Obama Makes a Push To Add Time To the School Year 1073
N!NJA sends in a proposal that is sure to cause some discussion, especially among students and teachers. Obama and his education secretary say that American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage in comparison to 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.' 'Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy and not too many of our kids are working the fields today,' Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. ... 'Young people in other countries are going to school 25, 30 percent longer than our students here,' Duncan told the AP. 'I want to just level the playing field.' ... Kids in the US spend more hours in school (1,146 instructional hours per year) than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the US on math and science tests — Singapore (903), Taiwan (1,050), Japan (1,005) and Hong Kong (1,013). That is despite the fact that Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong have longer school years (190 to 201 days) than does the U.S. (180 days)."
Waste MORE time!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree. While my school days are long over, I doubt it would had made any sense to make them longer. It would probably had a negative impact actually.
Extending the school time only works so far. Those who want to learn, do it anyways. Those who really want to learn or are interested, even more so (thats pretty much where every programmer comes from).
Personally, I would hated to spend more time in school. It would even be more off from my learning to program and about computers, since those are still so shitty in schools compared to learning it on your own.
Maybe better solution is to optimize the time you spend in school? There's lots of useless things already, religion being the first one that comes to my mind. And make more choices to the students to take the classes they're interested in. World is too big to teach everything to everyone, so people need to specialize in their area.
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess I live in some type of dream land.....
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:4, Interesting)
The presidents kids go to a private school where any legislation affecting school hours wouldn't apply.
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I won't deny that some teachers give these kinds of assignments, but I'd also suggest that teachers do a poor job of explaining to students why they are giving homework. If a teacher is doing their job well, it's either about extension or application. Homework should take a concept an
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:5, Insightful)
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They are discussing both extending the length of the day and the number of days.
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:4, Insightful)
I did too, even tho the first clause was a bit bad worded. Same issues still stand tho.
No they don't. You could increase the number of days and shorten the hours of day and end up spending less time in school. All the Asian countries referred to below do that.
Of course the superior performance in mathematics in Asian countries could have more to do with cultural effects other than the number of days vs. the number of hours per day in schools. It probably does. However I think it is well established that learning is enhanced by processing information in more smaller chunks. Which is not to say the administration would necessarily be wise enough to shorten the school day as it increases their number.
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:5, Insightful)
I currently teach in an Asian school, and I have taught in more than one country on that list. I'll tell you the reason that Asian kids do better at math and science: they work their butts off. The amount of homework they get is scary, and most kids are enrolled in an after-school math program as well, to get more time with a teacher and more time doing homework. Added to this, the level of math being taught is way higher then I remember it being at school back home.
I guess this is a cultural thing, as you pointed out: because this state of affairs hasn't grown up in a vacuun, and society here does value achievement in these subject areas. Kids are rewarded for doing well, and even more amazingly respected by their peers who don't get results which are as good.
But kids here graft. That's why they are better at what they do.
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly: it's cultural. The USA is never going to excel at math, because it simply isn't rewarded, whereas sports achievement is.
If we really wanted to improve education, we'd make separate schools, so the studious kids can go to one school by themselves and excel before they head to college, and everyone else can go to a different school and play sports and take basic classes where they learn how to manage a bank account, before they're released into the world of work.
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:4, Informative)
You make it sound like athletics dooms a person to depressive mediocrity.
It does. A minute number of high school athletes make professional careers out of it and are successful, the rest end up working in construction or a similar career and spending the rest of their life thinking about how great high school was.
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously you don't know the first thing about why people play sports. Hint: not everybody who plays sports is trying to make a career out of it. Yeah, there's a lot of losers out there whose high point in life was playing sports in high school. There's just as many people who were losers in high school, losers in college, and are losers now with their shitty ass white collar job and boring lives. Which one is worse?
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:5, Insightful)
For one, construction generally pays pretty well, especially if you are proficient at it. Besides, athletics teaches important aspects of life that basement dwelling geeks generally won't get -- socialization and teamwork. Building strong working relationships and possessing good networking skills nearly always trumps specialized skill in a given field. Thats why your boss is an idiot, but still makes more money than you
With all that said, what fuckin high school did you go to? I've yet to meet anyone who pines for the good ol' days of high school -- the cliche Al-Bundy-four-touchdowns-in-one-game crowd or otherwise.
