By Mark
The press was briefly abuzz recently when President Obama mentioned his ideas for extending the school year. While this seems to be far from a concrete policy decision, it reopens a discussion to which we seem to return every so often.
Is Obama out of line? Aside from the cute arguments of fifth graders who want their summer break, why do people resist this concept so vehemently? If we can't change this, how can we change anything else about our faltering education system?
I love my "three months paid vacation and a month off at Christmas" (as if), but am for extending the school year. What are your thoughts?
I’d have to agree with year-round schooling. Being a high school student I agree, I do NOT study over the summer. 3 months is a LOOOOONG time without a book or a test. I totally agree on the year-round schooling. I’m doing a speech and debate paper right now on why we should enforce year-round schooling. (:
Nap time….yes.
Not only are schools so artificially constructed (bell rings…time for math! fifty minutes later, the next bell…change focus, it’s time for history!) but they also run counter to so much research about what best works with a typical teenager’s nature of sleep and wakefullness.
It would be dependent upon how we define the calendar. I’m all for it, especially because during the summer months, students seem to loose the aspect of learning. Though, they do deserve a break, year long schooling has been shown to give MORE breaks.
I want three months of school and then a month off between trimesters. I want fewer hours of formal instruction, and more time (specifically time NOT interrupted by sports) for students to get help where they need it. I want school to start when adolescents are awake, and I want a long enough lunch for everyone to enjoy some conversation as well as food. Nap-time wouldn’t hurt, either (http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200802/nap-your-way-the-top).
I love summers because I’m a working mom who lives in a region with a long, dark, chilled winter. I like to be able to spend time with my daughters, travel to see family, and do something other than plan and grade on my weekends.
But I also remember what it was like to be a student. Kids are treated like cattle in most schools – cattle on a strict schedule. They move in a herd through crowded chutes from one room to the next. They sit for long periods of time in terrible chairs, in stuffy rooms, beneath flourescent lights. Many teachers are boring, and kids count the minutes until the bell rings.
If school involved fresh air, physical movement, and productive AND intellectual social interaction, I’d be for year-round school. But it doesn’t, so I am for giving kids big chunks of time away from the classroom. Whether that’s in three-week stretches every ten weeks or a two-month stretch every summer, I don’t really care, but I wouldn’t want any child locked in a classroom twelve months of the year. Yuck.
9 to 5 would put us (in our building) at the same amount of student contact time…we go 7 10 to 240, with 25 minutes for lunch. I see definite merit in something like ten weeks on, three weeks off. It just seems more logical to me.
I guess I wonder why people resist the idea of year round school. Is it the melancholy for summer days of yore in Mayberry, down at the fishin’ hole?
I want a longer lunch. Thirty minutes is just not civilized.
I want time in the day when students can come to me for extra help. ‘Homework’ is the key to mastery in math (my subject), but it doesn’t have to be done at home. It’s just practice.
I’m not absolutely certain we need more days, but I am convinced we need more time. Why not start at 9:00 and end at 5:00, just like the parents?