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Do We Need a Longer School Year?
Hugh Pickens writes "Jennifer Davis writes that while summer holds a special place in our hearts: lazy afternoons, camping at the lake, warm evenings gazing at the moon, languid summers can be educationally detrimental, with most youth losing about two months of grade-level equivalency in math computational skills over the summer and students from low-income families falling even further behind. A consensus is building that the traditional nine-month school year might be a relic of the 20th century that has no place in an increasingly competitive global work force and an analysis of charter schools in New York reveals that students are most likely to outperform peers if they attend schools that are open at least 10 days more than the conventional year. What of the idea that summer should be a time of respite from the stresses of school? There are two wrong notions wrapped up in this perspective. The first is that somehow summer is automatically a magical time for children but as one fifth-grader, happy to be back at school in August, declared, 'Sometimes summer is really boring. We just sit there and watch TV.' The second mis-perception is that school is automatically bereft of the excitement and joy of learning. On the contrary, as the National Center on Time and Learning describes in its studies of schools that operate with significantly more time, educators use the longer days and years to enhance the content and methods of the classroom. 'We should expect our schools to furnish today's students with the education they will need to excel in our global society,' says Davis. 'But we must also be willing to provide schools the tools they need to ensure this outcome, including the flexibility to turn the lazy days of summer into the season of learning.'"
Rich kids with parents that care about their future attend schools that stay open longer. The kids care, and the parents care, so they outperform their inner-city peers.
Schools were out during the summer so that children could work in the fields. How relevant is this now?
[Aside: my high-school started a full week later than ever other school in the district, because we ere rural, and we actually did work the harvest.]
The school year should be 23 months with a month off to scrape all the gum off the underside of the desks.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Kids should get two weeks off per year and it should be treated like holiday or personal time where each student can choose how to split up their time and when to use it. It keeps them learning, it keeps them out of trouble and it's reflective of what they will have to deal with in the real world.
Take off the rose colored glasses. Learning constantly for 12 years is hard. Meaningful breaks are very important to avoid burnout and keep morale up. If people want to look at schooling maybe we should reconsider how the school time is allocated but lets not do it from the perspective of 'lazy students, they need to do more'.
I ate your fish.
my kids are in a semester system. one month at christmas off, one at spring break, one in summer... same number of days as the "traditional method" without the big gap in summer. works just fine imo.
We don't need a longer school year. What we need is better holiday distribution. RIght now where I live (Ontario, Canada) our kids get two weeks off in December, one in March and about 9 in the summer.
It would make more sense to have August, December and April off so there are three month-long breaks. That way, there's no long summer holiday during which kids can forget what they've learned. It also makes holiday planning a bit easier on parents; we don't have to cram everything into the summer.
2 months off in one block is probably not so good. A month off in the summer, 3 weeks in the winter might work better (as in an extra week in the winter). And then another week to coincide with some major culture group's major holiday, or in the middle of each 'term'. Say a week off in october and a week off in march, with school running august to june.
Teachers still need some vacation time, as do kids, and taking teachers out of the classroom for holidays is usually a disaster for the kids. Winter is probably a good time to have time off because kids pay relatively little attention when they have christmas coming/new toys anyway. Not to mention the problems with winter in general messing up schedules. Teachers also need prep time, so you can't really compact too much more and still leave them time for vacations + prep time+training etc.
But sure, overall, kids would probably overall benefit from more time at school, having to reteach 2 months of work because kids were gone for 2 months isn't really doing you any favours. Especially if you could make up that difference by teaching for an extra 2 or 3 weeks.
One of the universities I went to had a week long 'reading week' in each semester*, one in october, one in february, and the one in the summer was about mid july (the summer timing is a bit strange). The quality of work from those students was actually a lot better than were I am no, where they only get a break in the midst of february. The 4 months where most students aren't here doesn't do a lot of favours, but the one week break makes a huge difference to stress/sleep/quality of work, and I would suspect the same effect would apply to younger kids.
Semesters are sept-dec, Jan - > April, may - > august.
I have 2 opinions that fall on both sides of this debate. Personally I do not see how they were not mentioned, as they are based completely in known facts.
1) If school was really all that stressful, such that you need months of free time to recover your sanity and physiological strength, then we should not be forcing children to spend 8 months at a time there.
2) You do want to create people who are able to function in society, you do not do so by locking them away from the world for the first 17 years of their lives.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Wrong.
We need several things. The end of the massive summer off. Take the quarters and put a couple of weeks between them. Second, the end of grade levels beyond sixth, or maybe beyond eighth, as important metrics. If proper feedback testing on their abilities and instruction was performed for the years leading up to this, the student gets placed in classes in each discipline relevant to the student's abilities. Allow parents to have one free "appeal" in the form of a test to re-place the student, but after that initial result, all further appeals cost the parent to prevent helicopter parents from abusing the system. For students that place at mediocre levels, offer practical electives so that when they get out of high school they have something that they can do for their income where they won't need a lot of further training. If anything, start with an intro to trades type of class where students get exposure to trades, and use that to place them.