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, most of the rest are normal students who happen to play baseball or soccer after school.
At my high school, enrollment in AP courses correlated highly with participation in athletics. The football team was pretty much filled with top students.
It's all in how you set up your program. Academic requirements to participate in athletics go a long way.
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:5, Informative)
Depends on where in Asia. I've taught at 19 Japanese schools over a 7-year period, and two of those were high schools of differing levels. While the kids here excel at math and science, it's only in the areas where rote learning is emphasized. They really are at a disadvantage when it comes to original thinking. They think the teacher is responsible for telling them what's right. Also, they really hate trying to extrapolate an answer based on previous knowledge, because they might be wrong.
As for advancement through school, the boards of education are encouraging the "no child left behind" idea; even if you don't participate in class you receive a 55%, and 90% of your grade is based on the tests, not the classwork. This means that you only really have to cram for about eight weeks out of the year to do a decent job. For those who still manage to fail despite all of these measures, a single make-up test is offered every year for each subject failed, for which the student is rigorously coached (using the actual test questions) beforehand.
Japan and the US share a serious problem in common: a lot of bureaucratic interference from people who have no education credentials and are ham-stringing the teaching process to the point where everybody passes but nobody actually learns anything. Spending more time being taught badly isn't going to resolve the issue; we need to revamp the teaching system and eliminate the pandering cruft that is bogging down our schools.
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of fields still require a University degree, nevermind that they don't actually need it
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, we'd hate for poor people to have a chance at good jobs.
The same basic things could be proved by technical degrees, two-year degrees, and certifications, which can be obtained more cheaply. I have a four-year degree from a university, and I'm glad I took most of the classes I took for my own benefit. But I don't know why an employer should care about some of them.
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Employers care about the breadth of education from 4-year degree because it shows the student has the ability to learn subjects outside of the core competencies. A flexible and diverse workforce is important because you can't predict where the next groundbreaking idea will come from, or how a particular industry will evolve. Steve Jobs mentions the importance of calligraphy to Mac development, and the development of Perl was influenced by linguistics.
A hiring manager will care about anything that sets an applicant apart.
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:5, Insightful)
I worked with a registered nurse who did not know who Freud or Stalin were. At all. They came up at various times in our conversations (not work related, but still....) and she had no idea. Didn't know them by name or picture. She had a master's degree, but her education was entirely vocational. I feel sick to my stomach admitting that more school won't help the problem, but I think the underlying cause is that our culture does not look down on ignorance. Any knowledge that doesn't translate directly into dollars is considered "useless" by almost everyone. Even if someone is dead wrong about something they still have "a right to an opinion," so even pointing out that they're just ignorant makes *you* a presumptuous jerk.
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:4, Funny)
Frasier: upper middle-class radio personality lives in a three-bedroom apartment in Seattle with his father and home healthcare worker.
Seinfield: middle-class single comedian lives alone in a medium-size one-bedroom apartment. You do have to ignore Kramer...
I'm sure I could think of others.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Portrayals of single people are probably quite a bit more accurate that those of families (I'm assuming that Frasier's dad draws a pension and basically pulls his weight on expenses, leaving Frasier financially single). I think that any show about successful entertainers is, to a large degree, aspirational, because very few entertainers see prolonged financial success like that.
Family portrayals seem to reflect the aspirations of American families more than the reality. Working-class people living in well-to-do suburbs in big houses. I'm not a big TV watcher, but I can think of a couple: the Cosby show and Fresh Prince. I haven't seen much of either show, but I think the Fresh Prince guy would have to be in very rare company even among lawyers to live like that -- either that or living beyond his means. Even if those shows are realistic, they are aspirational in a way simply because so few people are that successful in their careers. Malcolm in the Middle refers to the family's financial troubles and shattered career aspirations but still gives them, on the whole, pretty nice material things and really glorifies the credit culture.
Again, I'm not a big TV-watcher, but I can think of a couple shows that really aren't/weren't aspirational portrayals of families. One is Everybody Hates Chris, and another is the short-lived show The PJs. There are probably more... but they're the exception. Almost all families on TV are shown in big suburban houses and wearing nice clothes, and that's not really how almost all families live.
