Slashdot Mirror
More Schools Go To 4-Day Week To Cut Costs
Hugh Pickens writes "As schools return to session in South Dakota, more than one-fourth of students in the state will only be in class from Monday through Thursday as budget constraints lead school districts to hack off a day from the school week. Larry Johnke, superintendant of the Irene-Wakonda school district, says the change will save his schools more than $50,000 per year. In order to make up for the missing day, schools will add 30 minutes to each of the other four days and shorten the daily lunch break. 'In this financial crisis, we wanted to maintain our core content and vocational program, so we were forced to do this,' says Johnke. Experts say research is scant on the effect of a four-day school week on student performance, but many of the 120 districts that have the shortened schedule nationwide say they've seen students who are less tired and more focused, which has helped raise test scores and attendance. Others say that not only did they fail to save a substantial amount of money by being off an extra day, they also saw students struggle because they weren't in class enough and didn't have enough contact with teachers."
To save $50,000 a year, they make an already bad education system worse. The future implications of that are..... I mean that much money for an entire school in one year is not that much. It's like having one less teacher. I'd for one prefer larger classes over this.
This may or may not work out for schools but I would love a 3-day weekend every week at my job!
I call BS on this. They're only interested in giving themselves a long weekend.
There's no consideration given to the parents who have to scramble to find another
day-care facility (yes, I am saying that schools, now-a-days, are functionally day-care
facilities).
In some states (I don't know about N. Dakota), there's a minimum requirement for
attendance by a number of days served - which is taken to be calendar days; not
accumulated hours... Just my 2.
Think about it, this can be a solution to unemployment.
Before you start asking me "But what happened to the usual near-Marxist flavor of your posts? Do you not see that this will lead to more desperate workers that will have to yield more and more to the demands of MegaCorp?", seriously, think about it. We already have robots doing labor, let's focus on building new, more efficient ones, so we can afford to have one more weekend day in the long run. And in the short-term, new people can be hired to work part-time- it's not like MegaCorp can't afford it!
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
How can a school system not afford to stay open? In new york city they get $17,000 per year per student. Average tuition at a private school is $4,000. Enjoy your socialism
we've had that in france for a while. it has been discovered that pupils end up extremely tired at the end of each day, and the whole thing is totally inefficient. in fact, we're having talks of going to a US style week, with morning classes and afternoon outdoor activities and stuff... also, switching to a 4 days week to save money is the most ludicrous and stupid thing I've heard. ah, no, I've heard worse. closing a school in a mountain village, and forcing parents to drive their kids 1 hour away every morning and back
Negatives:
Parents will scramble to find daycare!
Kids will run rampant in the neighbourhoods/suburbs!
Public will see this as teachers lessening their workload and/or have long weekends!
Public will see this as cost downloading!
Moderates will see this as America losing the battle to improve education (compared to China)!
Teachers will complain that they have to fit the curriculum in 4 days!
Positives:
Teeanagers will increase population growth!
Atheltic programs will have an extra day for practice!
Parents will raise more independent children as they are well equipped to leave them unsupervised for one day per week!
Daycare will BOOM!
Cartoons will run all day on Fridays!
Americans kids are too good for College; let's have the Chinese and Indians to all dem thinking jobs for us!
If they are able to keep extra programs and such? Plus the dollar amounts are all relative to the schools involved. 50K would be a rounding error in NYC schools but in Podunk wherever results in a class being taught for fuel for school buses.
We have counties here whose fuel bills are in the millions, going to four day weeks would save money wasted on buses; let alone what parents and students who drive spend; and allow them to be spent more effectively.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
We'll give them a day off school and instead use that day for tutoring.
Isn't that like teaching?
No, it's tutoring, not teaching!
Where does the money for that come from?
The money we saved closing the school for one day a week will pay for all the tutors...!
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Isn't it funny how the leaders of a fallen nation always claim they didn't see it coming? How they keep claiming to the very last day, that theirs is a strong nation that will never fall?
You know what? They don't even lie.
... what you can't accomplish when you are unwilling to pay for anything.
Although with the rather solid conservative majority in South Dakota, many of these people are probably the same ones who complain about public schools being a machine of the commie-socialist-atheist-muslim-fascist-hippie-liberal elite.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
There's a lot of truth to what you are saying. Our education woes have nothing to do with time. It has to do with the culture. When will it become "cool" to ace a math test? When will the science fair be bigger than a football game? It looks like Glee made Glee Club more popular...now come out with some similar show to help in the core subjects...
So are all of the local companies in those districts going to four day work weeks? A lot of parents are at work during school hours and have to take vacation days to cover school holidays that don't overlap with their work ones. I wonder how the parents are handling an extra day each week. Day care facilities must be booming!
Cut taxes!
Clearly it's the fault of some evil government type person somewhere, casting evil spells.
Over here in the UK (and according to plenty of Europeans I know), it's certainly not "cool" either. It's just society in general really considers it to matter once you reach a certain age.
From TFA: "Two different Boys and Girls Club sites and a church are offering affordable child care and tutoring, respectively, on Mondays for between $10 and $15."
The district has 300 students - 300 x $10 (or $15) x 36 weeks = $108000 to $162000.
So you are right, the cost of childcare is far more than the cost of the extra $50k to run the school for a day. However, the article also states that locals are unwilling to pay the extra cost in taxes: "We've repeatedly asked our residents to pay higher taxes, cut some of our staff, and we may even close one of our schools. What else can you really do?".
I do wonder why more effort doesn't seem to be put into using Technology to help save money.
Sure, take your 4 day week. Does that mean the kids can't be given a website to go to, with their on personal login, that has a bunch of weekly tests and exams for them to do, that they can spend friday doing? Have set times, make them sit the "exam" at the same time as everyone else, effectively making it a "school day" without the school. Even if it's something simple like watching an educational video and occasionally interrupting to ask both education questions and questions to make sure they're actually paying attention. It's not a perfect idea, it sure as hell wouldn't beat having direct access to a teacher 5 days a week, but surely it's better than just not being in school on the friday.
It seems that technology in the classroom is constantly shunned, with people stating that computers distract kids more than they help, but maybe that's just because people haven't invested enough in them. Or maybe it's just a pipe dream.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
From TFA it seems teachers pay stays the same since they work the same hours, but other workers who don't get their pay cut: "Teachers who still work the same number of hours over four days, instead of five, generally don't see a reduction in salary. But staff who can't make up the lost time, such as bus drivers and cafeteria workers, are often hard-hit, losing as much as 20% of their pay."
I loved four-day weeks at college. For a trivially longer workday you get four days extra per month to have a life.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
But the problem has little to do with money or four day weeks... if they implemented four day weeks correctly, especially for middle school and above, you'd get the same amount of total classroom time and be able to have more focus because you don't need those first 5 or 10 minutes of class to get back "up to speed."
When I was in college, I always felt like my Tue-Thu 1.5 hour classes were more productive than my M-W-F 1 hour classes.
But even that has little to do with it - there's no silver bullet, no single thing that you can "fix" to suddenly make the educational system in the U.S. dramatically improve, there's just too many things that went wrong...
I could go on - but the bottom line is things have spiralled out of control and there's no way someone's going to step in and "solve" the problem by attacking just one issue.
I'd also like to point out that what you've stated is somewhat true, but at lower grade levels, American students score comparably to Asian and European countries. By the time we graduate high school, though, the performance falls dramatically. IOW, the potential is there, but our system - including our culture, helps destroy it by the time students become adults. Fourth graders in the U.S. outperform England, Canada, most of Europe, in fact; by grade 8 we drop below those countries... by grade 12 (U.S. public education goes through grade 12, I know it's different in other countries) we are on the bottom of the list.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Culture... kind of. If you call consumerism culture, then yes, it is culture that is to blame.
To a degree, it has always been this way, but the things kids are into today are a LOT more expensive than they once were and it seems few go without them. "Members only" jackets -- anyone remember or even know about those? I didn't get one... didn't want one either. But by comparison, things are far worse today.
We also have too much social media going on. (Yes, I know Slashdot is a kind of social media)
And I wish these kids would get off my lawn... damned kids. But seriously, our cultural values are focused on things we buy rather than things we achieve. I'm ashamed to say, my brother is a harley-davidson-jack-daniels-iphone guy and damned proud of it. He has achieved so much by being able to buy these brand names and labels and is in a membership I will probably never join. (He's just so much better than I will ever be... 'cause he's got that stuff)
The "obvious" solution would be to force people who are doing poorly in math and/or science to work in a field that requires a lot of either, or both. That way, they will see where it applies to their life, and I believe they'll be more likely to remember the material. Or not. Because they still probably won't be interested in it (and, at least for me, and quite a few other people that I know, that highly decreases the chances that I'll even vaguely remember something).
Some people simply don't need certain knowledge, and asking "what if" questions simply isn't all that convincing to me (even when speaking of high school students). Increasing the rate of failures by forcibly teaching people advanced mathematics and such (rather than just basic everyday things) is rather foolish, in my opinion. They might change their minds later, but that is their problem. They have options if they need to learn it, so don't hold everyone else back and waste their time.
