More school: Obama would curtail summer vacation

[IDemo]

By LIBBY QUAID (AP) – 1 hour ago

WASHINGTON — Students beware: The summer vacation you just enjoyed could be sharply curtailed if President Barack Obama gets his way.

Obama says American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage with other students around the globe.

"Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas," the president said earlier this year. "Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom."

The president, who has a sixth-grader and a third-grader, wants schools to add time to classes, to stay open late and to let kids in on weekends so they have a safe place to go.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iaZ6R77zq5_ZYc77h178ePWRNJwQD9AVLOCG0

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. Wow. First education policy I agree with him about.

I've been saying this for years. Summer vacations from school were created to address the needs of an agriculture based society, which we don't have anymore. Kids lose so much over the summer. We spend the first quarter of the year reviewing what they learned the previous year. 25% of our time reviewing and reteaching.

Of course eliminating summer vacations would mean paying teachers a whole lot more and I don't know where President Obama is on that.

[madokie]

13. And I agree with you

We have many Teachers in our family and they all say basically the same thing. :hi:
Have a great day, looks like a pretty one in the making.:hug:

[MattBaggins]

I will work against him if he does this

I won't just not vote, I'll actively campaign against him.

[proud2BlibKansan]

17. Why?

[MattBaggins]

21. I use the summer to do things with my children

I take them places and teach them new things that I want them to know. I make sure they write in journals and learn new things each day so they don't forget or fall behind. I will take care of my kids needs in the summer months and don't need you telling me that I will pay you to watch them at that time whether I like it or not.

[seabeyond]

22. i am with you. we keep the mental stimulation going, even thru summer months

a couple weeks before school starts i have kids review the things they are weak in, like multiplication, division. not older, algrebra ect.... so they have the info and a leg up

and they do lots of reading. library is our friend in summer

[proud2BlibKansan]

27. When I was a kid we had summer homework

Due on the first day of school every year.

[seabeyond]

31. my kids have it now. one had a journal on a book. holes i believe

and another had to kill a mockingbird that he had to read an analyze

i also set up work sheets in math for them

but on our own, we do education stuff, like follow what is currently happening and discussing. reading the times, national geographic and Smithsonian and discussing.

kids do NOT stop thinking. thinking is part of who they are and they dont turn it off in summer.

[proud2BlibKansan]

41. Holes is one of my very favorite books.

Such a neat story.

[seabeyond]

45. both kids really enjoyed it. we had it here anyway. children love to read

we have tons of books. walk in closets full and bursting out to bedroom. hubby had to make a book case for them.

son read 1984 the other day

black like me was 8 yr old reading for them.

we have them all

[proud2BlibKansan]

26. Unfortunately there aren't as many parents like you as there should be

What about a 3 or 4 week break several times a year instead of 10 weeks once a year? Would that be enough time for you to spend vacation time with your kids?

[seabeyond]

29. i could see the advantage of this too. as long as there are NO more school days than

what we have today. if a person wants to shorten the vacations and spread them out, i can see a real advantage. that is hard for the working parent though. then you are having to come up with someone to care for child more often. but, if child is home alone then there is less time for boredom, ergo trouble. they are spending first couple weeks just enjoying being out of school. the longer the vacation, boredom and trouble become a factor

i do not want my kids in anymore school, than what they have now

they do work hard

they do deserve the time out

they arent adults

[proud2BlibKansan]

40. That's how year round school works in many other countries

The kids are still in school for about the same number of days as they are here. They just spread out the breaks. Some school districts here in the US have tried this as well. And charter school as well.

But I still think they need to address teacher pay. This calendar would prevent teachers from working summer jobs, and as long as the pay is as low as it is, they need those summer jobs.

Then there is the expense of air conditioning schools.

[seabeyond]

43. yes on the two other considerations, pay and air. it is hell for the kids without air.

and THAT counts too. as much as we would like to tell them to buck up, it creates an environment for failure

but NO MORE school days.

lol

i am adamant. my kids have enough. more than we did in our day

and they are working ass off. i dont want them penalized because of adult concerns. so much of our children's upbringing today is effected by adult world.

[Obamanaut]

100. Mankind has not always had conditioned air, and yet we survived.

I finished HS in 1960, and never had conditioned air in any school. There was even a time when there was no teevee, and we looked up stuff in the library using card catalogs. And we survived.

I suspect the children of today will as well, even if a few 'hardships' are put upon them.

Kids living on farms do chores every day, all year long. Some before sunrise. And survive.

[seabeyond]

105. and you had the hottest months off. rollin eyes. nt

[Obamanaut]

123. And those are the months when the farm kids do a lot of their chores

outdoors.

I don't know about where you are, but here the school vacation times are not the same times throughout the state. Our county is different (slightly) than the two neighboring counties. This accomodates the crop harvests snd planting.

Plus, even without conditioned air (I enjoy saying that), there are days outside of the existing school vacation times when there are temperatures that are not all that comfortable.

[seabeyond]

132. nd water available, off time in mid day available, ect.... and not learning environment condusive

for thinking and learning. not productive to learning

i lived in texas, az and calif. all hot

[Obamanaut]

The school year has not always been Sep - Jun, but has changed

several times over the years, with not all school systems the same as every other one.


<snip>Historians at Old Sturbridge Village, a living history museum that recreates an 1830s New England farming village, say not. According to the web site and schoolmistress there, farm children went to school from December to March and from mid-May to August. Adults and children alike helped with planting and harvesting in the spring and fall.
<more at link>http://www.factmonster.com/spot/schoolyear1.html

[MattBaggins]

219. The majority of farm work occurs

in the spring and fall; not the summer when the farm kids were off.

[Obamanaut]

246. Oh silly me. When I was younger I picked watermelons out of season.

Cropped tobacco when it wasn't ready. Got up before dawn and milked cows by hand even though the calendar showed July and August. One summer, when I lived in a children's home, the boys hauled bricks for the brick masons as we built a new building for a girl's dorm.

I feel like such a dummy for not ceasing all productive labor, just because school was out.

Damn!

[proud2BlibKansan]

116. Did you go to school in the summer?

Another factor that is often left out is the number of kids with asthma. They need modern buildings with air conditioning so they can breathe.

[Obamanaut]

200. Did you ever hear of 'summer school'? nt

[proud2BlibKansan]

303. For ALL kids? In non air conditioned buildings?

[ChazII]

384. Agree with you 100%/

The 45 days in school with the 15 day break sounds like a good plan. I know of one district in the valley that uses it. Many families like it because it is still 180 days of school.

[MattBaggins]

34. Depends on the state

See as a teacher you may not realize how Corporate America works. The folks that I work with would like to take their families on summer vacations and it wouldn't be so great for everyone with kids to try and take off the same few weeks. See some families go at the beginning of summer, some in the middle and some at the end.

All the folks that want a free babysitting service during the summer don't really care about those of us that don't want that.

Keep your hands off our July and August thank you very much.

[seabeyond]

38. this is true. we generally do long vacation immediately out before other are there

and then a couple four dayers thru out summer. but i can adapt. but true as far as corporate goes, having run a business with employees that take vacation time. all cant go in that small window

[proud2BlibKansan]

42. Well until all schools are air conditioned we can't change the calendar

So you may be getting upset about nothing.

[JackintheGreen]

86. It's how they do it in India

And they take education there much more seriously than we do here (my daughter's school had a mural that proclaimed something like: "Your teachers are like gods. You parents are gods." And kids got hit for showing disrespect to a book.)

Anyway, even they had 8 weeks of vacation during the hottest part of the year, because it was the hottest part of the year.

[MattBaggins]

93. Knew someone was going to bring up the India Myth

So they take their education so much more seriously than we do? So you mean the upper caste gets a good education system? How many kids in India get to go to school? What is the percentage of poor kids that go to school in India vs in the USA?

[proud2BlibKansan]

126. Beat me to it

Thanks!

[JackintheGreen]

243. Argh! You guys infuriate me sometimes (well-intentioned, I'm sure)

The main point of my post was to underscore the common sense of not conducting school when it's simply too damn hot inside non-a/c buildings crowded with human beings. Thanks for ignoring that.

I doubt very much that you have ever had a child enrolled in school in India. I doubt very much that you have lived in India for an extended period of time. I doubt very much that you are at all familiar with the every day cultural socialization that motivates average Indians on a daily basis. Please, do correct me if I am wrong.

Am I blind to the many many failings of the education system in place in India today? Of course not. Is literacy of access higher in India than it is here? No. But guess what. Things are different there than they are here.

Here's the thing. Education is not denigrated there in the same way that many seem to denigrate it here. How many times have we seen posted here on DU some article about how ideologues on the right attack the "educated elite"? Why, there was one posted just this morning on the Reagan legacy on education. Go look. I'll wait. See that part about the "bloodbath"?

How often were Obama or Kerry or Kennedy attacked for the particular type of education they possessed? How many kids were kept out of school just so they wouldn't be poisoned by the president's "stay in school" speech? How many districts (and states) in the last ten years have been in the news in the last ten years for proposed changes intheir curricula?

Having lived in India, having put my child in Indian schools, I can say from experience (experience that I gather you do not have) that families take education very seriously in India. There are institutional failings. Gods! how there are failings. Literacy hovers around 66%. Drop out rates into secondary school are double what they are in the U.S. But I have never seen the the type of idiotic attacks against education there that I have seen here.

For the record, I am white, hail from the Midwest, now live in the Mid-Atlantic. My child is now enrolled in one of the best districts in our state. I can speak numbers from India as a nation, but my personal experiences are limited to only a handful of places. But there I work with the poorest populations, not the richest. The people I speak about often earn less than a dollar a day but send their children to school as long as they are able. Just because their ability to provide ceases doesn't mean that their desire to provide does.

Let me underscore: There are huge problems with education in India, from funding to access. But those are institutional. The seriousness I speak of, and you take such issue with, is intensely personal.

[goclark]

101. They had that in Los Angeles ~ it was called " Year Round "school

It worked fairly well, especially for the Inner City Schools that had 1200 or more students in the building that would hold 800 max.

The children got use to it and so did the parents.

The posters here that are explaining how they want "quality time for summer activities and family learning" are not the parents that feel they will be helped by the Plan.

That is the "ideal parent child plan" for beautiful shared learning experiences.

That's the plan for parents that have jobs with summer vacations.

That is the plan for parents that have a wide range of lovely challenging books to read and enjoy with their children.

With the job market being like it is ~ there will probably be more parents that need to have an option such as this one.

[MattBaggins]

114. Oh please if you are doing it for "the working parents"

Than schools should be open all week, all day, all year. I should be able to send my kids to school at night when I am at work. You don't know anything about working parents if you think that all year school helps poor workers. It is for the people with nice cushy 9 to 5 jobs.

Stop trying to argue for longer school just so families can become even more enslaved to the grind. Argue for it on behalf of the kids actaully learning something not convenience for lazy parents.

[proud2BlibKansan]

131. Lazy parents?

I don't call parents who work and need day care 'lazy'.

[MattBaggins]

137. Neither do I

I was meaning those who don't want to spend any time involved in their kids educations and was aiming it at them. I wasn't clear about that. I do believe that the lucky 9 to 5ers are most likely to be in that group and the most vocal advocates of year round school.

[goclark]

232. In no way am I saying Yr. Round school should be for every child

I'm drawing on my 36 years of experience as an Educator/Administrator.

If anything,I'm explaining how it workED for those that happened to be in urban areas, some had jobs and some didn't, most of them liked the YRS. However, they didn't have a choice. That was the only option open to them at the time.

I have been a school administrator in all types of schools(extremely wealthy areas to the poverty level) I am well aware of educational settings.

Your post helped me to remember my last school ~ very wealthy parent population.

Many of those parents enjoyed sending their children to "summer school" (notice I didn't say Yr. Round School) that way they had time to get their nails done, play tennis and shop. They would often take their children out of summer school to go on family vacations. Summer school was/is an option in most school districts. Year Round School in Los Angeles was not an option.

Those same wealthy parents volunteered many hours to make the educational setting better for ALL of the students. They really cared about making education meaningful for children of all races and economic levels.

I am in no way saying that going to school throughout the year should be for everyone.

[Obamanaut]

94. Even though it might work for the masses, would you oppose it? nt

[MattBaggins]

107. I used to work 12 hour shifts for my job

Worked a month of days then a month of nights with rotating days off. It must be really nice to work 9 to 4 jobs only during the days but many of us bust our asses all night long. Could we have schools staffed with teachers 24/7 so I could have free babysitting when it's convenient for me? It would really be helpful for me if I could send my kids to school on the weekends as well.

All the folks that want year round school "in the name of working parents" are actually people with cushy day time jobs that just want someone to watch their kids on my dime. Anyone who actually works for a living and has more than one job realizes that extending the school year isn't for us. If you aren't talking about weekends and nights, you are someone with a nice cushy desk job that just wants some one else to watch your kids for "free".

[Obamanaut]

250. Yes, life and work can indeed be arduous. I spent many a month

at sea in the Navy working 12 hour shifts, 7 days a week. Miz O was at home working her job and raising our daughters.

And yet, we have survived.

[gtar100]

358. What you're doing for your kids is awesome but you are an exception to the rule.

Nearly everyone of our neighbor's kids spend their summers hanging out. Period. Parents have to work, like every other day of the year. If it could be worked where you get what you need - time with your kids - and others could get a system that better supports the realities of their lives as well, then there would be no need to stop this.

It can be done.

[Papagoose]

193. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater

I think year round school is a bad idea too, but it would take an awful lot more than this to make me campaign against Obama. Hell, he'd probably have to commit murder or treason for me to go that far, though some say he already has!

My family takes educational and cultural vacations every summer and spends time alone as a family without the distractions of every day life. We avoid tourist traps and amusement parks, saving those for long weekends during the rest of the year. It would be a real shame if we lost our short summers (in Georgia, at least in my county, we get less than two full months off already).

[tabbycat31]

187. one problem with school in summer

in many parts of the country, schools do not have air conditioning. I remember being in school and September and June can be deadly. It's very hard to learn in a 90+ degree classroom.

In high school, they actually had a few rooms with a/c but most of the classrooms did not. When they scheduled our finals, they tried to put them in the rooms with a/c (usually the larger rooms--- cafeteria, music suite, stage, student center)

[Hippo_Tron]

318. I think it would help get teacher pay raised

The whole "they get a three month vacation" argument is one of the main ones used by people who don't think teachers should make more money. Of course I know this argument is false given that teachers actually spend a good part of that time preparing for next year's classes but a lot of people won't believe that.

[mainer]

2. Make summer classes no-grades, and all fun

Some of my best memories are of summer school enrichment classes, as a kid in California. That's when I was taught typing, watched science documentaries, and read cool non-academic books. Summer school doesn't have to be a drudge. It can be something kids look forward to, a place where they can learn fun stuff without realizing it.

Here are some classes kids might flock to:

"Building rockets." Not only will kids actually get to fire off a rocket, they'll (incidentally) learn the math of trajectories and the chemistry of propellants. Wouldn't that be fun?

"Telling whoppers." Kids get to make up the most outrageous, impossible SF tales -- and judge which one is best.

"Treasure Hunter": Kids play around with geo-cacheing, to find a secret treasure. The caches will include clues to the next cache, requiring students to look up arcane historical facts.

I wish I could have had these classes as a kid!

[Tim01]

3. Fixing the wrong problem.

The education system is performing badly because of the way the system works.(No child left behind) This will just be doing badly for more time.

[Deja Q]

317. I think time in school is a part of a very complex problem.

I addressed some of my concerns in my direct response to the OP...

And, yes, NCLB has **got to go**.

[seabeyond]

324. every teacher and adm i know and aisd school board has said NCLB has got to go. nt

[countingbluecars]

4. This would cost a lot.

I don't see it happening.

[proud2BlibKansan]

14. I don't either

For starters, we don't have the money to air condition all of our schools.

[debbierlus]

5. Not until they change the education plan into something beyond teaching to tests

[seabeyond]

6. they are using schools as babysitters. i see a NEED kids have a break from school

i dont want kids at school all day every day thru out year

they work their asses off and deserve the break

and they dont need a babysitter

if this is what he is creating out of the schools fine, but not a requirement for all kids

[Liberal_in_LA]

113. Agreed. We all had a long break and most turned out just fine

[earthside]

7. Well, Obama is Wrong

Sadly, President Obama and his corporate/military Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, think that the sole measure of an education is how a child performs on a three week battery of high stakes standardized tests.

Learning and real education encompasses more than time stuck in a preformed-plastic desk ... time to "chill" with friends, exploring the real world, thinking, playing, etc. are activities also very critical to the development of kids as whole people.

Obama and Duncan and the purveyors of the current schooling fad of "accountability/testing/standards" (ie, the corporate education-industrial complex) would turn our children into burned-out drudges if they get their way.