Some may call this unfair, as it no longer gives each and every child equal opportunity. I would say that parents choose the path their child takes from the very beginning, and the school should accommodate that decision while still allowing those who choose to excel despite home choices to do so. If little Johnny wasn't encouraged to do well in school then little Johnny doesn't get to be placed into the classes where his sheer presence gets to drag others down to his level if he is inclined to do that. He doesn't get college prep classes as he's probably not going to college. On the other hand, if he does well in school, for whatever reason, he'll be placed to where it's expected that his education will continue past secondary school.
Lastly, for hellions, boarding school. Uniforms, curfew, mandatory attendance, the works. Put a fence around the place if necessary. We do not serve them by letting them get away with outright bad behavior. Boarding school is expensive, but as a whole, is it cheaper to let them disrupt normal school and keep them there?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
There will always be losers, layabouts, and lazy people. No school schedule will chance this.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Our son is going into 5th grade. He's attending a public school that has a 190-day school year with an extended 8-3 day, and they go to school until late July, only getting 5-6 weeks of summer vacation. In compensation for the long July in school, they get a vacation week in late October and another one in the beginning of June that other kids don't get.
For the most part, he loves it. And when he and his schoolmates get back to school, there seems to be less time getting kids back up to speed than there is at the conventional schools here in town. Overall results trend better here as well, and we've got a lot of overall issues in the system here outside of our school. Within reason, I think an extended day/extended year model is ideal for most learning situations, but not necessarily universal. I don't think school should be fully year-round, there should be some sort of summer break. But the 2+ month summer vacation is a relic of this country's agricultural roots, and it certainly could go away without causing a problem.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
The one missing part is the family of the kids. Families do things like take vacations or trips, or large projects around the home that need the kids to help with. Summer vacation isn't just a break from school for the kids, it's a large block of time where the family doesn't have to plan everything they do around the school schedule. It's when the family can take a week or two for a trip. It's when they can take a week or two to haul the furniture out of the house one room at a time to do a thorough cleaning and rearranging of everything.
And frankly, competitive with the rest of the world? I deal with a lot of outsourced IT people daily, and it wouldn't take much to be competitive with them. Not just helpdesk types, software developers and the like too. I don't want the kind of educational system that makes you better at being like them. I want the kind of educational system that led to being able to "make this <holds up a square filter> fit in that <points to a round hole> using nothing but these <dumps out a random assortment of supplies>".
If students go so far as to regress in simply 2 months after 10 months of education, then its not the students, but the way they are taught. Before we cut the summer vacation maybe we should focus on enhancing education that's received in a 10 month window and make that better instead of adding another 2 weeks of subpar education. Sure summer can be boring, but that's up to the individual child. If you sit in front of a TV all day you are going to be bored, but if you actually got up and did something productive with the time you had off, you'd be much better off. Also, that second "mis-perception" is by far the norm in America. More classes then not were void of enjoyment and learning in my education, and the way the education system is set up today, students are made to work toward a magical number so the school can receive funding, instead of creating joy in learning. We need to change the time we do have in the classroom, before we start adding more time to an already defunct institution.
Everybody's favorite buzzword to justify near-slave labor... Lengthen the school year, but shorten the 'work year'... to the point where you forget where you work.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Much learning occurs *outside* of classrooms. Learning to be a good person, how to camp, swim, fish, etc. and enjoy life.And how to work, btw. I'm not aware of any curriculum that includes those classes. Are we going to add them in those 3 more months of failed public schooling ?
Our school system has many issues (starting w/ the NEA and - ironically - underpaid teachers). Turning it into a 12 year long death march isn't going to fix it. In the "land of the free", its important for kids to know what freedom is.
007: "Who are you?"
Pussy: "My name is Pussy Galore."
007: "I must be dreaming..."
I didn't know people did 9-month school anymore. All my nieces and nephews went to 12-month schools. All the school zone signs in the last two towns I've lived in have "12 Month" warnings. Are my observations a statistical fluke?
At any rate, I think summers off are a good thing. IMO being a kid is an important part of becoming an adult. Let them have a break for all those dirt clod fights and stuff.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Terms and Semesters, works well in Australia.
The trouble with education is that everybody has an opinion on it.
My wife is a teacher. Do you know what teachers do during "Teacher Work Days"?
Mandatory All Hands Meetings.
You might think they're working on lesson plans or report cards or grading papers, but that's what they do at home at night.
:wq
You know, you're probably right. If we had no summer and short breaks instead, we'd probably be better off academically.
But I don't think academic efficiency should be our paramount goal, above all others. I don't think we should be looking at kids and asking ourselves how to maximize their future utility as workers - even though it is for them.
When I look back at my summers, I remember vast stretches of time where I was basically free to do anything and had little or no responsibilities. I didn't have to worry about having to do anything. I was free like most of us never will be until maybe retirement. Sure, maybe I didn't use it productively. I mostly laid around or played with friends. I read a lot of books. Sometimes I was bored and just wanted school to start back. But it was great. And I sure wish I could have that back. There's more to life than working and yeah, even learning.
If you want to take some kind of psychohistory perspective, maybe you could even say that we owe a lot of our individualism and ideals to all that.
