Slashdot Mirror
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)."
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?
...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).
... 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...
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hear hear. If distinguished physicist Stephen Hawking had been born in a country with UK style socialized education, he'd be digging ditches today.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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!
obviously, lengthening the school year is a matter of vital interstate commerce . . .
Of course, just like with the drinking age, the federal government is unlikely to actually mandate that states lengthen the school year, but rather they'll take more money from the states, lose a chunk of it due to the overall federal bureaucracy that will undoubtably be created, and then blackmail the states into changing their laws in order to get their money back (while redistributing more of the money to states/districts that support the political party currently in power). All the while the politicians can look like they're doing something productive, ignore the constitution, piss away money, and slowly chip away at the last remnants of sovereignty that individual states once had.
Phil
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.
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.
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.
I think you need a healthy dose of The Daily Show.
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?
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/
Thank you, sir. Best post I've read in many moons.
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.
...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?
Think Progress is a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. The Center for American Progress Action Fund is a nonpartisan organization. Through this blog, CAPAF seeks to provide a forum that advances progressive ideas and policies.
ThinkProgress was voted âoeBest Liberal Blogâ in the 2006 Weblog Awards
Not biased at all.
And I like how they are complaining about $1 billion in "waste." I wonder if they looked at the recent "stimulus" plan, bailout plans, and proposed health care "reform."
Neither Congress, FEMA, nor President Bush should be proud of their response in the Gulf Coast. FEMAâ(TM)s post-Katrina housing program has produced âoevast sums of waste and misspent funds,â now likely to âoetop $1 billion and perhaps much more.â
Not that waste is good, but they seem to think we should progress further towards government-control/spending, since we obviously do it so well as it is...
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 quality of public schooling in Japan is way better. Of course, that's because it's all predicated on placement testing and if you don't make it into public school your only choice is private.
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
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.
Ah, I see. Art doesn't matter but math does. Right.
Within a year she'll know basic arithmetic, and that is, by and large, all she's likely to need for her adult life. With the exception of those people to whom math is of personal or professional interest -- a minority of the population -- most people do not encounter anything more advanced than arithmetic and fractions outside of a classroom.
Everyone wrings their hands about how kids aren't learning enough math these days, as though having a population who has memorized the quadratic formula is somehow beneficial. Not that more than a scant handful of them are ever, ever going to use it, of course -- but for some reason they have to know it.
In my school we were lucky to get any art instruction at all. I think that being able to appreciate the aesthetics of artistic compositions -- be they visual, musical, or the written word -- is of enormous value to anyone, in any walk of life, in any social or professional circle. We are surrounded by music, art, and literature every day. It's part of our collective culture.
Contrawise, being able to graph nonlinear equations is of absolutely no value to the majority of the population, most of whom will never see it, much less use it, after graduation.
I'm not saying math is, itself, useless. But there are way too many people who seem to think "math is important, everyone should learn it" as though that is somehow axiomatic, and lamenting the fact that today's high school graduates suck at calculus. I've yet to see anyone come up with a compelling reason why it matters all that much.
Seeing people whine about this kind of thing is like seeing a musician claim that everyone must have an in-depth knowledge of scales, arpeggios, notation, time signatures, for years and years, knowing full well that most people will not ever want or need to play an instrument or read sheet music of any kind. But because it's personally interesting to the musician, he insists it's important for everyone.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
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!!!!!
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.
Japanese education doesn't target anything; there's no class segregation in terms of Math A, Math B, Algebra, and Algebra II -- everyone goes to Math B together, regardless of the number of students who don't understand it at all or the number of students who are really ready for Algebra. This directly affects the quality of the class; the brightest aren't getting what they need, and neither are the ones who hadn't learned the previous stuff all that well. Class participation is a huge component of learning, and the Japanese approach tends to kill that. Rather than segmenting classes by ability, they have developed an approach where they just throw things and hope that some things stick.
Admittedly, I got out of the American public school system just before No Child Left Behind kicked in, so I don't know how bad it is there.
http://www.tenjou.net/
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.
"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!
I can't believe this got modded troll, it's obviously a joke...
weinersmith
It's funny, because basically every business leader in the country will say exactly what parent says. Specific skills and facts are less important than being creative, easy to work with, and capable of picking up new ideas. A further point is that even though foreign students entering PhD Math programs test WAY higher (GRE Math test), they don't graduate any faster than their US counterparts. Nor do they produce more research.