A return to local control of schools to the people closest to them would be a more important step than making kids spend more time inside the concrete and glass walls. Letting teachers actually teach without all the top-down curriculum mandates from federal and state governments might really return some learning to our schools. And, ending the nightmare of 'No Child Left Behind' and its deadening testing regimen would be a huge step in returning schools into places of creativity and the joy of learning instead of places of bureaucracy, 'zero tolerance' oppression and regimentation.

If President Obama and Arne Duncan propose and pass a new federal mandate that forces our public schools to make kids spend more time setting in desks, then look for the homeschooling and private school population to explode, as even liberals and progressives say enough is enough of the testing, testing, testing of their children.

[SammyWinstonJack]

10. +1 nt

[Tim01]

12. Exactly.

Our kids are being taught to be worker drones. Work, consume, obey. Work, consume, obey. Work, consume,obey.
That is what is most profitable for the corporations.

[BigBluenoser]

350. I'm out of bubblegum :(

:)

[Bonobo]

30. We are #37 among industrialized countries and falling.

Our education system sucks. Our children will wind up serving Wendy's to the rest of the world if we don't do something.

[seabeyond]

33. our parents are NOT doing their job. the education is there

if the child wants and parent insists

they bring the numbers down. there are too many not grabbing the opportunity given

[Bonobo]

35. Understandable given that the parents are products of the same crappy system. nt

[seabeyond]

39. oh, arent we victims and powerless. no thank you. nt

[Bonobo]

44. No, I am not. But are some? Yes. nt

[seabeyond]

47. i dont care the situation. too many parents give up their roles to school. i refuse. nt

[Bonobo]

50. So your argument is basically "Keep you gubbnit hands off my kids!". I got it.

You don't TRUST the gubbnit. Sounds familiar.

[seabeyond]

55. no. my argument is, i have a responsibility to parent my children and schools cannot be parent

they need the support form the families or it is failure. we cannot expect our school to raise our children or again, we will have failure. then we will point finger at school adn say, you failed to raise my child.

[saltpoint]

314. I think your system is operating on questionable logic.

You assail the notion that teachers cannot be parents but acknowledge that parents are key to children's learning outcomes.

When that's added us, I get the same crappy parenting going on with correspondingly less support for the kids enrolled in schools.

And in fact a lot of adults in any culture become defactor parents. Perhaps in your house there is some sound parenting going on. Would you not readily conceded that good parenting is not a feature in all households?

If poor parenting is the problem, more time for kids away from poor parents would seem to operate in favor of increasing their survival skills, not against it.

[seabeyond]

321. if poor parenting the teachers will not have reinforcement to teach the child

the child can be out of control, refuse to learn and without the parental support and educational environemnt, home included, the teacher will inevitably fail. then we will point to the teacher as the failure like we do today.

and i can easily argue this without taking it to personal insult without proper knowledge.

teachers cannot teach a child that does not want to learn and parents do not support the teacher. it is that simple. i watch it daily

[saltpoint]

323. I'm sure you will acknowledge that there are instances of poor parenting

out there as we speak.

That being said, the praise I offered for defactor parents on the part of other adults in a community -- especially teachers -- seems entirely fair.

And more to the point.

I think given the naked choice I would want kids around people dedicated to their future well-being for more days of a year rather than fewer.

[seabeyond]

327. it DOES NOT work. that is the problem. you can continue to add the hours, add the days

and kids will just leave the "system" all that much earlier.

that is the problem.

address the problems. not continuing on with the same ole fixes that dont fix.

[saltpoint]

334. Apparently it does work. Thirty to thirty-five other leading nations whose

students excel across academic disciplines and leave our kids in the dust have decidedly longer academic calendars.

In most cases more practice on a trumpet would suggest the possibility of greater improvement contrasted to fewer hours' practice on a trumpet. Come audition time, more practice favors the music student who put in the hours.

[seabeyond]

336. but you have ignored all facts that contribute to those numbers. smart. nt

[saltpoint]

338. The variables in learning include, in the best case, good teaching,

a workable attitude by the student, supportive parents, and a learning environment in which self can develop a relationship with knowledge or experience.

Given those conditions, more learning is better than less learning.

The President is correct.

[seabeyond]

341. a workable attitude by the student, supportive parents, .... without these two

more hours, more days fail.

you never told me how we implement more hours with a kid alread there from 6:30 to 5:00 adn then homework.

and NO by far, my kid is not the only one with that schedule.

[saltpoint]

345. There's no polite way to say it, seabeyond. You have yourself all whipped up

in your own kitchen and simply can't see what's going on outside your house.

Your child, you say, is working very hard. I'm pleased to hear it.

But the president is not talking about your household, your schedule, or your child.

The president is addressing a perceived emergency regarding global academic competitiveness. He is proposing, among other things, the possibility of an extended academic calendar.

I support the president in this proposal. The final details notwithstanding are likely to materialize over coming months.

In the meanwhile, I favor more learning, not less, and see an extended school year as one component.

[seabeyond]

347. it doesnt address the issues in schools. no more whipped up than you. nt

[saltpoint]

349. The difference in whips appears to be the flavor.

I like the President's plan.

I think it will enjoy considerable and broad support coast to coast, even if you don't like it, and I think it is likely to become a reality for both public school systems and private schools.

[Codeine]

209. OMG

I agree with seabeyond.

The end is nigh! :hi:

[seabeyond]

211. oh..... lol. lmao. nt

[Odin2005]

216. And I agreed with Orwellian Ghost! Are we going nuts?

:rofl:

[anigbrowl]

339. Disagree. Testing is a good thing

Americans need to get over the butthurt 'oh testing is so mean and deadening waaaah' meme. Most Euro countries have more rigorous testing than even NCLB and that's one of the reasons euro educational levels are higher. Tests are not the be-all and end-all of education but complaints about them are often rooted in self-deception. People on DU often point to Europe as an example of what can be achieved sith social democracy - proper healthcare, affordable education, greater social mobility, empowered citiznes etc.

Well, a rigorous education system is a part of that. The US has long had a geographic advantage which at least partly responsible for the country's enormous wealth. that advantage is diminishing as time goes on, for obvious reasons. If you don't get serious education (in the sense of setting goals and sticking to them, not just paying lip service and COLA for teachers) then the USA is going to end up as a second rate country.

[blonndee]

8. I totally agree with him. Year-round school makes so much more sense.

There can still be vacations, just add more days to the school year and make shorter but fairly frequent breaks. Three months of nothing is just ridiculous. Obviously, this change alone wouldn't solve our education problems, but I think it would be a beneficial one among others.

[BumRushDaShow]

9. Less "summer vacation" = billions more dollars

needed to fund the RETROFITTING of thousands of early - mid 20th century school buildings without air-conditioning. These same buildings with leaking roofs, crumbling plaster walls, badly patched boilers, lead drenched plumbing full of non-potable water, and under-sized electrical plants. Learning becomes difficult in brick, stone, and masonry ovens with barred windows.

But I doubt that fixing the school infrastructure in the cities beyond the drop in the bucket from the stimulus, is on any agenda. :eyes:

[proud2BlibKansan]

16. +1

[whyverne]

11. "Obama is god" says single parent. n/t

[Tim01]

15. Oh, I hadn't thought of that. Year round babysitter. Good poiint. nt

[RB TexLa]

18. At some point the children will understand we are telling them they do not deserve the level of

education others get by not doing this.

[seabeyond]

19. again i will say.... that my children understand (having received education) that the opportunity

is there for them to particpate in or not.

the education is provided

it is theirs to receive that education or not

and a parents job to help them decide

[Bonobo]

49. A single parent working 3 part-time jobs...

Is unlikely to be able to pass down to their children the joys of education, the delights of trigonometry and the passion of creative writing.

They may get a good dose of meth-labs,violence, poverty and bad teeth though.

These parents you describe, with all the free time in the world, largely does not exist these days. Perhaps only among smug, snooty internet-users only.

[seabeyond]

62. yes. it is a bitch and damn hard being a single parent. i see it within my family

day in and day out. i also see the single parent that sacrifices and is able to keep things going. but damn hard being a single parent. i also see a large group of the upper income parent not parenting their kids. tell me, what is their excuse. set up things for the single parent and poor two working family parents. i am and always have been all for that. again, i have watched my two brothers, the single parent with NO mother around, struggle for years. both groups of kids a mess

bring in the funds and take care fo those kids. i demand and insist

but aLL kids should not have to live that life if that is not where they are.

[Deja Q]

320. The point you reference clandestinely is well said.

Parents need to be around to help (and discipline) their children. That means middle class-paying jobs are needed.

[seabeyond]

YES. that is a problem that something being done can HELP the system.

and doable.

[Deja Q]

319. Well said.

We don't agree on every issue, obviously, but I think we both agree on far more we give each other credit for.

[Bonobo]

20. He should. It is a no-brainer.

1. Our students are far behind the rest of the world.
2. Parents work during the summer (duh!). We can't watch our kids for 3 months!
3. We don't have enough money to pay for all those separate camps we have to cobble together to create a 'summer experience'
4. Our kids forget everything they learn during the summer and waste a whole semester reviewing it -wasting the next year as well.
5. We aren't farmers that need the kids to work on the farm anymore. Jeez!

[MattBaggins]

24. Leave my kids out of your babysitting service

1. Big fat lie on this one. Our kids are just as smart as the Asian ones. It's really stupid to compare the top 10% of Asian students to all of American students. When you compare our poor kids who at least get to go to high school to all the kids in these "awesome" countries that never get that opportunity.

As far as the rest of it; work with your kids over the summer so they don't fall behind. Don't force my kids into your babysitting service and ruin our summer vacation.

[Bonobo]

28. "Our kids are just as smart as the Asian ones."

Perhaps as smart, but not as educated. Evidence proves my case.

[seabeyond]

37. talk to the parents. the asian kids in u.s. are receiving same education as other kids

asian kids parents demand their kids work in school, ergo, higher numbers

[proud2BlibKansan]

46. It's more of a cultural difference than a reflection on our education system

[seabeyond]

51. it absolutely is. we have a group of india and asian families. and their work ethic

at least with education is soooo different than ours in u.s. hubby gets put out with kids that they do not do the same. he works with a lot of the group on computers and have gone into the homes, and seen what they do. my youngest is friends with the group so i have gotten to know parents and see the discipline the demand for their kids

i am not willing to create that environment for my children. i dont want to. but we dont have a lazy ass, or victim mentality with school either

kinda a happy medium that works for us.

[proud2BlibKansan]

58. When I was teaching 2nd grade,

I had a kid who was grounded if she didn't get straight As on her report card. Her parents owned a Vietnamese restaurant and they wanted her to go to college and have a career. I tried to tell them they had a terrific daughter, she was a good worker and a joy in class, but they insisted she get all As. And she did get a lot of them. But I was torn every time I gave her grades. I hated to see such a good kid punished.

[seabeyond]

66. exactly. that is why i say middle ground. that is what i saw in kids middle school

one asian child literally cried at a 96 cause he was gonna get it from father.

i wont do that.

[Bonobo]

53. Not true. They may be ahead of the curve, but they are not receiving the "same".

Yes, Asians and Jews push their kids harder than others, but it doesn't make up for the gap entirely.

[proud2BlibKansan]

59. I took it that she meant the gap here in the US

I refuse to compare our schools to schools in other countries because the statistics are flawed.

[seabeyond]

71. i agree. i walk into school system with little ones thinking how horrible they were

and deprieved our kids were in academics. more than a decade later, i call bullshit

[proud2BlibKansan]

81. We have no valid statistics to compare our kids to other countries

For starters, most other countries only test their college bound kids. We test all kids.

This 'we are lagging behind other countries' argument is crap. I get pretty angry when I hear smart politicians use it.

[seabeyond]

84. i agree. again. nt

[Odin2005]

99. Exactly.

Most European countries split their kids into vocational and college-bound tracks in high school, the vocational kids graduate at 16 and then go to an equivalent of a tech-school, they don't get counted.

If I were a benevolent dictator I would reform the US educational system to be more like the German educational system. I know someone who was an exchange student to Germany one year and she says that the German system is much better than ours.

[seabeyond]

104. this is my thought. i alluded to below about becoming creative. we say all kids to college

not a reality, not gonna happen, some kids truly not college able for different reasons.

they aren't throw away, worthless, or can be made to do it

what happened to guiding to professions of livable wage, skill taught, something they excel at.

[Bonobo]

115. College is now an expensive replacement for what used to be taught in HS.

$100,000 to learn how to write a research paper and take some elementary classes and get a piece of paper. It's a racket. They should teach those things in HS like they used to.

[seabeyond]

122. bullshit. do you not listen. kids are beyond what we ever did in schools

and i see plenty, more than my day, teaching how to write a paper and at earlier years. i love how they have gone step by step thru each grade in writing papers.

[Bonobo]

133. If they write as you do, color me unimpressed. nt

[proud2BlibKansan]

148. Nice personal slam

Really helps your argument!

[Bonobo]

157. Well it sounded more harsh than I meant it. Kind of a half joke.

I understand that people are typing fast. I really was just joking and it just comes off as snarky on a message board. Sorry.

[proud2BlibKansan]

163. She just has a different writing style

I have no trouble understanding what she is saying. She communicates a message, which is the point of writing.

ee cummings wrote beautiful poetry and violated every possible writing convention. :)

[Bonobo]

165. Point taken. nt

[seabeyond]

169. lol

you know. people seem to have trouble understanding when they no longer have argument. prior to that, it seems clear enough

but that is how i see it too. either you get it or you dont. and as much in the feel as not. and i dont care if you get, really.

[proud2BlibKansan]

179. I took a wonderful seminar in written language a few years ago

The presenter was a well respected education author. College professor in English. She began by reading newspaper articles, mainly sports stories. She would read the article, then put it up on the screen and ask us to grade the use of conventions (grammar, etc). Of course 90% of the teachers gave every article an F, mainly due to incomplete sentences.

Then she asked us to write a few sentences summarizing each article. Of course, we had no trouble getting meaning from every piece.

She made her point, which was the point is the meaning, not the conventions. I have thoroughly enjoyed using incomplete sentences in my writing ever since. Still capitalize though. That's a hard habit to break. LOL

[seabeyond]

192. you know what

that was kinda my purpose and i didn't it purposely. lol. handful of years ago i walked away from convention. in my thought, there is a lack of trust in a persons ability to insist if all rules aren't followed a person wouldn't be able to understand. that rules must be followed, when rules dont have to be.

to me, it is seeing the very least in a person

my writing, is giving the read all the credit.

and not following unnecessary rules a freedom for me cause i was so very very anal about these things

now i look at all the red and green and a glorious decoration in a post. you know those little squiggle lines under words and sentences that aren't correct

was a freedom for me in a spiritual step, lol lol lol. talking from heart, not ego.

now i refuse to go back. but i do have to remember to always re read and correct and clarify. cause it can be tough. i can be too bad.

that is me. kids have to have complete, proper sentences, capitalization and academically correct.

[proud2BlibKansan]

196. They do need to learn the conventions

But we need to be more flexible about how they are used.

[Bonobo]

202. I appreciate what you are saying.

Your writing style does place a little more burden upon the reader, you must admit. It serves a purpose, I suppose, in that it asks a reader to do more work in order to bridge the 'understanding gap'.
However, I find it a little hard to read, so you always take the chance that someone just can't or won't want to 'invest' sufficient time in reading what you write.

No big deal. Different strokes for different folks.

[seabeyond]

206. yes, always, there right to not read. and i understand. and i take that risk. nt

[kath]

248. I find that it takes a LOT more effort to understand her posts. Some capital letters and some

normal punctuation and sentence structure would really help. Most of the time, I'm not willing to put in the considerable extra time and effort to try to understand what she's trying to say, which is a real shame because sometimes I realize that she has some very good points she is trying to make.
Many of us try to zip through DU threads pretty quickly, because we have limited time to spend here. Unless it's a very short one of hers, I can probably read (and comprehend!) at least 4 or 5 of someone else's posts in the time it takes me to try to decipher one of hers.

Is it arrogance- I'm more special than anyone else! - or what? English as a second language?

[seabeyond]

251. no, it is simply if you cant read posts, dont. i am not for everyone. nor have i claimed to be

see my name, walk past. that is cool

[Odin2005]

267. I can understand her just fine.

Then again, I'm 23 and I'm used to text messages with bad punctuation. :)

[seabeyond]

268. lol lol. nt

[Odin2005]

156. IMO high school should be structured more like college.

There would be separate "tracks" with a certain number of requirements and electives (say, Vocational, Pre-Science, Pre-Art, and Pre-Humanities). Age-segregated classes would be done away with. There would be classes offered over summer break if enough students wish to have them. There would be more emphasis on long-term projects than short-term busywork. rural schools would have subsidies so they can afford to have a greater diversity of subjects taught.