I believe that too much time, money, and resources are wasted on trying to teach things to people who simply won't need them, and not enough responsibility is placed on youth.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
So what are parents who have a 5 day workweek going to do? Hire a babysitter on friday? This may work out for older kids, not the younger ones....
While bemoaning the state of American education is fun, and often justified, it really makes more sense to do a more granular comparison.
The state-by-state comparisons of educational outcomes are... quite dramatic. They don't totally salvage the situation(MA, the best performing, still comes in below some but not all of the usual suspects in Asia); but there are parts of the US that do considerably better than "American students" and other parts that, well, do their bit to ensure that the first group doesn't skew the average too much...
But that's a cost to the parents not the schools. A simple alternative would be increasing taxes so the schools. Of course there's likely a lot of tax payers who don't have kids in school to - they might prefer that the parents eat the cost.
The affluent will be able to pay for private school. What these cuts do is to ensure that the poor get less education. Somehow, most of the affluent folks have become convinced that educating the poor is not worth it. It is hard to see how this will end well.
Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party. Taxes are the lowest they have been since the 50s on the upper classes, but these people have been fighting tooth and nail to cut budgets even further.
While the rest of the world is increasing the school week, the US is decreasing it.
Not only are these people working to make you poor and miserable while you are old, but trying to slash medicare and "taxing" your 401K with their debt ceiling/S&P/default stunt, they are working to make your children under-educated, to make sure they are poor all their lives.
Please vote these people out in 2012.
For your self interest.
Oh, it's a lost cause? I guess we'll just close every one of our schools... since you've decided and all.
For a little perspective: http://mat.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infographic/
We spend a lot on each kid without commensurate performance across the board. But we're hardly in "lost cause" territory.
Sounds like another case of people wanting more of something for less money. People seem to not realize that everything costs money, and their governments should spend wisely, not less.
Don't be a fool. It will be the Police Union that cries foul, when all the kids are let loose for long three day weekends. Imagine the trouble they are going to cause!
The problem is that our government both spends unwisely and in ever increasing amounts. When the economy is going strong, government spending increases because there is plenty of tax revenue to support it. When the economy is doing poorly, government spending increases because "we can't afford to cut spending when the economy is weak." Of course, they never, ever actually cut spending. All they do is not spend as much more than last year as they said they would.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Great to see the US has its priorities straight. Spend money on war and other nonsense but don't spend it on your kids and society. What a joke.
One less cruise missile could keep 100 schools open all week for a whole year.
That's the thing. It's the parents, not the schools. I'm on the west coast. The schools I went to and the schools my son attends are full of Koreans, most of the families have some sort of family business and, thus, are fairly entrepreneurial. They push their kids to the top of the class in school by loading up their extracurricular activities with tutors, tutors, and more tutors. When they break out API scores by ethnicity, you'll see numbers like you see at the example I've chosen in So Cal(higher the better, obviously): Asian: 946, Filipino: 906, Non-latino White: 889, Hispanic: 835, Black: 830. The majority of schools have similar discrepancies by ethnicity. Considering the trend, it's obvious it's completely cultural. No race is "smarter" than the other, and even then test scores are about recall ability rather than intelligence. When scores by ethnicity have similar results as above across all schools you can't blame the school.
$50,00 for an entire district, that is ridiculous and small potatoes does not even do it justice.
That has to be like 25 cents per student (and no matter how small the district is it would still just be pocket change per student).
And just think of the cost of some kind of child care for all of these kids during this one extra day off that they parents will not have, or alternatively the extra cost to the tax payers for all the extra damaged property that these unattended children will cause.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Wow, someone bashing unions or /. What a surprise. -_-
GE pays negative billions of dollars in tax money to the US government, while you focus your hate on people who make $25K a year just because they are in a big bad union.
I thought the users of this website were smart enough not to fall for such misdirection. You have bought the class warfare propangda hook, line, and sinker.
Because you can't keeping people fat, stupid and glued to Fox news without stripping of the educational system first.
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With the kids coming out of the schools today, they should be keeping them in school LONGER, not less. The best thing they could do would be MANDATORY uniforms, and DISCIPLINE.
What about the parents who used to be able to rely on their kids being in school so they could go out to work? Do they now need to arrange childcare for Fridays too?
This is just transferring a small cost to the system into a massive cost for society - unless you're in the childcare industry.
It's just one less brick in the wall.
Gently reply
You know, they said the same thing about the various sacred cows of prior generations of kids, that they were more expensive and more frivolous than what came before. Every generation says the one or two after it is "much worse" than the one prior. Moral decay is always right around the corner**, and the golden age was whatever was happening when you were 18-24, regardless of whether or not that was 1930, 1950, 1970 or 1990.
Do you sense a theme, here?
The point is that people are people and really don't change all that much generation to generation. You'll always have a certain amount of shallowness, consumerism, base social urges and so forth, but the proportion doesn't really change that much, and what certainly doesn't change is "Get Off My Lawn"-ism, as you note but don't really accept.
What's happening is that each generation goes through a phase of a) (mostly) growing up and realizing that actions have consequences, and b) realizing that it isn't their world anymore, and that there's all these young people around. For sound biological reasons (certain brain development doesn't finish until after puberty) you don't figure this out until you're 25, and it doesn't sink in until you're older than that.
** even though crime is down, pollution less of a problem, information easier to access and the powerful held as much, if not more, to account than ever before. Funny, how if we're at the precipice before the pit, that objectively things aren't too bad.
--srj/mmv
Don't forget that in America there is also a strong counter-culture of do-it-yourself types. A lot of people like that are here. I didn't learn much in school, but I always had my own research projects. The difference was that I didn't exactly report on what I researched, or care to. There are a lot of us that take pride in building our own homes, fixing our own motorcycles and brewing our own beer. A lot of us consider Harley riding, Jack Daniels drinking, iPhone buying jerks to be dweebs with more dollars than sense.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
They add 30 minutes per day (30m x 4 = 2h per week) + shortened lunch break (?? 30m x4 = 2h per week) for a total of up to 4 hours a week, and that's equivalent to how much time they would have worked on Friday?
Here's a better statistic. The internet says there are 199,616 kids in South Dakota.
So, if everyone chips in 25 cents per kid, they can go to school for that extra day.
Are you kidding me? This is a serious "cut"?
This reminds me more about Bill Maher's plate of food, they're talking about cutting the parsley (education), while ignoring the mashed potato (military spending), and macaroni (social security).
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I find I do better when we have 4 day weeks. This happens fairly frequently during the winter months, since skiing to school really isn't a viable option for many students. Our workload doesn't really get any smaller, since we just get our assignments from the internet, but it still results in more time that I can manage in a personally useful way, rather than have it managed for me by a computer program that brute forces a schedule with no conflicts. However, the amount of work we have is also huge relative to public schools.
I could definitely see myself slacking off (rather than taking breaks) if I didn't constantly have something to work on.
I think you got a good point with "lack of focus". I grew up in France and now live in Ohio. I got a 7th grader at home and I went to his parent conference on monday. The timetable is just ridiculous. They spend about a third of their time on music, art and PE. And all the activites kind of collide with each other such as "if you are doing band, then you miss the first 10 minutes of foreign language". WTF?
Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with music, art and PE. They are important things. But that definitively tells you want type of society you are tending too.
When I grew up, we had about 30 actual hours of class a week. Here they are doing 33 hours everything included (lunch break, recess and "room switch" take time over a week).
I am not even talking about the content of the class. They have each day 25 minutes of silent reading. Why do you do that in class. It is wasting teacher/school time. It can be done at home.
Couldn't they fire one secretary instead? Or maybe-- I'm a "fascist", I know-- reduce every teacher's salary a small amount?
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Just a word about teacher's unions. Here in Alberta the ATA (Alberta Teacher's Association) is one of the most powerful and influential unions in the province. The salary and benefits teachers receive are second to none. As of September 1st this year it is in fact possible to make over $100,000 a year in this province as a teacher teaching gym class as long as you have 10 years experience and 6 years of formal education. If that sounds like a bad thing to you then I suppose you're partially right, but we also have the best teachers in the country. You get what you pay for.
50 measly thousand dollars? how about you pay about 10 bucks more in taxes and get a better school?
800K in population. say 1/4 are tax payers. For 10 dollars per year that's 2 million. SO now you got your 5 days back AND you can get rid of home work and add another period design to focus kids on there specific problem area.
but ... no. Evil social programs are BAD. Fuckety fuck FUCK!
Here is one, how about a 25 cent tax on Soda for education? or gas? Spread the tax around into any area, not just property taxes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That counter-culture is not as strong as we would like to think. I do like making my own stuff. It's an experience in knowledge, history and self-worship. Radio Shack selected its name because it catered to a once-strong group of young minds who liked playing with stuff like that. Now Radio Shack sells consumer crap and it's not even that good -- the stores are small and the people working there know nothing.
The slow, painful death of Radio Shack is more than symbolic. I see it as completely parallel to the slow and painful death of intellectualism in our national culture.
