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.'"

Comments

Alternate hypothesis

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[fiziko]

That absolutely is a factor, but this is far from the first research I've seen (as an educator myself) that indicates three weeks is the longest break the average student can take before skills start to regress. This is why some schools use the "happy medium" of year round schooling. The number of school days is the same as a ten month school year (standard here in Canada) but no break from school exceeds three weeks. Instead, there are more frequent and longer breaks during the school years. (Three weeks at winter, a week at Easter, four days off instead of three for most long weekends, etc.) Academic results are higher (on average), students usually like it once they've tried it because of the more frequent breaks, and working parents enjoy it more. The true test, however, needs to be comparing two otherwise comparable private schools. As you have correctly pointed out, any private system should be able to outperform the local public system on average because the parents who really don't care and produce students who don't respect the need for education send their kids to the public system.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[cappp]

The articles themselves pretty much cede that point.

During the school year, disadvantaged children manage to catch up somewhat to more advantaged students. But during the summer, they lose those gains while their more advantaged peers -- whose parents can afford to arrange for summer enriching activities -- maintain theirs.

Moreover, they note that the issue is more complicated than just throwing a couple of extra days into the mix.

We should note, however, that a long school year tends to go part and parcel with several other policies, such as a longer school day and Saturday school, and this should make us cautious about assigning too much importance to a longer school year in and of itself. A more conservative conclusion would be to think of the package of the three policies having a positive association with student achievement.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[MF4218]

In my country the expensive schools have shorter terms and achieve better academic results. I don't think it's a simple case of how much time you spend, but how you spend it.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[Nursie]

Yet in other countries (UK for instance) the better off folk send their kids to private schools that have longer holidays, and still achieve brilliant results.

You're right (IMHO) that the kids and parents caring is a big factor. I'm not convinced taking away the summers of youth is a good idea though.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[CastrTroy]

Skills do regress. You may not completely lose them but they do regress. Take your average 40 year old who hasn't ridden a bike since he was a teenager and ask him to ride a bike. I'm pretty sure that many would not be a stable as when they were teenagers. On the other hand, I don't think that summer has to be a time for kids to regress and stop learning. My kids have learned a lot this summer. Kids should at least be reading books, if not doing many other things to enforce the material they learned throughout the year. I think the main problem is parents who don't care, and don't take an interest in their children's learning and schooling.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[shiftless]

Saturday school? Seriously? Is nothing sacred?

Not when your goal is to train up kids to be drones, ready and willing to fall in line and slave away 80 hour work weeks to make their employer rich. That's why they don't teach critical thinking skills or financial education either.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[Anonymous Coward]

Cambridge and Oxford may not be entirely typical, but they only have 20 weeks/academic year of lectures. Yet they don't seem to have trouble teaching people things.

The problem, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, nor in our school years, but in ourselves.

In order to make kids do well, live long, and prosper, you only need one principle: Ensure they are better off if they work hard and succeed than they will be if they don't and fail. We use the principle in football and basketball, and have lots of good football and basketball players. We use the principle in teaching performance music, and we have lots of good performers.

It's mainly in things like mathematics where - on the average - we just don't seem to care. The Chinese use the principle in everything, and that's why they increasingly run circles around us.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[epyT-R]

Riding a bike is not the same kind of skill as solving algebra equations.. Biking is kinesthetic and math is intellectual. The brain treats these skills very very differently. Nevertheless, ALL skills regress over time. It's a drawback to neurology that can adapt. Old cruft gets thrown out.

Perhaps the real problem is that some large percentage of what's taught in school is cruft. How it's taught can also be 'cruft' as well.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[cfulmer]

Eh.... The school system in Wake County, NC (the 12th largest in the US) has a number of year-round schools and the results are not as positive as you're painting them. For one thing, the on-again, off-again nature of the year-round system makes finding childcare harder. Secondly, we haven't seen the academic benefits that were supposed to happen. And, thirdly, the country is organized around the traditional school calendar -- want to send your kid to a 4-week summer camp? If you're on a year-round schedule, you can't do it.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[Anonymous Coward]

This, a thousand times. I'm fairly far removed from the educational system now, thank $diety, but this "must be competitive no matter what" crap has got to stop. Here's an idea: why don't the people in charge NOW stop our insane "free trade" policies that make it necessary or desirable for kids to worry about their economic futures when they're 10.