[seabeyond]

164. we have an A CAL for the kids. focusing on computer, math, science, automotive

for the more analytical kid. it is an excellent program that many kids get into. takes half a day away from the high school. can get a nursing degree there. computer degrees. i am not up on it. hubby is. oldest son isnt analytic, but very academic so the AP courses fit him better. youngest son more analytical so might be just the program for him

[Odin2005]

173. That would be perfect for "aspie" kids!

I wish I had that! Science for teh win! :)

[seabeyond]

177. it is really a good program. lots of kids use it. nt

[Odin2005]

144. Our vocational-trade educational system sucks in this country because...

...it is expected that everyone should go to college. Tech-schools are often mocked as where the D-students go to "finish high school" It's a load of hokum. I know a fellow "aspie" that is very intelligent and is going to the local tech-school for computer programming.

[seabeyond]

146. it was much better in the past. we understood the concept not ALL students college bound

and had to find skill, livable wage earning skill for this person

[proud2BlibKansan]

112. Many of those countries split the kids up when they are 5

I don't support tracking kids that early.

[Bonobo]

118. No they don't. nt

[Odin2005]

160. Um, no, they don't, more like 14.

[Bonobo]

125. Can you provide evidence that that is the case?

I think you are terribly wrong if you think we are getting the education of other countries.

My children have extensive experience at public school in Japan and my direct experience does not support your statement.

In Japan, even a rural JHS math program is at least one year ahead of America.

[proud2BlibKansan]

140. Other countries don't test all of their kids like we do

They test only the college bound. NCLB says we have to test ALL. Plus, many of these other countries we hear about (like India) don't even educate all of their kids.

In Japan and Korea, the pressure to do well in school is so intense that it leads to a high teen suicide rate. I don't want to copy that.

Plus, it's not valid to compare test scores unless testing conditions are identical. The language difference alone voids any standardization.

Until we test only our college bound kids (and we need to get rid of NCLB before we do that) and have a universal worldwide language, it is not valid to compare our test scores to other countries.

Now saying that, I do believe we lag in some areas. Many of these countries that supposedly do better have year round school models, better parent support and better funding. Some have more up to date technology. We can definitely improve in those areas. But comparing test scores is not the way to convince educators that we we lag behind other countries.

[Bonobo]

161. How would they know who is "college bound"? It makes no sense. nt

[proud2BlibKansan]

166. They screen them when they are young

The school system decides who goes to college. Not the kids and not the parents.

[Bonobo]

172. Again, what country are you talking about!? Certainly NOT Japan or Asian countries.

And they are the main ones kicking our asses.

And I still stay that international test scores in math and the sciences are absolutely meaningful and absolutely quantifiable.

[MattBaggins]

182. My wife is from Germany and I have friends that are German teachers

They start identifying who will go to vocational style schools and who will go on to "high school" when the kids are 8 years old. You won't be moving on to university unless they say so.

[proud2BlibKansan]

190. Thank you

They also have separate high schools for the college bound and those who don't deserve to go to college. When they release test scores, it is the college bound kids.

[Bonobo]

261. Not the case for Japan nor Taiwan, Korea, etc. I imagine. nt

[proud2BlibKansan]

186. And every statistics expert I know would disagree with you.

As for Japan and other Asian countries, I wouldn't want their teen suicide rate. Or their childhood mental illnesses. Pressuring kids to succeed is not always what is best for them.

[Bonobo]

194. You know so many statistic experts AND you know what they think too?

Come on, now. Even if you do know a lot of stat experts, you aren't one and we haven't even discussed how the studies are done.
How could you already conclude they are flawed?

You seem to be predisposed to coming to the conclusion that ANY comparison is inherently unfair. But I repeat that IF any comparisons are valid, in principal, it would be in math and the sciences.

Do you disagree with that even? A triangle is a triangle in any language. Math is difficult to fudge you know.

[proud2BlibKansan]

218. I have a masters degree in education and 30 years experience

So yes I do know quite a few statistics experts. I take it you don't know that a good statistics background is required now in teacher ed programs? I am in special ed so I have even more statistics courses.

It's all that testing. We need to know as much about statistics as we need to know about child development :)

[Bonobo]

238. My mom taught Special ED (B.D) for 30 yrs. too.

Good for you!

[Odin2005]

270. Nice to see some good Special Ed. teachers.

The Special Ed teachers I had were ignorant morons, unfortunately. :(

[Bonobo]

277. My mom couldn't have given more dedication and love.

90% of the teachers I have come across give so much more than can be reasonable expected for any job.

Thank god for our dedicated teachers.

[seabeyond]

281. and THIS i agree. it is what i found. i had one bad teacher with sons 7th grade math

and one incompetent, unorganized teacher for sons second grade. her style worked for some students. but my son has learning problems and he needs tight structure. especially so young, before we understood his weaknesses. since, he has continually learned to recognize and accomodate and gets better every year.

two teachers with two kids

a lot of good, hardworking, caring teachers in between.

[seabeyond]

68. i beleive it does as my kids sit next to them in the same AP and pre AP classes. nt

[MattBaggins]

60. I'm talking about comparing counries

We always hear about how all these other countries kids are so much better then ours. Take the myth of India for example where only a fraction of the kids get to go to school. We have liars in our own country hell bent on smearing our entire system so they compare education stats of countries that don't include their failures or never let the kids go to school in the first place and compare it to all our kids including the drop outs.

I'm just getting sick of people who take our bottom 10% stats; compare it to the top 10% of China, and tell us how our kids are so much dumber than Chinese kids.


Now don't get me wrong. I will complain about the problems with our kids education and point my finger right where the blame lies. The good for nothing, lazy worthless parents. All the whining "schools aren't babysitting my kids right" parents who never attend a single parent teacher conference nor ever crack open one of the text books the kids are using. Stop blaming the teachers union and calling for charter schools so we can start another modern day white flight. Open up a damn book and read with your kids. Turn off the WWE Smackdown or NASCAR race and do some homework with your child.

My daughter brought home her math homework from first grade that actually had negative numbers on it. I did not get exposed to negative numbers until sixth grade. How can our schools be so piss poor and our Nation be so bad if my kids are learning things years before I ever did?

Teachers give the kids more sensible learning based homework; parents get your noses out of the TV, and the rest of you leave our summers alone.

[seabeyond]

73. my 6th grader in pre AP math is doing freshman algrebra. all of their classes are ahead

of what we did three decades ago.

take texas. they compare texas, florida and calif with northern states. these three states have massive immigration intregrated into system. adn good for them. kick ass they give the education adn work hard to provide.

also effect the numbers.

we can be honest

or we can create illusions for argument

[proud2BlibKansan]

82. Bingo

Glad you get it! :applause:

[Odin2005]

106. My mom (who is 49) was shocked when I was doing pre-algebra in 5th grade.

I was a gifted kid, so I breezed right through it, but she was shocked that the other kids could handle it.

[Bonobo]

110. Unfortunately, your reality is not representative of the broader picture.

In reality, it is in Math and the Sciences that we are falling the most behind other nations.

And far from being difficult to compare country to country, it is actually quite easy to compare on hard science. It is easily quantified.

[Odin2005]

119. See the other posts in this thread pointing out that we aren't as "bad" as we are claimed to be.

Most countries only test their college-bound kids, which obviously skews the numbers.

[Bonobo]

121. I have seen the international stats and can dig them up.

What you say does not make sense.

If they test HS students/JHS students, how can they know, at the time, whether they are college-bound or not.

Can you provide evidence that this is true (about the testing)?

[proud2BlibKansan]

158. Other countries decide as young as age 5 which kids get a college bound curriculum

and which kids do not. They have a two track educational system. We do not.

[Bonobo]

162. Which ones? nt

[proud2BlibKansan]

170. Haven't looked it up in awhile

I had a list I was given when I was in grad school. At that time it was Germany and most Scandinavian countries. And several Asian countries but I think they have moved away from that model.

I'd have to do some current research to get an exact list.

[Bonobo]

175. I would really like to know if you can look it up.

I have no idea of the truth of that... It sounds like you are describing USSR-era eastern bloc countries.

[proud2BlibKansan]

191. Poster above is married to a woman from Germany who verifies my claim

[LeftishBrit]

227. I have quite a few German friends..

and according to them, Germany does separate pupils into academic, technical and vocational schools, but at 11 to 13, not 5.

As German education is mainly administered by state (Land) governments, it may be that one Land has tried to carry out the division earlier, but I haven't heard of it. Since compulsory education in Germany starts at 6 (though many have preschool education), I seriously doubt that anyone there does try dividing kids before they've properly started formal instruction.

[proud2BlibKansan]

301. But they are split

and only the ones in the college prep programs are tested. So we are comparing ALL of our kids to only their college bound kids. Which was my original claim as to why we can't look at the achievement of kids in these countries and make a valid comparison.

[LeftishBrit]

392. Fair point...

The same sort of thing makes comparisons between British teenagers' performance now and say, 40 years ago problematic. We have the big exams at 16. Nowadays, all pupils are required to stay at school till 16. 40 years ago, most didn't and it was generally the more able pupils who stayed. Therefore, 16-year-olds now may appear to be worse performers - but we are comparing the whole range now with a selected group in the past.

[wickerwoman]

269. I went to a German high school for a semester.

They separate into the different tracks between 11 and 13 but students can change to a different track later if they want to (and if their tests and grades are high enough.) Lots of kids go to Gesamtschule, which is basically the same as our high schools. They can go onto college from there. The top kids go to Gymnasium, where the expectation is that they will go to college. Kids who are struggling with academics go to Hauptschule or Realschule which are more like voc-tech high schools.

I also taught briefly in a Realschule-type setting in the Czech Republic. The kids were focused on IT and they were quite bright and enthusiastic since they got to study what they were interested in instead of struggling through a generalized curriculum with dubious career applications. It's not all wood-shop and auto repair.

Even in the UK (and related systems), kids start specializing earlier than they do in the US. Many kids leave school at 16 to get into apprenticeship type programs without the stigma of being "drop-outs" which they would be assumed to be in the US.

I spent a semester as an exchange student at a Gymnasium and it was tough as hell. They were easily two years ahead of my home school in science and math, most of the kids spoke at least two or three languages fairly fluently... I was an honor roll student in the top stream of one of the better public school districts in the US and it was glaringly obvious that my German peers were miles ahead of me in almost every subject.

Too much pressure is obviously bad, but I think in the US we definitely go too far towards the opposite extreme. I never once had anyone sit down with me and ask what my plans were for the future, what kind of job I expected to get, and what classes I should take to prepare me for it. If I had had a little more guidance in that direction, I might not have wasted nine years and $135,000 on a BA and MA that have virtually no job market.

I think as long as some flexibility is left in the system, a little more direction for younger kids would be a good thing as would removing the stigma of not finishing the academic track all the way to 18 when you are sure at 14 or 16 that you don't want to go to college.

[proud2BlibKansan]

302. I agree

We have gone way too far in the opposite direction. We need to bring back vocational programs. Our dropout rate would likely go down if we were actually teaching more vocational skills.

[LeftishBrit]

181. I'm not aware of any country that does that.

There are countries with two- or three-track educational systems, but they generally start the division at 11 or later. The UK used to assign kids to different educational tracks at 'eleven-plus' on the basis of an exam and teacher ratings, but most parts of the UK now have a comprehensive school system.

[MattBaggins]

124. Easily quantified if your samples are equal

Compare 100% of American kids to 100% of Indian kids or compare our top 10% to their top 10%. I'll take our system where all kids at least have an education system available to them then a caste based one.

[Bonobo]

129. Where is the evidence of this 'caste based' idea?

You are spouting things without providing any evidence.

I can tell you that in Japan, ALL kids stay in the same class. Without exception.

[MattBaggins]

141. Good I think the japanese system is great

I also don't think our children are dumber than the Japanese kids. I also don't buy into the bullshit about how their "culture" is so much better than ours. I'm a little bit tired of the American swine need to be more like the holy and all mighty Asians.

[Bonobo]

153. You sound tired, yes.

All the whining about the "holy and all mighty asians"? Wow. I think you said all I want to hear.

[MattBaggins]

188. And your Asians are better than Americans

tells me equally as much

[Bonobo]

240. Except I never said it. You imagined it. nt

[proud2BlibKansan]

152. I disagree

We do indeed teach Algebra at a much younger grade and we do see a difference in the kids' understanding of mathematical concepts. There has been a revolution is Math instruction in the last 15 years and the first generation of kids to benefit from this are just now entering college.

If you are using test scores to support your argument that we are lagging behind, then I call bullshit.

As for Science, is it tested in most states? If not, it won't be taught as it should. I would also argue that schools in foreign countries could be equipped with better science lab facilities. There is also a cultural difference. We don't value Science in this country as they do overseas.

[seabeyond]

120. i was too. my son 6th grade doing it this fall. just a couple weeks ago. i could not believe it

kept asking, you sure, you sure this is what your teacher wants. as hubby explaining to him. and what we saw, as son insists math is hard (lazy) he was so comfortable with numbers and so easy for him. told him, .... no more pretending hard

he has always been the child that did not share what he knew, what he could do. like talk, walk ect.... lol. odd child. but i saw a couple weeks ago how easy numbers are. i had my suspensions

[Odin2005]

167. For many people Math is only hard because they think it's hard and because...

IMO there is too much emphasis on endless busywork and not enough on understanding the logic and theory behind it.

[seabeyond]

176. with my kids, i say one is lazy and the other, sees things differently than most so

needs to see it 3, 4, 5 different angles before one connects.

i see it as the only course that actually challenges them and makes them work brain, well, what to say, where they start at clueless. all other subject are so very easy for them, be it science, language, history. they just get it right off the bat.

so they say, they arent good at math cause it is not the same working.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

305. Where do you get your India stats from?

I was recently in India and personally witnessed dirt-poor village kids attending schools. I also visited my aunt's private school (she's the principal) that catered to better-off children, and they started preschool at three years of age, not to mention the three languages they were taught.

[seabeyond]

330. and the Scandinavian schools dont start kids until much later and they are the answer. nt

[Deja Q]

326. *ding* *ding* *ding* we have a winner!

Quite. It's utter bull, yanked fresh from the cow, when we're told we're dumb...

Yet the bulk of products and services made by offshored workers are poorly manufactured (no math skills), with poorly written documentation (poor literary skills), are toxic or deadly (poor quality control skills), or leech chemicals that ruin electronics or add to their overall flimsiness (poor quality control and/or material purchasing decisions).

It's about being cheap and overpaid executives, who are claiming the workers are overpaid ($11.75/hr was great in 1979, but you cannot live on that today).

[Odin2005]

89. Kids in East Asian countries are not truly "educated", they are "trained".

Rote learning and regurgitation of facts is NOT education, that is vocational training. REAL education involves critical thinking, QUESTIONING ONE'S TEACHERS, finding the answers for one's self, and achieving true understanding.

That is not to say that rote memorization and vocational training is a bad thing, if you need to, say, learn a language you don't need to learn linguistics to do it, but that is not "true" education.

[foo_bar]

224. dude, wtf?

I don't know where to begin... "kids in East Asian countries", "true understanding", "learn<ing> a language...is not 'true' education"; are you a liberal arts major? Would you like fries with that?

The historical importance of education in Chinese culture is derived from the teachings of Confucius and philosophers of the middle and late Chou eras. Fundamentally, these philosophies taught that social harmony could be achieved only if humans were free from deprivation and given proper education. Confucius taught that all people possessed the same potential, and that education was the corrective means to curb any tendencies to stray from ethical behavior.

http://www.csupomona.edu/~plin/ls201/confucian2.html

A hallmark of Confucius' thought is his emphasis on education and study. He disparages those who have faith in natural understanding or intuition and argues that the only real understanding of a subject comes from long and careful study. Study, for Confucius, means finding a good teacher and imitating his words and deeds. A good teacher is someone older who is familiar with the ways of the past and the practices of the ancients. (See Lunyu 7.22) While he sometimes warns against excessive reflection and meditation, Confucius' position appears to be a middle course between studying and reflecting on what one has learned. “He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.” (Lunyu 2.15) Confucius, himself, is credited by the tradition with having taught altogether three thousand students, though only seventy are said to have truly mastered the arts he cherished. Confucius is willing to teach anyone, whatever their social standing, as long as they are eager and tireless. He taught his students morality, proper speech, government, and the refined arts. While he also emphasizes the “Six Arts” -- ritual, music, archery, chariot-riding, calligraphy, and computation -- it is clear that he regards morality the most important subject. Confucius' pedagogical methods are striking. He never discourses at length on a subject. Instead he poses questions, cites passages from the classics, or uses apt analogies, and waits for his students to arrive at the right answers.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/confucius/

[Odin2005]

226. I'm talking about the modern educational system in those countries.

It's all rote learning and tests and unquestioning obedience.

I'm a Biotechnology major with a linguistics minor, FYI. The language-learning example was meant as a illustration of rote knowledge versus understanding of underlying principles.

[foo_bar]

236. thus biotech is "true understanding" not "vocational training"?

It's difficult making generalizations about the whole of "East Asia"*, but it's safe to say that "critical thinking" isn't a concept original to Western civilization.

* Peter Beattie, former premier of Queensland, Australia, referenced a recent McKinsey Report that listed Korea as a hot spot for stem cell work “ahead of, or on par with, the rest of the world.” Korean representatives, in a separate session, cited the beginnings of ventures between local and international firms.