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah! I was wondering when my old television knowledge would would come in handy. Uncle Phil went to Harvard Law School, was a federal judge, and was also on the board of the NAACP. And on the Cosby Show, Cliff Huxtable was an OBGYN and Clair Huxtable was a partner at a large law firm. So their lifestyles might actually be fairly accurate, at least as far as sitcoms are realistic.
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Marge also works occasionally, but that hardly fills in the gaps.
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Two points:
1) McMansions have been genuinely pretty cheap in some places. Even during the real estate bubble in 2006, you could get into a pretty nice house in Houston for less than $150k. Some places in the country you could probably push down $100k. In fact, I almost picked up a 3 bedroom in one of Utah's more expensive markets for $120k. Nobody knows exactly where Springfield is, but it seems to have an apparent barely-urban-island-in-an-ocean-of-countryside setting that'd make those comparable markets. And that's before you consider the modern accepted way of gaining the American Dream: credit. Which is, admittedly, a bit tight after the last year, but has been pretty accessible for much of the run of the Simpson's.
2) Work ethic isn't strictly correlated with financial success. In fact, that's an explicit point at times in the Simpson's social commentary. "Lisa, if you don't like your job you don't strike. You just go in every day, and do it really half-assed. That's the American way." Part of our national mythos is that we're a meritocracy, but the truth is considerably murkier.
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No way man. (bart quote, lol). Blue collar workers cannot afford 1500+ sqft homes unless they are renting. Not anymore, at least.
We used to be able to refine our work in trades or education and own a nice family home --- yet more and more we find the middle class renting and the wealthy-class as landlords.
I'd make a modest proposal, but the situation (wealth disparity) is not quite dire yet.
Trade school needs to be a real option (Score:4, Interesting)
Part of the problem isn't even parents being unrealistic, it is that the options are straight to the work force or university. Nothing else is ever presented as an option by anyone.
That was how it was for me. It was just assumed I was going to university. My intelligence and academic performance was such that university wasn't a problem... But that doesn't mean I should have gone. I do computer support. That is not a degree career, it's applied, not theoretical. While going to university worked out ok for me, I didn't need to. I should have gone to a trade school, however it just wasn't presented as an option.
Re:Trade school needs to be a real option (Score:4, Interesting)
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I'm really eager to take the educational advice of a person who uses apostrophes to pluralize nouns.
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:4, Interesting)
"If anything, shorten the school day/year so our people can go back to acquiring trade skills and progressing the nation;"
No, keep it the same but offer vocational classes without prejudice and don't use them as a dumping ground. An auto mechanic or weldor or plumber can have a very profitable career path and eventually own their own business, but this is largely ignored nowadays.
Education CHANGE that we do need (Score:4, Interesting)
0) The world is progressing. Why is it that when they get close we think we need to go higher? At some point there should be a reasonable limit to what education can do alone. Language, culture, family, become more important as education gets more "equal". It'll never be a level where one can completely rule it out and only look at other factors-- this is in the realm of soft science. Could be ours is the best already but the other factors are knocking it down... (not probable; just making a point.)
1) PUBLIC schools should be funded by the number of students, federally without any strings other than they must be public schools. This will lower the taxes we have on shelter (aka property tax or renter's included property tax.) It will increase income tax; however, it is NOT equitable to punish kids by underfunding their schools simply because they are located in a poorer area. (I'm not talking inner city either, we have poor rural and rich rural depending on what properties are in that area and local tax codes.)
2) Technology in education is unproven. it needs more pilot programs and less political stumping. The public is part of the whole gaming of the numbers system we have. Test scores are a poor measure; any systematic measurement system is going to get hacked by people like win98 on an open network. Other nations measure scores differently; they also filter out kids-- our system accepts everybody. My city's schools do about as well as the rich suburban schools -- but have less money and TONS of disadvantaged kids of every kind to deal with.
3) Simply BEING A STUDENT does not make you an expert in education. Its like saying you can advise airplane design because you ride on jets. There is serious work done on learning, the brain etc. in academic institutions and by profession educators already. But forget that, a couple stats make us look bad so lets ship the kids off to more schooling and give them all laptops! Just how long have we known its better for children to have different school hours than we do now? We still have the same hours-- to keep the parents happy and their dreams of their kid getting that sports scholarship they didn't get. (college funding being a separate issue best solved instead of the lotto scholarship mess. Don't expect that CHANGE since college loans handle more money than the credit card industry!)