I think the problem is that people as a whole are cheap and ignorant, and they will rail against taxes even if they're necessary and avoiding them will cost more in the way of child care or private education. Your average joe-schmoe citizen doesn't understand that an extra $50/year in taxes or whatever could save them thousands and thousands of dollars. It just doesn't occur to them...probably because they are products of the same failing education system as the rest of the kids.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
I'm interested, if anyone knows, whether voters were given the option of raising taxes in the most recent elections there to avoid this issue. My guess is that raising taxes wasn't something that had a chance of passing. People are pretty short-sighted.
It really stinks for the childcare industry as well, it's hard to have staff to handle a huge amount of business for one day per week.
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It wouldn't surprise me if someone in law enforcement wasn't involved in this decision making process. Think about it, law enforcement isn't required if no one breaks the law, and law enforcement gets time and a half. Teachers, bus drivers, etc. seem to exempt from that law.
I'm waiting to read when law enforcement says that by putting a camera on South Dakota's token stop light in front of the governors mansion, that it will help reduce the number of deaths in the state.
Ladies and gentlemen, the above post is what happens when you believe BOTH parties' propaganda at the same time.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
In Europe we had 5-day school week. Every two weeks we'd switch from morning classes to afternoon classes, and vice versa. Grades 1,3,5,7 ware for example morning class, and 2,4,6, 8 ware afternoon. Every two weeks they switch. Morning classes ware from 7am-12 and afternoon 12-6pm.
This allowed for smaller buildings, less maintenance, heating/cooling, smaller class sizes, less teachers!
We also had way less homework than I've had here in US. But we did more in class. Tests and quizzes ware daily occurrence - we ware continuously tested. So, even though I finished grade 7 in Europe, when I came here to US, I was put into grade 9 (youngest in my high school) due to my developed skill-set. I had easily taken maths all the way into grade 11 without any effort at all.
There are definitely more efficient ways of teaching kids. Issues I see are: curriculum, lack of inventive teaching, teacher's unions, giving kids too much slack and dumbing them down, also learning though play has to stop as well as giving everyone A+ for participation type of bullshit. But who am I to judge?
When my grandfather was my age he didn't have an iPad. Therefore I'm a spoiled brat who expects everything to be handed to me on a silver platter.
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Exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about... just one example of stupid things that screw up public education. Do private schools have SSR (they call it "sustained silent reading," as if 30 minutes of reading is that difficult)? This is where parenting comes in - my kids already read 30 minutes a day, at MINIMUM, EVERY day, their bed time includes 30 minutes of reading. It's no wonder they find school so completely boring.
On the topic of bedtimes... I've coached academic teams at the school (Odyssey of the Mind) and it seems like most kids don't even have a standard bed time at all. I'm convinced that most ADD diagnosed kids simply don't get enough sleep. Fifth graders were talking about what they saw on Robot Chicken the night before. That's midnight in my timezone, not to mention terribly inappropriate for kids that age.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I knew an electronics teacher who worked part time at Radio Shack because it was fun, in 2005. Has it deteriorated since then? Could it be more localized? I still find the people I meet at local Radio Shacks to be fairly knowledgeable about the small electronic components they sell.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
It really stinks for the childcare industry as well, it's hard to have staff to handle a huge amount of business for one day per week.
I don't think this is actually a problem. There will be some number of qualified people, the teachers who are now off one day a week or friends who are also parents, that can do the work.
If teenagers had some maturity and discipline, which they don't, they could make good use of the time by doing homework and sleeping. Instead, most will spend the time screwing around and getting into trouble. I would have just hacked on my computer all day, which would also have avoided sleep and homework. Teenagers have the same sleep requirements as pre-teens, but the rhythm is shifted. One school tried shifting their start and end time later, and the absentee rate went down and the grades went up. As it is, most highschool schedules are stupid, and students could use the extra day to make up for the lost sleep. Sadly, most won't avail themselves of that. Teenagers think they have an energy surplus, but it's mostly that they are more easily bored and distracted. Of course, they'd be less distractable if we fed them a proper diet instead of McDonalds all the time. Another school in the southeast US tried feeding their students healthy lunches, and the absentee rate went down and the grades went up. Whoda thunk it.
I'd wager less than 25% will be put into daycare. These two towns are out in the middle of farm country, there's not much else there. These will tend to be single earner families and many of them will have both parents around home much of the time. Add in the roughly 50% in middle and high school who can stay home by themselves and there you go. The daycare costs should be closer to $30K.
Sig is on vacation
A few of the other big issues with the US system:
* The US system has a summer vacation, while most other school systems do not. The effect of this policy, a legacy of the 19th century when kids had to go work the family farm in the summer, is that not only do students lose about 2-3 months in the summer, they also lose 2-3 months in the fall reviewing all the stuff they covered in the previous year that they've forgotten over the break.
* A particular style of conservative Protestantism actively discourages the proper study of many subjects. In the really extreme cases, they'll go after math departments for teaching that pi != 3, but more commonly go after history books that acknowledge that the world existed before God created it c 4000 BC (and none of that "BCE / CE" business either, it's "BC" and "AD"), biology books that teach that life as we know it was the result of natural processes, and any efforts by humanities teachers to incorporate art and culture that has viewpoints that don't match up exactly with their worldview.
* A lot of politicians want to go to a system in which only private schools exist and education is limited to those who's parents can afford to pay. A good way to make their political case is to ensure that the public schools suck. Or as the joke sometimes goes, Republicans argue that government doesn't work, and once elected to office do their best to prove their point.
You're absolutely right that with US schools, there is no silver bullet.
I am officially gone from
I don't know about Canada, but the problem here isn't necessarily teacher pay. As I said, I don't think teachers ought to work for slave wages or get no benefits and, in fact, I think teaching is a very important and often difficult job. But many government school teachers here already exceed $100k, especially when you include benefits that far exceed what people in the private sector get. The problem is that you get what you pay for only if you can get rid of under-performing teachers and evaluate teachers based in individual performance. The unions make it nearly impossible to get rid of terrible teachers. Moreover, while not a union issue, it's hard enough to evaluate individual performance in teachers when they are given an essentially "random" variety of new students each year who may or may not perform well themselves, so I know it's difficult. The problem is the unions here make it even harder to evaluate individuals.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Are there any good reasons to have a 7-day week anyway? I'm asking from pure ignorance because there may be, specially after everything in our lives that got adapted to that. But if we ignore everything we built on top of it, is there a good reason to choose that system over any other?
I'm asking because I always felt this is something that should be rethought. Is it really beneficial for human beings, to work 5 consecutive days and have 2 days off (in most cases). Is there any research on that?
I partially agree with this move, not because of budgets, but because I feel that working 5 consecutive days decreases your productivity as opposed to, let's say, working 3 days in a row and having 1 day off. A 4-day week system that wouldn't decrease productivity in the long run since you increase the working days and decrease the consecutive working days. Maybe a better system would be a 2/1 ratio on working vs weekend days. Who knows? All I'm saying is that this should be rethought and studies should be made.
I know I went on a tangent here, feel free to mod me down for being off-topic, this is just something I feel should be talked about but for other reasons than what these schools presented.
I'm so glad that other states are doing this kind of experiment on their children. Future generations will thank them for the empirical evidence.
What I can't figure out is how they got this past the IRB.
4 day weeks work well for *some* jobs, but not well for pre-college students. I shudder to think of what high school kids with a whole day off will get into.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
No, that is not problem. The problem is that government expenditures have steadily increased as a percentage of GDP and yet the outcomes for which we rely on government have gotten steadily worse. As someone pointed out in another post, in 1961 we spent $2808 in inflation adjuted dollars per student, in 2008 we spent $10,441. I have not seen it laid out, but based on other things I have seen I believe that a significant part of that increased spending is on administrative personell.
The problem is that every time people try to exert monetory discipline on political organizations, the organizations cut from the parts that deliver essential services, not from the administrative overhead.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Can we PLEASE start school at 9am. Prior to that, it messes with teenager circadian rhythm, which is not good for retaining information. I see schools starting earlier and earlier. One school a bit away from here is starting school at 6:45.
I'm not sure about this school district, but others in South Dakota have done this for middle and high school. Well middle school starts at 8:30 and high school at 9:00, the classes go later in each as well.
Sig is on vacation
I am not saying it is not important. I am just saying spending way more time learning how to sing than learning how your country is structured does not make too much sense to me.
Ohioans voted for commissioners last year. The first 5 citizen registered on the voters list I asked "What does a commissioner do?" could not answer my question without googling it.
If that's not a failure of the school system that did not emphasize federal and state organization, I do not know what it is. And I can't help but think that if they were singing a little less and playing basket ball a little less, they could learn these things which are essential.
Once again, I am glad they learn music and arts and that they learn how to use their body appropriately; these are good things. I am saying kids are missing some essentials.
Look at the region this is happening in. These are farmers, lots of single earner families. The towns are small, two towns have 300 kids, and much of the town will be extended family. This isn't the same as if it were happening in NYC.