They should drop traditional teaching, which EVERY kid hates, and do like 1 month of independent study for 7th graders on up. That would let them apply whatever field of learning they most enjoy to a real world project. If you're into chemistry, build a battery and solar array. If you like computers, build and test one. Okay those are really expensive but still :-P If you're into history, do a gigantic research paper/presentation into a specific event or research the town's history. Giving kids a little freedom while forcing them to actually use their brains would be a great idea.
Kids do 75% of their growing during 25% of the year: the summer when they actually get sleep mostly and also sufficient food whenever they want to eat it. So cut out a bit of the summer, and we're gonna have some short kids :-P Of course, several school districts in the US bumped start time up 1 hour to like 9:00 and behavioral problems basically disappeared, skipping school stopped, test scores went through the roof, and kids' opinions of school went up. Since kids aren't designed to get up that early, it's just because of their selfish, lazy, assholes parents that both work, maybe they should just implement that instead.
You could be scarring him for life you know. If he doesn't have an aptitude for math, this will not help him. If he does have an aptitude for math, this is a complete waste of time. Whatever the case, you are not helping him in any way, making him resent you, and causing who knows what kind of social problems / insecurities for him. Hopefully he will be strong enough to just laugh it off as something his crazy father made him do.
Also, maybe you should suggest he go play outside an hour in the morning and evening, if his "fun stuff" is watching TV and sitting at the computer. This will do much more for his future quality of life than math tutoring
Who pays for the extra month(s) of school? Localities across the US are already strapped for cash. Increase teacher's salaries by 20% (ish) and things get worse. And when will they do their continuing ed to remain accredited or get higher degrees? Similar stories for custodians, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, etc. In many (most?) school districts, only parts of the administration are 12 month employees. There's also an increase in electricity and possible retrofitting of AC in places that don't have it.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
"He doesn't seem to mind too much. "
The serial killer part of his life comes a bit later.
No. We need better curriculums that focus on math, science, REASONING skills/logic, and english language shortcomings. We also need to lose the social and political propaganda stuff being taught in 'social studies' and health class and encourage self reliance whenever possible. It's not an issue of quantity but of quality.
I agree with your statements about the separate tracks, as long as each student is given ample opportunity to test out.. maybe once a year?
Hellions do not respond to prison any better than they do laissez faire 'open study.' They're hellions for other reasons. These reasons should be addressed.
It doesn't cost any more than the current system. In fact, there have been estimates that a year round schedule will cut maintenance costs.
Learn to love Alaska
At the risk of being modded under a bridge I'll comment here..
> In a time of massive layoffs of teachers and restricted education budgets, how the hell are you going to pay for this?
Huh? Where is this happening? Maybe private sector teachers, but deficiently not public sector ones.
> The current system is shit, but it is paid for. In every debate on education, people talk about results, results, results and how we need to improve them. But the only thing the legislators and taxpayers care about is the cost. If you don't have a revolutionary idea on how to pay for your program then don't even bother with it, or it will end up in the junk-pile labeled "one million and one education reform ideas".
We can't talk about the single major factor in the deteriorating education system in this country. Teachers Unions. How was it we successfully educated generations of students prior to the unions and now we consistently produce students which can barely read, write, and spell.
My own experience in the California public school system was HORRIFIC. Some of the newer teachers were good, however they lacked funding to really do anything, that said, the rest of them where HORRIBLE and should have been fired long ago.
With the current system in place, the unions will not allow for a longer school year, and no amount of additional funding you dump into the smoking hole known as public education will fix this. More money in, more money to get redirected into union dues and pensions.
But on a bright side, failure at this level is impressive, and doing it so uniformly is also a major accomplishment.
There's more to life than working and yeah, even learning.
Sounds more like an argument for minimum 4 weeks a year paid leave, like the rest of the world has, or maybe more. 8 weeks paid leave, and you can have your summer every year and not lose your job for it.
Learn to love Alaska
Actually, doing lots of problems is the right way to study math, no matter how much or little aptitude the student has. It doesn't matter if it is elementary school arithmetic, or high school calculus. I've heard so many stories of math students even in the college level come in not understanding even the basics of not only the math they should know, but how to study the material. The real galling thing? Is when the student who does not turn in their homework begs the instructor to let them pass, despite doing very poorly on their tests.
And no, it's not in any way bad for a student to study for a couple hours a day over the summer. I might suggest a bit of variety in the week, say twice a week math, leaving other subjects for the other weekdays. Maybe a little history that isn't the pilgrims and civil war, or music (theory or performance).
I hear music teachers bemoan every summer how every student immediately puts down their instrument for three months and refuses to touch it. When they come back, they've lost a lot of their ability and their practice ability. The teachers know about taking a break, and often offer fun pieces in different areas, or suggest a lighter practice schedule. There's a difference between taking a bit of a break and turning off the brain.
"I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend unto the death your right to say it." -- Voltaire
Have we not realized there is not one magic pill to boost student achievement? Is a longer school year a possibility? Maybe. Is a shorter day a possibility? Maybe. Will changing society's values on education make a difference? Probably. Will more money in the education system make a difference? Maybe. Will better salaries attract better teachers? Maybe. Will differentiated instruction make a difference? Maybe.
