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Boston Elementary, Middle Schools To Get a Longer Day
Many public elementary- and middle-school students in Boston may soon have a longer time to spend in school each day. A change, announced Friday by Boston mayor Martin J. Walsh, though yet to get final approval from the city's school committee and teachers' unions' full membership, would add 40 minutes to the schedule at schools not already under an extended schedule. Currently, most elementary school students have a 6-hour day, and middle school students' is 10 minutes longer, which means that high schools will now have by default the shortest day (six and a half hours) in the Boston public school system. From the Boston Globe's coverage:
Teachers in the 60 schools would get an annual stipend of $4,464 for the expanded schedule, the mayor’s office said. The plan would be rolled out over three years, beginning with about 20 schools in the 2015-2016 school year, the statement said. Officials said it wasn’t clear which schools would be in the first group. Once fully rolled out, the plan, which would add up to about an extra month of learning per year for 23,000 students, would cost about $12.5 million per year.
How long is the school day in your neck of the woods, and do you think it should be any longer?
No need for school to start at the absolute butt-crack of dawn. It's actually been shown to be harmful for teenagers. Their natural sleep cycle involves sleeping in. Many of them simply physically cannot function so early in the morning. (Thinking is a physical process...)
If high school started an hour later, the kids would be on the streets less while parents are off work, too. So it seems like a win-win, without actually increasing the number of hours of instruction.
Increasing the duration of school won't automatically improve education. "No Child Left Behind" certainly didn't, but it did require greater duration to the school day if you actually met all of its requirements.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It is ludicrous to make the assertion that adding 40 minutes of time to the school day will magically add a month more of learning. The mentally that more time in school equals more learning is very flawed. We have setup our school like little prisons with strict rules and rigid schedules. Real learning doesn't take place while students are sitting at their desk listening to a teacher droning on an on. Real learning takes place when kids are actively engaged. They should invest their money on creating an alternative, project based educational program.
Keep the kids longer and don't send homework.
For many children, success in school depend on 1-on-1 help with homework. In many households, parents are not able to provide that help due to work schedule or their own lack of education. Depending on homework seems to disproportionally affect children living in poor, uneducated households. Those children grow up less educated and end up with a lower paying job, so when they have children of their own, the cycle continues.
A great example of this is the very debate over "the core curriculum". The debate's loudest voices are from parents that just don't understand what the new methods are trying to accomplish. The parents all agree their child should be taught math, so the debate should be between educators on *how* to do it. I guarantee you that there would be next to no debate if parents were not asked to help with homework. If we limit what we teach to what all parents understand, then we're done. Turn the lights off and crawl back into our caves.
The only benefit to this is for parents using school as a babysitter.
This all makes sense and is probably a good idea.
Only if you're foolish enough to believe that quality = quantity. But that is false. What really needs to happen is to get rid of rote memorization-based standardized tests, the ridiculous amounts of useless busywork that don't help people truly comprehend the material, propaganda trying to teach kids that authority is best, the ridiculous amounts of unnecessary rote memorization in general, and the one-size-fits-all nonsense that plagues the school system.
More schooling (which is just tantamount to brainwashing at the moment) will not fix any of this trash.
And if we move to an 8 hour or longer school day, when are children supposed to develop into adults? I saw it first hand in China where the young adults are barely more mature than our middle school students because they spent so much time in class that they didn't get any of that out of their system. In order to develop into an adult, you reallyneed some time to make your own decisions and have your own experiences.
I'm guessing that you're one of those people for whom the educational system failed if you're blaming teachers' unions. It's not teachers' unions, it's the lack of public support for education that's the problem here. Try getting good teachers if you're not willing to pay a rate that's similar to what other professions with similar education and training requirements pay. Or, how about actually providing support so that the teacher isn't having to work many hours outside of class on things that paraprofessionals should be doing.