Asia is not homogeneous and, Claude stressed, “the choice of location is crucial.” For example, Cambodia is low-cost, but is very risky. Taiwan has a strong IT and medical-device culture, and the government is now offering incentives to biotech, in a bid to become a hub for CRO action, Claus said. India holds the promise of a vast future market, but that market currently is smaller than that of Japan, Korea, or China. “India and China will spearhead the growth in the Asian pharmaceutical and biotech markets,” he added, “and Singapore will maintain its position as a center for research and innovation.”

http://www.genengnews.com/articles/chitem.aspx?aid=3007

[Bonobo]

259. Poster is using tired old racist idea of Asians as ant colonies with robot-like learning.

Little point in arguing against such a well-informed opinion. The poster is, after all, a linguistics minor.

:sarcasm:

[Odin2005]

272. Racist?

Thinking educational systems that drive teens to suicide are not something I'd like here is RACIST? :eyes:

[Bonobo]

275. "It is not true education. It is rote learning."

I call bullshit and I further suggest racist stereotyping behind such ideas. I am not accusing you of being racist, but the ideas themselves are based on portraying the other as an inscrutable, ant-colony society.

[wickerwoman]

286. The Chinese educational system is pretty atrocious

in terms of methodology.

I taught there for three years and observed schools for two years. I saw teachers literally shouting short phrases and then having the students shout them back at them. For four hours without a break. Class sizes are huge and everything is about the test, not the joy of learning.

They are slowly, slowly making improvements but most applications of new technology just reinforce the "call and response" method instead of encouraging critical thinking. Students brag about how many hours they spend studying, not realizing study time should be about quality, not quantity. The average Chinese primary school kid gets about six hours of sleep a night because they have so much homework to do.

All of the emphasis in on maximum efficiency for short-term test results instead of long-term learning or functional application. I had students who had "fluent" scores on the TOEFL exam who couldn't answer simple questions like "How are you?" in English.

I can't speak for the rest of Asia, but China is a good thirty years behind in pedagogical method. The students succeed despite their largely unskilled teachers (whom they are not allowed to question) because their parents hold their noses to the grindstone on a daily basis and because they know that education is the magic bullet which will lift them from their obvious daily poverty to a secure middle-class lifestyle.

I'm sorry that it fits a lazy stereotype, but in my personal experience China had by far the hardest working, most earnest students and the worst teachers of any of the six countries where I have taught or studied.

[Odin2005]

288. Watch out, you'll be called a racist for saying that.

[Bonobo]

291. In fact I made a point of saying that I was NOT calling you racist. So please retract.

You either missed me saying that or are intentionally mis-portraying what I have said. Please retract.

I stated that the thinking that Asian societies are robot-like colonies of Borgs is racist.

Do I believe that there are critiques to be made of any system? Yes.

But look at the international test scores. They don't lie.

Ignore reality at your peril.

[Bonobo]

293. I do not question your experiences.

In fact, I value them.

[wickerwoman]

355. Here's the article I was thinking of:

http://www.china.org.cn/english/education/203420.htm

"In a 2005 survey polling 2,500 schoolchildren in six cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, 66 percent of primary school students and 77 percent of high school students were found to be suffering from a lack of sleep."

"'Of course I want my son to have more sleep, more exercise and more fun," she said. "But the common saying is that if you give your child a happy childhood in China, you give him a failed adulthood.'"

This is obviously way, way too extreme and most Chinese people I know recognize it, but I also think it *is* fair to say that there is a clear cultural difference between the way most Chinese parents and most American parents approach their children's educations. Even the most over-scheduling, hyper-competitive American parents generally don't drive their kids to sleep deprivation, which is the norm for Chinese kids, especially in the cities.

There has to be a happy medium.

[haele]

108. Make it an "opt out". Your personal experience is not the usual experience of parents these days -

I know I can't take time off from the job that keeps a roof over our heads and my husband in the medication that keeps him functional even if he can't move around much anymore, to also keep the teenager out of trouble over the three months that she would have off in a traditional school system.

Once a child gets past a certain age and peer pressure from all of his or her cool, aimless, loser friends kicks in, how are you going to keep your babies on track during the summer? How are you going to compete with all the drama and excitement of "hanging out with friends" - especially since most of their friends parents have just become personal ATMs or chauffeurs to those kids? How well do you handle the defiance that develops in the teens, especially if you can't dedicate more than four or so hours a day after work to that teen?
Once they turn 13 or 14, your child is probably going to become someone totally different - a "know it all" that desperately needs a structure to re-enforce what you - or the school district (if you didn't have the ability to create the initial) tried to teach that child about learning and personal responsibility to keep active. If they don't already have the structure, through re-enforced tasks and habits, they tend to drift.

Inertia is a terrible thing to watch an bright, intelligent child descend into - they start "forgetting" and it takes months to reverse if you can't catch it in time. And that's what usually happens by week 5 or 6 if you can't keep the child in some sort of active structured environment.

That you, personally, have the ability spend time with your children, and don't need a "babysitter" to keep them from joining the herds of aimless youth is a good thing that I applaud - like the responsible home-schoolers who have made the sacrifice to keep someone at home to give their child a quality education in failing school districts. Unfortunately, most parents (myself included) don't have that luxury - or the ability to "do without and make the sacrifice". Doing without that long or second job to be there for the kid means being homeless, starving, or being medically unable to care for the child in a lot of cases.

Any stable structure that most parents forced to work can give their children to keep them active and from losing what little they've been able to learn is, and "year round" school model that most countries have adopted gives them at most only four weeks without structure that parents have to concentrate on keeping their children active. The child still has lots of time off during the year; and generally, the two weeks "off" they get four other times during the year gives them plenty of blowing off steam time. The traditional summer vacation is split up and taken throughout the year, instead of being given to the child in one big lump of days on end with nothing major to do.
The child ends up spending most of the summer home in front of the tube or at the Gameboy or mall with other children, no matter how much "work" or how many tasks a parent thinks they've given to keep children busy. Or,they're sending the child off to see Mom or Dad for the summer per custody requirements, and can't enforce the rules the child was sent off with - and lord knows what sort of crisis or drama they come back to with.

When I was growing up in the 60's, there used to be a plethora of various types of low-cost day-camps over the summer that most families that did not have the time could send their children to as a structural re-enforcement; those have been slashed and cut so much from community budgets that they are either out of reach financially or are run by focus groups that pretty much target specific needs children.

**************

I do believe that summer session should be an "opt out" if the parents have events planned they want to use as an elective instead of school; say, child goes to the family farm in Greece to work with Aunt and Uncle for two months, takes a summer job, or does a road trip of the US - or has a journal or writing project in addition to completing workbook exercises in, oh, math or geography. Something to keep the child active and learning over the summer, while their peers have the option to use the "babysitter" of public schools, where the sessions should be some of the elective classes that had been dropped over the years in favor of NCLB - classes like home ec., shop, accounting/economics, business practices, health, music, art, drafting, architecture, literature/theater, earth science...

As for retro-fitting buildings and maintaining over the summer - that has to be done anyway, and could be part of the green jobs the stimulus is supposed to be providing. Especially since in most states over the past two decades, the summer heat has been lasting well into October, a good month into the traditional school year.

And last but not least - GET RID OF NCLB! That's been the greatest cause of the downfall to the average US public school-child's ability to learn how to learn since Ronald Reagan became Governor of California...

Haele

[snooper2]

117. Yeah, High School Juniors and Seniors really rock those geography tests

Like, finding their State on a map.....

"ruin our summer vacation"....yeah, wouldn't want education to get in the way of some family photos at six flags :eyes:

[seabeyond]

128. my boys 10 and 8 listening to 16 yr old niece and friend giggle not knowing mexico and new mexico,

state, country.... ooooooh who is to know. so confused.

they fuckin live in texas.

one has lived here all her life and doenst know new mexico state west of us. mexico country below us.

now

am i really gonna take this stupid seriously. you reall think more time in school is going to help these two kids

and my boys sit there, mouth hanging open and the stupid explaining to them the difference in the two and there locations

i didnt have nearly the patience. i told the two girls to quit being stupid, wasnt cute

[snooper2]

147. I think more time in school along with increased teacher pay

along with continuing teacher training will all help...

Nice to point out a 16 year old in Texas but the problem is nation wide...

I don't see you commenting on this thread...
American schools losing the language race

[seabeyond]

159. becasue i am in this thread. in this argument now. my kids are taking spanish courses.

dont know what the other thread is about.

[Deja Q]

329. Teachers will be blamed when the TRUTH is:

a. the principal shoves the kids through the system
b. teachers cannot discipline or else the parents will sue
c. hey, there's a thought: where are the parents?
d (and most debatable). children see their ambient environment and stopped caring because they're smarter than what we give them credit for

There are other reasons, but those are obviously the primary three and the ones that need to be addressed.

[haele]

23. Having a teenager, I can attest that a lot of problems kids get into "these days" is from doing

nothing for long periods of time other than "hanging out". No structure. No reason to do anything but re-enforce their own narrow world-view.

It's not a matter of turning children into drones; it's that in my experience, the most well-adjusted, self-confident, happy children are usually children who have a balance of play time and "task time". The concept of teen-age and "hanging out" all day is a recent media-driven concept.
In "the bad old days" (-pretty much most of history up through the 1950's), pretty much the only kids who hung out for long periods of time (more than two/three hours a day for weeks on end) had no future. The observation was that teenagers who spent weeks with in a 24/7 holding pattern with nothing but time on their hands tended to get into trouble and/or lose the ambition to take up tasks and do something; they'd drift and expect things to be done for them, or they'd just get in the habit of taking what they want and walking away, not considering that their actions may have any consequences because there was no one around other than their equally inexperienced peers to call them on personal fantasy-driven bullshit.
Vacation time was usually filled with family outings, work around the house, and other "learning events" that were structured along enabling older children or tweens to develop personally or socially until they were old enough to handle getting a job of their own to survive on or to provide financial assistance to the family unit that provided the food, clothing, and roof over their heads. Toys and massive amounts of free time to wander around with friends generally disappeared the older and more socially aware children became.
Even children whose parents could provide them with relatively responsibility-free teenage usually had them doing something that kept them active and gave them structure to use in their adulthood - a "grand tour", music, art, or science/history lessons aimed towards a political or economic future, apprenticeship/internship in a trade, university...

In most countries, children - including the pre-personal-responsibility teens - usually have at most four weeks of free time between school; allowing for family holiday, camps, etc... And those children tend to have less issues and mature earlier without than our own little darlings that have an entire summer off to do nothing but forget at best 3/4s of what they had learned in school the previous year, as well as some of the ability to comprehend and "learn".
The kidlet went from a "traditional" US school type to a "self-paced" charter school with flexible attendance (a disaster for someone who is smart and ADD/rapid cycle bi-polar) and to now, a structured year-round school. She has commented that the year-round school makes her feel more comfortable; she's not only able to anticipate when she needs to study, she doesn't forget as her personal sense of ambition fades because there's nothing around the house with the potential for repercussions that would re-enforce her personal reasons to concentrate on anything outside her own personal reality.
And watching the herds of teenagers that roam the streets and malls for hours and days on end, they've got nothing to build any structure on other than each other and personal dramas.

Yes, I know - I'm a judgmental old beotch who "hates" mindless fun. Now, you punks get off my lawn! (unless, of course, you're going to mow it for cash under the table this weekend)

Haele

[Bonobo]

36. +1 nt

[Robb]

25. I used to live in a rural district

...Where every time the school board tried to schedule starting the school year before Labor Day, the six parents who had kids in 4-H would come screaming about how their kids wouldn't be able to adequately participate in the county fair if they had to go to school, too.

Until education becomes a priority, this will be an uphill battle.

[Bluerthanblue]

63. I live in a district just like this- and our state fair is

held so close, that the students raise money by changing the parking lot at the middle/high school to public parking. Our school starts before Labor Day, but is suspended for the days that the fair runs. It's awkward, but it's also important.

As a former 4-Her and leader, and mother of former 4-Her I have to disagree with your opinion that participation in a program like 4-H isn't as important as "education"- it IS another form of education, and valuable in it's own unique, practical way.

I understand the concept of year round school, it does make "sense"- but I also think there is merit in the idea that we spend far too much time as a society in scheduled activities, and not enough time simply LIVING- knowing how to recreate together with friends as kids AND adults- doing things that don't necessarily create wealth for anyone, but which build community and bond us together. Life has really become a treadmill where we are constantly working toward "tomorrow" and for some, tomorrow isn't going to come-

Living fully in each moment- that's something I wish all of us could learn to do and experience.


:hi:

[Robb]

72. I won't deny the good lessons that 4-H can teach

I just meant that as an example of a small segment influencing school policy. And how change is very, very difficult in political situations where elected members shy away from anything that might bring parents to board meetings. :)

[seabeyond]

74. i think 4-h is an excellent program giving our children the best of who they are. nt

[pitohui]

32. could be a wonderful boon to working parents AND the economy

they've needed to fix "school hours" for a fuck of a long time, if both parents work, they're put in an impossible situation, because kids are out of school and on their own, so a mom (and it usually is mom) ends up being put in the nasty position of breaking the child neglect laws (her children are on their own for hours each day because she has to fucking work) or else losing income because she has to either leave the job early (which means she's first to be fired and last to be promoted etc.) or else has to hire someone (which costs as much as she's earning for those hours after taxes)

we need school hours to have a better fit to work hours and we've needed this for a VERY long time

also, the need to have more teachers and other workers on campus for longer, will mean more hours and more jobs

this proposal seems like a win/win to me

unfortunately schools aren't really under federal control, they're under local control, and i don't see how he can mandate this BADLY NEEDED CHANGE from the top

it's an excellent idea though -- that "safe place to go" thing is very important and in the usa we've preferred hysteria to real solutions for WAY too long

me, if i were king of the world, i'd have those extra hours filled with activities that require a broader choice of teachers -- arts, music, more choices of sports -- this way it isn't just choking academics down someone's throat 8 or 10 hours a day, which no one (even a kid) can absorb -- instead it gives variety and it also gives more employment options for the creative, the jocks etc.

others are pointing out the costs, and to me this would be a WONDERFUL area for a stimulus program -- billions of $$$ in jobs for those who are refurbing the schools, billions of $$$ more for teachers, educators, administrators -- and as i just said billions in new programs for arts, music, sports, etc. -- hard to think of a much better place to spend "stimulus" $$$
-- yah the states and local gov'ts are broke but if there is a federal proposal to fund this -- this would help the broke-ass state/parishes AND get our kids learning again

[cherish44]

48. I think summer vacation time could be cut in half and it would still be long enough

6 weeks offers plenty of time to give the kids a break, enjoy summer activities and give families a chance to travel or vacation together. Since I have to work, all the activities I do with my kids in the summer are in the evenings and on the weekends, just like the school year. Kids do better if they have some kind of structure. Those can can stay home and do fun educational things with their kids during the day are very lucky and unfortunately a small minority. Mine stayed with a sitter when they were little and now stay home alone while I'm at work. I start hearing "I'm bored" usually by the start of July.

[seabeyond]

75. the break is enough time. BUT the school year is longer, and the length they have now

without break is LONG enough. extending that is going to create a problem for kids and teachers alike

[etherealtruth]

52. I agree with Obama

Our school year was set up to accommodate and agrarian society. Clearly, our needs have changed.

[msongs]

54. yes get rid of union teachers with lower paid for profit day care providers right away nt

[Contrary1]

56. Oh good. More time for the teachers to teach the accountability tests. n/t

[Arkana]

57. Great. As if his education policy hasn't pissed off my teacher parents

enough.

[proud2BlibKansan]

61. I don't know any teachers who don't agree that year round schooling is better

and inevitable at some point.

[blonndee]

67. Me neither. n/t

[SemiCharmedQuark]

310. I like the idea of a year round schooling system set up like England's.

They go "year round" in that they don't have a 3 month break, but they have several smaller breaks throughout the year.

I hated the 3 month break. I liked not doing anything for 3 months, but then we'd get back to class and nobody would remember anything we'd done three months before. It required us to waste quite a bit of time relearning material we'd already gone over. I found it to be horribly disruptive.

[ecstatic]

64. It's not the amount of time in school that's the problem

It's the crappy curriculum, the disparity in resources in schools in rich/poor/middle class areas, lack of qualified teachers and follow through. Leave the summer vacation alone. Focus on getting a new education model that works for everyone--rich and poor.

[proud2BlibKansan]

76. Most year round models don't add days to the year

I agree with the rest of your post :)

[cherish44]

77. You have a point about crappy curriculum

And a lot of apatheic parents or parents whose priorities are all screwed up. When I was teaching, any teacher who dared give homework got lots of complaints from parents because it kept kids from focusing on more important things like football practice.