There is no magic cure all, but what people seem to be forgetting is that children aren't nearly as dumb/uniformed as today's adults want to believe they are. Furthermore, their knowledge is spread out amongst a large variety of topics that were not available 50 years ago or whatever golden age of education we want to believe existed (but, in reality, really didn't). I teach a basic computer class for 4th graders (on Linux, for those of you who wish to pat me on the back) and it's always funny to see just how much better on a computer than their teachers are. That's just an example.
The fact is children today aren't nearly as dumb as adults want to pretend they are. And there's no magical answer for improving standardized test scores (which apparently is the only way we can ever evaluate learning). In my opinion, the most important thing we can do for education is quit playing politics with it, quit pointing fingers and blaming everyone else, and have everyone pitch in to be responsible for every child's learning.
It's not the STUDENTS that decide to cram and forget in the case of the standardized test. Their entire curriculum is geared to it.
Funny thing, when I went to school and got back from summer vacation, we had not forgotten all that much. At most a week of review had everyone up to speed.
Much of the time in school is a complete waste. All school sports are a waste, and a distraction, and a lever for considerable classing amongst the students and between the students and the faculty. School sports should be completely removed. If you insist they need exercise and that we must exercise these cattle, er, I mean humans, then fine, exercise them. But end the body-based competition. Waste of time, and harmful as well. If they want to pursue sports, this should be done *outside* of actual education.
Next, we are teaching the wrong things: we need to teach critical thinking; logic; reading (a LOT more reading!); writing and typing; math for living so that they can balance a checkbook and manage a credit card and pay bills successfully. We need to teach how science works, not make them memorize a bunch of facts about one science or another. If they're interested in a particular science, fine, that can come later -- and they'll actually understand it when they get to it. The one thing we really fail at, and which is very difficult to learn on one's own, is math. Teach the broad strokes of history. That's all. No one pays attention to that unless they're interested; so teach it broadly enough as to spark those interests and otherwise quit wasting everyone's time. Our citizens don't care about anything as it is, so apparently it's a waste of time to teach them the details -- they don't stick.
When someone is found who has a great aptitude, they should be offered a different kind of education. Which they should also be able to turn down with no penalty. Some people do better on their own. Some people thrive in a regimented environment. There is no perfect answer for everyone.
All of that should only take a few hours each day. Which means if they're interested in sports (or science, or history, or whatever), then they have time to pursue it, and parents can (and should) help them specialize, or they can do it themselves.
There's a problem on the other end, too: There are far too many jobs that "require" a college degree, that don't actually require one. Test for your job requirements instead of relying on beer party institutions. I think in many cases candidates would be found without any trouble -- or any degrees.
Our schooling is *really* fucked up. It focuses on the wrong things, pukes out uneducated people because it's just not PC to fail people, and wastes their time and energy on setting up classing that is irrelevant to education. Adding time will just make it worse. Instead of adding time, we need to focus on what is important. You can't teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time, and it annoys the pig. However, if you FIND a pig that can sing, then you need to single that one out and treat it special. It's as simple as that.
If you don't have a revolutionary idea on how to pay for your program then don't even bother with it, or it will end up in the junk-pile labeled "one million and one education reform ideas".
I have a *revolutionary* idea.
FUCKING PAY FOR IT .
Fucking Christ. Seriously?
Why do we have to bail out all the fucking sociopathic douchnozzles on Wall Street? Those utter assholes at AIG who used millions to host a party? How many fucking cruise missiles do we need? How about one less billion dollar stealth jet?
How is that education and infrastructure, the very fucking backbone of our society needs to beg and plead to not get last priority over a bunch of fucking assholes in Congress that just give the money to their "friends" in the form of massive Military Industrial Complex, Wall Street, and Pork bailouts?
I'm a taxpayer. I care about the cost. What irks me when they raise taxes is that it does not solve the problem. It's as if I gave you a million fucking dollars for groceries for the year, and you come back to me saying you need more. I don't have a problem with paying for something, as long as it is done correctly and not without parasitic levels of corruption and inefficiency.
It's like that douchebag that owns Papa Johns Pizza trying to tell me that my pizza will cost a whole extra dollar to pay for health care for his employees. Ummm, yeah, what's the problem you fucking dick. I would gladly pay the dollar if I knew it was going to your employee's (and their families) health care.
Some things should be paid for. Education is one of them. Cut the military budget by 25% and dump it into education.
I'm pretty sure we can terrorize the rest of the world with drone strikes with 25% less money.
for poor kids. For kids who's parents work all day and have no disposable income (not even enough for the bus). Summer's very different when you're middle class. The War on Summer is just another example of the middle class going away. Yes, I know very well the origins of Summer vacation (farm work). I also know the origins of the education system (training farmers to work in a factory).
What I like best about this entire article is not one person asked why the hell we'd want to work that hard?
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Huh? Where is this happening? Maybe private sector teachers, but deficiently not public sector ones.
Here is a link that has real numbers for layoffs. It says there have been 150,000 public teacher layoffs due to the recession. It also mentions Bureau of Labor Statistics which says 33,500 teachers were hit by layoffs since September. (Article was written in June.)
So, you may not have noticed it happening - but it is. Also, and this is a guess, it is affecting lower income schools since higher income schools generally have parents that are able to complain, hire lawyers, call their city/state/federal representatives, etc. So, if your kids go to a "good school" they might have kept their teacher numbers by shifting the burdens to schools that aren't performing.
