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.
...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
It depends what you mean by "how long" -- how long in a given day, or how long between vacation periods? Cognitive psychologists have demonstrated that the spacing of study occasions is highly important for learning and long-term retention. The education literature is full of studies on summer learning loss. So Obama isn't just making this up out of nowhere -- he's basing his proposal on a substantial body of empirical research.
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
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."
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
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.
"Doesn't that mean that the problem is not how long US kids are in school?"
The problem is American popular culture, which exalts stupidity and is savagely anti-intellectual.
No public education system changes will affect this, and the solution is to facilitate school choice so the parents who appreciate the superiority of private education can rescue their children. We can't have an educated
public, but we can and should cultivate an educated. self-aware counter-culture from which we can groom future leaders.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Almost anyone who works here knows that their education system is practically broken for the public schools. Children are legally entitled and cannot be denied their education; this precludes disciplinary measures such as in-school suspension and detention. There are no demerit systems -- after all, if you can't be given detention or suspension, how will you punish someone? The harshest punishment is usually a stern talking-to by the principal and homeroom teacher; a referral to a parent may or may not be as harsh.
From personal experience, many of the students who go to juku go because they don't pay attention in class. They sit around and draw pictures, stare out the window, or talk to their friends. There are students who simply sit and cross their arms, refusing to do anything in any class despite coming to school. And of course, there are students who just don't come to school, because there's nothing that can be done to them; they will move up through the grades and graduate from junior high regardless. There are also students who DON'T go to juku, or go once/twice a week. These students are the ones who actually do their homework and listen in class. Guess which of the two groups generally has better test scores in my school.
I don't really believe in the whole longer school hours argument, either. We have school from 8:50 AM to 3:35 PM; at my school, it was 8:10 AM to 3:10 PM, slightly longer. On top of that, they only have six periods in a day, with a lunch break after fourth period. And on top of THAT, Monday and Friday only have FIVE periods. I fail to see how Japanese children spend more time in school unless they count club activities (generally an hour before school and an hour or two after school). Or perhaps they're counting juku, which SHOULDN'T be counted; it's completely optional and you pay for it. Basically you're paying to go to a classroom with a cubby where you're forced to do what you should be doing in school to begin with.
For another rant, a lot of students who get good grades are simply memorizing and regurgitating facts, especially in liberal arts courses. They aren't learning how things fit together, or how to apply their knowledge, or even how to use their knowledge outside of regimented series of tests. If you think the SATs are bad in America, come here for a bit. This is a land where tests are God, so you learn to please God.
If that's what Obama wants America to aim for, I don't think I approve. At all.
http://www.tenjou.net/
Yes, the educated benefit from being educated, but everybody benefits from having educated people around. The former is why private schools are seductive to many, but the latter is why we should embrace education as a public good - external to the market - and support/fix our existing socialized system.
So you're right, the problem is the incompetence of public schools. But privatization ain't the solution.
Libertarians, who are often persuasively consistent (and I really do appreciate your consistency), have given monopolies, governments, and other non-market institutions a bad reputation. Even the term for something that doesn't jibe with a market - "an externality" - belittles the importance of things like pollution, basic science, education, overfishing, national defense, a judicial system, national highways, and on and on and on.
Read the story again. The argument is for a longer school year, and not necessarily more hours in school. Think about that for a minute, especially on how it affects knowledge retention. If you have a good argument, by all means make it, but if the debate on education in the country in general is at the same level as in your post, we are in a very sorry state indeed.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
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
The problem is not the amount of money or time available for schools. The problem is it is assumed we are all equal and the schools cater to the lowest denominator in the classroom, handicapping the rest of the class. Unfortunately, segregating students based on ability is an unpopular idea because it does not reinforce the idea that we are all equal.
Yes, but do you expect a politician to come right out and tell the members of the teachers union, that as a whole they suck?
I am not so sure about that. From what I have seen of how the public is educated, most people have an inherent curiosity that is slowly and methodically destroyed. Instead of being allowed to explore, they are herded into overcrowded classrooms and forced to learn things through repetition.
Then we are screwed. No democratic republic will stand long if the population is ignorant. The educational system needs drastic and immediate reform. There needs to be competition and the red tape and various nonsense which is stifling exploration and experimentation needs to go away.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
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.
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
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.........
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 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...