[seabeyond]

83. you are so right on. this is what i found in a higher income, educated community

i would say all right, thank you to after school tutoring when one of my children struggled with math. the teacher would warily ask if the child could do it, expecting problems. i asked, really, parents really have a problem, you going beyond for my child. and teachers say ya. tis hard

i have heard same complaint about homework. i tell adm and teacher more homework. i want to see what id is doing and if he struggles, ergo needs help. tthey are saying, parents complain

[seabeyond]

80. honestly, our poorest schools have the best academic curriculum

so the opportunity is there. they are magnet schools and awesome. my kids dont particpate in that system. but i hear good things about this.

i can only talk about my area though

the rest of the system have advanced course IF a child takes advantage and i have found those cirriculms to be excellent too

[saltpoint]

65. To ask more of students than we currently ask means also, IMO, paying teachers

correspondingly more for the extra work they already do in students' behalf.

Let's do ask more of our students but let's expressly elevate the role of teaching them to the very high status it deserves, with corresponding salary bumps.

[proud2BlibKansan]

78. +1000

:applause:

[seabeyond]

85. asking more of the students will accomplish nothing, set up failure, if MORE is not demanded of

parent.

the teachers cannot accomplish what you say, without parent.

the children who could do more, already have the parent demanding it of them. and they are succeeding. it is the kids that do not have parental participation failing. adn that will jsut continue.

gotta address the real issue. or set up for failure.

[saltpoint]

87. I can't give you any kind of blueprint that will make parents subscribe to

the Jefferson/Madison model of the iormed citizenry.

I wish I could.

[seabeyond]

92. and nto addressing the real issue, setting up all to fail is not the answer either.

kinda like everything else we are doing in this country. trying to fix without going to heart of problem.

we might have to get creative addressing these children that are not participating in the academics the kids are provided.

[saltpoint]

98. Still, Obama is asking that we ask more such that we graduate kids

from our high schools who can balance a personal bank budget, who can locate the Mississippi River on a map, and who may be more willing than prior generations to serve others toward a collective good.

This may well involve summer hours.

[seabeyond]

111. they teach all that in the schools. it is there for the child to learn. the child that refuses

are you really saying a few more weeks, a few more motnhs of schooling will finely allow the child how to do this.

i taught my child to balance checkbook and reconcile his savings account at 11, 12. he hasnt even gotten into the classes yet that provide this, but classes there are

why in the hell would it require more hours when the kids are taught five years running where the mississippi is and they still refuse to learn it.

[Odin2005]

127. I learned far more reading on my own than I ever learned in the classroom.

If something is not useful or interesting it will be forgotten by most people. I guess that I where my Asperger's is a bit of a gift, I can remember copious amount of information very easily.

[seabeyond]

135. both kids. they always have been, how our house is, both parents are.

why we have decided all our learning, the only learing is from school, .... i have no idea

[saltpoint]

134. The president is not suggesting a magic formula to overcome

recalcitrance.

Nor would more school commitment hours equal, per se, more learning in a student recalcitrant to learning.

A recalcitrant student is recalcitrant no matter the school calendar.

The greater gesture is a commitment to learning as a social value and as a global goal. I'm for those goals and those values. I believe Obama is on firm ground asking for more calendar commitment and I think he will enjoy considerable support.

How can it be, for example, that U.S. students are already in school more hours than some other nations' kids, but that those other nations' kids know more when they graduate than our 18-year olds do in Omaha and Dayton and Carlsbad?

If there were cultural imperatives in place coast to coast which obviated the need for more school hours, I'm yet to hear them. Hanging out at the mall? Playing video games? Checking on-line porn? Public vandalism? Gang membership?

The idle mind is not necessary the devil's playground, but an engaged mind can be a laboratory for self-discovery and service to others.

I think the president is heading in the right direction on this.

[seabeyond]

138. mall, video, porn, vandalism, gang. all sounds like parenting to me. address that. nt

[saltpoint]

142. If kids are required to be in school there is the arithmetic of fewer

hours for mischief.

Some kids are into those things right now, which you assert as a parent issue, but which is real and reasonably (and sadly) prevalent.

Kids who are engaged longer in something a structured social institution asserts is important would have fewer hours to drift into danger zones.

I see no argument against Obama's proposal of summer hours for young people.

[seabeyond]

149. then call it what it is, babysitting. kid off street program. i am all for that. the more

available, the better it is. i have a HUGE issue with children being left all summer without parental care, guidance and watchful eye.

huge issue with that

i am all for a govt program making afforable and entertaining and educational environment for the children that need it

not the same as more required hours in school for all children

[saltpoint]

151. How would more learning hours be detrimental to anyone?

[seabeyond]

178. it is the structured environment of learning. they are kids, not adults. they

need the time off. they need the freedom. they need the period of unstructered learning.

[saltpoint]

197. Agreed. But that unstructured time might be considered a privilege following

periods of defined achievement.

Whole European countries more or less shut down and high schoolers, for example, ping-pong about the country on choo-choos.

I see no reason why unstructured time could not be part of an overall structured program, and would consider that it might be an earned privilege.

Dedication to one's own learning pays broad and diverse dividends. I think the president is well within zone to ask also that young people be enjoined to some public service commitment.

John Kennedy's Peace Corps was a good idea. A one-room school house, part necessity in rural areas, is also a good idea because the expectation of older kids assisting and encouraging younger ones is built into the process. The nation's public schools might consider taking a defiant bully from grade 6 and plopping him into an 8th or 9th grade class. My hunch is that the bulllying conduct would diminish pronto. It creats an academic inconvenience but one which could be worked around, and it establishes respectful citizenship as an expected norm.

Learning and service and citizenship aren't guaranteed by adjusting the academic calendar, granted, but they are asserted as values worth pursuing and values / goals we should insist on in our society.

It does not seem persuasive to me that those goals are more achievable by fewer hours and that they might, in the right hands, be attainable if the school year were extended and if more was asked of our students.

[seabeyond]

208. my 11 yr old summer camp was leadership in texas. a week of learning. a week

in dallas/fort worth hitting the sites, museums, and all kinds of intersting learning environment.

again i say

those opportunities are there for the kids interested. the kids that are not interested wont do

[saltpoint]

214. You may be certain that in grade 7 I was definitely not interested in algebra

but it was decided at a level of the company far ahead of my desk that I would learn it just the same.

Some of my classmates in high school thought History sucked door knobs, but despite the two or three teachers we had who taught History to us, differing styles and personalities all, we did in fact learn it pretty well (some better than others!) and carry, as I suspect most people do, some sense that we owe the Past some respect and allegiance.

Field trips? Love 'em. No reason to curtai them at all. I'd add more to the academic schedule, in fact. Good way also to involve parents' in the lives of the school and in the lives of their kids.

[wickerwoman]

368. And who is going to enforce the parental expectations?

If I'm a teacher and I have a student who never does homework and I tell their parents and they respond "what difference does it make? She wants to be a hairdresser," then what is the teacher supposed to do? Report them to the cops?

I agree that parents need to step up. I just don't think that's something that's enforceable with public policy.

There will always be unskilled parents, lazy parents, absent parents, stupid parents, disrespectful parents, abusive parents, overwhelmed and struggling parents... the job of the educational system is to mitigate the damage that they do to their children so that they can lead productive lives regardless.

And they can only do that in the time that they have the kids in the class. And since the expectations and needs of a "well educated citizen" have raised exponentially since the 1950s in terms of math, science, analytic thinking, foreign languages, computer skills, etc. the time that teachers have now is clearly inadequate and stupidly distributed for learning effectiveness and efficiency.

You have to fix what you can fix and not worry about the rest.

[seabeyond]

369. we have not even talked about the exceleration of the drop out rate.

if telling a parent the child needs to do his homeworks meets with no results, what will happen with that child, with no parental control, told to go to class more.

drop out faster.

those are the issue we face.

more hours, more days are not going ot make these kids learn more

if a child does not know first pres of u.s. or current pres by twelth grade, what will more time in class give them?

i cannot see the common sense in arguing more time in school will finally teach that child where the mississippi is or who the first pres was.

it. makes. no. sense.

and no one has yet to explain to me how more time will teach that almost adult something os simple

[wickerwoman]

382. Kids have different interests.

I hated learning grammar in English, loved learning it in German class (mostly because I hated my English teacher and loved my German one). Some kids hate math but love science or economics or computers. Some kids will read big fat books about history or dinosaurs or space exploration but struggle with poetry in their English classes. A kid who didn't learn where Mississippi was in their geography class might learn it in a music history class or in a play they were acting in or in an earth science class.

Offering kids an array of subjects makes it more likely that all the bases will be covered.

The problem with the school system now is that kids who are tagged weak readers or bad at math are kept from studying anything but the subject they hate until they can pass a standardized test in it. Maybe they really need two or three hours a day of math to catch up to grade level but then they don't get to take science, computer or business classes *which also use math* and which might keep them more interested and in school.

Having these kids take a wider variety of classes in the extra time (and letting other kids take more electives) would keep more kids in school because it would increase the likelihood that they would find *their thing*... something that they could excel at... instead of making them spend 70% of their time on dry subjects that don't interest them and which they feel doomed to fail at.

[MattBaggins]

130. Ask more of the parents IMHO

[saltpoint]

136. A good ideal worth aiming for, but hard to push to fruition.

Our culture does not honor intellectual or creative accomplishment. The teacher's reach is only so far.

In some cases a teacher can inspire a change in attitudes in kids' homes, but generally speaking that isn't possible.

On school grounds, though, you can elevate that good teacher's reach into the future by permitting kids more time with him or her.

[seabeyond]

139. permitting kids more time with him or her.... point. babysitter. teacher the parent. nt

[saltpoint]

145. You debase teachers' missions by calling them babysitters.

[seabeyond]

180. NO, i do NOT. it is a system that makes them that, demands them to be

i am the one saying NO to it. that is exactly what is being suggested here, and i say our teachers are so much more, and it is not their job to be the parent.

[saltpoint]

189. The system sanctions learning. That is its mission. The institution doing

that sanctioning is imperfect, as any institution is imperfect, but many, many good things happen in classrooms, in cafeterias, in gym classes, in band rehearsal halls, in drama stages, on the girls' soccer practice, and so forth.

Many good things. Things worth defending, preserving, encouraging more of.

I see no detriment in more such hours for young people.

[seabeyond]

195. and i do see it as detrimental. so we disagree. the amount my kids get is more than enough

we are all ready to say enough, including the teachers. they are beyond us academically than years past. they do more, have more knowledge, and ahead of us oldies. but you want more

i dont want more

i want my kids to be kids. not little adults have the countries experiment.

[saltpoint]

201. Asking more of students does not assert that they can't be kids.

Kids are gonna be kids no matter what you and I think or no matter if Obama's proposals are ever realized.

The French 18-year old who finishes public school in her country but who knows more than a U.S. 18-year old who just graduated from a Beaumont, Texas or Mansfield, Ohio high school is no more or no less a kid.

They're all kids, just as we were all kids.

[seabeyond]

210. and my kids that take education seriously will meet that 18 yr old french person academically. nt

[saltpoint]

222. Ok, but your household is not representative, is it? Whose household is?

Public education invokes Madison's and Jefferson's informed citizenry.

Most high schools here are NOT on level with many other nation's public education system, and the president expressly indicated that we should strive for a far more competitive level.

I don't have a problem with that at all.

[seabeyond]

225. i hear the same argument from many in this community. schools not par to my kids across country?

show me. i am not believing it. maybe true, and maybe not. maybe it is people putting the blame, like in this area, where the blame does not belong.

my kids see the opportunities adn they strive to take advantage of the opportunities. i cant see the panhandle of texas being particularly exceptional or above the nation. i just dont buy it. cant guarentee the arent. but doesnt make sense to me

seems more like parents are wanting something that isnt gonna happen cause of home environment.

[saltpoint]

229. This is the president's proposal, not a proposal by any particular set

of parents.

If you are a supportive parent, I say hurray, we could use more of you.

But I think if you consult with teachers from different parts of the country you will hear a series of different accounts.

Justice, health care, and education are not the same in all places.

[seabeyond]

233. they have increased the amount of time in school. problem has NOT been

solved. it has gotten worse. a student that doesn not want to be there, does not want ot learn will not magically meet those goals with extended hours. they will just give up and quit sooner.

[saltpoint]

234. Our culture persisted in its claim that cigarette smoking is harmful to

people's health and in the lifetimes of many Americans, the percentage of adults who smoked dramatically decreased.

That is a change of behavior among the citizenry. Hard fought, but worth the scramble. And it was significantly successful. We may never get 100% of anyone to do any one thing.

There will be kids who resist learning. There will be parents who don't support their kids.

The president is not pretending that we can snap our fingers and solve those problems.

But he is asserting that a more competitive outcome is required for global citizenship, and I think he will enjoy significant support for that. The specifics are yet to be hammered out. I'd like to see an abandonment of standardized testing and I would support increased school hours.

I would also be very enthusiastic about connecting accomplishment and attitude toward accomplishment with unstructured time, earned by demonstrable achievement and/or attitude toward same. I think you are exactly right that kids need unstructured time. We all do, actually.

But I also believe that you and I would more responsibly manage our unstructured time and make better choices than the average 9th grader or 10th grader. If kids want an allowance I think they should keep their rooms tidy and the grass cut and the garbage emptied in exchange.

[seabeyond]

239. my kids school day goes from 6:30 in morning until 5:00 in evening. then every night homework.

how much longer would you like to make his day

he has ALL AP course adn a college course his freshman year in highschool

how much tougher would you like to make it for him

[saltpoint]

244. I don't think the president is trying to make life tough for your family.

The goal here is predicated on the idea that our high schoolers do not compete favorably with high schoolers from other nations' public eduction system.

The contrast is demonstrable and pervades almost all academic fields.

If things are going well at your house, that's genuinely great news. But as I said before, your house would not appear to be representative if in fact that contrast is so sharply drawn.

And it is.

Hence, the president's concern.

You object to more schooling hours in the academic calendar, but this idea has been kicked around for many years. Obama has not just pulled it out of thin air.

We are behind in almost all academic subjects. He is asking that we buck up and do better and become more globally competitive.

[seabeyond]

245. reality. my kid goes from 6:30-5:00 in school then homework. TELL me, how much longer

of a day should he have. how much harder should his learning be. freshman year. ALL AP and one college course.

what more do you want from him.

you tell me

my youngest is doing freshman algebra in 6th grade. should we make it 5th grade so people feel better.

[saltpoint]

253. I was trying to politely suggest that the president's proposal is not

about your family.

Your references in response to points in the thread are about your family, your child, your role.

There are some 300 million U.S. Americans and the president is searching for a way to make a failed system far more globally competitive.

[seabeyond]

255. he is suggesting longer days for all, not some. longer school year for all, not some

my children may not need it, as a matter of fact, it will undoubtly hurt my kids, but that is ok, cause of kids across the nation needing more? when the more doesnt address the real problems.

the increase in day and year is for all kids, not some. so tell me.... how much longer is my kids day gonna be for an experiment that to me makes no sense, for the children that are not doing well.

how long will my kids day be.

that is the reality that is being suggested

[saltpoint]

258. It's pertinent to your household but as has been suggested a few times

already, your household is not the nation.

The nation is a big place with lots of folks and the need is not in question: we need to do better in a global community in preparing students for real-world application of what they learn.

That is presently not being accomplished at a competitive level with dozens of other nations.

[seabeyond]

263. i agree. so go to the real reasons. increasing hours in the day hurts the kids. and yes

my kids count. as many kids across the nation participate in a very important and healthy after school curriculum that takes up time too. and they have the same hours in their day. generally the good students that have to work ass off from time they get up until the time they go to bed. they are the ones in accelerated programs pulling in the A's. they are the ones that do the homework at night.

the suggestion in longer hours in a day

the ONLY way i see that happening is cut the extra curricular programs so the kids cant fit all the "learnin" that they are already learning into their day.

so it seems that though the extra hours wont help the kids that refuse to do the work, it will hurt our kids busting butt.

[seabeyond]

249. you ignore. we have tried increased days and it fails. so increase more? we tried teachers

as parent substitute and it fails. so we want to increase their parental role?

where is common sense.

[saltpoint]

256. Increased hours has not been uniformly tried. That is false. School systems

around the country are not the same. Just ask any family with one kid in college and another in high school when they are trying to plan a visit to the grandparents in Cincinnati. Schools are not on the same schedule. They are annoyingly different.

Some schools begin earlier than others in August. Some budget more snow days if they're in a climate where that's required. In Texas you likely have fewer snow days budgeted than a school in Burlington, Vermont, or Schaumburg, Illinois.

Curricula differ. There is no uniform agreement on what kids should study, or when, or for how long, or to what academic level.

If you want a kid to do handsomely with a tremendous educational system and enormous opportunity, enroll him or her in Finland. Those people seem to get it done.

The president's proposal attempts to improve the quality of learning in the United States. I think we need to be flexible and fluid in attaining that goal.

[seabeyond]

257. that is differing schedules, not differing lengths of days in school year.

across the nation, the days in school year are consistent if they want federal funding. and yes, the time in school was what `176. now what 182.