Also, talking to teachers that I know, finding a teaching job is next to impossible right now. So, it might be less about layoffs than not filling positions as people retire/leave the field/whatever.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
I've come face to face with the "pre-union" results of education. Students who didn't perform were socially promoted, stuck in the back of the class because they knew they couldn't flunk the student out and didn't want to deal with them for another year. Better to just hand them off to the next teacher.
The result is adults who cannot read even now in their 60s or older. Any math beyond making change? Impossible.
Their education level was so rudimentary that a modern fifth grader is expected to know more reading, more math, more history (except for the parts these older adults lived through).
Yes, I've met also many highly educated people in their sixties, seventies and eighties, but I also have known personally enough who were socially promoted or encouraged to stop learning and then drop out without even being able to read to know that the problems you describe in education are hardly knew.
The problems you describe aren't new, aren't unique to the era of union teachers, unless you're saying they existed back before WWII through today.
"I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend unto the death your right to say it." -- Voltaire
People don't need to be sorted and graded like eggs or meat, because people are capable of selecting a path for themselves. The system you're describing is an assembly line. People will never be able to meet their full potential (academically or otherwise) in a system that dehumanizes them and makes them feel powerless over their own destiny. And a system that objectifies people teaches them to devalue their personal sovereignty and mindlessly submit to authority. That causes social problems on a larger scale because people feel like they aren't responsible for their own actions since they were powerless to do otherwise. They were "just following orders" so to speak.
Your prescription for troubled students is especially off the mark. If a student isn't institutionalizing well, it doesn't mean we should double down on them and try to break their will. It just means that they're ready to grow up and start on their own. They shouldn't have to go to school, and should be able to take a job or an apprenticeship or have something else constructive to do with their time (depending on their age). School isn't for everybody.
It's like that douchebag that owns Papa Johns Pizza trying to tell me that my pizza will cost a whole extra dollar to pay for health care for his employees
Actually it is 14 cents.
Wrong.
No, you're wrong.
Our school system is fucked beyond belief. It currently serves no other purpose than to raise up obedient little worker drones. And you want to expose them to more of that?
Why? What's the point? A few more days per year isn't going to overturn an entire culture that eschews things like math and proper writing skills as stuff for dorks who never get laid.
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Much of the time in school is a complete waste. All school sports are a waste, and a distraction
Stopped reading
We can't talk about the single major factor in the deteriorating education system in this country. Teachers Unions. How was it we successfully educated generations of students prior to the unions and now we consistently produce students which can barely read, write, and spell.
In my opinion, you guys started demonizing and drastically underpaying your teachers. At first, that certainly saves money, but over time it encourages talented people to seek employment elsewhere. Will raising teacher's salaries make them better? Of course not, but it will attract people to the profession that might actually be good.
Most of my friends who have smart kids are seeing them go into finance. Why? Talented people follow the money. Yes, it would be nice if people became teachers for the love of education, but we live in the real world.
My own experience in the California public school system was HORRIFIC. Some of the newer teachers were good, however they lacked funding to really do anything, that said, the rest of them where HORRIBLE and should have been fired long ago.
You get what you pay for.
selfish/lazy/etc., parents that BOTH work? kinda hard on us working-class stiffs aren't you?
You'd be surprised to find out how important the process of forgetting is to the human memory and learning, and how important it is to let the mind rest and process all the information digested at its own pace.
Unfortunately, most schools are not built to handle the summer heat. Those buildings are dangerously hot in the summer and most don't have AC, and can't be easily retrofitted.
http://johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm "Before you can reach a point of effectiveness in defending your own children or your principles against the assault of blind social machinery, you have to stop conspiring against yourself by attempting to negotiate with a set of abstract principles and rules which, by its nature, cannot respond. Under all its disguises, that is what institutional schooling is, an abstraction which has escaped its handlers. Nobody can reform it. First you have to realize that human values are the stuff of madness to a system; in systems-logic the schools we have are already the schools the system needs; the only way they could be much improved is to have kids eat, sleep, live, and die there."
Thus, this initiative. At least Canadian doctors realize a bit more the importance of vitamin D deficiency; keeping kids indoors even more during the summer is going to be terrible for their physical heath. Education serves multiple purposes -- to help an individual grow in human potential, to help someone become an informed citizen of good civic judgment, and also to learn some practical skills. School unfortunately focuses mostly on the last, and mainly in the context of shaping children to fit the needs of 19th century factories which mostly no longer exist. The most important "skill" is to be able to learn from real need and curiosity, and unfortunately that is stomped out of most children very early on because it would be too inconvenient for the school curriculum. Thus we then have the pathetic statements of kids in college saying they finally "learned how to learn", never remembering they were a "scientist in the crib". Keeping kids in school more will only mean even less of that most important "skill" will survive. See also:
"In Defense Of Childhood: Protecting Kids'' Inner Wildness"
http://www.chrismercogliano.com/childhood.htm
"As codirector of the Albany Free School, Chris Mercogliano has had remarkable success in helping a diverse population of youngsters find their way in the world. He regrets, however, that most kids' lives are subject to some form of control from dawn until dusk. Lamenting risk-averse parents, overstructured school days, and a lack of playtime and solitude, Mercogliano argues that we are robbing our young people of "that precious, irreplaceable period in their lives that nature has set aside for exploration and innocent discovery," leaving them ill-equipped to face adulthood. The "domestication of childhood" squeezes the adventure out of kids' lives and threatens to smother the spark that animates each child with talents, dreams, and inclinations. As Mercogliano explains, however, there is plenty that those involved with children can do to protect their spontaneity and exuberance. We can address their desperate thirst for knowledge, give them space to learn from their mistakes, and let them explore what their place in the adult world might be."