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.
. .
More physical education is needed, not more study time. Exercise maintains brain health. Kids sitting in a chair all day is NOT good for brain development. Ass and belly development, sure. Spaced learning is better than crammed anyway. Or let them sit in the shade of a tree and read in the afternoon.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Seriously?
Is
this the movie you are referencing?
You're either really old, really young, or are privy to some joke I'm unaware of.
If it's the last, then well played.
I'd argue that anyone who doesn't know that reference is really young.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWzMyKSIbFY
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.
I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about. I was just commenting on the fact that he misspelled Bueller. Of course, that normally isn't a big deal, but he did it in an offtopic first post. And THAT sir, will not be tolerated.
<Complete your profile by adding a signature!>
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.
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.
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
And your sense of humour shows this
"Cats like plain crisps"
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 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 =(.
Woosh! Pop! :P
That's the sound of the joke passing right over your head, and then collapsing into a singularity.
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.
I don't see anything about how it is constitutional... but you can see for yourself the history here
The first sentence of their own history says "Education is primarily a State and local responsibility in the United States".
Also - "In 1980, Congress established the Department of Education as a Cabinet level agency."
So, there ya go. The country ran for over two hundred years without a cabinet level position for Education.
Ironically, Ronald Regan left us with this quip - The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
Has Education gotten better since 1980?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
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.
Well said sir...oh, and don't forget the really important bit of "opening schools on the weekends so kids will have a safe place to go". It's government daycare for school aged kids...
I'm not always the brightest pixel in the stream
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?
Hear hear. If distinguished physicist Stephen Hawking had been born in a country with UK style socialized education, he'd be digging ditches today.
Because in the UK they somehow have therapy/treatment for his paralysis?
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.
Sounds like the problem isn't needing more time put into schooling, but, making the current time spent more productive and worthwhile!!
For one..maybe we need to quit teaching to the lowest common denominator. Perhaps we need to start rewarding actual success and progress, rather than giving everyone a reward for just showing up, eh? How about competition again and quit worrying so much about everyone's fucking self esteem...and try to prepare the kids more for a real world with competition...
How about stopping drugging the kids so much? In my day, it was called being a 'boy' they way I and my friends acted...now, they just dose you.
How about not assuming every kid is academic? How about making votech type schooling a positive thing, and if kids want to go that way, let them, encourage them....and don't keep them in classrooms bored and distracting other students...? How about rather than making school a right...make it a privilege that you earn by behaving, and progressing....?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
Can you explain how it's richer rather than poorer because of the expenditure he made that he could have used elsewhere? Because I can't explain it by any quantifiable means. Not that I disagree that the world isn't made better by the study of literature. I do it in my free time and it does make my life more enjoyable. But I fail to see how that makes your life better.
Money is the root of all evil?
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
Basically every example you offered is covered by basic arithmetic, except for the ones you mentioned which are social issues that have absolutely nothing to do with math. We can all do arithmetic. Even the idiots that bankrupted themselves buying stuff on credit can do basic arithmetic, or who are supposed to be exemplary of the rhetoric you offered. Lack of knowledge isn't the problem -- lack of applying it is. *
Let me also point out that currently, we send kids on a forced march of twelve years minimum of math classes -- and usually more once they go to college. And for all of that time, ever example you offered is still utterly rampant in our society. People can't or won't do math. Why do we think that forcing them through even more is going to help? At what point do we say "enough, this isn't helping"?
Meanwhile, most schools shuffle art courses off to the side -- a semester here or there, if you're lucky. Many schools have no significant art program at all. My middle and high schools, in an affluent part of Atlanta, are fine examples.
We already know what happens when you force math down student's throats for twelve or more years: Basically nothing. The vast majority of people never use it, and can't remember any of it -- and you illustrated that yourself.
So why not expand the art programs and see if that helps?
In third grade we were learning multiplication and division, having already mastered addition and subtraction. In fourth grade we got to long division, which was pretty much the end of the road as far as most people are concerned -- most people, really, will never be in a situation in real life where they have to calculate long division problems by hand.