[saltpoint]

260. Sorry. Aware of that distinction, that point is not the point at hand.

If a student in Finland or France can learn more in fewer days than one in Amarillo or Atlanta, the global opportunity belongs first to the student from Finland or France. And not to the one from Amarillo.

How would you address the feeling by many educators that more classroom hours would be of benefit to large numbers of students?

[seabeyond]

264. i have not heard that from a single educator. what uor schools provide is an

extra period at end of day for tutoring kids they feel are not getting it. mandatory. and parents get down right angry and upset that the school dares to insist their kids have extra one on one attention. addressing these issue, parents, that cry about kid having homoework, whine about kids being taught, and throw fits about one on one attention from teachers before demanding all the kids put in more needless hours

[saltpoint]

315. You should talk with a lot more educators. Teachers have many

varying insights and analyses over how to best represent themselves in cases where a child refuses to learn versus is unable to learn; in cases where parents cannot make the distinction between support and interference, or worse, when the parents are so uninvolved as to render their children's academic efforts moot; and in cases where there are other variables serving as impediments to children's learning, no matter the source.

In my opinion, most teachers are awfully damn good at knowing what to do about it, about knowing the limits they face, about conferring with each other on strategies and possible solutions, and so forth.

Again. If parenting in this nation sucks as bad as you seem to suggest it does, then perhaps teachers possessed of far better instincts should have more time, not less, with those at-risk student populations.

[seabeyond]

266. you still have not given me a number how much longer my kids day needs to be. 6:30 to 5:00. then

homework.

and my kid far from the only

how long of a day do kids perform.

or do we cut out the healthy extra cirricular.

[saltpoint]

294. I would be delighted to charge consultant's fees for any

insights and analysis regarding your children's schooling.

However, that role is likely a joint duty of parents and teachers.

One kid learns baseball within a few weeks' time; another might take months; there's no telling what the variables are for the differential.

Same with geography and math.

The argument that a number or statistic or percentage decides quality is the psychology of standardized testing.

[seabeyond]

296. since you so easily refuse to suggest another hour in my kids day because other students

REFUSE their education, i have to figure even you realize that a kid in the school from 6:30 to 5:00 is long enough and you are not willing to cut extra curricular activities. not to mention the homework later in the evening.

your post is snarky bullshit not addressing the issue

kids are having problems in the school

address the problems.

longer hours is not the problem

the kids aren't learning what they are given now, where mississippi is. they wont learn because you extend the hours. they will drop out that much sooner

good way to aggravate the problem and add burden to kids doing what they are suppose to.

[saltpoint]

309. I'm too frightened to continue. You're using naughty words.

[saltpoint]

262. The U.S. school calendar is shorter than calendars of most of the nations whose

students know more than our kids do:

http://schoolmatch.com/articles/BNJAN05.htm

- - -

American students have a shorter school year than those living in twelve of the world’s other wealthiest nations. Students in other information-age countries receive twice as much instruction as American students in core academic areas during their secondary school years.

On average, in the United States, students attend school 180 days, in the UK 190 days and in Eastern Asia 208 days. It would appear to be no coincidence that Eastern Asian students generally perform well on international comparison tests. Many of the countries where students outscored ours have instructional calendars that are 3-4 weeks longer each year than that provided for American students.

- - -

[seabeyond]

265. again, we increased kids schools days today from yesterday. our kids fall behind nations today

as opposed to yesterday (and yesterday not literal). asian has more days, they also have a different family structure and demands on their childrens performance.

common sense. studies. whatever

is it the parental participation or number of days

we increase days, kids succeed less.

[saltpoint]

313. Shown to be false. In other countries comparably aged students

excel at subjects versus academic outcomes in our country and the international venues require more class time.

You are mistaken there.

[Odin2005]

276. And IMO WAY too much homework.

Too much useless busywork and not enough understanding.

[seabeyond]

280. lol. the reason i like homework coming home is to be a part of that understanding

if kids dont understand. what i have found especially with my kids, adn kids as a whole is they dont want to ask teacher to further explain when they dont get it. and so they nod that they understand and dont. i want the homework home to see if kids understand and if not get them instruction needed to understand so they dont fall behind and are not overwhelmed and dont fail.

[Odin2005]

284. The problem isn't homework, the problem is too much homework

There was many times that I had so much homework that I was up until 1AM doing my homework, made my mom furious at the school. Kids shouldn't be having 3 hours of homework on them.

[seabeyond]

285. i agree. though we dont often run into that. we were talking about school events scheduled

in the evening and all the teachers dumping homework on that night. do understand that thinking. but i have not run into too much homework, for the most part. occassionaly.

but i can as much see it as childs fault for procrastination too.

[wickerwoman]

365. My local high school's hours are still 8-2.

If your kid is spending eleven hours a day at school that probably involves commuting, your work schedule and/or extra-curriculars.

The point is that he doesn't *have* to spend that much time at school, nor does he have to take AP and college classes. He has a tough schedule because he (and/or you) signed up for it. Good for you.

Many more students are doing the bare minimum. They only go to school six 45 or 50 minute periods a day (one or more of which might be "study hall"- so 3.5-4.5 hours of class time a day), do almost no homework, and forget what little they do learn over the three month break which they spend on the sofa with their Playstations while their parents(s) work. Those are the kids who would greatly benefit from a little more time in school and a little more structured vacation schedule.

And since statistically those students seem to be more prevalent than kids like you son (leading to us dragging behind almost every other industrialized nation), there would seem to be a good case for lengthening the school year and redistributing the vacations.

[seabeyond]

367. then wouldnt that be where you started? why would you extend the day that for many are already full

my kid is not the only one in these course. my kid is not the only one in extra cirricular classes. we dont want to stop those kids do we?

kids school goes 7:55 to 3:40. 8 periods. to graduate it is 4x4, starting this year

4 yrs science
4 yrs english
4 yrs math
4 yrs history

[Odin2005]

279. A ton of useless homework isn't "asking more of students", it's turning them off of learning things.

We need BETTER education, not more education.

[saltpoint]

295. Good practicing habits, well-supported by encouraging piano teachers,

plus more time at the keyboard usually puts the Bach preludes within reach in far shorter time than any reduction in any of those three things.

[MattBaggins]

174. I agree with you 100%

But you can dream up a 1000, million dollar magic programs that will fix our education system and they won't do squat if you don't get parents to pay attention to their kids. Extending school years so we can train our kids to be good mindless little workers won't fix the problems of failing families. See that is what we have; failing families not failing schools.

Yep it's tough in todays world with single parents and multiple jobs but YOU have to take an active role no matter how tired you might be. Sending our kids to a brick box for a few extra weeks of the year isn't going to help.

[saltpoint]

184. Yes. A kid who is well-supported at home by one or more parents or

guardians has by far the greater chance for success and self-esteem and express accomplishment.

For kids who do not have that level of support, teachers' roles are even more crucial as rescuers from current limits to future possibilities.

A couple of generations ago, a very large number of U.S. adults smoked cigarettes. On planes, in theaters, and in the workplace.

Not so now. It took a couple of generations and a full-court press about the health risks, but it did kick in, at least for a sizable chunk of adults.

A similar push regarding taking a supportive and encouraging role in a kid's schooling wouldn't hurt one iota.

And loud, sustained cheers for the teachers who battle many hours of the day for those kids who need the most support. Bravo for them.

[seabeyond]

205. teacher being a parent does NOT work. we already have evidence. we have been

experimenting with it a couple decades. and it is a failure. the teacher isnt the parent, without parental support the teacher cannot be successful. you are taking a failure and demanding not only continuing it but escalating it to increased failure. then blaming teachers and sytem as the nation is doing today

[saltpoint]

207. Don't veer off into crazyland. Teachers serve as role models. They

teach math equations. They help interpret LORD OF THE FLIES. They run band rehearsals. They have cafeteria duty. They arrange parent-teacher conferences. They send home notices. They discipline kids as needed. They make calls home when necessary. They often buy their own classroom materials. They attend professional conferences.

And so forth down a very long list.

The argument the president offers here is not a conversion of roles. It is a proposal which asserts the value of learning and the citizenship possible when that learning is more broadly values and more vigorously pursued.

[seabeyond]

213. dont dismiis fact as craziness. talk to teachers. i am right on. nt

[saltpoint]

215. Your opinion does not = 'fact.' It's only an opinion, as is mine.

Teachers have been known to disagree.

You and I disagree on this subject, as an example.

[earthside]

155. No way.

An unkind truth: most teachers in this country are paid very well in comparison to everyone else; they have health insurance (at least partially paid for by taxpayers); they have a great work schedule (all holidays off); generally have an adequate retirement plan (admitting that the current recession is hurting them and everyone), etc. Nevertheless, I certainly do not begrudge teachers for what they are making now, but they shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Being a teacher is important, but collecting our garbage is also quite important -- see what happens when it is not collected. I get very uncomfortable with this rather elitist notion that all unskilled labor is menial and undeserving and that just because a person has the title "teacher" they should be entitled to the highest wages in the nation. Almost all teachers I know, right now with their current wage and benefit package, are living very good middle class lives.

Besides, let's get real ... as long as teachers become more and more just bureaucrats because of the NCLB curriculum and testing mandates, then they are on the way to being overpaid for what they do. Indeed, if Obama's and Duncan's "merit pay" plan takes hold as part of this misnamed "Race to the Top" scheme look for more union busting and more 'robot' teachers to create even more downward wage pressure.

Until the unions and teachers start actively agitating to end the 'No Child Left Behind' disaster, they aren't going to get paid more and, in my opinion, won't deserve to be.

So beware of 'year round school' ... it looks to me like another way to either make teachers work more for the same money or an excuse to bust-up the union to give administrators more authority to hire 'teachers' who will work more for less.

[saltpoint]

203. I sense no union-busting involved in asking more of students.

[NightWatcher]

69. do most kids still need the summer off to harvest on their family's farm?

Nope? then let them get back to school.

I know it might suck since we have the smartest kids in the world, oh wait, we are falling WAY behind the rest of the world in damn near every subject.

[goclark]

199. Good point ~ I went on a tour of schools in Japan

I was invited by the Japanese Embassy to visit schools during the summer of 1997. It was a once in a life time experience. Helping their children was at the top of the list for the hundreds of Japanese parents that I met. They really valued learning.

We had "home stays" and got to talk to parents and see how they helped their children. On the weekend the parents would take me with the children to the zoo and other places of educational value.

Not saying that Americans would be happy with it because we are used to having our "summer vacations." I'm just saying that in Japan, children are going to school all year round. I don't remember seeing any children crying because they wanted to be at home. And ~~~ Japan is HOT during the summer!

The President framed the issue well IMO. He was drawing on his own experience of course. Recall that his mother woke him up at 4 AM so she could be sure he studied.

Education was important in the family life of Michelle and Barack Obama.

Don't think that he would want to harm America's children.

[Odin2005]

70. Sorry, Mr. President, but this is a bad idea.

His intentions are good, but are based on BS sociological fads. Kids NEED a long break free from structured, institutional education. A time kids can day-dream, wonder, and explore on their own.

Another reason that if I have kids I'm going to homeschool them.

[DefenseLawyer]

79. More tuning out, more burning out, more dropping out

We have already consolidated schools into massive test taking factories, where any actual learning is done at home with 3 or 4 hours of homework a night (can't take away from the testing company's time during the school day), why not take the drudgery to another level with year round school? We need to teach those kids early on that workers don't get vacations; their time belongs to the man. We would be better off with LOTS more small community schools with smaller class sizes and more teachers, rather than looking at our failing system and saying "Hey lets keep failing our kids, we'll just do it more often.".

[Lyric]

88. If he does, my kid leaves public schools for good.

Kids need time for unstructured mental development--time to explore, learn, and play. Time to learn to entertain themselves in absence of constant "input" from teachers, parents, and the internet/TV media.

Take away summer vacation, and I take MY kid out of public school and give it right back to him.

[Odin2005]

109. +1

[roody]

90. How did I ever manage to become such a good reader

and mathematician? Born in 1953.

[roody]

91. School---cheap day care.

Why pay more?

[Bonobo]

95. Capitalism---indentured worker system.

Who needs slavery?

[MadHound]

96. Beyond stupid Obama

First off, study after study has shown the kids need that long period of unstructured time in order to grow and develop properly. They are not little adults who you keep at the grindstone day in, day out all year around.

Secondly, teachers need that time off, to destress, decompress, and also catch up on their own lives. Furthermore, if you're going to have school in session year round, when are teachers going to have time to do that continuing education(professional development, master's degrees, etc.) that they are mandated to acquire? Not to mention that it will require shelling out more money to pay teachers to be in school year round.

Finally, if you have year round school, you are going to wreck the economy. Tourism generates 8 million jobs and over 600 billion dollars in revenue. Take that away, or severely curtail it and your economy goes into a tailspin.

Hopefully this is simply another example of a foolish president, uneducated on the issue, shooting off his mouth for political purposes. Yet this sort of thing continues to make me regret my vote for this man, and if he actively pursues this, I will actively oppose him. After all, at one time in the not so distant past, we still had summer vacations and were one of the top educated populations in the world. So it isn't the amount of time that was a factor, but rather this points to things like our current underfunding of education, lack of parental involvement, NCLB, the emphasis on testing, the dumbed down curriculum, etc. etc. Perhaps we should start addressing those issues rather than trying to fix it with that mythical magical bullet of no summer vacations.

[seabeyond]

143. They are not little adults . POINT. nt

[Odin2005]

183. I agree.

Obama is getting bad advice from the people pushing the newest sociological fads.

[Better Today]

97. With the work loads and schedules of most working parents, I see this as a good

thing with the consideration that the class days/months/years include more art, more phys ed, more music, more life skills (like cooking, financial/money/credit, and other vocational type classes that assist us in fixing and maintaining our own things better than we can now).

If it is just more RRR and testing, than its entirely stupid and nothing more than extended daycare, which is nice for working parents but would be too costly and too useless to justify.

[treestar]

102. I agree with this - teachers spend a lot of time in the fall just reviewing

The number of days in school can stay the same with the breaks more frequent and shorter. The big three month break was to help with the harvest, and that's obsolete.

[Obamanaut]

103. I agree with this. nt

[Orwellian_Ghost]

150. Do we really need school?

The empire struck back, of course; childish adults regularly conflate opposition with disloyalty. I once returned from a medical leave to discover t~at all evidence of my having been granted the leave had been purposely destroyed, that my job had been terminated, and that I no longer possessed even a teaching license. After nine months of tormented effort I was able to retrieve the license when a school secretary testified to witnessing the plot unfold. In the meantime my family suffered more than I care to remember. By the time I finally retired in 1991, 1 had more than enough reason to think of our schools-with their long-term, cell-block-style, forced confinement of both students and teachers-as virtual factories of childishness. Yet I honestly could not see why they had to be that way. My own experience had revealed to me what many other teachers must learn along the way, too, yet keep to themselves for fear of reprisal: if we wanted to we could easily and inexpensively jettison the old, stupid structures and help kids take an education rather than merely receive a schooling. We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness-curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insightsimply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids to truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then.

But we don't do that. And the more I asked why not, and persisted in thinking about the "problem" of schooling as an engineer might, the more I missed the point: What if there is no "problem" with our schools? What if they are the way they are, so expensively flying in the face of common sense and long experience in how children learn things, not because they are doing something wrong but because they are doing something right? Is it possible that George W. Bush accidentally spoke the truth when he said we would "leave no child behind"? Could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not one of them ever really grows up?

Do we really need school? I don't mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. Is this deadly routine really necessary? And if so, for what? Don't hide behind reading, writing, and arithmetic as a rationale, because 2 million happy homeschoolers have surely put that banal justification to rest. Even if they hadn't, a considerable number of well-known Americans never went through the twelve-year wringer our kids currently go through, and they turned out all right. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln? Someone taught them, to be sure, but they were not products of a school system, and not one of them was ever "graduated" from a secondary school. Throughout most of American history, kids generally didn't go to high school, yet the unschooled rose to be admirals, like Farragut; inventors, like Edison; captains of industry like Carnegie and Rockefeller; writers, like Melville and Twain and Conrad; and even scholars, like Margaret Mead. In fact, until pretty recently people who reached the age of thirteen weren't looked upon as children at all. Ariel Durant, who co-wrote an enormous, and very good, multivolume history of the world with her husband, Will, was happily married at fifteen, and who could reasonably claim that Ariel Durant was an uneducated person? Unschooled, perhaps, but not uneducated.

...

http://www.spinninglobe.net/againstschool.htm

[Odin2005]

198. Wow, I agree with you for once! Great post, OG!

I learned far more from my own reading than I ever learned in a school. IMO the way we educate our kids need to be re-designed from the ground up. The world has moved on since the origin of our public education system in the early 1800s. Technology has advanced greatly and yet has never been truly integrated into our educational system, they exist mostly as add-ons. For example, IMO there is a huge, untapped well of potential of using things like educational video games and interactive virtual worlds. In our Wikipediafied world the problem is not with getting enough information, it's in learning to process it and come to rational conclusions.

