, how to research a topic. We also are required to solve math problems and show our work, just the answer alone is never enough when doing an actual assignment. For a standardized test, then yes, you just give the answer, often multiple choice, but this is more to do with the limitations of test checking technology than a doctrine of "trivia style learning".
I think it is pretty insulting that you think you can sum up the solutions to the American education system in a paragraph.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
In my high school, classes were about 42 minutes long. One year I got to experience Summer school and the classes there were an hour long. I found that the extra 18 minutes made a world of difference. I felt I was able to settle in, relax, and start learning better in an hour than in 42 minutes. After that I thought they should have less classes per day but have them be an hour long.
I don't know if it's the same in the states but here in Australia they get 4 holidays a year, 2 for 2 weeks and I think one for 3 weeks, the other for 4 weeks! (longer in private schools!)
This is a logistical nightmare for parents and I'm not even a parent - the combined annual leave in this country is 8 weeks for 2 parents, not enough to cover the school holidays and that's assuming they can manage to take all 4 weeks - I know in your country you guys get TWO weeks a year (ugh)
Furthermore it doesn't prepare them for the real world, I was crushed when I found out I get 4 weeks holiday a year when I started working, toughen them up a little and compromise, give them 6 weeks a year or something, maybe 7? but the current amount they get is absoloutely ridiculous.
I have an idea, why don't we start teaching kids during the current school day instead of testing them every other day! Bushes, every child left behind act ruined the schools.
Free time is important for kids. I eventually had a computer class in school, but K-9th grade all programming was done on my own. Then I could finally take VB class. I taught myself C on my own as well, and school did not get a C++ class until 12th grade. By cutting into my private time, my ability to mess around with the computer and learn to program would have been greatly reduced...
Also my high school wasn't that great. The kids I knew who scored 1600 on the SATs did it by studying on their own. They got math textbooks and vocabulary books and worked through them on their own. Increasing school time would have reduced their ability to study.
Plus you gotta let kids be kids. Kids want to have fun!!! I liked hanging out with my friends and doing stupid stuff..... Why start the workplace stress that young.... Also what about older kids who have jobs (some to help their family in a tough time). If anything I would think more of the people who want to work would drop out since with the bigger demands of school there would be less time to work. Older kids want their cars, dates, video games, etc. and I'm sure more than one would be willing to drop out of school for a job.
Hello,
Music training has been shown to enhance student's abilities in math by a significant margin. I think it may also offer advantage in other cognitive areas too. Music training definitely has its place in a GOOD academic program.
Physical education is also underrated. Your body supports your mind, and if your body is unfit and obese, your brain will similarly suffer. I do think the emphasis on HS sports is stupid, but fitness is key.
--PeterM
I'm shocked to hear that Seinfeld's apartment is considered good in New York, because it looked positively tiny to me.
Having seen & lived in my share of NYC apartments, I would say Jerry's place was moderately large for a one-bed. A place like that would probably run $2000/mo. If you cut the living room and kitchen in half, it would be a more accurate portrayal, but it's not ridiculous.
The single most ludicrously outlandish apartment on television has to be the one shared by the girls in Friends with the enormous living room windows, private deck (not porch, mind you, but full-on DECK), two-bedrooms, giant kitchen... that's $3500-$4000/mo. easy. No way is someone working at a coffee shop living in a place that gigantic.
Really, the mod's should be ashamed of themselves.
The idea that the US spends less time in the classroom is a myth. According to the AP research, the US spends about 1146 hours in the classroom, while students in Japan, Singapore, and Tiawan that outperforme the US in math and science average about 1000. They do attend more school days, but not more classroom hours.
Our school systems are already taxed financially. Many in our area are actually lengthening the day a few minutes, so they can go LESS days. The professional staff is all basically a fixed cost for the year, but utilities and supports staff are not. My sister is on a school board, and this was a major decision for them this year.
According to the G8 report, the US spends almost DOUBLE per student than other G8 countries. All the waste is not going to the teachers, but rather the overhead. Most of my teaching friends goal is to get into school management so their salaries can double or more. Statistically the number one thing that helps students performance better is great teachers, not free laptops or technology (although they do help some, but even more with great teachers). We need to make sure the budget is making it into the classroom, with teacher pay that encourages great teachers. Teachers are not overpaid.