Public schools as we know them are going the way of the Dodo bird. Khan Academy is just one example of "learning on demand" as a larger trend I wrote about five years ago:
http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTechnologyHasFailedSchools.html
Pushes like these are just one last gasp of a dying system. Jerry Mintz talks about that here:
http://www.educationrevolution.org/blog/sustainable-education/
If we are to continue to have public schools, they should become a lot more like public libraries -- but at John Taylor Gatto points out, "public" means something very different in those two terms. See also:
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
"Look again at the seven lessons of schoolteaching: confusion, class assignment, dulled respon
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Here, let me give you a tale of two school districts. One, the school district of the city of Newark, NJ, spends $21,000 per pupil per year (or $17,000 depending on how you calculate it), and is one of the worst in the state; students don't learn shit. The other, the school district for Millburn Township, NJ spends $17,000 per year (or $14,000 using the other method) and is one of the best. You know what sort of improvement you're going to get by sending the kids in Newark to school 12 months a year? Fuck all. You know what sort of improvement you're going to get by sending the kids in Millburn to school 12 months a year? Still fuck all.
It isn't the money, and it isn't the time. Figure out why Johnny isn't learning jack shit in school during 9 months of the year (and fix it) before proposing that he go 12 months to learn the same jack shit.
Summertime adolescence was the time for heavy reading. "Patanjali's yoga sutras" and "Tantric Mysticism of Tibet". Scientific American magazine (Dad got me the special on microprocessors and here I am), Analog magazine,Greek philosophy (and eventually, geek philosophy). Admittedly, this was fluffed with about 1 science fiction paperpack every day or two, but these two had quite some educational value.
Summertime childhood too, was full of books on dinosaurs and mythology. In addition, I got motor coordination and exercise better than gym class by wandering the mountains near home, swinging on grape vines (and falling), bicycling, hiking, and so on.
So, I say, three cheers for summer vacation. It was fun, and educational. A child not motivated to intellectual exploration will avoid it, school or no. A curious intelligent child will seek education, whether school is involved or not.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
It rang true to me and almost every other Slashdotter who read those words I'd wager. Rebuttal required.
From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc
The problem is that most schools are funded by LOCAL property taxes. That's not really "the problem" but many politicians have had states takeover handing out the money, bringing everybody down.
Let's use Michigan. Literally half of property tax goes to schools. It USED to go directly from the county treasurer to the school district and the states chipped in maybe 10-20% the Feds almost nothing except discrete programs (for instance lunches are pulled from food stamp money). The changes are pretty drastic after 1990's... The rules are different now.
In Michigan we passes a law that added 2% to sales tax and capped "homestead" personal home taxes to inflation, only adjusting at sale time. There was a problem because seniors were being "taxed" out of their homes because property values shot thru the roof. Unfortunately, that IS how property tax is supposed to work to allocate resources more efficiently.
The problems started immediately. The State 2% sales tax increase didn't cover the spread of decreased property taxes. Worse, the state handed out all the districts the same share. A boon to poor districts, but huge cuts where localities with lots of professionals were paying 50% more taxes in some cases.
To "fix" that problem, of individual districts voting in MORE taxes to cover the losses, passed another law that the districts had to have most of the operating taxes sent THRU the state. AND localities couldn't add more operating taxes because that wasn't "fair" to poor districts.
So now NOBODY will vote for one more dime of school taxes because it doesn't go to THEIR schools. We have districts with great building and technology budgets, but they legally can't pay their teachers one dime more. Of course just as fast as the state grabbed all that money, the first thing to go was that 2% committed to schools... Or rather it became 2% for "education spending". Then the state cut its share of general fund to colleges and trade schools... Taking the funds away from k-12 schools that the law moved to the State's care. (and nobody can raise local taxes ... Still) what's worse is that the "education" fund (that 2% sales tax) had a balance for over a Decade... Not a lot, but enough to smooth over year-to-year tax changes... But the most recent Govenor took THAT fund and paid it to colleges instead of the State's normal yearly share. So we spent 15 years building a cushion and in one budget we trashed it. Not to mention the state has been starving higher education for decades as well. It was just in the last few years that State University tuition cut from the STUDENTS is more than from the state (the other third comes from federal, alumni, and industry grants).
So sure, blame unions or whatever... How about blame the people that are pushing the system to break intentionally as they possibly can?
I'm not sure what your point is. I CAN, however, tell you what the difference between schools in Newark and Millburn Township is: Parents who give a shit.
If someone can come up with a way to coax parents from poor socioeconomic backgrounds to start caring about providing educational support to their kids, they can have all the rest of the Nobel Prizes for the rest of eternity AFAIC. It may be the biggest problem faced by society in the USA.