4) Children, like all mammals LEARN and develop by playing. Sure, TV robs them of this--- thats not the fed's business; if parents suck. (unless you are in the UK...where they want to monitor parents!) I LEARNED far more things in the summer that were useful in the "real world" than I did in school. I didn't have to work on a farm, but I worked on other things and learned, played, and developed my imagination. Many of my peers went to "camps" so they'd get an edge the next school year while the flunkies went to catch up so they'd not have to drop a grade.
5) Just HOW long should kids be in school? how about some REAL numbers? We already know health wise its better to take a long nap in the middle of the day but other than a few countries nobody does that... (BTW, the WTO is pressuring those countries to change their ways.)
6) America rose to the top (FYI we are not there anymore) and went to the moon with people who didn't have technology or even went to those "shameful" rural schools where 1-6 grades were in 1 room with the same teacher. Now we can't do math without a calculator-- even then we can't do math. My father had a shooting range in the basement of his high school; kept a gun at school too! Yes, this points to cultural degradation-- but THAT is the point! The real big issues are the elephants in the room nobody dares mention! I do credit Obama a bit having touched on a few... I am not saying we need to go back to those idealized times and "get off my lawn!" More social science is needed.
7) American kids are F***'d up. School psychologists are needed. #1 problem for any student is mental. We expect teachers to do everything and moder
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in a country that's already socialist, with full corporate sponsorship.
You have the most amazing case of bipolar view I've ever seen. Make up your mind, please! Are you worried about socialism or capitalism? Most people agree these are nearly opposites.
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:4, Informative)
in a country that's already socialist, with full corporate sponsorship.
You have the most amazing case of bipolar view I've ever seen. Make up your mind, please! Are you worried about socialism or capitalism? Most people agree these are nearly opposites.
Maybe he's a real leftist in the Gore Vidal sense who defines "corporate sponsorship" as what we have in the USA: government-backed socialism for the rich and dog-eat-dog capitalism for everyone else. Maybe he says we should move to a different plutocracy.
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, think positively. It prepares students for the real world, where people get promoted until they fail. Then they get fired or laid off for not meeting expectations.
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wolvenhaven's comment about budgets is on target; our small, rural Iowa district had to let 8 teachers go this spring because of declining tax inflows due to the economy. Funding teachers across more time would be a financial benefit to our family (my wife is a teacher in the district and doesn't receive compensation for when she's out of school not teaching as would be expected), but it'd cause the district to lose more teachers. In a small district, this would be devastating.
But there's another aspect some (including Obama) are missing. The United States is a highly diverse nation with a diverse workforce. Like a fool who would prescribe public transportation to replace all motor transportation in the U.S. -- a proposal that simply fails to understand the large spaces the U.S. covers and treats Wyoming like Berlin -- the educational system has similar heterogeneous aspects. During the summer months, our system is not to "send the kiddies to the field" as Obama's inept education administration official claims, but rather to supplement education in a highly diverse, non-governmental-decreed manner.
Yes, many kids get summer jobs, and there is considerable education for those working in a shop, grocery store or other light skill or service economy function given the probability that such students will be moving into this workforce upon graduation. In case you didn't notice the recent unemployment statistics, this demographic (16-24) now suffers over 50% unemployment, mostly due to the recession and the increase in minimum wages (which causes employers to substitute an unexperienced teen with an adult with experience for the same higher wage).
But many kids destined for college go off to specialized camps. My son spent 5 weeks of the summer at one of the top national debate institutes, working harder in the summer than he did during the year. Music camps, international travel, student summer foreign exchanges and local university summer programs all round out the options available for the college bound to receive much more intense and specialized education, necessary for their advancement in higher education. Obama's plan would replace that with more of the same -- as Gilles Deleuze would say, smoothing terrain by pushing more of the same hegemonic, institutional programme and eradicating diversity education that predominates summer break.
While it's not appropriate to debate this on the terms of "more education vs. kids sitting around watching tv" (those kids are also preparing for their future career through the choices being made), it is appropriate to debate this on the terms of whether we desire the heterogeneous workforce we're encouraging through the current model, or seek a more homogeneous model (ala "sameness"). Should further globalization be desired, as Obama's administration advances and his financial backer George Soros promotes, then perhaps the United States would be better served by creating more interchangeable service sector jobs. Given that both political parties desire a global model, Americans are less likely to be programmers, system engineers, architects, creative thinkers, product designers, etc.; even finance and legal professions are increasingly being offshored with great financial benefit to the global corporation. Preparing students for a career where they're part of a replaceable, worker-commodity workforce may be more appropriate in the long term, given the unified desire of Americans through the expression of those pro-globalization representatives they continue to elect.