Sig is on vacation
Now parents will have to arrange day care for little kids who will be home on Fridays.
No way that's going to work. No day care provider is prepared to take kids only one day a week, much less non-toddlers, age 5 to 12.
The school board really hasn't thought this one through, unless the $50,000 figure is actually some sort of blackmail: "Parents pay up. Or come Friday, little Johnny will be hanging out on street corners".
I think you missed the parent's post. He didn't seem to be complaining about music and art class time, but about the time spent on sports and silent reading, which really should be spent outside of class. Just my $.02 ...
It's You and I against the World... When do we attack?
Wow, you had it easy. My grade school kids in South Dakota went to school from 7h50 to 16h00 with a 30 minute lunch break and two ten minute breaks. High school here starts later but goes longer.
Sig is on vacation
When my grandfather was my age he didn't have an iPad. Therefore I'm a spoiled brat who expects everything to be handed to me on a silver platter.
If you didn't pay for that ipad with money you earned by being a soda jerk at the local druggist, maybe. 'course kids don't work for money until college these days, often after college.
Your first mistake is thinking that the public education system in this country is broken. Consider this your "there is no spoon" moment. The public education system does exactly what it is intended to do and will not be changed until the market demands it.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Killing all republicans would be a good start to just 'fix' the school system.
Effective but somewhat brutal.
.....somehow I think the community would be better served ditching the employee rather than negatively impacting thousands of kid's education.
Not cool over here, but it certainly doesn't seem to be at the level of american anti-intellectualism. Bullying of nerds seems to be a real problem in america for example. Nerds were never bullied any more than any one else when I was in school in Ireland like. I heard a guy comment the other day that a gym teacher called him a weak nerd, wtf.
"The space elevator will be built about 50 years after everyone stops laughing." - Arthur C. Clarke ~1980
[Citation Needed]
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
The USA spend 1757 Billion $ on bailouts in the years 2008 and 2009 for banks, insurance groups and the auto industry. But of course they keep on saying that the well-fare state is too big and we all live beyond our means. We all need to cut costs to save the banks, because we know that without the banks and Wall Street there would be no civilization.
http://www.propublica.org/special/government-bailouts
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
That'd depend on how they are killed.
Over here in the UK (and according to plenty of Europeans I know), it's certainly not "cool" either. It's just society in general really considers it to matter once you reach a certain age.
It might not be cool to be ignorant when you're older, but it's certainly acceptable to be "bad at maths".
Demonstration: find a store with a sale, "25% off marked price". Pick something that's marked £30, walk to the checkout and hand over £22.50 (exactly) before the barcode is scanned. Many people will be impressed.
It's not acceptable to say "I can't read", or "I can't write a letter", but it is acceptable to say "oh, I'm no good at maths" or "I can't understand my gas bill".
They have SSR (DEAR, etc.) because many children and youth simply will not have the "opportunity" to read otherwise. In that respect it is an incredibly useful way to use time and it does seem to be effective.
That being said, it is only that way because of social problems that should not exist.
With 9% unemployment, kids can't find jobs until a while after college these days. Instead of saying "get off my lawn" we should be saying "here's $20, mow my lawn."
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
Good luck with that. I'm in my 30s and when I was in 1st grade I was the only literate student in the class. Years later (like, 15 years later) I had a hell of a shock when I went to a new barber and he remembered me as "that kid who could read on the first day of school". At four years older than me, he wasn't my classmate, nor had any relatives in my class. I was such an oddity for being literate at five/six that the entire elementary heard about it.
A few of the other big issues with the US system: * The US system has a summer vacation, while most other school systems do not. The effect of this policy, a legacy of the 19th century when kids had to go work the family farm in the summer, is that not only do students lose about 2-3 months in the summer, they also lose 2-3 months in the fall reviewing all the stuff they covered in the previous year that they've forgotten over the break.
Eh? Every country in europe I can think of has the usual 2-3 month summer break too. Pretty sure everywhere has that kinda system or something similar with semesters and big breaks. A quick search online shows america does about 180 days of school a year. We do 168 days in Ireland in high school and 180 days in primary school before that.
"The space elevator will be built about 50 years after everyone stops laughing." - Arthur C. Clarke ~1980
South Dakota is a Right to Work State, there is no mandatory union membership. The district I went to Eagle Butte 20-1, didn't have any teachers in the union when I went there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyenne-Eagle_Butte_School
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law#U.S._states_with_right-to-work_laws
. . . not only do students lose about 2-3 months in the summer, they also lose 2-3 months in the fall reviewing all the stuff they covered in the previous year that they've forgotten over the break.
This is actually wrong for many students. The big problem is that the school system coddles the stupid and in so doing make the whole thing redundant for everyone. If you want people to be good marksmen, make the targets smaller and farther. We're so addicted to evaluations that we forget to teach the actual material being evaluated. Most people can make up what they've forgotten without spending half the year on reviewing the latter half of the previous year. This is why intelligent people become bored of school.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
South Dakota teacher salaries are very, very, very low.
http://teacherportal.com/teacher-salaries-by-state
26,000 is the average.
I found the opposite to be true in classes. No matter what the class or who the professor, my attention span is never above 45 mins. Tuesday/Thursday classes and only Monday classes ended up requiring more learning on my own because I learned less in the classes.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
For comparison, in England in the 1990s-2000s I spent about 1 hour a week on art, 1 hour on music and 1 hour on PE, plus one afternoon at "games" (sport, but less structured than PE). Theatre (we called it drama) was compulsory for about an hour a week for 1 term, for one year.
Anyone interested in any of the above could do more in their own time (lunchtime or after school as a school-supported activity, or outside school).
We had 5h20m of lessons each day, roughly an hour each, two in the morning, a 20 minute break, another lesson, an hour for lunch, then two more lessons.
I don't have an old timetable, but I think we had at least 3 hours each of English, Maths and Science; plus 2 hours of Geography, History, French (or German or Spanish), plus 1 hour of technology (or 2?), 1 hour of IT, plus other stuff (Religion/theology/philosophy, health/social). That adds up to about the right number of hours.
4 hours on a Friday is considered a "long day" for the teaching profession.
I'm pretty sure he said less hours, not lesser hours.
from wikipedia: "The Cambridge Guide to English Usage notes that the "pressure to substitute fewer for less seems to have developed out of all proportion to the ambiguity it may provide in noun phrases like less promising results". It describes conformance with this pressure as a shibboleth and the choice "between the more formal fewer and the more spontaneous less" as a stylistic choice"
This explains a bit about what "unemployment" statistics mean.
My primary school, like most in the 1990s in England (AFAIIA), didn't set "homework" in the usual sense, apart from learning spellings or "times tables" once a week.
But I did have to read books at home. When I was five to six/seven these were part of special series to help children to learn to read ("Roger has a red hat. Percy has a green hat. Jenny has a yellow hat. Billy has a blue hat." was the first). From when I was about six/seven we had to choose a book from the school library and read that. At the end, I think we had to explain to the teacher why we liked it (or didn't like it). From about age eight I had to write a review.
There was time for reading in class, probably about half an hour a week. During that time the teacher would have one child sit next to her and read quietly to her, sometimes from her own book. (She was assessing reading ability.)
There were some extra teachers who taught one or two children at a time, for a few hours a week (depending) outside normal classes, if they were struggling.
Presumably there were parents who didn't bother to read the book with their children, but I wasn't really aware of it. From the age of 11 we never did reading in class, but I still had to choose books from the library to read, and keep a 'diary' of what I'd read.
This was 15 years ago (or 10, I'm pretty sure my younger brother had the same thing), so I'm not sure what happens now. It's a real shame if parents won't read with their children.
I think you may be overestimating the capabilities of the "at worst" home schooling parent. For a school to match a very bad parent would require every teacher to be just as bad, and even then, at least the teachers had training and degrees in education.
...cause they've reduced the chance to miss school by 20%. Hey, here's a thought! If we go down to one day a week of school, they won't be able to miss more than one day a week of school! Attendance will skyrocket!
In fact, of course, they are mandating missing school. They should factor the extra day at home into their attendance as a day being missed by every student every week.
--
$tar -xvf
> but how much extra will it cost parents who need to pay for care for younger children
Don't know, don't care. Perhaps the parents should have thought about possible costs before procreating?
Or, I dunno, maybe we can ditch the income taxes so families have the option again of the mother staying home with the children, and we can stop incessantly building an Empire?
Nah, let's cut school days instead.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
What teacher in grade school starts out over 25k? Where are you that this is a reality? After 30 years my mother was making decent money as a teacher, but for the first 10 she certainly wasn't breaking the low 30s.
I find it odd that the NEA is so vilified. Given what teachers have to put up with I think they are one of the least corrupt of the unions. Of course I also find it odd that Planned Parenthood is under attack when it's the ONLY source of birth control for a rather large portion of the population. I suppose some people just gotta hate for no reason.
Your point being?
When unemployment is high the inexperienced often suffer the most. It's the kids who are the least experienced and thus they are the ones most affected by unemployment. People who are laid off that have better qualifications often settle for less money, and in lesser positions that the inexperienced would otherwise be doing.