The idea of tenure at a taxpayer funded institution is lunacy. Teachers need higher pay, but poor teachers need fired and replaced with someone that can do the job better.
Personally I would not mind a longer school day, but not crazy about a lengthened school year. Sports and other extra curricular activities could work into the end of the school day, instead of after school. The changes would not be as drastic. The biggest drawback is funding, longer hours are not free. Without drastic changes to how schools operate (good idea, but not easy to accomplish in practice) is to raise taxes.
American kids are F***'d up.
...absentee/lackadaisical parenting
...parents are too busy working
...the American Dream requires a pipe and funny tobacco
...the middle class existence is being inexorably eradicated by the very-wealthy
...the very-wealthy are a bunch of selfish shits that think 99% of the population are there for their own personal entertainment.
Because...
Because...
Because...
Because...
Because...
It seems to me this is likely to hurt society long term. As Obama notes, low acheiving students tend to have no alternate educational oppurtunities outside school and would benefit from a longer school year. The problem is that high acheiving students often do have significant alternate educational oppurtunities outside school and that those oppurtunities often are often, due to being more specialized to the child's particular interests, vastly superior to the educational oppurtunities received in school.
By example, I know my own success as an engineer had a lot to do with the hobby programming and tinkering I did in my spare time as a child, the science/math enrichment programs my parents sent me to in the summer, all the museums we visited on family vacations, the academic competitions I competed in after school etc.
This plan is likely to have the effect of making the best and brightest significantly worse of in the name of making the bottom better off. Essentailly everyone will become a more average student. The problem is that making the top students into average students has a far more negative effect on the advancement of society than making the bottom students into average students has as a positive effect.
Society grows from the top, not the middle.
How about requiring that the President of the United States actually perform the duties of the President at least 75 percent of the time or more?
You know, instead of endless T.V. interviews, campaigning disguised as promoting "health care", presentation to get the Olympics awarded to Chicago, etc.
No one asked you either, a$$hole!
The real motive to have more days of schools is to have a reason to hire more teachers.
I would agree with a year-round school year. A long summer break, during which kids can forget everything they've learned and lose good study habits, is no longer needed. But I strongly disagree with adding more days to the school year and I disagree with a longer school day. The number of days should not be increased, but the current number of days should simply be spread out more evenly throughout the year. More money to schools rarely, if ever, helps anything. And studies have shown that for countries in which students excel it has much more to do with the culture, values, and motivation, and little if anything to do with the amount of time spent in school. More time in bad schools will just make things worse... more time for the disruptive students to hold everyone else back, when they could be getting out of the schools to go to the library or surf the Web and actually learn something on their own. A longer school day and year is nothing but a veiled attempt by this power-grabbing government administration to grab even more power. It would increase opportunities for indoctrinating our children, removing them futher from the influences of parents and family, and it would provide another excuse for claiming that the schools now need even more money (even though more money never works) which in turn gives the government an excuse to raise taxes thereby giving the government more power, taking money from those it chooses and to re-distribute it to those that the government deems worthy of receiving it. It also gives the federal government even more power to dictate education policy over the states. (Central planning is a bad idea... remember the Soviet Union anyone?) User philipgar hit the nail right on the head in his post. The federal government ostensibly is not *officially* in control, but they take even more money from the people and then blackmail the states by withholding it to pressure the states into doing what the federal government wants. The end result is that the federal government gains even more power and control. A longer school year would also provide yet another opportunity for lazy, irresponsible people to abdicate yet more of their own personal responsibility and freedoms to the government so that they do not need to be bothered by it themselves and then they get to whine, point fingers, and shift blame to the government when things go wrong. It will provide people with what amounts to more taxpayer-funded child care, allowing parents to have their kids herded onto buses and brought to school for even longer periods of time so they can work even longer to earn more money so that they can give their children more "stuff" (but even less of their time), while reducing the amount of time for which they must be (*gasp*) personally responsible for, and interact with, their own children. Smaller government is better, people. I don't care what political party affiliation you are... people who want big government are always happy when the government is doing things with which they agree... but it will not always be that way. Eventually people will be elected who want to do things with which you disagree and then what happens? ... once power is ceded by the people to the government it is much, much more difficult to take that power back again.