[Fleshdancer]

154. I go back and forth on this

I think a better compromise would be to make the school days longer while keeping at least 2 months for summer vacation. I can think of a number of reasons why a longer school day would benefit both everyone - PE every day, less need for struggling families to pay for after school care, educators have more time (and hopefully more flexibility) in their lesson plans, etc.

[FirstLight]

168. Yikes, the strong responses here are really thick...

Look, I am sure that the school year extensions and weekend openings would be optional in some form.

I am an idealist, and would also like to think this would create jobs as well as increase the benefits/compensation for srrent teachers...who knows? maybe they WOULD get more help?

I am a single mom with 3 kids...one is much older and has to be the "backup" when my work goes past 4pm and the little ones get off the bus. I don't like the idea of a longer day, just because they need the downtime to get settled and relax and eat dinner and do the bedtime routine. I'd rather be picking them up myself at 4:30. At this point, the hour long bus-ride home is a babysitter of sorts for me...
And as much as I love my kids, this summer was hell - I could have used a "day camp" program at the school or church that would have let them go and learn something and be socially stimulated - even 3 days a week would have made a HUGE difference in everyone's happiness level. The two ounger siblings got bored with eachother, I couldn't get my work done (home office) and the constant bickering almost drove us ALL over the edge...

So ya, I am a HUGE proponent of the year round school idea. They NEED the stimulation and to be around other kids and the summer was so long - one month in they were bored riding their brand new bikes! And though I enjoy teaching the occasional sunday school...most of the time the juggle of cleaning house/cooking/and working are so all consuming that it makes it hard to sit down and just "play" with my kids. - call me a bad parent, but that's LIFE when you are single and struggling..
I WISH I could be one of those parents who does that quality time and summer project stuff with their kids...but for my crazy life sometimes just keeping up on regular schoolwork is hard for us...but I welcome the structure, and so do they.

More school isn't for lazy parents...just the opposite in fact.

[Triana]

171. Make it year-round. n/t

[blue_onyx]

185. I think this would be good

I don't think adding more days will affect a student's ability to have a nice summer. I know in Michigan, school usually ends about the middle of June and starts back up after Labor Day. If we extended the school year until the end of June, which would add two weeks to the school year, students would still have over 2 month of vacations. That's plenty of time to enjoy the summer.

[seabeyond]

221. i bet it is the same amount of days. i bet they cut out holidays

and pushed the beginning of school to later to accommodate a later release.

they did this in our district two years ago.

the reason?

corporations and business need the high school and college students as employees longer than they were getting during the break. wasn't for kids, was for corporations, businesses.

i dont care any way they decide this. make it year around with breaks. but kids are provided with enough day to learn what they need.

[Stuckinthebush]

204. Excellent idea

Year round school is a great idea too. To those who lament the death of the summer vacation, remember that year round school allows for long vacations at different times of the year. Also, for most parents the summer is a time of stress to figure out what to do with kids. Many parents work full time jobs with limited vacation options.

But the most important thing is that kids have continuity in studies.

Good idea. I support it.

[seabeyond]

223. they are talking escalating the school year by hours in a day and days in the year

if it is the same amount of time per year for education, i will go along with however they chose to break it up. i see advantages and disadvantages in both ways. but it is fine with me.

[HughBeaumont]

212. Ugh. Dislike.

School was a fucking miserable experience for me and I'm sure countless thousands of other students. The constant busywork, homework that consumed just about every ounce of free time, studying for hours and getting average to below average grades as a result, bad teachers who should have retired years previous berating you in class and making you feel like even less of a piece of shit than you already feel, useless classes that seemed to get longer with each passing day .. .. oh, did I mention the coital mistake bullies, douchebaggity cliques, drug use, and students of both genders being assholes for the sake of being assholes?

Yes, I mean, who WOULDN'T want to forego the one escape you have from this idiocy, the one glimmer of hope in a sewer of a life . . . to trudge through this lake of liquid manure ALL year ROUND? After all, those douchebags are going to be a hell of a lot less surly if you take THEIR summer away and they'll perhaps leave you alone, right? Hey, who needs FUN? Was it Hegel or Red Forman who said "To be a well adjusted adult later in life, you have to be miserable NOW! That's just good parenting."

Life isn't about FUN, and the sooner us untermensch drones get that through our thick skulls, the better off we'll BE.

:eyes: :sarcasm: :eyes: :sarcasm: :eyes: :sarcasm: :eyes: :sarcasm: :eyes: :sarcasm: :eyes: :sarcasm: :eyes: :sarcasm:

You're concerned about students being behind? Here's a clue, first one's free: DON'T ELECT REPUBLICAN POLITICIANS, BECAUSE THEY DEFUND ALL THINGS PERTINENT TO EDUCATION AND USE THE BORROWED LOOT TO BLOW UP SOVEREIGN NATIONS AND FUND MANSIONS FOR THE WEALTHY!!!

[Odin2005]

220. Exactly! I agree with you completely.

I have PTSD from being bullied by peers and teachers.

[HughBeaumont]

231. School isn't just about "a" or "b" or word problems or examinations.

Too many intangibles going on and every kid's school experience is different. You read about far too many examples of kids who are traumatized at the mere thought of going to school for this to be a good idea sight unseen. Victimized kids cannot learn in an environment where they're made to feel less than human by the people that are supposed to be teaching them, let alone their supposed "peers".

And more often than not . . . it "doesn't just go away" and there is no "forgive and forget".

[Feron]

217. It's already happening here.

Back in the late 90s, the school year ran from late August to early May. Now in the same district the year runs from early August to early June.

I remember forgetting a lot of stuff over the summer and a shorter break will at least curb that.

[seabeyond]

228. i bet it is the same amount of days too. jsut shifting schedule. this proposal

is longer hours in a day and more days of the year.

[Mariana]

230. If he wants to spread out the vacation time

so that less is taken in the summer and more taken at other times of the year, that would be fine. If more days are added, I'll pull my daughter out.

[seabeyond]

235. again, my kids are working their ass off time in. why should they be penalized and have a longer

period when they are doing what they are suppose to do. the NEED to stop at a certain time. or they burn out, or dont continue being successful. oldest son doing cross country freshman year. all AP course, a college course, full day in school and goes to school at 6:30 in morning for practice and gets out at 5 with afternoon practice then homework. that is more than enough.

switch up schedule i would support

more, i will not. how much longer of a day do they want this kid to do. and i strongly support homework so not asking for less.

[aikoaiko]

237. Finally,

Kids need more time in the classroom. There is way too much to learn these days.

[lostnfound]

241. Horrifying and depressing. Let kids be kids.

Of course the one bright side is that the rightwingers would have less hours with which to inculcate their kids with their idiocy.
On the other hand, I would have less hours reading Howard Zinn together with my son or less time to take him on trips out of the bubble of the United States, and he would have less hours with aging members of the family with whom his time will be limited.

Doesn't anyone think there's anything to be learned OUTSIDE of school?!!?

If they really want to smarten up the entire country, they could terminate the cartoon network (but that might interfere with the recruiting).

[seabeyond]

242. agreed. with argument to extend day, .... my kid goes from 6:30 in morning til 5:00 at night, then

homework when he comes home. he is exhausted every night and exhausted by end of week. i am proud he is doing so well, workin ass off. just where do they want to extend their day.

this makes me so mad

i would be derelict of as a parent to allow this, as much as the parent that insists on less for their child.

[saltpoint]

331. Were you and the president to sit down over lunch and if you continued

to repeat your child's schedule, my guess is that the president might suggest to you that he is president for all 300 million Americans and not just your personal household.

People who don't have any children pay taxes to support public schools. No one needs to read their budget / income versus proportional service-to-tax percentages.

You are almost in double figures in this thread bitching about your family's school schedule.

The president does not appear to be singling your household out for frustration. He appears to be making a broader gesture on a pertinent topic which by all counts involves global academic competitiveness.

[seabeyond]

335. and are you seriously suggesting my child has the only school with this schedule and opportunity

in academics and that my child is the ONLY one in his school with this schedule and academic expectation?

are you seriously suggesting that

[saltpoint]

337. Actually what I'm trying to suggest, without any discernible success, is that

your personal family is not likely the model prompting concern by the President and his team and on which his proposal rests.

You seem throughout the thread completely incapable of moving from your kitchen to the broader landscape the President is addressing.

[seabeyond]

343. and you continue to ignore where the issues are with a bandaide fix it that wont work. nt

[saltpoint]

348. You'll hear very few arguments from me that the U.S education system is

flawless.

However.

For better and worse, it does not rise and fall from your front porch.

[seabeyond]

351. my front porch does not ignore the true issues with our kids today. yours does. blindly. nt

[saltpoint]

353. I also appreciate the fact that the President expressly referenced safety,

in the context of allowing that public schools could serve as havens when students generally or students in vulnerable populations are threatened.

It is perhaps immoral to ask children to learn science and math and geography if they are fearful of their personal safety.

I applaud the President for including this as a component in his proposal. I believe many would be likely to benefit.

[seabeyond]

356. i can agree whole heartedly with this. neighborhood havens. academic environments for children

that dont have parental care. all kinds of programs to help the working parent that makes squat. jobs that pay livable wage. early start programs for little kids to have them rearing to go when they are excited in learning. parental classes and environments that will help educate the parent in the type of home to result in an active academic child.

there are lots of things i would like to see implemented to help our kids

i can go for tougher curriculums. my children would be thrilled to get tougher more stimulating work, but will leave other kids behind so they have to teach to the class

all kinds of things they need to do in the schools to make it productive learning. but to just increase hours without other implementations will not create an academic environment.

[saltpoint]

360. If the President were inclined to tie the privilege of unstructured time to

the responsibility of public service, including older kids who are demonstrated to have the instincts to teach and protect younger ones, it would be a very workable model. Even if on a percentage basis, it would relieve the tedium some educators feel regarding discipline.

Public school as havens might include a recreational sports program, band practice, and community street fairs or science shows or whatever.

No reason to think that the space itself should go idle when you fill it up with people.

For effective parents, it might also be a good volunteer environment. Special tudoring sessions for math or History or other subjects might not make math fun or History thrilling, but if the experience is focused on goals, tied to privilege, and done in the company of one's pals, it might not be half-bad.

[seabeyond]

364. no. not all people like to continually be with people. we suck it up thru the school year

but we do not want every minute of our time scheduled by govt. just no.

[Odin2005]

287. "Doesn't anyone think there's anything to be learned OUTSIDE of school?!!?" Exactly!

And people wonder why there are so many kids being diagnosed with ADHD. It's because they don't have time to let off steam.

[uppityperson]

247. Add in longer breaks in spring and winter

Have a month break in the summer, or maybe 6 weeks. Have 2-4 wks off Dec/Jan, then another 2-4 wk break later in the spring.

And get rid of NCLB.

[seabeyond]

252. kids can adapt to restructure off time. i wont allow increased days. or longer school years. nt

[Taverner]

254. Agreed. We are one of the only countries that has one

[BlooInBloo]

271. lol! Always funny to watch Americans fight to be as stupid as they want to be.

[seabeyond]

274. is that what you get out of my fight. that i want stupid kids? nt

[BlooInBloo]

289. Likely you don't *mean* to want stupid kids, but the effect is extensionally identical...

And since dim people are the overwhelmingly vast majority of this country - with teachers as a subgroup, they'll almost certainly have their way. It's very hard to stop stupid's social reproduction, for natural equilibrium reasons. A lot of energy is required to force a higher balance point.

It's all good. My kids will have the same job security I enjoy. It's not good for the country, of course, and I would wish it otherwise, but I can't say I'm personally negatively impacted.

Good luck to you all.

[seabeyond]

290. your children are through the system that lacks yet are secure in brilliance amongst the stupid

yet, because my kids are in system, in all the higher level classes adn working butt off, we are stupid and doomed for failure.

hm

i think your post is insulting.

[BlooInBloo]

292. "higher level classes" - Of course that's a relative term....

And of course a small number of kids make it through the educational system as very bright adults - despite the best efforts of the dim to make stupid adults. Nothing is perfect - a small number always get through. Possibly your kids will be among those few - I can't speak to specific cases without knowing the specific details.

[Karmadillo]

273. And then those crazy teachers will ask for more money just because they have to work more hours.

You know they will. If they really cared about our kids, they'd work for free.

[LeftyMom]

278. add time to classes, to stay open late and to let kids in on weekends

Uh, when are the kids expected to go home?

[seabeyond]

283. from what i am hearing, i guess they just take sleeping bads so teachers can be the parent too

totally. and absolutely

[GreenPartyVoter]

304. Well, teachers are already getting lots of practice parenting kids now so this won't be

too much of a stretch for them, eh?

[RidinMyDonkey]

282. I'm on the fence about this!

Personally, I don't have a problem with expanding school hours and years. I went to a year-round school my Freshman year. It was probably one of the better schools that I have attended. We still had time off though, instead of one long break we got several short ones throughout the year. I think that would be a good system for public school as well.

On the other hand, this could possibly make quite a few people angry. I guess the question is weather or not the students of America are worth it.

[bhikkhu]

297. Absolutely right - more school is needed

and I have two kids in school also, and spend a lot of time with kids of school age. There is so much more that they could do if it were taken more seriously.

Reading much of the stuff upthread, it just makes me think its the parents that are the real problem holding kids back. How many kids are pampered and pitied by their parents for the amount and difficulty of work they have to do? Do they have any idea of where we fall, as a nation, against the educational standards of other countries? Its pathetic, and its a pathetically low expectation that has been instilled in our kids.

[seabeyond]

298. since you read the "stuff" upthread are you suggesting i am pampering and pitying my kids

that i have low expectation of my kids?

is that what you got from my posts?

are you directing your comments toward me, out of curiousity. since you said you read much of the "stuff" upthread.

[bhikkhu]

299. Actually, yes. That's what it sounds like.

Not that there aren't kids who work their hearts out and could stand up beside the best students of any country, and then are best nurtured and helped along by their parents.

But that's not what the OP is about. The OP is about Obama's goal of improving the education standards in the US, to at least raise the expectations of kids here to the level of their peers in the rest of the industrialized world. I support that 100%, and think its well past time. And I do think that the low expectations of parents is one thing that has a corrosive effect on the end result of schooling in the US.

My perspective is informed by 6 years of involvement in my kid's schooling and our local school system. Its also informed by 4 recent years back in college (OSU) where it was absolutely appalling to find the majority of my classmates could barely spell and had trouble reading through a book, and it was a rare individual who could put a thought into words effectively.

[seabeyond]

300. if these kids are not learning the basic in all these 12, 13 years of education,

what makes you think they will learn the basics any more readily with more time.

if a kid does not know where the mississippi is after four years of geography, what makes you think the fifth year they will learn.

if they must teach my child one more year where the mississippi is when he learned it in the second grade, that is one more year of reptitive, non productive learning

if my kid is going to school from 6:30 to 5:oo and then does homework at night, how many more hours do you want to tack on him

if my kid is all AP advanced course and taking a college course his freshman year, how much more, and quicker must he learn to satisfy

the problem is not in the education. it is not in our teachers. it is not in the system.

it is in the parents that dont demand an education for their children. it is in the parent that does not want kid to do homework cause it interfers with their life. it is the parent that refuses to allow a kid tutorial time to stay caught up with the class.

more hours, more days does not address any of this.

on edit: this is not just my kids. i see lots of kids taking full advantage of education being offered to them.

[bhikkhu]

370. A real government policy of high expectations is a start

and that sounds like what the president is proposing.

The last few years of "no child left behind" was a farce that hurt everyone - schools, students, parents. It basically said very much out loud - the schools suck, the teachers are suspect, and people are getting fired and schools closed if it doesn't change. Then it provided zero means for improvement and made the teacher's lives hell, and squared off the parents against the whole mess.

Its effect on everyone involved has been to lower expectations and expect the worst. You have some good points about parental responsibility, but thats not something the president can do much about. What he can do is set a high standard - let students and parents both know that the education of kids is something that is a real priority and important enough to fund fully and to make whatever changes are needed to get it right. Just knowing that their society cares how well they do can make a difference to a kid, and hopefully the parents will get the idea too.

[seabeyond]

371. all that sounds pretty. i know the destruction of nclb, but it worked for my kids

for different reasons so i didnt think so bad, but i know the damage it causes as a whole, so can go there with you

but

before adding more to school hours and days of the year, maybe we ought to work within, creating the academic environment instead of shruggin and saying we are serious now.... you kids are gonna learn the first pres of u.s. one way or another if we have to make you go to school every day of the week

if the children refuse to learn the simplest, what will be created with mroe days in school.

if kids are dropping out in busloads, why will more school make them stay, .... longer, instead of them dropping out sooner. what kind of sense is that.

my kids are not the ones at risk. my kids would continue to go to school regardless. my kids are not the ones that will bulk. the very kids this programs aims to help are the very ones it will hurt immediately and hardest

[bhikkhu]

373. If you look at what has changed...

In the past few years in my area both the school year and the school day has been shortened due to budget cuts. Teachers have been laid off and given early retirement and not replaced. Every school building in my county has big issues of "deferred maintenance", music programs have been cut from most of the schools, art programs have been eliminated from most of the schools, athletic programs have been cut way back and the bulk of expenses laid upon the kids...and so on and so forth.