Offering a kid $20 to mow your lawn gets the kid occupied for an hour or so, and you can be certain that $20 is going straight into the economy elsewhere. The more you spend money directly in your community, the more you will see that community prosper. Go buy garbage from Walmart if you want to see China prosper.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
My high school teacher wife added up the days they wasted on standardized testing, pre-testing, re-pre-testing, coaching for the testing, blah-blah-bla and it was *ONE FOURTH* of the steenking school year. Fact, not making it up.
Flushing the standardized testing would allow us to cut the school budget, and taxes presumablly, by 25%. I would buy that for a dollar.
(Or, we could spend more on the football team, this is Texas :)
I know, that's the problem... both my kids were reading to their preschool classmates, and they were looked at as oddities when it should have been the other way around.
I don't think of them as exceptional in that respect... it's just how it should be.
When my son was in first grade, he couldn't get credit for reading Harry Potter because it was too advanced.... he was very unhappy reading "baby" books for school credit when, on his own, he was reading Harry Potter. When we met with the principle and first grade teacher to discuss advanced placement, they actually berated me for having done hooked on phonics. "We don't believe it's a good method." Oh... so not reading at all is better? It was just ridiculous.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
There is no need to raise taxes. The amount of money the school gets is based upon the property taxes. Property taxes are based upon property values. Property values (or at least assessed property values) outpace inflation. If they are unable to make do with what they have now, then they should have been in even worse shape last year and the year before that, etc, etc. Education continues to suffer from programs being cut, teachers not getting salary increases and all in the name of money woes, yet the districts get more money every year. What is the problem? At least where I live, the problem is the administration. When I grew up (in this same town), we had about the same population, about the same number of teachers, 1 principal per high school and no administrators. Now there are multiple principals, multiple administrative buildings and literally dozens of school board administrators. It is essentially government makework that takes money out of taxpayers hands in the name of education and gives it to paperpushers and busybodies that back in my day would have done the same job, but not got paid for it.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
What about all the parents now that have to get a babysitter for them time during that extra 1 day a week, where they can not rely on school being the baby sitter, but need to be home to supervise the child...some parents (single moms) work for the time the kid is at school..doing this is really not going to solve anything, instead try and save money by forcing all paper to be cut down, and all school supplies to be cut down, ebooks instead of paperback, all tests can be done on computer terminals, where schools become really paperless..there will be a lot more savings when you consider how much paper a school goes through.
Truth be told, I do pay someone to mow my lawn. Costs me $25 every 2 - 3 weeks. Worth every penny.
Not a kid, (I tried that, too unreliable.) but the mentally challenged guy from down the street.
Honestly I know he does a better job than I would.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
There will be some number of qualified people, the teachers who are now off one day a week
Did you RTFA? The teachers are still working the same number of hours per week, so they're likely not a pool of workers that can be drawn upon, as they'll need that day to do the work that they would have otherwise done "after school."
Nobody learns anything on a Friday, anyway.
Well, for one, school shouldn't be thought of as child care anyway.
If you didn't pay for that ipad with money you earned by being a soda jerk at the local druggist, maybe. 'course kids don't work for money until college these days, often after college.
I have no idea what my kid will do for a job, considering that the local papers won't even hire kids for routes anymore. They've consolidated the routes into massive 250+ house runs and expect you to have the use of a car.
Also important to note that it's been many many years since "working my way through college" was a legitimate possibility. The only person I know who did it had his tuition paid by the company he worked for.
Who is making $25k a year in the teacher's union?
Just about anybody starting out, unless they live somewhere that has a very high cost of living (NYC, SF, etc).
They should have went with Wednesday off. 3 days in row off means that kids won't do much for these 3 days. If they had 2 days school, one day off to do homework, then another two days of school, they wouldn't be so disconnected.
but I suppose teachers like 3 days off too - so it is win/win for everybody but students.
The joke is that when my grandfather was my age the iPad hadn't been invented.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
The problem I have is that schools don't always just cut music, art and PE. My neighborhood school didn't bother teaching science or social studies to my second grader most of the school year. Kids did one lesson in each of those subjects, and those only after state testing was done. The rest of the year the class only worked on math and language arts, in an effort to get the school's test scores up. I'd say they would have been smarter to broaden the education and include all the subjects they were supposed to teach. They even had the frigging textbooks in the class - they just never used them. Workbooks came home at the end of the school year untouched except that single lesson.
It didn't surprise me at all that we got a notice the following year that the school would be closed and replaced by a charter school due to poor performance. I'm really hoping the charter school does better. They've chosen a tough program, and now have to do a full curriculum to comply with the program they'd like to become a full part of. They're just a candidate school now, but have to teach a foreign language starting in kindergarten, social studies, science, and my kids tell me they do get art now.
I do know how hard it is to fit a full curriculum into a school day. I did an online charter school with my daughter for third grade which required art and either music or a foreign language in addition to the usual. It was tough to get it all done some days, but other days we could finish quite early. Not at all the same as running a class of 20-30 students, of course.
Happened once, a long time ago.
Part of that would be some of the more famous people lending their celebrity to the causes of education. There was a story recently where Wil.I.Am bought out some time on ABC so he could broadcast a national high school robotics competition. Things like that will help propel math & science to popularity again.
That is really gonna cut into bullying time!
We're so addicted to evaluations that we forget to teach the actual material being evaluated.
Not to mention that if the kid doesn't learn it, we blame the teacher for his low marks, rather than the kid.
(pause to let everyone put their "some teachers are idiots and useless" stories here - I've got a few as well)
But talk to a teacher today, and they can't do anything *but* make sure their kids know what's on the test (leaving no time to do anything actually freakin' interesting), because it's either do that or find another job.
I go for Matt Damon's take on teachers - you go into teaching because you want to do it. If you don't like teaching kids, there are easier ways to make a living. That's why you see so many education majors in human resources.
Radio Shack is actually making an effort to get back to its roots regarding selling electronic parts. They're starting to stock a lot more robotics parts, and microcontroller boards. Still not as good as you can get online (which is why I think they steered away from it for a while to start with), but it's a start.
I worked my way through college, although your and my definitions of "many" might differ. It also took me a few more years than most.
(yes, teachers unions, and no, I don't think teachers ought to work for "slave" labor or not have benefits)
Funny, because that's usually what happens. You're forgetting why the unions were started in the first place.
lack of focus... yes, art is important, music is important, but the core classes are MORE important and need more resources.
Says who? The arts can be just as important as math and science. Especially when it comes to getting kids to actually enjoy learning.
we've had the government coddling us for so long
Yes, having a social safety net and actual worker's rights (as pitiful as they are in the states) is "coddling". Same with consumer protections.
I highly doubt that "music" and "sports" are why your commissioners didn't know what they were supposed to do. If anything, some of those programs are what kept them in school.
Do private schools have SSR
The one I went to did. For a lot of students, if they don't have that time in school, they don't read at all.
Funny, because I know very few professionals in unions (I live in a right-to-work state), and we all get decent pay and benefits. You're forgetting unions have long outlived their usefulness. You think we're going to go back to the dark ages with sweat shops and child labor if unions disbanded? Really? You think the work week will go up to 60 hours? The problem is that unions started addressing valid problems, and then when those were solved they went on to business destroying demands; in the case of teachers, you have teachers sitting in rooms reading books all day, being paid full time wages, because it's easier than firing them... and then wonder why school districts never seem to have enough money.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I believe you misread my post.
And I can not resist a snarky comment: "You might have been better learning how to read than how to sing. That would have removed this embarassment." (Notice that this part is a joke. :) )
I don't know about Canada, but the problem here isn't necessarily teacher pay.
When new teachers start at below $35k in most places, whereas "finance" and "business" types start at more than double that, then yes, it is a problem.
especially when you include benefits that far exceed what people in the private sector get
That's actually a lie. Public sector workers are paid at market, or slightly less, even when counting in benefits.
And quite frankly, bitching over "benefits that they get that we don't!" is incredibly immature. The problem is not that teachers get the benefits. The problem is that most US workers didn't fight to keep them when they lost them. The question shouldn't be "Why do they get them?", it should be "Why don't we get them?"
Demonstration: find a store with a sale, "25% off marked price". Pick something that's marked £30, walk to the checkout and hand over £22.50 (exactly) before the barcode is scanned. Many people will be impressed.
We have that whole sales tax thing here in California. Modify that £22.50 by another 8.75%. Quick!
It sure is... if you can show me where I did that, I'll apologize.
The article you linked to doesn't say that at all... it's got two people disagreeing and you chose a quote from the one you agree with. Nice.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Soon, churches (mainly of the Southern, pentecostal sect) will begin offering to either underwrite public schools or help out in the class rooms as unpaid volunteers... in exchange for being allowed to proselytize in every class room as they desire and have a direct hand in the curriculum.
This fits hand in glove with the implementation of public vouchers for religious schools. Hell, just cut out the middle man and take over public schools intentionally underfunded by the GOP statehouses! Killing critical thinking and indoctrinating the next generation of the right-wing in one fell-swoop! Little Madrassa on the Plains!