The truth is that math is a skill like any other -- it must be practiced or it will be forgotten. Ten years out of high school, having never encounted anything more complicated than arithmetic in fractions in the real world **, I could not crunch through a quadratic equation to save my life. For the hell of it I tried a few months ago, thought I was remembering things correctly, was feeling pretty pleased with myself, and got a totally wrong answer. And it's no wonder, considering I haven't had to do something like that in a decade.
I'm not special in this regard. I'm your average workaday yob. And my life has not been enriched by knowing how to do algebra or trig when I was younger, nor have I suffered because I can't remember any of it now. These statements hold true for the vast majority of the population.
So, let the kid enjoy art class. Learning to be creative, work with others, expand seeds of ideas into something tangible, the ability to elaborate upon one's own work or the work of others, the ability to view the world with a critical eye, the ability to express one's self in a variety of ways, from succinct to abstract -- these are things that art will teach. These are things that will be useful in life, regardless of the path the child chooses.
* I admit it doesn't help that math is taught in such a terminally boring manner of drills and "Handed Down From On High" knowledge that no one wants to deal with it later in life.
** I will make concessions for occasional basic geometry -- being able to figure out the area of a floor or wall can be useful. I can not think of a real life example where I will ever need to determine the volume of a cone. Or anything else I ever allegedly "learned" in geometry.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
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'
1. Because Dave from HR might not always remain Dave from HR. Being a writer, or any kind of artist, rarely brings fast success, and one must pay your bills somehow until then. He could be an aspiring novelist for all you know.
2. Dave might not end up as a writer, but being in class means he's paying tuition, keeping the college funded and the professor at his job. Especially so if he's from out of state or overseas. Who knows what the professor or his other students might end up doing?
3. Having an educated populace means more arts and high culture around due to higher consumption of them. If you don't like art, this might not be a benefit to you.
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.
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.
It makes my life better because it promotes critical thinking and historical perspective, so when politicians come on and give crap justifications, plans, or promises, "Joe the Plumber" will think for himself and vote appropriately instead of blindly following a party line on brand name.
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.
I say do away with the entirely - show me where the US Constitution gives the federal government authority to establish a "department of education".
Learn about Photography Basics.
IT said they're already doing more hours than kids in the rest of the world.
Sounds like the problem isn't needing more time put into schooling, but, making the current time spent more productive and worthwhile!!
Actually, I suspect the "hours in school" statistic refers purely to state-run schools. In Korea, and most of Asia, probably students leave school in the afternoon, only to continue studying at private learning centers until evening to get advantage for the next placement test. They spend a lot of time there. So I'll bet Asian kids study many more hours than Americans when you factor in these "hagwans".
Currently hooked on AMP
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
I like microcars
Romantic literature promotes critical thinking and historical perspective?
I think it promotes uncritical emoting and historical myths.
All that it takes to get one of those types to agree with you is to sprinkle your argument with 'literary allusions' that will feed the 'Romantic Lit' major's ego and induce warm fuzzies. Instant buy in.
That's just my opinion.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
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.
1. You don't need a literature degree to be in HR or write a book.
2. Why bother with this argument? This is arguing for a professor just for the sake of the professor. If the funds that were allocated to a lit professor are better allocated to a engineering professor, why not get rid of the lit professor? Who knows what the engineering professor could be doing with his students?
3. I like books, and I pay for them. It is a benefit to me and the author. Explain to me where the educated but under employed lit major falls into that equation. If he was the editor, I could understand that, but that would be a job directly related to his major.
My beef here isn't with being educated. I think everyone should be educated. My beef here is with the insistence on formal education. The expenditure on formal education is what is plane crazy, and I believe it is the major barrier to having smarter people in the world. Everyone wants to solve this problem by making formal education less expensive, but whats wrong with advocating for self directed informal education? You know, the kind that anyone can get with a library card, the internet, and a little gumption. Oh right, people would have to be responsible for their own learning, instead of tricking them into doing it based on some imagined authority boogey man they remember from high-school... that never existed in the first place...
Money is the root of all evil?
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...
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
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.
Please mod parent up.
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.
Scandinavians don't study in private schools in general. There was one research that I've read, that stated that when parents actually spend time with children on learning activities, children learn more. Comparison was between US, Canada and European countries.
I don't really think it is the quality of teaching in general that is to blame. The American education system is recognised internationally as one of the best in the world, and it is of course not without reason that American universities are still considered the best.