From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc
All this is neither here nor there... the big problem is your kids in school and then he's not... and you have to find childcare. Not only that, but THE ENTIRE COUNTRY has a giant break from school at the same approximate time. So the price of childcare skyrockets during that break. Summer break is idiotic and should be done away with on that premise alone. If school is supposed to prepare you for the working world, why not give kids 3 to 6 weeks vacation time a year at let them use it as they see fit just like their parents? A kid that's doing better in school could earn more, just like a real job. Oh wait... the teachers union controls our schools, so we can't ever makes changes. I forgot. My bad.
Chesterton's gate: if, while driving through the English countryside, you encounter a gate across the road which does not at first glance appear to serve any purpose, you are not allowed to remove it just because you can't imagine what it is there for. Only when you can figure out why someone put up a gate there in the first place, and determine whether that reason is still valid or not, can you decide whether or not to remove the gate.
Just because you cannot see the point of sports does not mean that there is not a good one. Physical fitness is a desirable thing to teach. It lets people know that they can improve themselves, something which is considerably more difficult to convey in an intellectual context. I learned many valuable lessons playing football. For example, I know that I can eat as much as I want of whatever I want, every day, while still having 15% body fat and pretty good muscles. I just have to put on twenty pounds of gear and run around in the heat for three hours smashing into other people three days a week with a high-intensity workout (aka a game) once a week. Plus weights four times a week.
Following that policy leaves you open to the sort of jackass who would put up a gate just for the sake of doing so; because there was no reason for the gate, you can never find one in order to decide to take it down.
Indeed. I feel like this whenever the topic of education is brought up.
What do kids want? To be out playing, having fun with friends, enjoying life.
What do parents want? The kids to be learned enough to live on their own.
What do educators want? A paycheck and a submissive student body.
You've tried lengthening and shortening the school year to compensate for lower test scores (and everyone hates being in class during the month of June; the heat is tremendous, and it's almost worth calling in a bomb threat just to have a day off), You've tried tweaking the tests to more accurately reflect students' learning. You've tried parent-teacher conferences. You've tried cutting teacher's salaries and increasing them. You've tried changing the teaching methods. You have Montessori schools and Play schools. You've employed off-duty police as security guards to make sure the students are in their classrooms as the appointed times. You've tried using fear, fear of the known and unknown, to motivate kids to learn, because the life you're living is similar to the one they will be living. You've tried honours classes, and you've tried remedial classes. None of it seems to work, does it? Every attempt to increase the yield of better learned students seems to make things worse.
I am here to tell you that you don't know what you want. Could children be taught subjects like Calculus, Physics, and Advanced Humanities at grade 5? Yes, but you have a plan, or someone does, which requires the workforce to maintain a certain number of people; is that not the rally cry these days, why don't the older ones retire, so the younger ones can give it a try? If you created an army of PhD candidates by grade 8, where would all the jobs go for the former generations? Face it guys, this is all social engineering gone awry. You can't have your cake and eat it. You can't have super-intelligent kids at a young age without having to change how things work, but in doing so, everyone older loses out on their 'shares' in the way things are. They're too old to change, to adapt, too unwilling, and doing so means they 'lose' everything. So, make up your minds. Do you want Doctoral candidates by grade 8, or do you want a slightly idiotic workforce that is still maturing well into their 50s? Lengthening or shortening their summers won't do much here, save the students enjoying themselves or growing up to be terribly dull.
Are you giving birth to sentient beings, who have the rights and privileges to be whomever they want to be, or are you putting out a product, for future consumption by some terrible beings? I will play the game however you want to play it. Idiots or geniuses, the choice is yours.
I am John Hurt.
I have four kids, three are currently in school. They impress the teachers every year when they come back and its simple. For one hour of every day whether we are on vacation or at home they do age appropriate math and writing. The curriculum is free online and they progress rather than regress. The rest of the day they are free to swim, hike, play video games, build models, read etc in short be kids. We always try to fix the system, we fail to recognize that sometimes its us.
No time off from mindless busywork which doesn't, by any stretch of the imagination, prepare anyone for the real world.
No time off from senselessly time-consuming homework. (Why is it that students are given homework anyways? In the real world, your boss doesn't generally give you 'homework'; you work your 8 hours and you're DONE FOR THE DAY.)
No time off from cruel and sadistic bullies.
No time off from incompetent and disinterested teachers.
No time off from the mind-numbingly uncaring bureaucracy of the school administration.
No time off from waking up before dawn to trundle out to the school bus, alone and half-awake.
I'm 33 years old, and I look back at my school years as some of the worst times of my life. The suggestion of eliminating the summer respite would only make an already grueling and unpleasant period of every person's life significantly worse.
Now, there ARE ways to improve our school system. They don't involve adding more time to the school experience. They involve, among other things, tailoring the curriculum to the needs of each student, reducing the focus on mindless drilling for standardised tests, reshaping the curriculum to focus on useful real-world skills, transplanting money currently spent on sports (which should have no place in an academic environment anyways) and other non-academic things such as ROTC into better textbooks, better teachers, and perhaps even undoing some of the damage idiot parents in this country routinely do to their children (such as teaching them that Earth is 6,000 years old and was created in six literal 24-hour days, for example). They also involve treating students like human beings and not mere items on an assembly line, and ensuring that every student is treated with dignity. (The epidemic of school bullying needs to end NOW.)