Our society is totally batshit crazy, and we blame everyone and everything except our own economic system and the people in charge of it. Here's a free clue: you can't live on $2/day in the US, and no amount of "adapting" is going to fix that.

Here's another free clue: cognitive dissonance works. Kids are much better than adults at figuring out when somebody is pulling a bunch of BS on them. They get told when they're young that if you work hard you'll be successful, and then they see evidence to the contrary on a daily basis--lots of times in their own homes as a parent is laid off when their job is outsourced. They see people who preach family values go do things politically and in business that make Scrooge look like a nice guy. They see dumb but well liked people getting rewards while the competent but quiet are ignored. They see liars go far and straight shooters go nowhere. They learn, and what they learn is that our society sucks, so they tune it out.

Kids aren't broken. They way we run our world and look on each other as economic prey is.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[fearofcarpet]

My parents were divorced and I came from a family of blue-collar workers and immigrant farmers. I hope that you are not suggesting that they sent me to public school because they didn't care or respect the need for education. My mom held down a job while attending night school and still managed to get me to school on time with my homework done. In the US, in the 80's and early 90's, our school years were constantly shortened to deal with budget cuts. It had nothing at all to do with the quality of education, it was all about screwing over poor kids and the "if you're poor it's because you didn't work hard enough" philosophy that Reagan popularized.

Theoretically all my "wasted" summer months were a big drag on my education, but I contend that the measure of the performance of a kid with respect to schooling is not a measure of future success, nor is it the most important aspect of a child's life. Summer Break offers opportunities to learn other useful life skills. When I was very young, I would spend Summer with my grandparents, who lived in another state (and who weren't poor). They sent me to a great summer camp, where I made friends, performed in skits, played field hockey, swam, etc. One summer I even went to baseball camp. Once I was 12 or so, I would work (under the table) all Summer and when I turned 14, I started working real jobs, with a paycheck. I'm sure I forgot a few proofs from Geometry or some SI units, but I learned so many other skills that are important to success (not the least of which is how much minimum wage sucks).

After many years of state college, I wound up studying at an ivy league university, surrounded by upper-class kids from private schools. Their teachers had PhDs and their schools boasted all kinds of fancy education models. They had all been pushed by their well-educated parents to succeed right from the womb. Many of them actually knew each other from way-back, because they had competed at the same "science competitions" (I still don't know what those are). None of them had jobs--instead they volunteered at soup kitchens, or whatever, because that is the sort of thing fancy-pants universities like on applications. All of them had better educations that I, and all of them retained far more of it. They could talk about literature and sound generally smart and educated. But they were also high-strung and sheltered. Not one of them had ever done a day of real manual labor. Their definition of "hard work" was wildly different from mine and they all expected "hard work" to translate into success automatically. I prefer my rich patchwork of life experience and realistic expectations to their sterile bubble of self-indulgence and I credit my long, budget-induced summers with much of what makes me unique.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[daem0n1x]

If everybody is a business man, who is left to do the work?

OK, not everyone will succeed. In fact, the vast majority will fail. So, in your dream society there's a little bunch of successful business men and a vast majority of frustrated, miserable losers who hate what they do because they all wanted to be business men. And they receive shit pay because they have "failed". Can't you see a systemic problem with this model?

Summers off?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.]

Re:Summers off?

[frisket]

Schools were out during the summer so that children could work in the fields. How relevant is this now?

For some people here in rural agricultural Ireland, very. Ditto elsewhere in the countryside. But that's maybe 5-10% of the population. If school isn't going to be a year-round thing, then cut some of the summer holiday and add it to the other breaks. Or make the timings entirely local, as you described.

Re:Summers off?

[mister_playboy]

I'm glad I got summers off... neither my elementary nor my high school had AC. (Both do have it now however)

Re:Summers off?

[Mashiki]

Schools were out during the summer so that children could work in the fields. How relevant is this now?