I suspect it is a cultural thing. For one thing, Far-Eastern parents really take education seriously; just take Chinese children - they study very long hours at home, because the parents make them do it. This is not a modern thing either - China has for centuries had a system of exams by which in principle anybody could enter into public office, and it has always been extremely demanding and competitive, hence the strong emphasis on studying.
On the other side of the cultural fence is the pervasive, American idea, that education is not essential in order to be successful; you can see it even in Disney's Scrooge McDuck character - you just have to work hard and save money, and you will end up fabulously rich. Or the myth that all you need is some "talent" and become a rock-star or actor. And of course, there is a large segment of Americans that are simply anti-intellectual for religious or political reasons.
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.
To all the wooshees - the reference was to an Investor's Business Daily editorial. The original article has unfortunately disappeared:
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/IBDEditorials.aspx
More jollity at IBD's expense here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/12/hawking_british_and_alive/
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.
So are you saying it's better to wait for calculus? Maybe not bother trying?
Most students don't ever understand algebra either ('do the same to both sides' is IMHO not real understanding). But getting exposure early means that people at least have a framework in which they can fill in the 'sophisticated' blanks. YMMV.
Here the Italian Ministerial Program for the Lower Middle School (kids 11-13 years old) http://www.aetnanet.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=118#SCIENZE%20MATEMATICHE,%20CHIMICHE,%20FISICHE%20E%20NATURALI Here what they teach at "Liceo Scientifico" If you translate this from Italian with Google, you could find what the teachers are required to teach and the pupils to learn. If you look further, you could find the actual problems given as tests to the pupils at the final exams for graduation: http://www.liceocastiglione.it/esami_di_stato.htm (here the problems for the pupils from the "Liceo Scientifico" of all Italy in 2009 -2008 -2007 (pupils 19 years old) Here the problems for the final graduation exams from Technical Schools (Electronics and Systems) and proposed solutions http://web.tiscali.it/i2viu/esami/svolti.htm The final exams in Italy are called "Esame di MaturitÃ", the problems are the same for all Italy classes, for all schools. They are different only for different specializations. The texts of the exams are delivered in the same day, at the same hour, to all the school of Italy by the Police (depending directly from the Government) just before the exam. And if the student cheat they seriously risk to repeat all the exams the next year. Not exactly bubble-box exams.
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.
Just one point in reply--on "drugging" kids. I have ten kids, six of whom are boys, and five of those boys are in school this year. We've seen plenty of the "boys will be boys" behavior from four of the five. One, however, has had constant problems to a tenth degree of magnitude of that of his brothers. He had sensory integration disorder as a child (in his case, he was over sensitive to tactile stimulii, but things like spinning him round 100 times wouldn't get him dizzy), which was helped with therapy. As he got older, however, and as struggles increased (both at home and in school), we took him in to be evaulated by a pediatric psychiatrist (no, we didn't realize there was such a specialty until we got the appointment, either).
The long and short of it? He has ADHD but without the typical hyperactivity component. Did we choose to medicate him? Yes, but only after carefully consulting with a number of specialists, and we have switched his medications numerous time to try to find the right formulation. There's a common perception out there that these kids get put on sedatives--that's not true. Kids with ADHD are typically prescribed stimulants that help their higher nervous system functions to be better able to execute control. We would not accept any medication that would sedate our child, or put him in any form of mild stupor. As we've switched meds, we've stayed in close contact with his teachers, to make sure he is not "drugged out" all day.
It was a tough choice to make (not only giving our child a label, but opting to use meds), but it was a choice made for the benefit of our child. I'll be the first to tell you that meds are overprescribed to a lot of kids who don't really need them, but just ask you to remember that some kids, like my son, do need them to function well. I know that they will help him, because I started taking stimulants for ADHD as an adult. I never imagined that I could have such a condition (I pictured kids would could never stay on task or would daydream constantly--I learned that hyperfocusing is a common symptom, and that above average intelligence can mask {compensate for} the condition so that it often goes undetected in such cases), but learned how much better I could be at controlling my task management and other executive functions when taking my meds.
Cheers! and best regards to you.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
The history is that people vote for federal office candidates who say they're going to do things. When those candidates get elected and do things, nobody challenges them, because the voters wanted it.
The constitutional rationale is that the constitution (as Bush apocryphally said) really is "just a piece of paper" if the people don't agree with it. And the people don't agree with it. Article 1 Section 8 and the 10th Amendment are not the law if you don't enforce them. The law is whatever the powerful do unchallenged.