The slow, painful death of Radio Shack is more than symbolic. I see it as completely parallel to the slow and painful death of intellectualism in our national culture.
Or, you know, that Internet thing: http://www.digikey.com/ http://www.newark.com/ http://www.mouser.com/
Now my cousin (more like a niece due to generational quirks) is spelling apple "apl" because of some new retarded plan they have.
My elementary/middle school had remedial reading (like 3ish grades less than normal) classes up to eighth grade, and I think it stopped there only because the school stopped there.
Seriously, if you are a young person, what has been done to you is criminal.
What about the parents who used to be able to rely on their kids being in school so they could go out to work? Do they now need to arrange childcare for Fridays too?
<politicianspeak> By instituting a 4 day school week, we will be creating additional jobs in childcare services, thus offsetting the loss of income by the non teaching school staffers </politicianspeak>
You school system is seriously FUBAR. If you teach class all day to an average of 35 students, then the expenditure for your class is about $350,000 (based on the national average). If the school can't give you a good salary and buy textbooks at the same time then someone above you is criminally incompetent.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Fortunately, all shops (online and brick) in the UK display all prices including VAT. It's a legal requirement (apparently only since 2004, so probably the law was made to stop people trying to compete with "lower" prices in advertisements).
Sometimes, we just need to admit that it's a lost cause. It's a situation that can't be salvaged.
Can't be salvaged? Well that's just idiotic. Education is not a goal that we can just give up on. It would be colossally stupid to just give up on future generations like that. It's already bad enough that we are cheating them like this, but to say we can't possibly fix it is more selfish than even we are.
It's not as if we're out of ideas either. We have plenty of our own, and if none of those appeal to you, look at countries that are doing it well, and the differences in how we do it and how they do it, and then model ourselves after that. Be prepared to spend more money on it. Throwing money at it is not a magic solution, sure, but saving money is not a goal worth sacrificing the education system for.
I like how you spout one anecdote, with nothing to support it, and imply that's what the entire school system has become.
As for the rest of your rant, remember, most workers also aren't subject to the whims of the taxpayer, who always wants his taxes lower. Meaning that without the unions, the teachers likely would never get raises, and would likely never have limits on their class sizes, either.
If you'd have read the article, you'd see that there's also a report backing it up.
It sure is... if you can show me where I did that, I'll apologize.
I'm gonna start with the line I quoted. And I'm gonna go back to the trouble in Wisconsin a few months ago, where people like you were constantly bitching that teachers got benefits.
As long as your limiting that to the $1.2 trillion we spend a year on the military-industrial-surveillance-contractor complex, sure. Otherwise, no.
I bet the biggest complaint about the four day week comes from the parents who treat school as free daycare. Say all the bad things you want about homeschooling, home schooled students perform better, on average, than public school students, period.
And I bet you're not a parent. Have you considered what it takes to make a two-income or single-parent household with children actually work? School is free daycare (inasmuch as anything funded by taxes is free). That's not all it is, of course, but that free daycare is absolutely critical for any family that needs both parents (or the single parent) working full-time.
So, yes, absolutely the biggest complaint will be from those parents. And they're goddam right for complaining about it.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
Actually I think it is cheaper now for everything but the throwaway iCrap. When I was a kid everybody wanted or had a muscle car. Sure we bought rustbuckets but when you figured the amount of $$$ and time we sunk into those rustbuckets they got expensive pretty damned quick.
Now when my oldest got accepted to college my dad, who got me a 72 duster with a crunched side when i was his age, gets Jackson an S10 fully loaded in mint state. We are talking deep midnight blue paint, mags, kicking stereo, man that is a sweet ride. When I was a kid something THAT nice would have broke the bank, but now? $2300 and the thing is perfect, hell the engine even looks new as well as purrs like a kitten. The mechanic that checked it out said "Its the same as the day it rolled off the showroom floor, completely perfect" and then promptly tried to buy it off us.
So if anything I'd say we have quite an abundance. Both my boys have multicore desktops AND laptops, hell we have to have 7 PCs just between me and the boys, everybody has a car and a PC and an MP3 and consoles and handhelds and just...more everything. When I was a kid having enough money to get a Coleco was considered a big fricking deal. Owning a PC? I was the only one in the entire town and that was only because i had a trucker uncle who scored a VIC20 that "fell off the back of a truck" for me.
So now all the kids are really really spoiled and don't even know what its like to trudge uphill in the snow both ways. Damned spoiled brats getting on our lawns!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Really? You think that either the government wisely spends the money that isn't spent on "defense", or you think that it is not spending it in ever increasing amounts. In either case, I think you are a fool.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
there should be no problem in paying more money for educating your populace. After all, it should be easy cutting some unneeded expenses. After all, you are obviously much more skilled than the people who actually run things like a school, so you can obviously eliminate a whole lot of waste in your own life and show them just how it's done.
that less hours in school leads to more hours at home where the anti-intellectual culture comes from.
It'd be nice if it were in the US. However there is some benefit in not displaying the all inclusive price. As a college student on a non-existent budget I got rather good at the mental calculation of the real price so that I knew I had enough before I got to the checkout.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
I'm sure that the current round of republican bagger candidates will be happy to create work groups where children can occupy their time learning work skills producing cheap merchandise and performing maid duties for the wealthier class of Real Americans.
Saying "if you pay higher taxes, we'll use them to fund ____" is a lie, and everyone knows it. The citizens have no control over where their tax money ends up, and even if the taxes are actually used for _____, money is fungible, so the government can just decide to reduce the remaining portion of the funding to free up tax funds for something else.
schooling isn't design to transfer knowledge from adults to children; it's design to create conforming and obedient citizens.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
I read the article... there's no link to any confirming reports for either side. They all cite a few stats, neither really disagreeing with the other except what they emphasize to make their cases. One guy says private employees are paid more, the other counters with benefits being higher, as well as job security (which is the thing I was taking issue with), neither one denies what the other has said... then another guy counters with some nebulous negative about working in a large bureaucracy.
You mean "when you include benefits that far exceed what people in the private sector get?" The thing that NOBODY in your own article even denies?
I didn't say they got benefits we didn't, but what they get is often better - cheaper health insurance, better retirement plans. They're the same benefits most people get, they're just "better" because the employers (tax payers) pay more. I never complained they get more benefits than me - you are viewing this whole discussion with a confirmation bias that you don't even recognize, and making knee-jerk responses to anything that questions your beliefs.
Oh... and don't fucking say "people like you," because it only shows what an ignorant asshole you're acting like.... you have no idea who I am, and I have not once said teacher's benefits or pay should be cut, and never once whined about them getting a benefit "I don't get."
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Radio Shack's demise is more about technology than anything. Back before all their stores were in malls they carried a lot of electronics components, but they also carried consumer electronics. I have a pair of 30 year old Realistic stereo speakers. My dad owned several Tandy computers. But with electronics going to SMD and programmable chips, most of the hobbyists moved on to cheaper hobbies. And then of course, a lot of them went into programming. While I think it would be nice to have a local source for things like Arduino's and PICs, in reality I doubt they could sell enough to keep a store open since most of us would order on the internet anyway. Radio Shack was never cheap and they didn't have particularly stellar quality control either.
The only thing lost is the impulse buy.
Another day, another update to a Google android app.
Maybe they don't want to pay more for the same system.
Sorry bub, inflation.
You're kidding, right? You think tax payers are more demanding than my private sector employer? You think my employer's not trying to maximize his profits by keeping employee pay and benefits low? What rock are you living under?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
You bet wrong, which pretty much makes the rest of your post meaningless.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
That's hilarious... sounds like they're teaching them how to text.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
"working your way through college" any more means:
In the GP's definition it likely means all the same but with the exception that there is no such thing as a "student loan" and therefore all expenses are covered by your part-time job. Which is very much impossible unless you happen to be a female with a body proportioned for use as a sex toy and leverage it for same.
On a related note... for those of you that are parents out there here's a bit of advice. If you care at all about your kid being academically successful and thereby having an easier time finding a good job when they get out start putting aside a college fund for them. If they have to sacrifice essential homework/study time in order to work to support their a** you are as good as sabotaging them.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Teachers in my school district in central NY start at about $27/yr. The median salary for high school teachers is $52k/yr. Yes, they're unionized.
That just goes back to parents being part of the problem.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
The last time I went into a Radio Shack and found the shelves meaningfully stocked with supplies for intellectual hobbies was the early 1990's. I've never in my lifetime (32 years) found them to be staffed by anyone other than incompetents that couldn't hack their way through a liberal arts degree much less a computer science or electrical engineering one. As far as I can tell they tend to be the types that think electronics are cool but spend all their time as consumers of video games and electronic gadgets while knowing nothing of their workings. I've found Best Buy staff to be more knowledgeable. They at least tend to memorize the talking points for the products they sell.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Demonstration: find a store with a sale, "25% off marked price". Pick something that's marked £30, walk to the checkout and hand over £22.50 (exactly) before the barcode is scanned. Many people will be impressed.