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Even if the number was zero, we'd still be falling behind because of population growth. We need to add more teachers every year just to keep up with the increasing number of students. So any cuts at all are doubly harmful.
And the social problem here is not that teachers themselves are struggling (although public sector employment is worse off than the private sector) but that we're undermining the education of the next generation of citizens.
No need to be humans. Be slaves and work 60+ hours a week, 49 weeks a year.
We are on a bad path.
Robotics are going to make it worse when they should be making it better.
People do not have to work this hard to survive. When you work your entire life away- unless you love working- you basically didn't live. They took your entire life from you.
It's one of the best systems of slavery ever developed. The slaves are all eager and willing to work until they have black eyes and are dying at their desks before they are even 55 years old.
For bonus points, let's cut back retirement programs and make them work until 70 (if they can get a job) or until their bodies are unable to work any more (maybe disability- maybe out on the streets homeless to die an average of a decade earlier).
It's horrific how much our society has changed over the last 50 years.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
You sound like someone who needs some perspective.
My dad tells the story on how his high school was visited by reporters from a magazine (I believe that it was Life). When the article came out, the headline was about the poor state of education in the country, next to a picture of his high school. This was in the 1930's.
By the way, my Dad (as well as a lot of people who have gone to that school over the years) managed to get a good high school and college education. He continued to pursue education throughout his life (and continues to, to the best of his ablility). Education depends most on the student, second on the influence of family, friends, and maybe teachers, and last on the length of the school year.
Forcing kids to go through that broken system MORE WEEKS PER YEAR isn't an "improvement", no matter how you want to slice it
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Then why did my local district have to make a choice between losing six teachers and fixing a roof on a school? That was improperly installed by a bankrupt contractor.
They chose the roof. After all, what's a few more students in each class....
To a point, money does matter, especially in high poverty schools.
Just because you cannot see the point of sports does not mean that there is not a good one.
Seriously, you are going with the "you're too dumb to see things my way" argument?
There is really no point in high school sports, and even less in middle school sports. All the team effort lessons can be taught in Science, or even English classes by group learning projects.
You could have learned as much in a basic after school pick up game of basketball as 3 years o football taught you, and you would still have your knees and far more of your brain cells intact.
My high school taught home construction as a team activity out of the industrial arts program. Building 3 bedroom houses, and selling them at a profit, until labor unions objected. The workmanship was excellent and electrical and plumbing codes were followed to the letter. The grade was based on how well they understood the concepts, as well as how they got the job done, and extra credit if the house sold at a profit.
Some of those kids went on to become engineering students, others went straight into the trades. None of them went on to running around bashing into other people for a living.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I have a question for you, why was education better when the relative salary of teachers was lower than it is today? The armies that fought the U.S. Civil War were the most literate armies in history (as evidenced by the many letters and journals that they wrote), yet at that time school teachers were generally paid a pittance.
So, when I first read the above, I figured you were just trolling. However, a quick google search turned up the following:
Civil War armies were the most literate in history to that time
Emphasis mine. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to ascertain the precise mistake made by the parent post.
OK, it will cut maintenance costs.
I was in education for a while, a decade ago. A very, very larger percentage of the cost of running a school is salary. 70% to 80% if I remember correctly.
Schools don't pay property taxes, or many other business expenses, and it's a very labor intensive industry - so much of the budget is for people. By increasing the number of days of instruction, you increase the number of days you pay teachers, and cafeteria workers, and bus drivers, and librarians, and nurses, and security, and... on and on.
Where I went to school, it was only hot enough to need air conditioning a few months of the year - summer. So we didn't have AC in the new high school. On those rare, hot days of fall or spring it was miserable. It would cost many tens of thousands of dollars to retrofit the building at this point.
I think there's a lot of factors you don't see.
I'm not saying what we have is great, but you can't just add to the number of days taught by lowering maintenance costs.
Yeah, that's what schools sometimes are, and the slant of the whole article, while not quite flamebait, is going for the whole "in today's competitive world" meme, clearly with an agenda that the writer will probably benefit from.
This is Slashdot, and I'm hearing the choice come down to "To watch TV while bored or work harder not smarter?!". Is no one using their summer to learn some computing, or form a band, or dig around uncle Joe's beat up old Datsun, or build some Hardware Hack?
Elsewhere on other days the "cynical idea" of paying students to get good grades has appeared, to the shock and horror of "but Education must be pure and noble!" Gee, if they're now saying "to be competitive, let's work harder", it's not noble anymore, is it?
There's other articles out there that say "unstructured time", the bane of writers of articles like this, "is necessary for young adolescent growth because it forms a mental glue that is difficult to measure but is important". Sorry, I also won't fall feed a "Citation Needed" Troll. This whole set of articles is 2012 going on 1981. Why 1981? Let's all intone together! "In this fast moving, high pressure, get it done world, aren't you glad there's one company that can keep up with it all?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31yxkSIIn9A
P.S. Nothing is ever good enough. So might as well spend a couple month each year reclaiming our humanity.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine