Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Asks: Should Schooling Be Year-Round?
Around the world, American schools' long summer break is viewed as an anomaly, and the long summer seems to be getting shorter. While most American primary and secondary schools used to start after Labor Day, more and more of them now open sometime in August (and that's not counting the ones that have gone to a year-round schedule). Some of my younger relatives started a new school year last week (in Indiana), while Baltimore schools start later this month. Both Seattle and Portland's kids have until after Labor Day (with start dates of the 3rd and 4th of September, respectively). The 4th is also the start date for students in New York City's public schools, the country's largest district. Colleges more often start in September, but some get a jump start in August, especially with required seminars or orientation programs for new students. Whether you're in school, out of school, or back in school by proxy (packing lunches or paying tuition), what time does (or did) your school-year start? Would you prefer that your local public schools run all year round, if they're of the long-summer variety? (And conversely, if your local schools give short shrift to summer, whether that's in the U.S. or anywhere else, do you think that's a good idea?)
Kids should have at least a couple of months out of the year when they can just not worry about their studies and have fun and BE KIDS.
I mean, jeez! You only get to be a kid once. Let them enjoy those summer vacations. When I think back to my childhood, my fondest memories are during those summer vacations! Why the heck should we take that away from our future generations?
Leave summer vacation in place. And stop freaking shortening it.
He wants his 50 cent consulting fee for being right again.
This year round stupidity came from parents who don't want their kids around the house. So they shove the child rearing off onto the schools who cannot punish them properly, can't do many things, and are not designed to raise their kids. Also, if you make them go year round, even though the drop out rate is already high, the drop out rate will go through the roof. They look at schools as holding pens for young thugs to keep them off the streets.
Who cares to even read the titles anymore?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
You've been coolin', baby I'm not foolin'.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Inquiring minds want to know.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Yes
One thing that gets missed in this whole year-round school debate is: when is the school going to have time for major maintenance, repairs, and renovations? Many schools are already packed through to the brim (in terms of classroom capacity) so it's not like they can close down an area of the campus/building to get work down while class is in session; construction noise and construction zone safety are major factors too. Ever been on the floor above when a construction worker is using an impact driver into a wafer ceiling?? If you have, you have probably noticed it's louder and more annoying noise for you that for the construction worker. On the safety side, do you really think it's a wise idea to do a crane lift of a large HVAC unit while there are unwatchful, unrulely, or apathetic students down below?
Schooling as we know it has become industrialized
Young children becomes the raw input
Teachers / administrators become the robotic hands to turn screws
Textbooks and all other teaching aids become the paint / lubrication
And out goes the finished product - something that has all its innate creativities and curiosity wiped
The industrialized schooling method might have worked in the 18th, 19th or even the 20th century but in the 21st century and beyond, what the world needs are human beings capable to tap into their FULL POTENTIALS, not some drones regurgitating whatever they have been programmed with
When I have children, I will do everything in my power to keep them out of school as much as possible. They will learn far more by just idly dicking around at a library. Our pedagogy is a terrible joke, and even good teachers' efforts are wasted due to the poisonous atmosphere created by forcing a heterogenous population of few thousand stressed and bored children to spend several hours a day together.
I personally like year round myself.
I would much rather have several two week sessions off than one big long stretch of time.
From my experience teaching at a year round school, there seems to be plenty of time for major maintenance and remodeling during the various breaks. Remember that year round schools generally meet for the same number of days each year, split between three sessions (a fall, spring, and summer session) with 4-6 weeks off between each session.
Rhapsody in Numbers
No, "schooling" is bad. Education is good. The two things are very, very different. But if you want to give kids an education, you shouldn't send them to our one-size-fits-all rote memorization factories.
I believe that the problems in education are not unlike the problems that Americans encounter in living their lives. Its very hard for an individual to manage a successful life these days, even with an education. For parents with children and scarce resources and education its even harder. If year round schooling can be part of a routine for working parents so that they can consistently manage work and supervision of their children while they are at work, then I believe that will have a profoundly positive effect on the overall quality of education in the United States. If we can accommodate the lives of families to be successful in their daily routines, then our education system will find routine success as well. Dropping out has always been our biggest educational problem , so this is a sensible place to START.
We have very long summer breaks. My kids have the French calendar, two whole months for vacarions, and a week break every six weeks.
sorry about typo
If the school is a hell-hole, then the students would probably be better off working in a sweatshop full time. At least, they'd be getting paid.
If it's a nice place with a solid education near the degree of progress of a good college or vocational school, then year round would work out, I think. I would miss summer vacation though in that situation.
The idea that it takes 12 years of schooling to produce a student ready for college is completely wrong, and is shown to be so by several lines of evidence :
0) Read 'Summerhill' by O'Neill. Kids who attend class don't do so much better than kids who don't. Kids who were illiterate went to college after a year or so of self-study.
1) Adult ed classes around the world take a couple of weeks in a classroom to get students to the point where they can continue entirely on their own, using books, and continue into college in 2 or 3 years, depending on time, motivation, intelligence.
The mind matures, it can learn more and much faster.
So the proper goal of education is to produce good mature brains : music, art, play, acting, singing, languages and a lot of practical experience at doing things , anything. Cooking, wood working, gardening, ...
We got into this mess by a historical accident amplified by teacher's self-interest. At the beginning of the industrial revolution, kids got a year of school or so before they went to work. Under those conditions, it made sense to teach as much as possible in the first year, then do it again next year, etc. From that + the teacher's desire to be employeed, we got the idea that we had to build knowledge, that first grade reading was required for 2nd grade, etc.
In fact, it is completely normal for kids to be several grades behind in a subject at the beginning of the year, and at least up to grade level with a couple of hours of tutoring every week. Every teacher who gives a damn about kids produces those 'miracles' routinely.
Longitudinal studies show that social effects of the present educational system and pedagogical approach are very likely the source of much of our society's pathologies, e.g. the divorce rate, crime rate, ...
Western educatin systems are just another example of a socialist utopian scheme. They have all failed.
I have had to interview numerous High School graduates and Junior College attendees who were so bad at math they couldn't run a cash register. What evidence is there to indicate that "schooling" over the summer is a benefit to them or Society at large?
Although I object to his lack of citations, real proof, and his use of innuendo and other false arguments, I strongly agree that John Taylor Gatto http://johntaylorgatto.com/ is right: The American Education system is irrevocably broken and must be redesigned from scratch. The school system is (WARNING!:GROSS GENERALIZATION AHEAD!) something where you send your kids to prison during the working hours to have their heads messed with by persons only marginally capable of feeding themselves .
OK, I agree that there are SOME dedicated and competent teachers, but I suspect they are working in an environment that systematically sabotages their best efforts. It is also true that some students do well in spite of the average school environment. These anomalous students maybe have access to better schools, better teachers, and better parents.
The idea of making students go to school year-around is case of "jumping-to-solutions" and avoids any real thinking about "How can we improve our educational system?"
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
I'm not adverse to having year-round education, but the most important and interesting things I ever did were outside of school. I spent a summer teaching myself to program GW-Basic on my 286 in the basement and another at summer camp. I took computer-focused summer courses at a special high school. I remember those days with good memories, and some good education got adsorbed along with it. If I had to spend those days sitting through the same Math and English courses I hated during the rest of the school year, I'd be a much more miserable person. My high school chemistry course involved less chemistry than my 3rd grade "rocks and minerals" course. The problem with our educational system is the lack of inspiration, we teach "classes" without focus on application or purpose. What do I use calculus for?.. little to nothing. But a "personal finances" course (which did NOT exist) could have saved me from ruining my financial history. Take me to a factory and show me how something is made, don't just waste my summer with a physics course that involves NO physical objects or demonstrations and try to convince me that I need to know it for some reason.. I don't believe you because you've provided no evidence. And my school wasn't crap, it was a highly-rated public school in Northern Va.. it's just that our cirriculum was paranoid about safety and was painfully boring - so nothing was really worth remembering. Then came the college "computer science" course that did not involve touching a computer for 2 years... leading to my abandonment of institutional academics. I have learned everything I know about computers and software from outside of school. All 23 languages I've written in (and two I've created) were done without supervision or direction. So don't take their summer away, give them a summer worth remembering.
Research clearly shows that skills regress if students don't apply those skills for over three weeks (on average; different students naturally have different retention rates.) Year round schools don't generally have significantly more school days than those with long summer breaks, they just have shorter and more frequent breaks. Kids *still* get times to be kids, but the classroom spends less time in review so more forward progress can be made. Year round schooling is better for the students, but it's not the most important reform needed in North America at the moment.
- W. Blaine Dowler
http://www.bureau42.com
Schools are not daycare/nanycare for your rug rats.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but for many people in the US they are just that. It's more likely to be that way for low income parents. Especially those low income parents who work more than 40 hours a week.
Classic school hours are 8am to 3pm. If the child takes the bus then add on average about an hour to both. So they leave at 7am and arrive at 8am. After school activities mean the child can't take the bus home, but typically last for about 2 hours. So, a parent doesn't need to pick them up until around 5pm.
This lets a working parent not have to worry about his or her child, and may be why some parents encourage after school activities. Of course far too many parents think their kid will be the next sports superstar and make millions of dollars. Those people are idiots.
So lets pretend that we've just completed writing this code, as opposed to having just completed sabotaging it -Altera
Year round in a high security school where firearms are confiscated and teachers try to stay alive rather than teach: NO Year round don't you dare take your child out of school or we'll throw you in prison: NO Year round schooling where creativity and rational logical thought is taught: YES
And that pretty much sums up why we homeschooled our two, who ended up with full scholarships to the state U for their efforts. Did we make them sit at a desk 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year? Of course not. We took vacations whenever the heck we wanted, we let them stop whenever they had demonstrated understanding of the day's lesson (average time: 2 hours a day doing schoolwork), and we shut down just about the entire month of December to accomodate visiting relatives, Christmas parties and other activities, and playing in the snow.
Of course, the subtitle of the TFS ("from the home-schooling-never-stops dept.") is exactly right. For (good) homeschoolers, EVERYTHING is a learning opportunity. For the little 'uns, sounding out words in the grocery store or learning to identify different animals. For the older students, anything from existentialism to comparitive religion to politics on any level to physics to algebra to constitutional law to history to classic literature to an assortment of foreign languages, theater, music history... you never know what may come up in the course of a day while we go about our lives.
Summer vacation has an effect size of d=.02 on learning, which is not good. .4 = 1 year of growth
http://ibiologystephen.wordpre...
But here is the deal, the longer we stop doing something, the less proficient we are at doing it. Think balancing a chemical equation in chemistry or solving the a Lorentz time dilation problem in physics, or remembering the plot of Snow White (assuming you haven't seen in 10 years).
Sure kids forget, we all do, but it is easy to dive back in and strengthen those memories with review, just like exercising a muscle.
To me the point of education should be this, teach kids to love learning, be curious, and learn how to learn. As a teacher, if you have done this, you have done your job. The goal of teaching is not to turn kids into homework machines that suck the life out of them so they can perform on the standardized test, all the while making them hate school and learning. Anything you learn today is obsolete in less than 4 years anyway and many things forced on kids in schools via state standard wish-lists are useless.
Childhood is a precious time where we learn lots and lots of stuff without sitting quietly in a desk. We build, we play, we explore the world, we ride bikes, dance, sing, play with dad's tools, and make all sorts of discoveries which aren't covered on standardized tests.
So it comes down to this, do we want study machines or children? Ask the children in South Korea.
Scroll down, school is like prison.
http://www.ashesthandust.com/t...
In North Carolina, USA, There was a surprising opponent to year-round schooling. It was the tourism industry.
I learned far more during the months off in summer than I did in school. Don't get me wrong, learning to touch type in school was valuable.
But I learned how to be a productive member of society working summers. I learned how to be an individual person at summer camp--arguably my moment of self actualization. Trips with families exposed me (back when this existed) to different societies/cultures--as well as that humans are all essentially the same ego pursuers.
If some venue taught me how to balance a checkbook and do taxes, and how to write formal correspondence, my education would be more complete than average. None of those things (save the correspondence and touch typing) happened in school.
Both my parents were educators. My father also a school psychologist part time. When I proposed to him the premise that folks need to learn on the job, that school and higher education were more for delaying folks entrance to the work force, he basically agreed. Obviously there are certain careers that require higher education, but often the knowledge base of those positions has changed by the time one graduates and you have to learn on the job anyway.
Schools tend to have artificial social environments that it's good to escape from to round out personal development.
Besides, what's the point of becoming an underpaid teacher if you don't get summers off?
This is from a Norwegian perspective, so anything here may or may not apply to the US. Here in Norway the three last weeks of July are extremely common to take vacation in, it's known as the "fellesferie" = "common vacation". It's a leftover from when many industries literally stopped in the summer, with the exception of those doing maintenance/upgrades. Basically where it's hard to run with half the staff, everyone gets the the same forced vacation. There's a huge network effect so everything is closed/on skeleton crew because everything else is too. What it practically means though is that every vacation resort or activity is crowded and overbooked, prices are insane and those who can avoid it.
For this reason being able to take vacation before (June) or after (August) or really any other time has become a perk and so it's been spread relatively thin. The school vacations though, they're like forced vacations so yes they're roughly 8 weeks to accommodate when their parents have time off, and even that is challenged as they want to travel in the off season. If the vacations had been shorter, all the parents would all have to squish together in those same weeks. Either that or you'd have to make the school vacation flexible, but then you'd have to run it all summer long for those who happen to be there at that time.
As I recall, in summer school was always a place to send your kids to if both parents had to work and you needed someone to take care of you, but that was not school. There were no teachers, no classrooms. It was more like supervised play, basically they kept track that you didn't get lost or hurt but we were left to make up our own activities with those we wanted to play with and there was no forced participation in anything, though they did try to get something going if all looked bored. I suppose in retrospect I'd call it big kid daycare, that's really what it was but there was a completely different level of freedom to it than school.
Nothing beat the sense of freedom from NOT going there though, to really be unsupervised even for just a few hours. I think it's a natural part of growing up, if you're always in school with people looking after you and then always with your parents looking after you then sooner or later you're going to drop off a cliff when you're on your own. I'm mostly glad I didn't have a cell phone as a kid, I couldn't go crying to mommy and daddy and they couldn't be overprotective as independence was sort of a necessity. I think as a parent today it would be awfully hard to let go simply because you have the technological ability not to.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Homeschooling is all day, all week, all year, for life.
We homeschool.
We started when our kids were born.
They learn every day.
Every day of the week.
Every week of the year.
It's lifetime learning.
They still get to be kids.
And they work on our farm.
Their mastery is far above public, and private, school levels for the same age.
They don't spend weeks and months forgetting stuff over vacations and summer.
They don't waste gobs of time on wait-wait-wait and sitting around as is the way of modern schooling.
They take responsibility for learning as they develop that ability rather than being tracked by an artificial curriculum which wastes time on politically correct nonsense.
They learn real science untainted by PC sensitivities.
They love learning. The joy of it isn't killed by the grey public school agenda.
This is like life used to be and better than the disconnected of today which is a result of the dystopia of urban culture.
I was an elected school board member in the 1980s. During that time, I would attend the annual California School Boards Association conferences.
One year, I heard an interesting presentation on a form of year-round schooling. The presenter described a calendar in which regular classes would meet for 9 weeks followed by a 3-week break, making a four-quarter school year. The 3-week break would not be a break for all students. He pointed out that 9 months of failure could not be corrected in only 6 weeks of summer school, a ratio of 6.5 to 1. Instead, students not meeting expected academic performance would have to attend remedial classes during the 3-week break, a ratio of 3 to 1.
It was already a noticeable problem in our schools that students would sometime miss classes because their parents took them on a skiing trip in the winter, to visit family in the spring, or to see fall color. As a member of the 2005-2006 County Grand Jury, I learned that this problem had grown worse county-wide in the 15 years after I left the school board. This radical calendar would provide 3 weeks off for those trips for students who were performing well in class.
This calendar would also provide an extra 2 weeks around Christmas and New Year, when even remedial students and their teachers would be off. It would provide for all the holidays the state Legislature mandates on public schools. Yet it would still involve the full 182 days of instruction annually that the Legislature also mandates. By shifting teacher in-service days to the 3-week breaks, students would actually be learning during all 182 days.
Of course, there would be increased costs for the remedial instruction and for the in-service days. That likely dooms this concept since too many members of the state Legislature think cutting taxes is the most important thing they can do, more important than educating our children, repairing our roads, assuring a supply of water, or anything else.
Massachusetts has great schools, among the best in the world.
They don't have a 12 month school year.
The first thing to do is getting the normal school year working properly across the US. Then we can come back and talk about 12 month school years.
Research concluded that poor kids, where parents usually don't spend as much 'meaningful' time with the children, because they're busy working three jobs to get food on the table, actually lose knowledge (math, reading comprehension) during summer. Blue collar/middle class children usually were leveled whereas middle class/rich kids actually got a bit smarter during summer. (http://www.education.com/reference/article/Ref_Summer_Learning_Loss/).
So for some children there may certainly be a benefit to less vacation.
One thing that gets missed in this whole year-round school debate is: when is the school going to have time for major maintenance, repairs, and renovations? Many schools are already packed through to the brim (in terms of classroom capacity) so it's not like they can close down an area of the campus/building to get work down while class is in session
Office buildings don't seem to have this problem.
I think the answer is simple: DONT OVERPACK STUDENTS; overbuild capacity is a must. Or construct additional buildings.
Crane lifting a HVAC unit is a once in 30 or 40 years type event.
We homeschool/unschool -- however, at great expense in terms of professional opportunity cost. As others have pointed out to echo your point, there is a big difference between "schooling" and "education". This is true even in the very "best" school districts which can be terribly oppressive places for children whose interests are not mostly academic or, in some cases, artsy and who don't plan to go to a top college and so would bring down the schools college acceptance scores. This can include hands-on practically-oriented children or wide-ranging people-oriented children or free-thinking imaginative children and so on who may not do well in settings focusing on abstraction or interactions with only-same age peers and authority figures or working on assigned tasks with arbitrary structure and with arbitrary timetables.
Your point also connects with bullying, A normal resolution to bullying by another kid might be to avoid him or her and choose different kids to associate with. However, school structure does not permit that for kids crammed together in a classroom. Izzy Kalman and "Bullies to Buddies" provides help for for unavoidable bullies though.
See also by John Taylor Gatto:
"The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher"
http://www.worldtrans.org/whol...
"After an adult lifetime spent teaching school I believe the method of mass-schooling is the only real content it has, don't be fooled into thinking that good curriculum or good equipment or good teachers are the critical determinants of your son and daughter's schooltime. All the pathologies we've considered come about in large measure because the lessons of school prevent children from keeping important appointments with themselves and with their families, to learn lessons in self- motivation, perseverance, self-reliance, courage, dignity and love and lessons in service to others, which are among the key lessons of home life.
Thirty years ago these things could still be learned in the time left after school. But television has eaten up most of that time, and a combination of television and the stresses peculiar to two-income or single-parent families have swallowed up most of what used to be family time. Our kids have no time left to grow up fully human, and only thin-soil wastelands to do it in. A future is rushing down upon our culture which will insist that all of us learn the wisdom of non-material experience; a future which will demand as the price of survival that we follow a pace of natural life economical in material cost. [PDF: I question the previous point on material scarcity...] These lessons cannot be learned in schools as they are. School is like starting life with a 12-year jail sentence in which bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it.
I should know."
More by John Taylor Gatto (1992 New York State Teacher of the year) here: https://www.johntaylorgatto.co...
Especially: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com...
"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."
Also: http://www.the-open-boat.com/G...
"Schooling is a for
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I loved school, but I'm for summer break, a generous one from Memorial through Labor Day. In fact I've been mulling whether grown-ups should have summer breaks too, if we could.
School is a narrow, weird world. It readied me in some ways, but in others I was a seedling. There are other ways a child must grow. Playing at home and in the neighborhood, hanging from trees, exploring, etc., are very good for the brain and the heart. Some kids go to camp, whether it be outdoor, sports, music, or whatever. You can't very well spend a month concentrating on a certain field when you have to go to school. I myself wasn't a joiner. I rejected Boy Scouts, band, and all sports. But I made up for it when I discovered moviemaking. In high school I made about 40 movies, short ones, but they had screenplays, multiple camera angles, special effects, editing, the best I could do.
I lament that I no longer have that creativity, and I blame it on the year-round non-stop drudgery that is the American way. Someone once said that a Frenchman told them you need five weeks: one week to get ready, two weeks to go somewhere, and two weeks to recover from vacation. Here we nary get more than week off at a time. There's just never a chance to recharge.
My son misbehaved and was sent to year-around school for 3 years. It is called
the Youth Detention Facility. He did not like it, but learned a lot, specially
non-scholastic subjects.
The tests are garbage, though. At most, they just test for rote memorization, so it would prove nothing worthwhile.
And, of course, you're illustrating the real problem with this idea: it would cost money. Money for buildings and money for teachers, and if there's one thing that Americans won't abide by (there are actually many things) it's spending money on stuff that doesn't blow other stuff up. Or medicare. (but not socialized health care! we aren't communists!)
In the USSR summer vacation used to be roughly three months, however children got a list of books to read (and I'm not talking about one, or two. More like 10-15 mandatory and another 10-20 optional) and, come September, were questioned on them.
9th or 10th grade (don't remember) contained such gems as War and Peace (the complete four-tome!), Crime and Punishment, Eugene Onegin, Queen of Spades, and other quite serious works.
I've experienced several school systems and neither Austrian, German or US systems came even close to teaching as much as the Soviet did. I went to "good" schools, some of them quite expensive. In the latter three countries, students were quite vocal about objecting to having more than one exam in a week, even though they had to be announced up front. In the USSR, you just *had* to be prepared for *each* class or risk getting a bad grade for the quarter.
The Soviet system also separated literature and language, as well as math and geometry, whereas the other three systems lumped these subjects together into language+literature and math+geometry.
All in all, the Soviet system was *much* more satisfying and intellectually stimulating than any other system I had the "pleasure" of experiencing.
A short anecdote: we've learned matrices in 7th grade in the USSR. When I was called to the board to solve a system of linear equations in 9th grade in AT, it was quite amusing to experience the surprised teacher say that this is something people learn in University for their STEM degrees.
On the other hand, I had to catch up a year of Latin there, so I guess that even out the surprise. When I later moved to Germany and asked the principal there whether Latin is part of the local curriculum, he asked me if I was planning on listening to Radio Vatican. I thought that's funny at the time, but my little knowledge of Latin still helps me understand a great deal of languages I don't speak and I wish I'd have learned more.
The US school I visited was a jack of all trades, more focused on creative education and quite boring, as I've already went through most of the curriculum in other countries (i.e. it lagged behind all other systems! You people there really gotta work on that, before it's too late.).
BTW, Austria had two months of summer vacation, and Germany around 3-4 weeks (it sucked big time, so unproductive and slow the whole year!).
For my kids, I'd prefer them to go to school in Russia and Austria, as that's a very good mix IMO.
I've heard the Japanese school system is even more intense (with students even committing suicide over the workload, etc.). Maybe someone would like to provide a short comparison in a reply.
This is crazy. We've allowed our kids to be overloaded with homework; now we're letting the education lobby steal summer vacation. Once the state is able to jack the retirement age up to 85 or so we'll have the perfect hive society.
Why is all the good stuff already modded 5, when I have mod points?
While I generally support year-round schools it will make maintenance of the schools a bit trickier. Just about half the schools here get some sort of construction done on them every summer and it's almost always down to the wire getting it finished in time for classes to start.
I think that having such a large break means that, in many cases, kids are forgetting important knowledge and skills over the summer break as they sit at home or play football or work jobs. My old school district "solved" this problem by assigning required reading and book reports for the summer -- but if you're going to do that, why not just have full class?
Personally, I think constant reinforcement is better for people to learn things. They should be in school year-round, being constantly reinforced and challenged a little bit more each time, rather than having to devote the first 1/4 of the school year just to refreshers.
On the other hand, I completely agree with the parent poster that kids need to BE KIDS. Making them "work" (go to school) and sit still and listen for 8 hours a day, then come home to do more homework on top of that doesn't let them ever be kids for most of the year.
Rather than being so bipolar, I would like to see year-round school, but lessening of the school day. Say, a 4 hour day or so. Devote an hour to class, then send everyone home to do homework and work on extracurriculars (which maybe the extracurriculars could be robot club at school, or whatever, but not required classes).
I think this does the most to fix all the issues: kids can BE KIDS ALL YEAR LONG because they have plenty of time each day to sign up for clubs and sports activities after school, and aren't expected to "act like adults" and sit still for 8+ hours every day, but they also go to school all year so they don't get behind, instead always progressing and refreshing constantly. By the same token, our overworked teachers will also get some time off from classroom/school duties to actually get a damn vacation a few nights a week, and have time to actually sit and work on effective new teaching plans/projects to advance education even further (rather than being burned out and angry like they are now -- I know, I teach at tech schools and my sister is an elementary teacher). It seems kids and teachers will be happier.
The only negative I can think of is that with kids getting out after 4 hours, maybe some parents will need babysitters/after-school care and can't afford it? High schoolers can take care of themselves, and instead of current 6:30am to 2:30pm, why can't we let our kids sleep??? research has shown teens typically are night-owls, so lets let them sleep in and go to class 10:30-2:30pm instead). But elementary schools are more like 9am to 4:30pm, I imagine to fit work schedules for parents that need to pick up their young kids. Not sure about best thing to do with that, but I can say that kids that age need to be out of a classroom EVEN MORE than the older kids, so we need to rethink as a society that too.
This is a huge point most educators miss. School actually teaches you very little about life outside of school. School is a very limited subset, and very unrealistic reproduction of reality. If I don't like where I work, I get a different job. Unless your parents move (or are rich) you don't get another school. A huge part of a vast portion of society will working alone or in small groups. Not in a room with 20+ other people with the same task.
We need to stop teach the test and move away from the push to have all go to college.
Me>So you want year round school in the south, but do you want to pay for it?
Other person>But it's the same amount of days, they are just spread apart differently.
Me> But not all days are created equal, when it's 105F out, you're spending a whole lot of electricity to keep the place cool. Even worse, most school busses are not equipped with air conditioning and would have to be refitted or replaced.
http://www.yourhoustonnews.com...
And, of course, you're illustrating the real problem with this idea: it would cost money. Money for buildings and money for teachers
This is already an issue. More money needs to be spent, even if we don't go to year-round schooling.
Also... a 4-day school week, 2-week vacation every 4 months and perhaps a 3-week winter break would also still provide plenty of time for building maintenance; they would just have to prioritize the maintenance differently.
For example: schedule it around the days that students are not there.
When I was in high school, they were remodeling three out of the four years I was there. Somehow, we all managed to survive. It did mean that some kids had to share lockers with their friends and the "class corridor" (i.e., senior corridor, freshman corridor) system sort of broke down as people tried to snag lockers where they could.
...more of it is worse. And even if total days of school are the same, penny-ante 2-week-long breaks spread throughout the year are not as good as a long break to let the body and mind rest from the trauma of public school.
Abolish "schooling" altogether. it's an obstacle to learning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Summer vacation was originally created so farmers could use their children as labourers during the crop season.
Nowadays it exists mainly because the teachers unions would scream bloody murder if teachers had to work all year like everyone else.
With the number of double-income families nowadays, it would be a lot easier for parents to deal with 4 1-2 week breaks per year instead of a couple months at one shot, due to the hassles of arranging child care for the summer months.
However, I don't expect anything to change in the near future. See earlier point on unions.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I got to attend a school in Germany for a year. What was being studied in the 7th grade there didn't show up for the most part until the 9th grade where I went to high school. The cool part was that there would be long breaks, where you have several weeks off at a time, so it broke up the crazy of school. I'd say yes to year round school, especially if it was broken up more with fewer half days and more week - two week breaks with an occasional 3 weeks off.
Yes, farming was a big reason.
Summer cooling is expensive. Teachers should be paid more if they work more. Nobody would work 2 more months per year at the same pay. (Teachers end and start at different dates than the students.)
I learned a great deal during the summer vacation. Don't let school interfere any further with your child's education!
More children need to be allowed to FAIL... and spend their summer saving face so they can be with their peers again.
Not that anything matters when you have a system geared for rote learning to pass standardized multiple guess exams; ignoring all the less quantifiable education or things not deemed important enough to regiment into a rigid exam system.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Your critique seems to tilt in favor of eliminating government schools entirely, and allowing responsible individuals decide exactly how and when, and if they send their kids to school. The fact that government schools have become de facto babysitting centers leads me to believe that if we're going to run them that way, we should just build them to that specification - eliminate any pretense at curriculum, and just hire babysitters to keep law and order amongst the inmates.
A vast majority of the population does not need to go to college. Most people aren't even cut out for college, and will just cause colleges to become half-assed trade schools in an effort to appease all these job-seeking mental midgets.
'Everybody's gotta go to college!' will just make colleges useless when it comes to giving people a quality education.
A better question might be; why is it that education is one of the few things we seem to be getting worse at as we advance? More hours in school does not seem to be translating into better trained, more educated, economically useful graduates, but rather the opposite.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Absolutely. I have to work all the time and I fear for my children becoming less than fully indoctrinated as any deviation in thought may result in a loss of employability and social acceptance.
Seastead this.
Nowadays your "real world learning" seems to mean sitting with an X-Box or equivalent for hours a day. There are several kids living on my block -- I've seen them outside less often than I do during the school year, so it's not like they're spending the summer days playing outdoors or anything like that.
No, every kid I know is glued to a TV, a cellphone, a tablet, or a computer. They're not learning *shit* about the "real world".
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Creativity and imagination are more stimulated by the long days of summer than much of what we learn in schools. I would never want my kids to miss out on this. I wouldn't want them to not have the time to think and create with their friends on their own terms. The time for regimentation and order comes quickly enough. Let the kids have the time they will cherish for the rest of their days.
"Around the world, American schools' long summer break is viewed as an anomaly"
I think I need more qualification about this statement. I don't think most people around the world have any inkling about our school schedule. Even fewer would view our summer break as anomalous. Of the countries I have been in and I have been in quite a few, most had lengthy summer breaks as well.
3 weeks doesn't have the same creative learning potential as does 2 1/2 months. The break is what changes the culture and allows kids to experience an alternative life. Alternative living enhances things to a degree that school is simply deficit in.
My favorite bumper sticker has always been "Don't let school get in the way of your education."
After 24+ years of schooling I still realize that school is largely a game. Life outside of school is where the most significant & practical education takes place.
Most of the significant learning happens outside of school. School is there to teach just the basics to survive in our society. The rest of the real learning starts after kids get our of school. Kids need to be taught how to learn. they don't need to spend endless hours being lectured at. Learning happens best when kids find a reason to do so.
seriously, when can they really learn
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Summer is the only time the weather doesn't suck here. It's 9 months of pure suck and 3 good months of summer that's usually is only mild suck. The only thing that keeps people from jumping off a bridge here is summer vacations.
In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
The education crisis in the US is one of a long list of problems that have to many barriers to be solved. We have moral, legal and social issues that simply arrest the educational process. Yes, America is way behind. But we would not do to our kids what some other nations do to theirs to increase educational levels. For example Japan has been known to apply a crushing load to students that American parents would never allow. In some nations the fear of poverty or hope of escape fuels a keen desire to acquire education. On top of that there are nations like China that can educate huge numbers of young people. We are in the predicament of a A high school size team faces when they play against a 5A size school. It isn't pretty to watch as the huge 5A school has so many students who try out for the teams whereas the tiny school has to beg just to get one kid to join the team. The US is not in a competitive position and is not likely to be in a competitive position for many decades. The very nature of the issue is that once a nation slips a bit it is next to impossible to regain top position. We also have no loyalty among our investor class. Even if a product or process happens to be developed in the US it will probably be produced offshore and the money made also deemed to be taxable in nations other than the US,. And with technology taking jobs we have an even stranger issue. We used to worry about whether our workers could out produce another nations workers or if they could pay their workers less than we do. Now the question is whether our robots can produce cheaper than their robots. The price of products is disconnecting from the price of human labor. Quality is also disconnecting from price. A fifty dollar Times or Casio wrist watch may be a better product than many fancy watches that cost tens of thousands of dollars. And the less expensive watches involve almost no human labor at all.
Despite the myth that teachers on;y work 9 months a year bit get paid for a full year, teacher salaries, like any job's, are set based on expected work hours. Just as there really isn't such a thing as paid vacation since it is already factored into a salary theaters don't get paid while not working over the summer. Some districts even give them the choice of 12 or 9 monthly pay periods. If the school year is expanded by 25% then it is not unreasonable for teachers to be paid accordingly; it's no different than any other job all of a sudden saying they've decided to increase the work day from 8 to 10 hours but not pay you any more because they all already paying you for a full year.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
"back"?
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
There are so few teachers who are capable of inspiring children to learn things for themselves that it only takes a couple of weeks a year for them to learn such a basic concept that holds the reward of lifelong learning. Far too often teachers demand that students dowse their quench for knowledge by requiring them to hold to standards of education that are designed to meet the needs of the mediocre.
I wish I could convey to you how severe my frustration with an education system that rewards aceing tests with "C"'s because the required mundane homework assignments were not completed as assigned. The education system I experienced was designed to steer people towards meeting in the middle and did nothing to encourage students to succed on their own.
So how about this? Would you consider a few weeks long test out period for students who just don't want to listen to you rehashing concepts for months on end that they have already mastered in just a few days?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Kids won't learn obedience if they are given free time to think for themselves.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Must be a state vs. state thing. I would imagine that ski resorts and other businesses that depend on winter tourism would welcome having better spaced breaks.
Research suggests that a long summer vacation adversely impacts learning. The Copernican School Plan provides a reasonable balance of school and free time. Only institutional inertia and ignorance precludes it wider adoption.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
I hated every day I was in school, I didn't kind of hate school, I loathed it. I hated at least 50% of my teachers, with maybe 1 teacher in 10 being pretty good. I think in of the maybe 200 teachers that I had, 1 or 2 were exceptional. I hated my school buildings (run down piles of crap). I hated the textbooks, I hated the curriculum, I hated the preachy pamphlets they handed out. I hated the chairs, the piles of broken down gym equipment.
What I did like were many of the friends I made, I liked snow days, I liked weekends, and I liked holidays; but what I loved was the summer break. I barely remember school. It is mostly one indistinct blur sitting in a chair while either the teacher droned on, a movie droned on, or I did drone work. But I could write a book series about my summer adventures and fun with friends. That is where I learned the magical things that made me who I am.
One of my dreams is that online teaching will devastate the school system. That what will happen is that smart kids (let's say average and above) are able to get all they want and more from online schooling and that they are able to abandon the traditional school system. That a secondary system of "practical" courses show up where kids can go in to learn things that require some hands on activities such as engineering, chemistry, nature studies, engine repair, etc. Then these secondary school course will have to "attract" kids who have them as a wise but optional part of education.
Then the schools will be left with the kids who are either too stupid to do online courses or are just don't possess the motivation. This way the lazy teachers and the lazy kids will be a perfect match for each other.
I am not merely motivated by some sort of vengeance but that our existing system is wildly broken. There are plenty of kids who could complete many grades of education per year; while there are other kids who can't. It is silly to hold back the kids who can progress faster by averaging them in with the slower kids. But at the same time it is stupid to allow only the most exceptional kids to skip forward and be freaks. Just let the kids proceed at a pace that they are comfortable with.
As for socializing that can be done through what was traditionally thought of as "after school" programs. So have lots of clubs, sports, etc.
But the last part of the equation are the teachers. My solution is simple. Create the new system, shut down the old system, off jobs as necessary within the new system to people who are qualified.
And in the north you're spending beaucoup bucks to keep the place warm when it's 10 F / -12 C outside.
Schooling is not about quantity, once a certain quantity has been reached (and that one is not very high). It is all about quality and quality in the US (and in other parts of the western world) sucks badly. Good education starts with the best educators that you can get. Pay them well and then give them significant freedom. If you find a bad apple, sack them.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
When I was in high school (early 70's) we started the school year on about 1st February, had a 3 week holidy in May, and another 3 week holiday in Aug/Sept, and finished school a week or 2 before Christmas.
Of course thtis was in the southern hemisphere, where summer is Dec, Jan and Feb
One of the Soviet Union's great accomplishments was the depth and breadth of the education they provided. And the end result of that was it's collapse when the citizens figured out how thoroughly they were being lied to. Don't think other governments didn't notice this little detail. Compare the longevity of the Soviet union with that of the House of Bourbon in France, where education of the commoners was, shall we say, less important.
Yes, I'm feeling cynical today.
Some of the best vacations we've had have been outside of the typical summer holiday season. Skiing in winter, Greece in spring. A schedule of three months school and one month off would allow families to arrange some more varied outings.
Of course, once the kids are out of the house, then us old geezers would rather you kept your kids in school and away from us during some of these most interesting off-peak vacation times.
Have gnu, will travel.
Education is more than school. The school year should start immediately after Labor Day and end before Memorial Day for everyone, at every level. That gives families, students, schools, and businesses a solid schedule for learning, productive, and completely non-productive activities in the widest possible variety of environments. If you need more hours in the school year, make the days longer. Stop all the frivolous 'work days' and concentrate on school and school activities- and then let the students go out in the world to apply, see different things, work, travel, camp, or just play.
http://www.infoplease.com/worl...
For example:
"The school day in France typically runs from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., with a half day on Saturday, although students do not attend school on Wednesday or Sunday. Lunch is a two-hour break for public school students. Students usually attend school from ages 6 to 18. The average number of students per class is 23. Uniforms are not required, but religious dress of any kind is banned. The school year for this country in the northern hemisphere stretches from August to June, and is divided into four seven-week terms, with one to two weeks of vacation in between."
Part of a consideration for any school year is the parent's work schedule and child care.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I Had my older two kids in elementary with a year-round system; now our two younger kids are in traditional. When I first heard about the year-round in our school district (Vista, CA, '90s) I had the same thoughts as "what? kids need summer break, just like I had etc." What I found was that, as far as total days of schooling, it's the same. As far as having working parents, scheduling day care, and being able to take family vacations, year-round is better.
Now, with my younger kids back in traditional, I miss the year round. Summers are a pain to manage, kids get bored, and you have to pull kids out of school to go skiing or visit friends in Europe in October.
So, given a choice, I would go back to year round.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
You did learn it, but it wasn't reinforced. Not many people can learn stuff and retain it long periods with only 1 session. You're looking at more like 3 sessions, minimum in order to retain something long term. Many people will require a dozen reinforcements. Think of it like vaccination in a way. Some vaccines you're good with 1 shot. Some require a booster here or there - giving both shots at the same time doesn't work, you NEED separation. Some you need updates on pretty much an annual basis.
The analogy isn't perfect, of course. My point would be that by having such a sharp divide in the form of summer vacation, you lose a bunch of knowledge that hasn't been reinforced enough. It doesn't necessarily take long to provide that refresher, but if you had a shorter break and were rolling into coursework that uses said knowledge/technique if you're still capable of doing it it provides reinforcement without needing a refresher.
Finally, I'll note that I mentioned 'swing of school' for a reason - study habits and learning behaviors are often not reinforced over the summer, so it takes a while to get them to sit down, listen, and work in schooling again.
I don't read AC A human right
Reason: school sucks.
I'm looking forward to the end of summer, when all the college kids go back to school and stop spending all day taking down my Ingress portals...
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
Take the evil creatures from their mothers at birth, and send them to government run education camps.
Seriously, kids burn out just like adults and need breaks too. They also need time to be 'kids' before they are sent into the machine. You only get one chance to be a kid, dont take that from them too
---- Booth was a patriot ----
That's why homeschoolers learn "better". The parents don't end school at 3 (or whenever school ends for the day). School is 24/7. If every parent did that with their public school student, then there'd be no complaints about the quality of a public school education.
The biggest problem with public schools is the parents who assume everything the child needs to learn they learn while in class.
Learn to love Alaska
Unless education really is just supposed to be about daycare and busywork I think we should focus on quality more than quantity. Those that actually need the extra time can ruin their summers with summer classes.
All that hand-wringing and extra effort when half the class is destined for Wall-Mart. Educate them more, it will make a difference!
Not.
You got the numbers, but don't understand anything about them. The biggest problems with Indian education are at the primary education level - which is why a huge number of children never reach school, drop out, or don't learn anything in primary school. And the drop outs have more to do with impecuniosity than with schools - children have to start "work" at an age of 9.
Secondary, and higher education is really much better than that in the US - taking cost, availability and quality into account. Which is why those who do get good primary education somehow, are like the people the GP describes.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
In grad school I got some funding by being a science assistant to a teacher in a school that was designated as "needs help". In this particular case it was because of shitty test score because of a large immigrant population. To address a couple of the big comments- The teachers loved it because it broke up when they were ALLOWED to take vacation. Basically 6 weeks from the large summer vacation were taken and 2 weeks were dispersed to winder, fall, and spring. Also, teachers optionally taught fun 'camps' during those weeks (parents paid $, teachers got more $ for teaching more), I personally assisted in a science camp one time which was pretty fun. Additionally, they did see positive results as far as the infamous, back-to-school knowledge loss. It seemed easier for kids to pick up where they left off after a few weeks as opposed to a few months. So, after that positive experience, I'm for it.
School all year round with NO breaks.
Also, give grades according to the number of overtime hours the kids stay in school, not according to what they manage to learn. You want all A-s, better spend 90 hours per week in school - you can even do 120 if you sleep under your desk and are careful when you shower.
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
Personally I hated summer vacations, because I got to be taken to my grandmothers' where there were no books, no friends my age, no woods even! I think I only got lazier and my brains stopped working during these meaningless summers...Some kids (but not all) enjoy vacations but there are some for whom the shorter the break the better. I would vote for summer camps as an alternative to summer schooling. Still interesting, intensive but in a different way than school and you got to have advantures!
Since most poor kids parents have little or no education anyway, what would they teach them if they had the time? I know a lot of poor kids whose parents never worked at all. And I know quite a few who find plenty of money for drugs, tattoos, piercings, and jewelry, somehow. Wonder if there is a connection?
Regimented learning- listening to endless lectures, testing, more lectures, etc. no matter how long its done, does not allow for creativity. The goal of all teaching should be to produce self-educating people that don't need to be told what to do all the time. That is why some of the richest people on earth dropped out of the decades long education behemoth and started inventing things, starting businesses, etc. All of the homeschoolers in my college info sys class could teach the class if they wanted to.
Ohhh you don't really believe any of them thought that far ahead do you??? This is the PUBLICK SKOOLS we're talkin here! They think oompa loompas handle all the externalities including the enormous increase in utility bills for herding them into enormous buildings in the hottest time of the year! As for unruly or apathetic students, the schools only know they get the same amount of tax money for a Rhodes scholar at they do an Adam Lanza. So the likelihood of them getting rid of the army of class disruptors that don't want to be there and aren't going to learn anything anyway is absolutely 0.
Homeschoolers can enter college at 13 and graduate with a bachelors at the time most of their age group is getting out of high school. If that fact does not tell the powers that be that there is something massively wrong with government schools, well I don't know what would.
Yes.
All that you have said is true. And this "extend the school year" stuff is just about that. And where does the burden fall? On the people who pay taxes but have no children. If parents had to pay the full cost of sending Johnny to school (and all his brothers and sisters) you would see a significant change in the education industry.
1) We recognize that Summer break was never meant to be time off (it's time when you needed all hands in the field and wouldn't have sent your kids to school anyway), and that do-nothing, responsibility-free childhoods are a rather recent human development. However, it's still healthy for kids to have to learn through play and be free to pursue things on their own. They need the break.
2) We recognize that the break puts a burden on parents to find activities, day care, or camps during the summer. However, it also provides a huge block of time for lengthy family vacations, which would otherwise be impossible to schedule, or even costlier because all kids get the same three week-long mini-breaks. This is good for the entire family's health and quality of life.
3) We recognize that other countries are lapping us in education. But we also have to recognize that that has nothing to do with time or money spent per student. We invest more per student than pretty much any other country, but we get worse results. That's because the fundamental changes to in teaching methods that we've made over the past 50 years have been for the worse, and other countries have made changes for the better.
4) No one wants to pay teachers for the nine months of work that they do already. More time means more cost, which no district's taxpayers are going to pay.
Ending Summer break is another costly distraction from the real problems: many teachers are unqualified for lack of training or materials, all teacher now teach mechanically to standardized tests which distract from the actual material, and many students are never going to achieve their full potential unless we first address some very hard, very real social problems first.
Office buildings do have that problem. The workers are expected to put up and shut up. I've never seen an office where the maintenance work was planned around anything related to the workers. This attitude doesn't work with children in school very well.
Public schools have the problem that they simply can't prepare for the same number of students entering the system each year. Where I work, we hire when we have the need, and don't hire when we don't need people. A public school system has to take every student in the district. If they're not to overpack students, they're going to need more money in the building budgets.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The reason homeschooled children tend to do better is that the parents are involved in the kids' education. If every parent cared about their kids' educations, and showed it by talking to them and helping them (if nothing else, make sure the kid has a good place to do homework), the schools would do a lot better.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Sure, give the parents and kids 6 weeks vacation to take together like the civilized world does, and then extend school into the remainder of summer.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
One of the reasons that the US has a summer break with 2 to 3 months off was for the kids to be at home during harvest. So that the crops could be gathered and preserved for the rest of the year. So originally the kids worked on the farm or orchards etc during this time, even if they couldn't harvest, they could tend the animals etc. while the harvest was going on. To say that the kids need the summer break to be kids and play is false, as it happened as a side effect as the harvest changed from manual to machine labor. At this day and age, when more and more parents both work to support the family, I can see how a full school year can help in a variety of ways. First the weekly schedule would not have to change during summer, day care would be more consistent, I don't know about your areas, but here some kids can't get day care during the summer months because they fill up and no additional companies start up since 9 months out of the year they wouldn't have enough business to keep the doors open. Secondly, teacher salaries would be more consistent with all other businesses, I know that some teachers take no salary during the summer months and others average their paychecks to include the summer months. That discrepancy and additional accounting would be streamlined. Third it would better prepare students for the work force, no summers off, continuing learning and productivity all year round. Of course vacations would have to be planned, so in the school days off there would have to be X number of days figured in to the curriculum for the students to be off for vacation, just like PTO for work etc.. But this would eventually normalize out the vacation spots, as some would take theirs in March, or April or August and September, or maybe other times of the year. Parents would not have to schedule their vacations during the shorter vacation time of summer school vacations.
I don't think most school years are getting longer, except in cases where there is additional vacation during the school year (a 3 week winter break instead of 2, a week for ski week AND a week for spring break, etc.)
What's happening is that high schools are starting to follow the patterns colleges already did: schools on semesters start earlier (August or very early September at the latest), so that the entire semester can be finished before winter break. (High schools used to have winter break, then come back for a few weeks of instruction plus semester finals, which didn't make much sense.) Schools on quarters start later, since the first quarter is only 10 weeks instead of 15 so is easier to finish before winter holidays, but high schools are not generally on the quarter system.