A lot of that has been because funding in general has decreased, but also a big part of the budget focus has shifted from providing a general well-rounded education to a very specific need to get reading and math test scores up for the No Child Left Behind act, under threat of school closure. That has made it miserable for the teachers and the students.

One year (I forget which grade it was) my daughter's class had to pass a certain testing standard. At the beginning of the year they took a pre-test. My daughter passed it. Almost the entire rest of the school year she was given busy work and ignored while the teacher worked with the students who were struggling. That's the sort of thing that makes school miserable, and its the sort of thing my kids have lived with every year. So if the government wants to increase funding and hours, what I see coming back are what has been lost - the arts and humanities and athletics programs that are "the good stuff" that made school fun, and math worth working through just to be there. For me at least.

[seabeyond]

374. oregon? disappointed adn surprised. here in texas, in my area there is none of that. but

that being the case, why not work on those issues. longer school years does nothing for those issues that you say are the problem in your school district.

our problem, in our area, is the education is offered adn kids refusing and drop out rate high.

they passed 4x4

i dont like it. i wouldnt have wanted four years math. but all kids must have

4 yrs english
4 yrs math
4 yrs science
4 yrs history

we didnt have in our days. no one did.

i dont get how much harder, how much more time we need to make this problem with students who refuse to do the schoolin correct itself.

i am not seeing time as the answer

i am seeing so many answers in so many places, but extending the school year is not the answer for the kids not learning.

[bhikkhu]

383. Ok, that's such a different standard

I had no idea that Texas was so different. I hope that it works well enough, and it certainly makes a Texas high school diploma mean something!

So I'm sorry about anything I might have insinuated about your situation, and you do seem have a reasonable point of view. But one thing you should know is that standards are lower in most places, to the point that a high school diploma doesn't mean you can spell, or do math, or write, or have even read a book beyond the 6th grade level. Every single year a new group of kids enters school, and the last few years have been bad in most places. My own older daughter says "its too late for me", as far as schools improving. I'm still behind the president on turning things around, however it needs to be done.

[seabeyond]

387. unless they address all the things causing the issues and problems more hours is not going ot do a

damn thing. i am into bettering the education too. i jsut do not see having a more babysitting environment to keep kids off the street the way to do it. get programs for those kids and places to go, even after school things. get kids starting early in life. they had a head start program that helped so much and i dont know if bush didnt all but destroy it.

but adding hours, all those kids that are dropping out (which is the real crisis) is going ot drop sooner.

get vocational school. not all kids will go to college. they need a trade.

[GreenPartyVoter]

307. I think we need to look at the models in other nations that do tracking. It seems to me that

throwing a wide spectrum of students together ultimately causes a teacher to teach down to the lowest level.

Not that I am against mainstreaming. I think there is a place for it: homeroom, gym, health class etc. But the more academic courses should be sorted out according to ability level. (In our extremely tiny rural school that's not an option due to low student enrollment, a small number of teachers, and extra space for more classrooms is nonexistent. So instead the brighter kids in the class are allowed to work ahead at their own pace. But I still feel they could be even further ahead with more time with their teachers. Frankly, if my husband and I, who have teaching experience of our own, didn't do some enrichment with our kids then our they would be even worse off.)

[seabeyond]

340. and in our area we have three four different options. AP advanced course,

college courses available to the kid that performs, A CAL for the analytically inclined. science, math, computers and automotive. magnet schools (which kids dont particpate in so not sure, but suppose to be excellent in lower income areas). and another program that is par with college, all the way thru high school. if a child meets the requirements and cannot receive what they want in their district, than can go to the district that offers.

[GreenPartyVoter]

375. We'll have similar options once the kids get to high school, but in the meantime they are

often off in the corner teaching themselves or being asked to help the other kids.

[seabeyond]

376. see, and even in lower schools they were divided up in ability adn given more if needed

our middle school had pre ap. like i have said, my 6th grader is doing freshman algebra in his pre AP course.

and he is not the only one, for those thinking i am talking about only my child. not you

[GreenPartyVoter]

378. I know my kid can be given harder work. I just wonder if they are getting enough teacher time. All

I know is, last year my older son was studying the universe and he came home one day and said, "Mom, I already know all this stuff between the book you gave me and the learning shows you make me watch."



This is an amazing book! If you have space nut kids among your family and friends, try and get it for them. :D

[Odin2005]

312. What a load of crap.

You are just going to make more kids that hate learning even more. Our kids have enough schoolwork as it is.

[anigbrowl]

342. Oh noes, work is haaaard waaaah

You don't get capable self-reliant people by wrapping them in cotton wool and never pushing them into anything difficult - you get whiny self-indulgent people instead.

[seabeyond]

346. has NO generation, ever been capable self reliant people? because what kids do today

is more progressive, earlier years and more days in school than ever before.

[anigbrowl]

352. quality =/= quantity

I think some modern educational methods are improvement on the old way of doin things, and some are worse. I am personally for a fair amount of testing and homework. Further, as I said above, much past economic security is based on a geographic advantage.

[seabeyond]

363. i like the testing too. i understand teachers issues and the set up for their failure, but

what i have seen in the schools with the nclb testing has worked well in our family. they do teach to the tests. but the tests cover what the kids are suppose to learn. step by step, year by year so it is a real drumming in math and writing that they cannot NOT learn. and i like to put the pressure on my kids during the test as community service. tests easy for kids. so their job to make a 100, no missed questions so they can bring the average up for their school.

but there are problems with nclb that goes beyond that that sets schools up for failure, not taking things into account which is wrong.

i like homework too. i can see what kids are studying and i can see if they get it. if not i then can get them extra help until they do get it.

but i am saying, my children are way ahead of the curve of what they are learning than what we did in our generation. i dont know what else we want to add onto their schedule. and they are busting butt. i dont see why they should be penalized with longer days, or less time off.

[Mariana]

381. Exactly.

So why do you think making the school year or school days longer will result in better QUALITY of education? My kid's Biology class has spent a whole MONTH learning about cells. Nothing else. My kid is bored out of her skull in that class and it's a shame because she was so looking forward to it.

You really think if they expand the school year they won't just spend five or six weeks instead of four covering cells? Cells are on THE TEST, you see. It's naive to think they won't just spend the extra time drilling the kids even more for those all-important tests.

[bhikkhu]

372. High expecatations is the real issue, not volume of work

No kid naturally hates learning, they'd generally just rather learn the cheats to get through the latest video game than school. If they get the message that they are doing enough, that all they need to do is just "get by", that 37th place is ok because we're privileged americans...you get a whole new generation of non-thinkers ripe for the RW spin machine.

High expectations should start at home, but if its the parents who are the problem then school is about the only chance a whole lot of kids are going to get. If Obama's serious about improving the schools and the country's standard of education, I'm all for it.

[armyowalgreens]

394. As a HS graduate of 2008, I can say with confidence that my class had it easy...

We did not have enough school work. The classes were terribly easy and boring.

The only classes that were challenging were my honors and AP classes.

But regular classes are a cake walk. We really do not demand much from our students.

[ohheckyeah]

306. I disagree.

I think kids need time to be kids. There are definitely some problems with education that need to be fixed but I don't think this is one of them. The kids will be grown up soon enough, working jobs that might give them a week or two paid vacation.

[Hippo_Tron]

325. Personally, I thought it was too long even when I was in school

Sure, a month to six weeks off is fine. But I was bored out of my mind by the end of the three months of summer vacation and I feel like a lot of my friends felt the same way.

[ohheckyeah]

366. Not me. I never wanted it to end.

But, I can entertain myself. I read a lot even as a kid and spent a lot of time playing in the woods.

[seabeyond]

388. my kids are the same way.

they dont want structure learning. they swear they can sit under a tree, oh homeschool.... NO> lol

they are never the kids saying they are ready to go back. and i always have kids around that are ready

[PM Martin]

308. Let the children have the two warmest months of the year off.

In Canada, have a 190-200 day year with July and August off.

[saltpoint]

311. Not everyone is Roger Maris.

I say so because it was Maris who was the guy from North Dakota who had a knack for the long ball. He began closing in on Ruth's record, having come from the cold winters out west on the Great Plains to Yankee Statdium in New York City.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Maris


Other players who learned baseball as kids and grew up practicing and playing it practiced and played it in Florida, or Arizona, or South Texas, or in Mexico or the Dominican Republican -- places where practicing and playing baseball are 12-month schedules. Plenty of sunshine year-round in those places. Quite a bit less in Minnesota and the Dakotas.

The first frost comes pretty early where Roger Maris grew up in North Dakota. And winter stays a while. It makes itself at home and it doesn't leave for months. The baseball season is short.

Not all of us are Roger Maris who could challenge Ruth's home run record having only trained some months of each year of his childhood.

If we are not Roger Maris but still love the game though are only average at playing it, we are better at it if we have the entire year to practice and play it than if we limit our time on the diamond to half or less of the calendar.

The same is true of say, music lessons, or soccer, or ballet, or painting, or just about anything else involving a craft a skill a talent.

The same would be true of say, learning how to read maps in geography, running equations in mathematics class, learning science and biology, getting better at French horn in symphonic wind ensemble, being more competitive against kids in other countries who are in classes for longer periods than U.S. kids are in classes over here. Experience matters.

It does not ensure that more time at a task always means greater mastery at the task, as exceptions abound in all life undertakings. But the basic hinge is that more learning is better than less learning, and more time to learn things is a sounder idea than less time to learn things, especially when the competition has already devoted more time to task than we have.

President Obama is headed in the right direction.

[Deja Q]

316. No argument from me.

Let's see what the children earn... and let's see what rewards they get by showing their aptitude.

Oh, punish the bullies and not the victims of bullies. Let's iron out EVERY problem with the school systems, most of which just prefer to shove kids through without a single thought -- and that is due in part by the principals, who lack principles.

[saltpoint]

328. You mention principals of schools and you assail them. Excellent. Quite

a few of them should be tied to a pickup truck and dragged across the Great Plains immediately if not sooner.

Some of the biggest dipshits I have ever met have been school principals.

[Deja Q]

332. Thanks. :) The saddest part is, TV shows from 1974 did the same thing...

"Good Times" has JJ Evans (Jimmy Walker) failing a class and the principal lets him slide through. Florida (Esther Rolle) and James Sr (John Amos) go to the school to demand JJ stay back.

I don't recall if he stayed back; I think he was given a choice...

And that's 1974. three and a half decades have passed...

At the same time I did bash them, I will agree that they are bound by various state and federal regulations too. Regulations aren't always a good thing by default -- Which is somewhat ironic given the state of Reagan's de-regulated miracle system that never was...

[saltpoint]

333. Agree -- and you are invoking a very definitional era as well -- that

murky, behind-the-curtains rope-knotting and wire-cutting between the last half of Reagan's second term and throughout Poppy's presidency -- culminating, if that's the word, in Bill Bennett's influence, a man originally appointed to be Secretary of Education with a view toward dismantling the Department he was appointed to lead.

Yuck City.

[Hippo_Tron]

322. Even as a kid I thought summer break was entirely too long

And I was fortunate enough to have parents who could afford to send me to summer camp, computer camp, etc. 1 to 1.5 months is plenty for summer break, IMO.

[Fire1]

344. Good luck with that at the current salaries. n/t

[flvegan]

354. Maybe it's not "too little time in school" rather "too little time being educated properly"

This is NOT a slam on the wonderful folks that go into the teaching field. My mother and my brother were both teachers. What it is is a slam on the infrastructure of our educational system. Teaching to tests isn't what educators ever had in mind. More time spent shoehorned into a room with 40 or 50 other kids isn't going to help. Also, if you think keeping third graders on lockdown every daylight hour is a grand idea, don't expect the problem with overweight children to subside any, as they sure as hell won't be playing outside in that case.

In this day and age, if there's additional learning to be done, I can't imagine that a good portion of it couldn't be internet based. Or played on a school cable channel. Because some children may not have access to a computer or the internet or cable, keep computer labs at the school open for them.

With more companies embracing telecommuting and more internet-taught classes at the university level, I can't believe we're going backwards with our youngest.

[REP]

359. Too much time being taught poorly

Too much time being taught how to take tests and conform properly; almost no time spent teaching how think for one's self. A common complaint of my friends who teach, as well as students who are not prepared by their parents to do anything for themselves (not all, of course, but a dismaying number across all SESes).

[wickerwoman]

385. I think it's both.

Average number of instructional days per year is:

Korea 225
Japan 223
China 221
Australia 196
Russia 195
Netherlands 191
England 190
Canada 188
U.S. 180

International Average: 193 days/year

So by the time the average Korean, Japanese or Chinese kid graduates, he's spent more than a year longer in school than his American peer. I'm not saying that's healthy or even desirable but it certainly explains a lot about why our test scores are comparatively poor.

The drawback with internet and cable TV learning is that they require self-motivated learners (the lack of whom I would argue is the single biggest problem with education today) and most still require a relatively low teacher-student ratio so that teachers can grade papers and give feedback effectively. I think it can work for some students, but exacerbates problems for others and it certainly doesn't save any money or really increase efficiency. But the novelty can work to capture some students' interest who might otherwise zone out.

[SoCalDem]

357. The whole concept of "summer vacation" harkens back to farming days

kids were an integral part of the harvest, so it made sense THEN, to end school so they could help their families.

That is no longer the case.

Learning is a full-time necessity these days, and for the older kids, there are no more "summer-jobs" anyway. Why not keep them in school, leaning, instead of lounging around the house getting into trouble while Mom & Dad are out busting their asses trying to keep a roof over their heads?

They could still have breaks......just not all at one time.

Summertime is HELL for working Moms, who suddenly have enormous childcare expenses, and who spend hours and hours trying to coordinate it all. and for some daycare people, it's a nightmare too, when older kids are reluctantly pressed into service, caring for younger siblings who may have been in daycare during the school year.

[Libertas1776]

361. School's in for the Summer!

School's in forever! School's in despite fever!

Hmm, I don't think I really like those new lyrics. :shrug:

[anonymous171]

362. How about they let the states decide?

Not every state is urban and/or crime ridden.

[Blue_In_AK]

377. I don't have kids at home anymore,

but I don't like it - especially for us up here where summer is so short anyway. It's the only time families have to camp, fish and spend some good time together.

[Hekate]

379. Good luck getting that past the politicians in Congress, Mr. President. Money, money, money...

It will cost money and it runs counter to the Repub scheme of making our children the dumbest, most ignorant in the world. The Repubs will scream "Taxes!" and their base -- already the dumbest, most ignorant mass of people in the world -- will come out swinging.

Personally I would VERY MUCH like to see the following: a longer school-year, better wages for teachers, on-site after school child care, a nurse in every school, music and art programs, more math and science... all those things and more are available in other countries, and our children deserve them too.

Good luck to our POTUS, who is younger, smarter, and more energetic than I will ever be again -- and good luck to all of us as well. We need him to succeed.

Hekate

[latebloomer]

380. How about letting kids have time to be kids?

To play, to daydream, to read, to spend time with their families?

They are way too over-scheduled and regimented as it is.

We all need down time.

I think homework sucks, too. Six hours in school is enough, especially for young kids.

If we need more affordable child care for working parents, great, fund it. But don't force everyone to spend their whole lives in school.

They are trying to make our kids into compliant little cogs.

[Toasterlad]

386. How About Making the Hours Spent In School Count Instead of Adding More Meaningless Time?

Until the standards of education in the country improve, spending more time in school won't improve our educational standing in the world.

[seabeyond]

389. this is what i say. simple logic. nt

[BeHereNow]

390. Translation: Obama advocates increased corporate/military indoctrination of youth.

Pay attention people.
BHN

[Hekate]

391. Did you forget your sarcasm smiley? Because I am baffled. nt

[BeHereNow]

395. No sarcasm intended. I have worked in public education for the last four years.

I am quitting.
I can no longer deal with the increasing militarization and corporate curriculum
intended to create a generation of slave labor or military service in the interest of hegemony.
We (teachers, staff, student and parents) are powerless against it.
Schools are no longer schools.
They are simply extensions of the military/prison/corporate mill.

I will have no part of it any longer.

BHN

[Hekate]

393. Kids in the US lose tremendous ground over the long summer break, especially the economically poor

See Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers"

Kids at the higher end of the socioeconomic spectrum don't lose as much ground because their parents enrich their environment, although they too have to spend the first few weeks in September reviewing what they have forgotten.

Kids whose families are poor spend at least a month reviewing last year's subject matter. This puts them at a permanent and cumulative disadvantage, year by year.

School kids in Asia and Europe DO NOT have to waste time relearning last year's material, in large part because they have shorter vacations and longer school days.

"Outliers" is a very well-researched and interestingly-written book, and recommended reading.

Hekate