Part of it is that they teach the concept of associative and commutative operations in school, but they stopped teaching why it's useful. I'm not sure the teachers understand why it's useful, because I'm not sure that they've been taught it either :)
Basically, when you ask somebody, "what's 25% of 30?", they start setting up a multiplication by 0.25 in their heads. They multiply by 5, they go to the next line and offset when multiplying by 2, they add the two lines, they figure out where to put the decimal. If they understand fractions (unfortunately also pretty rare), they might start dividing by 4, which is certainly way better. Those of us who understand commutative properties handles multiples of 10 and 5 more easily by instantly thinking "10% of 30 is 3, 2*3 is 20%. The other 5% is half of 10%, so 3/2, so the answer is 6 + 1.5, 7.5". Math with multiples of 5 and 10 is easy, but that's not what most people are trying to do. :)
You can impress a lot of people with the ability to quickly multiply numbers with 2 or 3 digits in your head. The really easy way of doing that is by using associative and commutative properties with multiples of 10 and adding up the numbers. 23 * 47 = 20 * 40 + 3 * 40 + 20 * 7 + 3 * 7. Each of those terms are easy to compute by just knowing the multiplication table, and you can sum them up as you go, so you only need a running sum in memory, not each individual term. People who are good at mental math do that, people who are not start setting it up in their minds as they would in the notebook, worrying about carrying digits and whanot.
It's not acceptable to say "I can't read", or "I can't write a letter", but it is acceptable to say "oh, I'm no good at maths" or "I can't understand my gas bill".
That's because a lot of people aren't good at math, so they have a large clique with which to reinforce the perception that it's ok. If we start teaching kids to be good at math again, then people who don't know math will be in the minority and it won't be acceptable to be in that group. It's the same reason why illiteracy is not acceptable, we live in nations with close to 100% literacy rates.
-- Derek Bok
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Right, because government entities just blew up more money than exists in the world in the greatest fraud in the history of the human race.
Oh wait, that was corrupt banks and corrupt investment firms.
I think the blatant double standards, binary thinking and willful ignorance employed by conservatives is quaint in 2011, like a teenager that still believes in Santa. Any organization of any significant size is going to have some waste. Does that mean you throw out the entire organization and all others like it? Do you honestly think that no one notices this line of reasoning is only used by conservatives on government, but business?
No true Scotsman would follow the Cambridge Guide to English Usage.
I don't know about other countries, but in Finland all teachers graduate from university. In addition, there are comparatively very few immigrants in Finnish schools, so it is a lot easier to teach and to learn than in many other countries. Both children and teachers have like 10 weeks of summer vacation and a couple of weeks off during the school season.
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne
I'm interested, if anyone knows, whether voters were given the option of raising taxes in the most recent elections there to avoid this issue.
More taxes? Taxes is a percentage, and as salaries go up the amount collected by taxes increases, i.e. 5% of your salary now it probably more than what 5% of your salary was in 1990. So there's no reason for *more* taxes, they already receive more money now than they did 20 years ago.
Problem is the US is facing the worse economic depression since the 1930s so fewer people are working which means less money for taxes. Schools seem to not be able to figure this out and make cuts so they think cutting a day out of the week will make the difference. All that will happen is less education for the students so US students will be at an even more disadvantage compared to students in other countries.
This goes back to the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Parents who can not afford to send their children to private schools are now faced with children that are receiving less education and decreases the chances of them getting in to good schools. They also have to find a way to provide childcare for their children now out of school one day a week which further hurts their income. Childcare for a day can range from $50-$100 so that's an extra $200-$400 a month they need to somehow pay for.
Then again this might be great for private schools, some parents that were wavering on private school might decide to just spend the money for private school rather than waste it on babysitting and risking their child's education, and if the public school lose too many children they might have to make even more cuts.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Your point? Are you saying that we shouldn't try to find alternative ways to solve that problem? That those kids unfortunate enough to not have parents that make them read should fuck off?
You're kidding, right? You think tax payers are more demanding than my private sector employer?
When it comes to education, YES. Did you not see the bitching over "teachers salaries" and shit that happened in Wisconsin this past year?
It may not be a failure of the school system to "emphasize federal and state organization." It may just as likely be a function of people coming up with stupid fucking names for positions.
For example, I can tell you that even grad students in Political Science would be at a loss if you asked them what the fuck a "comptroller" is supposed to be. Or an "Ombudsman." Why? Because these titles, much like "Commissioner", are so vague as to be completely fucking meaningless without a hell of a lot of specific context.
You ask someone what a "railroad commissioner" does, they'd probably give you a best guess. But would you ever think a "railroad commissioner" would be involved in gas utilities and pipelines? No? Well that's part of the purview of the "Texas Railroad Commission."
Before you smart off about how people don't know what a "commissioner" does, start at the source. See if there's any fucking rhyme or reason or logical connection to the name and the job duties first.
You mean "when you include benefits that far exceed what people in the private sector get?" The thing that NOBODY in your own article even denies?
The ones that they get paid far less in salary to make up for? You conveniently forgot to mention that.
I never complained they get more benefits than me - you are viewing this whole discussion with a confirmation bias that you don't even recognize, and making knee-jerk responses to anything that questions your beliefs.
Says the guy who can't possibly be asked to say one good thing about the schools. The guy who has done nothing but bitch and complain about how shitty they are, and constantly bring up how their benefits are compared to the private sector, while forgetting how low their salaries are. Nope, I'm the one with the confirmation bias, not you.
Oh... and don't fucking say "people like you," because it only shows what an ignorant asshole you're acting like.... you have no idea who I am, and I have not once said teacher's benefits or pay should be cut, and never once whined about them getting a benefit "I don't get."
If you weren't, then you wouldn't constantly be bringing them up.
Well, then Breaking Bad should make chemistry class more popular.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
It goes back to my OP, way back, where I said there's no single thing you can do to "solve" the education problem in this country.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
OMG!!! you're so blinded by your confirmation bias you can't even see it's RIGHT THERE IN WHAT I WROTE! " One guy says private employees are paid more, " but beyond that, you say "far less" even though the average is less than four percent! It says so right in your OWN ARTICLE!!!! HOLY CRAP, man, get a grip and take a deep breath.
You're so full of crap it's unbelievable.... this is what you call reasonable dialog - creating a strawman argument? I'm not the one constantly bringing up their benefits and salaries, YOU ARE... you go way back to my OP and see where I COMPLAINED about it, the schools, or anything... go on, show me ONE BAD THING I said about schools... go ahead. You're a disingenuous moron who took a knee-jerk reaction to any negativity about unions and can't see straight anymore.
I'm only discussing it because you are. If you don't want to discuss it - since I never complained teachers made too much or got too many benefits anyway, you just assumed I did when I complained about the unions, then let's just stop talking about it - it's pointless, it's not an argument I made, and you're own article says NOTHING you said it does.... it didn't expose any "lie," it didn't counter that benefits are better, and less than 4% is only "far less" in your fantasy world.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Yes, I'm familiar that taxes are a % of the income/sales/etc. going on in the area. If total economic activity goes down but the cost to running the police, fire department, schools, etc. remain constant then the % must go up.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Just be aware that the nifty college fund you set aside will go directly against federal aid (including grants) they'd otherwise be eligible for.
So if you really want to screw your kid over have high paying jobs and set aside a little money in a dedicated college fund and then let them pay for everything the college fund doesn't cover.
The arts can be just as important as math and science.
I'm going to say something unpopular here... No they can't. Art is not, has never been, and never will be as important as math and science. The very concept that it is even in the same league as math and science is absurd. Art is great, but it is what you do when you have your math and science done. Art leaves you with an empty belly and markings on your cave wall. Math and science give you safe, healthy food. Art gives you a really pretty quilt to lay under when you are dying young from some disease. Math and science give you medicines to not die young in the first place.
I was assuming the cost of running the schools this year is the same as last year (with minor adjustments for inflation), but that economic circumstances meant that a lower level of economic activity meant less sales tax was collected, and lower property values meant less property taxes were collected, etc. If the cost of running the fire department and police remain a constant but the level of economic activity goes down then the % at which economic activity is taxed must go up, even if only temporarily while over-all revenues are low. I'm also assuming that the vast majority of citizens want the schools to remain open (even if they're uninterested in paying the cost). It doesn't take an ideologue to support raising taxes. I supported raising taxes when we went to a war I disagreed with. I didn't support going, but if we're going to go let's at least make some attempt to pay for it.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
It is cultural indeed. By the 3rd or 4th generation, the descendants of those hardworking Asian immigrants are just as "dumb" as everyone else.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Many countries have summer vacation. The difference is that many (particular Asian) countries have assigned review assignments during the summer, due to the first day of fall quarter.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Cut the school day to save money....cut the art/music classes to save money ...how far do we go? Public school has become a disgrace. I'm all for public schools, I went clear through them. But I'm ready to see more private schools around that will offer tighter administration, teachers with authority to manage their classes, and a focus on teaching kids as much as possible.
Plus, pay the teachers well to do an important job! There is no shortage of teachers in the world! Snatch up the good ones and let the kids benefit. Give them the ability to manage their classes without fear of lawsuits and hiding behind the teacher's union.
I see too many politics, disgraceful decisions, and lack of focus on educating children. I say this after seeing my wife teaching in public school for several years. She loved her job, but quite frankly, it became too overwhelming and emotional for the pay. And I would say the kids lost great educational oppurtunities because of it.
Not really. Are you (or have you considered the case of) a single parent or a partner in a dual-income family that requires both incomes to make ends meet? Would you care to offer your perspective on how such a family would deal with a four-day school week?
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
If you're required to put your parents on your FAFSA and they make a middle-class income you the student are as good as screwed out of any grant money regardless. If by some miracle your parents are paupers that qualify for the maximum grant allowance (never going to happen for 99.99% of the population) it tops out around $5000/year. The rest comes down to government guaranteed loans and work-study sponsorship. The amount of which doesn't vary too much thanks to some absurdly low caps regardless of financials, and is never even close to enough. You either get parental sponsorship through loans taken out against their credit or you work to cover the gap. So like I said don't sabotage your kid, save money for their college. You've got 18 years to sock away the equivalent of an entry-level luxury sedan which is a hell of a lot better than trying force your kid to work for that during their time at college.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
All you had to say at my regular lunch table at university to get everyone laughing so hard they'd go into convulsions was EFC.
My perspective is that nobody has the right to demand others baby sit their children, so if you can't afford to have children then you should wait until you can.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
So, the answer is that you believe that the answer to all of society's problems is to ask the people who claimed that there was no problem with the banking system while those banks and investment firms were blowing up that money to spend ever more money.
You know, I don't even know what your point is. What "double standard" are you talking about? Please refer to the post you replied to (and if need be, the upstream thread).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
make full time 30-32 hours a week and re work benefits around that. Also split healthcare form being tied to the job.
Yeah, about what I expected. You haven't thought about this very hard--or if you have, it hasn't amounted to much. I guess you think that everyone who e.g. lost a chunk of their retirement in the recession (or went through a divorce or death of a spouse, or had a serious illness, or, or, or...) and now has to work harder to keep the family afloat was just irresponsible for procreating in the first place. Typical Slashdot knee-jerk "born on third base and thinks he hit a triple" libertarianism.
Oh, and if you had bothered to read before your knee jerked into your keyboard, you'd realize that I asked you a practical question, not an ethical or policy question: how do you think the (significant fraction of all American) families who can't easily find another few hundred dollars every month are actually going to cope with something like this? Or was "tough shit" indeed your entire answer?
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
I've probably thought about it a lot longer than you - and it's amounted to quite a bit. Nobody that should be worried about losing a chunk of their retirement in the recession is worrying about their school age kids; and I've thought about all the fringe cases you mention - it just doesn't add up to more than a tiny fraction.
Here's what you fail to grasp - those people somehow managed when the child was an infant, and a toddler? What did they do before kindergarten? And now that the child is easier to handle (you know, you pay more for day care for babies, right?), suddenly they're a burden?
Sorry, except for a few pathological cases, I'm not buying what you're selling.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Those of us who understand commutative properties handles multiples of 10 and 5 more easily by instantly thinking "10% of 30 is 3, 2*3 is 20%. The other 5% is half of 10%, so 3/2, so the answer is 6 + 1.5, 7.5".
I did £30 - (30 / 2 / 2), which seems about as fast as any method with ¼ or ¾.
But for a general 5n × m, I'd do 10n × m/2.
The really easy way of doing that is by using associative and commutative properties with multiples of 10 and adding up the numbers. 23 * 47 = 20 * 40 + 3 * 40 + 20 * 7 + 3 * 7.
I'm with the "most people" here. I'd never thought of doing that before, and have never factorised something not containing a variable. Yet I did all the mathematics I could at school, including "Further Maths" (which only a tiny, tiny number of people do), and then ½ a year of maths at university.
I tried to do 23 * 47 = ... actually, I'm too tired to type. No wonder I went wrong. (00:30 here.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland is well worth a read. Politicians running education systems often want to find out how the likes of Finland do so well, but they ask the questions (going on fact-finding missions etc) and then don't like the answers they get back.
Here in the UK the drive in schools for years now has been towards pitiless onslaughts of standardised national testing at all levels, and league tables and measurement everywhere you look. It is the exact opposite of letting children learn and grow in idiosyncratic ways without pressure for them to 'acquire key skills' and essentially tick the boxes the government wants ticking. This is all driven by the business imperative to turn education into training for jobs rather than anything about nurturing well-rounded, inquisitive, open-minded, moral human beings, and is combined with some ill-informed tabloid crap about how kids these days don't respect their elders, blah blah blah.
Politicians see that the country's schools are some way down the league tables, look across the water to Finland, refuse to believe what they hear about no high-pressure exams until the end of school, teachers being respected instead of turned into drones, and so they go ahead and implement the exact opposite.
Poor judgement by school boards and just look at the consequences. A parent will now have to stay home from work as one cannot leave a child at home unattended. So, the state will pay a bigger price. I am sure they never thought past the budget to consider the kids. Why not close air conditioning an hour or two early, and start it an hour or two later. I am feeling very sad and sorry for the students and their difficult future.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Taxes are paid by the entire community. Child care expenses are paid by parents. So the four day school week is cheaper for some people while a five day school week is cheaper for others. That is what politics are all about.
all expenses are covered by your part-time job. Which is very much impossible
Not impossible at all. If you have one or more roommates in a small apartment, a well-paying part time job that cuts off just under the hours that would make you full time (benefit eligible), and you take 9-12 credits a semester instead of 16-20. The best part is being debt free right out of the gate.
If Footlocker is having a 3 for 2 sale and a brick has a mass of 1 kg, how many pairs of trainers can Bozzer filch in the time it takes Joggo to steal one television?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Does being on a sports scholarship count as a part-time job?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's not obvious to me. Care to elaborate?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Why does anyone still have their children in a government school?
I'm with the "most people" here. I'd never thought of doing that before, and have never factorised something not containing a variable.
Of course you have. You did right here:
I did £30 - (30 / 2 / 2), which seems about as fast as any method with ¼ or ¾.
Which is pretty much the same idea. Dividing by half is easier than dividing by 4, so factor that 4.
Yet I did all the mathematics I could at school, including "Further Maths" (which only a tiny, tiny number of people do), and then ½ a year of maths at university.
Which is my point. You absolutely got taught that (a + b) * (c + d) = a*c + a*d + b*c + b*d, but nobody ever bothers to tell you that's pretty useful in mental arithmetic. We're teaching the stuff, but we're not bringing it home, which causes two problems: First, people don't always know how to apply what they're taught; and second, people forget everything after they leave school, because they've never used what they've been taught.
In simple terms, since, apparently, you need it simpler than I already stated: If one culture has consistently better scores than another than it is obvious that culture is a major defining factor in scores.
This may be true in many cases. However, most people would call 6 years in college a master's degree or completely unacceptable. Being "part-time" status at a university can also sometimes come with a few disadvantages both on the academics but mostly and especially the financial side. Since your tuition isn't usually calculated on a "per-credit" basis and financial aid all but evaporates you could well end up paying a larger bill even if you managed to pay as you go. If you are pursuing a reasonable paying career, those missed two years may well end up costing you considerably. If I'd maintained the starvation budget I was on during college for just a single year after graduating I'd have been able to pay off all my student loans.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Fits my definition. Play for pay.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Our local district moved to a 4 day week last year. The biggest issue I've had with it is that the reasons for going in this direction were all about budget savings, teachers preferring the 4 day work week (who wouldn't), etc. No where in the discussion was it ever discussed whether it would help more kids go to college or succeed in life. Even when it was brought up, the administrators or teachers changed the subject to how much they'd like the day off. One thing I've noticed is that the only schools doing this are rural schools. The local school district is the major employer in the district, thus making the teachers and administrators a large percentage of the voting population. Because local school boards are an elected position, this voting block carries a lot of sway with the local board members. They give the reason of budget savings, but my observation is that it's more about an extra day off than about actually improving the schools. Fortunately, it hasn't been the a disaster, but it does seem like our priorities and reasons for moving in one direction or another are messed up.
... "born on third base and thinks he hit a triple" libertarianism.
Can I just say I love that expression :) And I'm not even American lol.
Nope, why would I hate socialism? I'm not American, I don't associate socialism with communism, and there are many benefits to having a society take a wider holistic viewpoint to matters and to practice some form of utilitarianism in order to provide greatest good to society as a whole.
But hey, if the parents of these children were told they had the option of paying more taxes to keep the children in a five day week and were so scared about the tax word that they said no, then my sympathy for their situation has gone. I guess they can choose their own rip-off childcare provider now, or argue for 9/10 working or half-days on a Friday, etc.
There used to be a time in the UK when everything would shut down on Wednesday afternoons, presumably for economic reasons. That's the closest we ever got to a four day working week. A few more years of Tory power soon killed that off and again we all live to work to make money for corporate overlords...