Whenever the Republicrat party du jour in Washington (Republicans a few years ago, Democrats today) implements an illegal policy that you happen to think is a good idea, you need to tell them "that's a fucking awesome idea, and I'm going to call my state representative and tell them about it, but of course you are not really allowed to enact that." If, instead, you applaud what they do, then you are justifying the same illegal behavior for the next bunch of assholes 4 years later, who are going to use the same mechanisms to pass illegal laws that you don't happen to think are good ideas.
Nobody did that. When Democrats are in power, they say "federal government needs to be bigger and more powerful," and Republicans whine about the constitution. But their whining is a lie, because when Republicans are in power, they say "federal government needs to be bigger and more powerful" while the Democrats whine about them using their power incorrectly. And 99% of voters back one of those two parties.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Thanks for the response!
Those are great ideas; I agree entirely with you.
I'll keep these things in mind.
As for the paragraphs, I tried, but whenever I pressed 'return', Slashdot just ignored it.
-Nathan
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.
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.
* 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.
You're right. Did you know that in other countries, jocks have 25-30% more time to pick on nerds than in the US? We need to level the playing field.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Actually, a friend of mine who immigrated to the US from Denmark as an adult has a very different belief. Her children are given far more after school work than she was as a child, and the homework kills their enthusiasm for learning. She transferred her son from a school which gave him three hours of homework per night at age ten to one that gives him less than one hour of homework per night. His academic performance has increased dramatically. If her six year old daughter starts to perform poorly in the public school, she plans to transfer her to the same private school.
Here's a pretty good and reasonably balanced discussion of the topic: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/10/08/ING0FLHNM21.DTL
Clearly you don't spend enough time in school since you don't seem capable of writing meaningful sentences.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Agree. More time in schools is pointless if test scores are low and dropout rates are high compared to the rest of the world. School districts around the country, especially here in "Kalifornia" need a serious overhaul, that would make a LOT of people mad. More time in schools would only make Teachers and administrators earn more money, but would do little to improve the children's education.
I think that being able to appreciate the aesthetics of artistic compositions -- be they visual, musical, or the written word -- is of enormous value to anyone, in any walk of life, in any social or professional circle.
People have an innate ability to judge beauty. Until the advent of so-called modern art, it was unnecessary to "learn" how to appreciate aesthetics.
That aside, I agree that learning art is a good idea but I'm confused that you don't think the same of math. Sure you don't graph nonlinear equations every day (maybe never), but don't you use logic? Don't you see the value in learning about equality and balance? Isn't it valuable to see how things can be manipulated so they take on a difference appearance but are fundamentally unchanged?
I mean it's just bizarre that you see all these side-effects of art as valuable, but you ignore all the side-effects of math and just say the actual subject matter is pointless (which you're right about for most people).
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.
All these things are probably good (some, very good) ideas, but they will not happen for one simple reason.
Americans are no longer philosophically equipped to deal with the reality that different people have different capabilities.
We live in an age that Charles Murray refers to "Educational Romanticisim", whereby the Left ponders that every child would be an Einstein, if not for insufficient funding, and the Right ponders that every child would be an Einstein if only we had school choice.
Whatever the merits of each proposal, the indisputable reality is that human ability occurs in a distribution from one end to another (hence "The Bell Curve"). As a fairly radically egalitarian society, we obsess about the left side of the curve.
Can schools be made better, in general? Probably. Can they be made dramatically better, in general, by any approach? I doubt it. Will they be made significantly better by simply spending more time doing what they do now? I'm certain that they cannot.
One last quote, from Thomas Sowell:
A man is not even equal to himself on different days.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
You just described my nephew exactly. As a toddler he could not wear socks and refused to walk on just about any surface. Even now he refuses to wear any clothing with tags. He had absolutely no control of impulses. Once when he was around ten he was crossing the road and ran into a passing car. He is fifteen now and for the most part has learned to control his impulses, but still struggles to keep focus on his school work. Math in particular is almost impossible for him. His mother has given him some choice at to medicate or not because the side effects really bug him. Recently asked to start a minimal dose again so that he can get through his assignments. Intelligence wise he is not top of the charts, he is off them. He has been invited to several university live-in scholarship programs since middle school and has done extensive testing with various schools and organization for exceptionally gifted children.