I don't know about where you live, but in my neck of the woods(Ontario), kids still work in the fields here. In fact, kids will still be working in the fields here until about the end of September and sometimes right up until mid-October. The provincial government doesn't like it, not a single bit, they've tried reallllly hard to piss all over farmers who have kids who do this. In most cases, the answer of parents have been to homeschool. It's gotten exceptionally bad in the last 6 years since the Liberals(left) have come to power over it, and they keep sloshing around the "try to ban kids from working on the farm" it keeps getting knocked down by the PC's(Conservatives who are right of centre) and NDP(far left).

Though I shouldn't be surprised at this response from the odd ball American. Especially since Obama dept. of agriculturehad tried to ban kids from working on the farm, and driving farm machinery.

Re:Summers off?

[Belial6]

And if you mean by preventing child abuse, actually abusing the child by retarding their development through the restriction of their activities, sure. There are lots of ways to abuse kids. Sending them out to fend for themselves at 18 when they have never been allowed to develop into adults before that is a really common form of abuse these days.

Re:Summers off?

[Mashiki]

children driving a tractor or whatever is NOT abuse.. While I did not grow up on a farm, I was driving the family 12hp workhorse to mow lawns and haul wood and such.. I was around 6 or 7.

Of course it's not child abuse. Only in the warped mind of some government nanny is it child abuse, and the worst offenders are big city liberals who've never spent a day working on a farm in their lives. I spent my summers working on my uncles farm, either getting into the typical farm type trouble and in turn getting myself out--such as just how do you get a field beater that you just got stuck in 6" of mud out(that's easy, you go get the dozer and hook up some chains and pull it out)--to yeah and now we go off and harvest the corn. Enjoy that there 12hr day kiddo, by the way this is the CB...enjoy talking with your nieces and nephews, and the truckers along the highway(the 401 was nearby).

I've cut myself, sliced my fingers open, gotten more stitches than I can count. Never broken a bone though. Meh I've been spit on by horses, pissed on by cows. Hit and smacked around by sheep and goats. Had a bull charge me, because I was walking by. I've been up at the crack of stupid milking just about every stupid animal you can think of that can make milk, I've sheared things, I've busted my ass and done hard work and learned a major work ethic doing it. And I learned how to make silo-shine as they called it.

And I wouldn't trade that time for anything in the world.

Two weeks

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Suggested by someone who has forgotten

[cloricus]

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'.

Re:Suggested by someone who has forgotten

[CubicleZombie]

Learning constantly for 12 years is hard.

This.

My son has his whole life ahead of him to have his soul crushed in a cubicle. He has only one chance to be a kid.

"We just sit there and watch TV"
That's the parent's fault, not the school system.

meh

[vux984]

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.

Not a longer school year; just better distribution

[dskoll]

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.

Re:No

[TWX]

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?

Re:simple answer: NO

[wisnoskij]

There will always be losers, layabouts, and lazy people. No school schedule will chance this.

Works for us pretty well

[jht]

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.

Missing part: family

[Todd Knarr]

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>".

Re:Missing part: family

[Dr Fro]

The whole point of the education system is to make the square students fit into the round holes of standardized testing.

Public schools fail, so give them more ?

[kimanaw]

If the current system is failing, why would we want to give kids even more of it ?

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.

Terms and semesters

[warewolfsmith]

Terms and Semesters, works well in Australia.

Re:Leave Summers Alone

[CubicleZombie]

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.

no

[slashmydots]

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.

Who pays?

[gmhowell]

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.

Re:No

[AK Marc]

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.

Re:No

[colin_faber]

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.

Re:No

[AK Marc]

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.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:No

[EdIII]

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.

Re:No

[Bender0x7D1]

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.

Re:No

[D'Sphitz]

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.

What's the point?

[Velex]

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.

Just say No! Obligatory John Taylor Gatto quote

[Paul Fernhout]

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

Re:No

[russotto]

FUCKING PAY FOR IT .

Fucking Christ. Seriously?

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.

Re:No

[Mabhatter]

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?

Re:No

[Rudeboy777]

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.

Re:No

[demonlapin]

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.

Re:No

[russotto]

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.

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.

Sure-- better training to be slaves

[Maxo-Texas]

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.

Re:No

[icebike]

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.
 

Re:No

[Knave75]

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.

Re:No

[Skynyrd]

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.