You elect what you think is a progressive leader, act in your community to try to make things better, and now Bush 3 is here with No Child Left Behind 2 to take it all away.
You can bet your ass he's eventually going to ask Congress to pass a law that takes federal taxes that everyone pays, and only gives it back to the schools that do what he wants. It'll be just like highway funds.
Your voice will be weakened again. Don't bother talking to your state reps or mayor. Don't bother going to that PTA meeting. Don't get to know your teachers. Because none of them are calling the shots. You need to dial area code 202, and don't hold your breath waiting for someone to pick up the phone, much less expect accountability.
This kind of shit, moving decisions to Washington DC, is exactly what is wrong with democracy. Progressive or conservative, whatever your feelings (or ideas about how to improve education!) are, they don't matter because your school board has 300 million constituents. Why should anyone listen to you?
Of course you realize this is just an easy to get away with method of creating state-run free day-care right?
Presumably, there were some studies done showing that the dumb kids get a lot out of being with the average and smart kids. Of course, the smart kids don't get anything out of it, but we have to be fair...
I can say from experience that smart kids can get a benefit out of working with kids who are less advanced than they are. But, they have to be forced to interact with them. Tutoring a subject is a great way to really get good at it--you have to understand something very well in order to help someone else learn it. It can also train high-performing people to work constructively with lower-performing people--a skill that is hard to test for, but will be very valuable throughout life.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I was one who did great on standardized tests, and also on other tests as long as they were well designed, but tended to earn C's D's and E's in class because of the homework, and also because of badly designed tests. 'What year was George Washington born?' is a lousy question versus 'Write an essay describing three of the main causes of the American Revolution.' . I couldn't remember the names of all the Egyptian Pharoahs either. Who the hell cares about trivia?
Tests like that basically give kids who won't think a bar to jump over and get a grade. The students get to prove they learned something and the teacher gets to prove they taught something. Asking the important questions on tests requires something important to have been taught, and for something important to have been learned which makes nobody ( who matters ) happy at all. It's harder for the teacher, it pisses most of the parents off that their kids are suddenly doing poorly ( since they have been required to think to pass ), it pisses most of the kids off because it's easier for most of them to cram a bunch of trivia than learn to think, especially the ones who are accustomed to getting the 'good grade' sticker on their report card. ( It takes a certain type of person to be able to do this. These people grow up thinking they are smart whether or not they really are. Fortunately, thinking you are smart usually makes you at least passably smart eventually. )
The students for whom requiring thought to pass would be a benefit are few. The ones who don't care either way are many. And the ones pissed off by it or inconvenienced by it are many.
Standardized tests are certainly not all there is, and teachers shouldn't be judged based upon whether students pass them, but given the 'clusterfuck' that school is, it's the only proof alot of students have that they aren't stupid. Teachers should be judged by whether the students found their class worthwhile. And students should not be required to take classes they don't think are worthwhile. If students are wrong about what subjects are worthwhile, then they will find themselves lacking in important knowledge and come back to school later in life to seek it, taking the classes that ought to provide it. If they don't feel lacking and never come to seek a certain bit of knowledge then possibly the knowledge was not that important to begin with.
In education, you can provide a horse with water, but you can't make it drink.
...
I thought people got promoted to their failure point, and then stayed there.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
More school hours will certainly mean more $ for teachers... especially welcome by teachers' unions who, coincidentally, support Democratic candidates, and Obama, in their election efforts...
More hours, Weekends... ?
Good for parents who want "government baby sitters"...
As for students... more of the same mediocre education... ?
Butt out Mr. President.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
'nuff said.
As someone that went through public education (K-10) and private education (11-12), let me be the first to say that the classes were very similar. What was different was the student population. Students in private school want to get good grades, and therefore constantly compete against each other for top marks. In private school having the highest grades doesn't automatically make you the cool kid, but you do command the respect of the entire student body.
In public school it was only cool to get good grades if you didn't study for them. Before going to private school the longest I had ever studied for a test was 2 hours. If you did study you were worse than a nerd, you were a "try hard".
In private school if you had poor grades you were an idiot, and people made fun of you for it.
When public schools foster the same competitive spirit they will create better educated, curious, and effective students.
As a student myself, I've sometimes noticed that long summer vacations are too much of a good thing, almost.
An important logistical issue I see here is making sure the schools have decent air-conditioning systems
My chief issue is "more != better", as well as the other problems, those that more time won't address, as many of my fellow /. commenters have said
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I know this is probably a psychotic question, I'm one of those lunitics who believes in a limited federal government and state/individual rights. So my question is, By what authority can the president determine the length of the school year? He can say "I think the school year should be longer" all he wants but from what I am grasping he's saying "I'm going to make the school year longer" and i'm currious where that authority comes from and how many Constutional amendments it violates.
* More hours are not necessary
* More choice would be a good step (school vouchers for instance)
* Reduce effect of tenure (i.e. make it easier to fire a bad teacher)
* Pay for performance (why does a teacher need to be in their 50s before they earn well, and conversely why should a bad teacher in their 50s be paid very well)
* Encourage academic competition (knowledge bowl, mathcounts, etc.)
I took advantage of the talented youth program at a local University to get ahead in Math. I started that in 9th grade after a successful year in the Mathcounts team in 8th grade. Believe it or not, my local math teacher _discouraged_ me from doing it. Why? Because he thought I would get a better education with him.
I ended up being the first student at my small school to achieve a 4 or better on the AP calc test, and I took the test as a junior instead of as a senior. My point is that students should be challenged and not discouraged from pushing themselves to greater achievements. I believe many in the educational system find the lowest common denominator and teach to that, which is a real dis-service to most students.
Clearly you don't spend enough time in school since you don't seem capable of writing meaningful sentences.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I am in college presently, and all throughout my school years up until freshman year of college, school has been filled with busy work. Why doesn't Obama take a quick look at the curriculum and how it is being taught first, before we make our kids go to school as much as China. Instead, we have teachers complaining about their lack of pay, and giving students a worksheet rather than teaching them. So making students suffer through more time spent in the negative learning environment, we call school, would not be the best solution in making our kids smarter and more educated.
This initiative has nothing to do with kids spending more time in school, and everything to do with keeping them out of their homes where their ineffective parents let them play video games all day. The problem is, it's not a politically viable stance to say "America's parents suck at parenting, and need to read a book or 2 on child development."
Instead, Obama says "More time in school". But make no mistake, it's just a sugar-coated way of saying what he's really thinking, which is "Less time at home."
Why are US students not performing compared with those in other countries? Is it the sheer number of hours put in school? Most realize that there are more fundamental problems. It is naive and perhaps irresponsible for the Administration to propose 'more hours' as a solution. (It is similar to health care reform, where a solution is proposed without clear identification of the core and difficult problems.)
There is also a dimension beyond academic performance. Many schools teach values and ideas contrary to the parents'. And given incidents like "Obama Praise" in NJ, it's a very bad idea to let schools have even more influence over the children.
Public school does not teach children how to think. It does teach children to accept the coming "reality" of working more and getting less. Objective thinking is drilled out of their brains so that they will accept whatever newthink is presented on the latest TV news.
ALL PRAISE THE FED
Nah, just hold the jock accountable if they're a jerk. Most of the problems with bullying is that it's either ignored, actively encouraged, or only looked at when the victim takes down the aggressor. Fix that and keep your $1000
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
If you want to be a pro athlete, you have to be involved in the school athletics program. While I personally don't have the drive to be a pro athlete, I understand the call of fame and fortune. If you want to be a famous anything, athlete, movie star, whatever, then you have to take the chances you have. Sure, your chances of actually making it as a pro football player are low, but if you give up your dream because it's hard, then that chance becomes zero.
What you are saying is that someone who wants more than anything else to be a professional football player should abandon his dreams, give up, and become a good little productive unit.
but let's not forget that many of the same countries sited as examples also have a higher than average teen suicide rate. I sit next to a high school counselor who quit his job because our schools are more concerned with the job prospects and college prospects of their students than concern for that teens well being physically and mentally. The straw that broke the camels back was a student under his watch that lost all of his parents and grandparents in either health related issues or by accidents and this teen was facing homelessness and state custody issues, yet the school was only concerned about their SAT scores. Kids can not be relentlessly driven like adults who have been worn down and are use to overbearing bosses. National pride and school stats can not replace the life a student driven to the point of exhaustion that takes his or her own or a room full of classmates.
If you are really concerned with having a better outcome, and better education, with kids learning more - give us vouchers.
Let people go to private schools who would never be able to otherwise
Why private schools? Let's push this envelope. Suppose a longer school year lets kids graduate a year earlier so that they can go that much earlier into university. That's expensive, just like private school, but university is the most respected education.
When I was in public school, the first 6 grades didn't seem to teach much. The system seemed designed to shock kids into working in grade 7. An astute kid could probably jump straight into grade 6 and with a wee bit of help learn all it takes to be ready for grade 7. If kids were diligently guided to start working hard from grade 3, they would be able to start university after grade 8.
Kids like to run around and play, but so do adults. Schools should do much more to help people play and achieve throughout their lives. A lot of people find that they have no inclination to do more than watch TV for amusement, so that they can focus on their careers. It doesn't seem to be a healthy way of life.
People are faced with pressures above and below. Industry wants to treat people as pawns so that no marginalized pawn is irreplaceable. Individuals want to accumulate wealth, and the quickest way for a poor schmuck to do that is to achieve something extraordinary.
Obama had to work his way to the top, and an education system overhaul is what is needed to help people elevate themselves in this era of mature markets. He may talk of something concrete and day-to-day such as a longer school year, but underneath the thoughts touch on an upgraded education system. Politically, there is so much deficit and debt that the opposition would try to quash the message if anything with a big dollar sign was introduced, but if Obama does a sell job with a simpler message that people could look forward to more fulfilling lives with just a little longer education every year, then he could later have people coming back and asking for more education spending. That could be the politically smart way of improving education for a new era.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Obama really doesn't know the problems he will cause if he does manage to lengthen school time. Not only will he be cutting into the students working hours, but kids that feel like they don't fit in will feel even more horrible, which can lead to higher rates for suicide. Also I can say that we will have a higher percentage of drop out rates, and this won't just affect the students it will affect the adults too.
So no thanks Obama, you may be trying to help in your own way, but this is definitely not the way to go.
Are you bitter for not getting a gold star? Seriously, I can guarantee three things. The results that I produce are very high (documentation available), the amount I receive is very low per student (documentation available), and I can guarantee I'm doing something about the problems.
I'll let this pass, as there is no way to verify it. I would say if all public school teachers were as good as they say we wouldn't have a problem.
Now let's compare this with your contribution to the solution...... please feel free to post your teaching credentials, or your volunteerism in the schools.
Sadly my contribution must be advisory only. Because although I have an advanced engineering degree I am barred math or science in public high school by the teachers unions. I design electical cardiac devices for physician clods who like you shield themselves from competition behind obscure credientials.
an ill wind that blows no good
I am a recent graduate of the public school system, and I can give a few observations as to how it is broken, and yet not the entire issue.
There is a stunning lack in the breadth of knowledge of most high school students. Of the students I came across, there were only about two or three who were truly well-rounded for their age. To me, well-rounded means having a fundamental curiosity about the world around you and the things in it. This is something that cannot be taught in a class. It can only arise from someone's environment, parents, etc. This is a fundamental requirement for the accumulation of knowledge. Many parents have really dropped the ball on this one. They need to realize that an accurate view of the world cannot arise on its own. Instead of taking the kids on a vacation to Walt Disney World, take them somewhere that will really mean something. At half the cost you could pile in the car and drive to the Columbia Ice Fields. Let them see for themselves the effect of global warming. Instead of taking that cruise to wherever, spend a week or two at a language school in Mexico. Buy them SEED and Discover instead of PC Gamer and CosmoGirl. Show them that there is a world far beyond their imagination, and that they are a part of it.
There is another problem, and that is one of incredible immaturity. I attended a medium-sized high school that had around 2,000 students. The school had implemented an incredibly strict disciplinary system. People aged fifteen through eighteen had to account for their every action and fit into a prescribed routine. I cannot speak for others, but for me, I could not bear to have someone telling me what to do every second. It was humiliating for me to have to ask and have someone sign a passbook so that I could go to the bathroom. The school lunch was a miserable excuse for food, and yet I couldn not leave the campus to find food elsewhere. These conditions all come together to imprint students with a sort of imposed immaturity. How are you expected to act and learn in a responsible fashion when you are being constantly told what to do, how to act, and when you can drain the lizard. The net result is the behavior I saw in my fellow students. They responded to the overbearing authority by acting as irresponsibly as possible. I started taking classes at the local community college at night and found that not only did I get better grades then in high school, I enjoyed it. The fact that it was my choice to do what I did made it an entirely different experience.
I actually had one class that I really enjoyed in high school. It was a one-semester economics class with a teacher that had been there so long that they couldn't fire him, so he pretty much taught however and whatever he wanted. He was an old-school conservative who was all about the free market, small government, and the second amendment. I was a liberal. We butted heads. He apparently had been looking for someone to argue with for a very long time. We would spend entire class periods, as a class, arguing different current topics in current events. He and I usually started things off with a good topic, and then the entire class pitched in. We wrote papers, and we took notes, and we argued. This was sort of unheard of at that school, as it was a "regular" class. Debate almost always only took place in the "honors" classes. Not only did I immensely enjoy this class, I suspected that it might be the key to the improvement of the high school system. It forced all of us to give well-reasoned opinions and facts that could stand up to the scrutiny of the instructor and our peers. We had to think quick to respond to the criticisms of others, and most important of all, it forced us all to think.
Something else that I saw was the blatant segregation of students. When I came to that school, I had no idea what an honors or AP class was. My school had been small enough that everyone was in the same class regardless of ho
My local school district, Fairfax County Virgina, has a budget in excess of $2.2 billion out of which only $84 million is federal funds (makes you wonder why they care so much about NCLB since its 7% of funding).
see http://www.fcps.edu/fs/budget/documents/approved/2010/ApprovedBudget10.pdf
there are 13,744 teachers
there are 8,393 NON TEACHING POSITIONS.
likewise
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/BarbaraHollingsworth/Fairfax_School_Boards_Gateway_drug_101909.html
The school board recently wanted to spend 130 million (with 73 million on a spa facility and cafeteria for administrators) on a new administration building when students are studying in trailers. It would have also consolidated a number of school based positions focring those positions to have to travel to/from the schools.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
If not... We Need Less School, Not More
Increasing quantity of crap is just more crap. We need to increase the QUALITY of educate. And get rid of the stupid "no child left behind". And teach kids how to think and about subject matter, not just how to do well on standardized tests.
Chicken or the egg problem. Do music skills increase math skills, or do math skills indicate music skills. I sucked in band, but on the other hand I've forgotten more math than most people ever learn.
For PE, there is a big difference between having everyone run laps for an hour during school and spending thousands every year for the dozen students hand picked for football. If you are going to spend as much on the chess team, robotics team, starcraft team (thats a joke btw), and math club the more power to you. You live in a very rich school district. Otherwise, why are we spending public funds so a small group can have fun at the expense of everyone else? O I remember, because thats the New America...
The quality is so poor now why would I want kids in school longer with the current quality? The propaganda courtesy of the teachers union now outweights actual education and self esteem training takes up more hours then Reading, Writing, and Math. This would make sense if kids were receiving an actual education in school.
This sounds more like another handout... as in more tax funded daycare for kids...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
3rd generation teacher and thank God not union. Part of this problem comes from what I was taught is the missing bell.
In days past you graded on a curve. In a class of 20 you would have very few As, a few Bs, a lot of Cs, a few Ds, and a few Fs.
Someone always failed. This fear of failure pushed students to succeed. They had to compete. They had to fight for first place. Now, you show up, do the minimum, and you get an A.
"People, the problem with education in America is the bell has gone missing and with it, the very thing we need to teach people in school. You have to strive at all times to be the best or someone else who is just a little more motivated will snatch what you were grasping for. Coasting is no way to go through life, nor any way to go through education. Take away the fear of failure, take away the penalty for complacency, take that bell away and you will get nothing but a quick and swift journey to the lowest common denominator." - KCP
The brightest people I've met all went to private school and oddly they all were graded on the classic bell curve.
In my school we had a class of 20 and the first day the teacher said, "Two of you will fail this year. Two of you will get As. Three of you will get Ds. Three of you will get Bs. Everyone else will get Cs. Do any of you not understand that? Now open your books to page 7..."
You have to compete in life, period. You are competing with your resume when you go job hunting. You compete for a mate, a raise, a meal. The "Good Enough" education experiement has been a failiure.
Bring back the Bell!
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-