There are some things that do help significantly without the need for medication. First soy will turn him into an ADHD poster boy even with medication. Gluten affects him as well, but it tends to make him internalize things rather than the expressive actions that disrupt others. A trip to McDonald's will have him walking on his toes, making explosion sounds, and contorting his fingers in ways peculiar to kids with sensory integration disorder & ADHD. I am one of the first to claim over medication of children, but there are truly some that not only cannot function without it but function to an amazing degree with it.
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.
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.
(1) He doesn't have that authority (neither does the Congress) and (2) it violates the tenth amendment.
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.
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
People have an innate ability to judge beauty.
That is only one side of the coin. The other side is being able to express yourself accurately or eloquently. This is not innate; it requires practice. Simple exposure to society will teach you how to talk, and perhaps even to read and write, but most people are very, very poor at explaining their thoughts to others. (One need only glance at an average day's email from my company's customers to confirm this.) That is what art teaches, and not merely as a side effect, but as a fundamental portion of learning art.
Sure you don't graph nonlinear equations every day (maybe never), but don't you use logic?
I can actually recite the quadratic equation to this day, but I have no idea what it means, how it was derived, what possible use it has, or anything else. But I've committed it to memory. Did I learn logic?
Did I learn anything?
This is how math is taught. Long division, in fourth or fifth grade, is another great example. We were all taught how to crunch through those problems but it wasn't until I was 22 or 23 that I realised that long division is really just a shorthand way of doing mass subtraction. This was never, ever explained. Are students learning logic when they learn long division?
Are they learning anything?
Finally, the "math is logic" argument is such a tired one. There's this inate idea that math is pure logic -- it may well be -- and that by learning math, logic will somehow be transferred to the pupil. This, though, is far from axiomatic. If the goal is to teach students logic -- certainly a valuable skill to anyone -- there are many other ways to do this without involving math. "Teach students math and hope that logic somehow rubs off on them" seems to be the theme. Why not "Teach students logic and let them thereby learn logic?"
The side effects of learning art and English (or whatever your language may be) are immediate; that is to say they are not really "side effects" as such, but rather, it is basically impossible to learn art without also learning expression. It is, however, horrifyingly easy to learn how to crunch equations without actually learning any logic.
Teaching math does not imply logic will follow. Any schmuck can add numbers, simplify polynomials, graph linear and nonlinear equations, and plot best-fit averages, just by rote memorisation of the formula, but being able to do that does not imply that the student will have even a tenuous grasp of basic logic like "all A are B but not all B are A."
Being able to do math does not require knowing simple logic. Memorisation alone will suffice. But one cannot memorise art. That is something that must be learned, and it is nearly impossible to learn that without gaining what you call "side effects".
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
More physical education is needed, not more study time. Exercise maintains brain health. Kids sitting in a chair all day is NOT good for brain development. Ass and belly development, sure. Spaced learning is better than crammed anyway. Or let them sit in the shade of a tree and read in the afternoon.
I'm a health and PE teacher in the Philly area and I second the notion that we need more physical activity and less TV/Video/Computer time....have you really looked at our kids lately...
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.
There are some things that do help significantly without the need for medication. First soy will turn him into an ADHD poster boy even with medication.
Tell me more about this link between Soy products in his diet and his level of focus. All I can find online is borderline-pseudoscience (not saying it's wrong... but the tone of the writing has that inflection of "whack job" to it) about Soy during early development leading to ADHD/Autism/etc.
-- Not a troll or flamebait, seriously interested.
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? ]=-
Being able to do math does not require knowing simple logic. Memorisation alone will suffice. But one cannot memorise art. That is something that must be learned, and it is nearly impossible to learn that without gaining what you call "side effects".
This is not true. Just like you pointed out with math, it's trivial for a student to learn how to write an essay that gets an A without understanding or caring about the subject matter. In a field as subjective as art and beauty, it's even easier. In fact, in the few art related classes I've taken, I'm not sure it's possible to have NOT gotten an A, as long as you did the work.
On the other hand, I know what you mean, and it's exactly what I meant with math. If art is taught correctly, and the student takes it seriously, there is a lot to be learned. It's the same with math and hopefully you see that. And I would still argue that given these optimal conditions, you would get more out of learning math and never learning art than you would from learning art and never learning math.