Are we smarter than a fifth grader? :) (Score:4, Insightful)
During the summer months, our system is not to "send the kiddies to the field" as Obama's inept education administration official claims
I don't think that's the claim they're making. The only marginally close statement I can find is one by Duncan which agrees with you: "Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy and not too many of our kids are working the fields today," e.g., our calendar has some agrarian roots, but by and large we don't have that population anymore.
The key in where the president is actually coming from is probably in this paragraph:
"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."
It fits with the President's roots as an activist for the urban poor, which probably shape his perspective. And a lot of the research does say that poor/disadvantaged kids do the worst in making progress during the summer. Institutional support during summers could do a lot to help them become more productive and self-sufficient adults.
Those differences aside, I'd say you have a good point. Summer vacation isn't just downtime from school, it's still an opportunity to work (even if it isn't in the fields) and learn. Moreover, slack has value as recreational time and as a catalyst for creative foment -- not just for the kids, teachers use the time to refine their approaches as well. Extra days could put more into the curriculum for achievers or allow for a gentler curve for stragglers, but narrowing it down is going to have tradeoffs.
It sounds to me like the fifth grader in the article seems to have the balance about right: summer programs offer opportunities to kids that they might even enjoy (and which would meet Obama's goals), but don't force everyone into one particular tradeoff.
So: are we smarter than a fifth grader? :)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not too long ago the state of Texas shortened its school year to reduce cooling costs/electricity usage. The electric usage difference in Texas public schools between the months of April and September is over 100 million kwh *(Spring/Summer Electricity Usage by TXU Public School Customers 1997 and 1998[3]). This does not include the bus rides for children in 100F+ degree heat in the summer months. Does a longer school year make ecological and financial sense in hotter climates?
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As someone who is no longer in school, I say lets add some days.
I agree. Shorten summer vacation to July. US students spend less time in school that most industrialized countries, so the baloney about them learning less just doesn't wash. We're losing ground in science and engineering and if that means more time in school, then pack your books, kiddo.
What some of you are really saying is won't have as much time to spend on a WoW server or run up your score on Guitar Hero.
Cry me a river.
Has anyone considered adding "science" ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Has anyone considered adding a bit of science to the discussion? Not as a curriculum subject (no doubt covered in other threads) but rather - applying a bit of science to the question of "what is the optimum schedule for learning?"
Think about it - there must be a series of attention "ramps" during the day, week and year, where the ability to absorb knowledge is better than at other times.
Do we do math better before or after gym class? Is there any point to having a math class at all immediately after lunch? Are business classes enhanced after physical competition?
Would a 6am start kick start the day or is 10am better? Note that we have evolved to have half our numbers awake and on guard at night [citation somewhere].
Should we survey people in some way to determine whether they're day learners or night learners (and teachers too, to match the learning profile).
There must be hundreds of questions and answers to this. I suspect we've refined our way into a low-energy orbit, and it isn't getting us anywhere very quickly. We need to learn smarter, not longer, from the stats in TFA.
Re:Has anyone considered adding "science" ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Has anyone considered adding a bit of science to the discussion? Not as a curriculum subject (no doubt covered in other threads) but rather - applying a bit of science to the question of "what is the optimum schedule for learning?"
Think about it - there must be a series of attention "ramps" during the day, week and year, where the ability to absorb knowledge is better than at other times.
Do we do math better before or after gym class? Is there any point to having a math class at all immediately after lunch? Are business classes enhanced after physical competition?
Would a 6am start kick start the day or is 10am better? Note that we have evolved to have half our numbers awake and on guard at night [citation somewhere].
Should we survey people in some way to determine whether they're day learners or night learners (and teachers too, to match the learning profile).
There must be hundreds of questions and answers to this. I suspect we've refined our way into a low-energy orbit, and it isn't getting us anywhere very quickly. We need to learn smarter, not longer, from the stats in TFA.
Isn't what you propose exactly the sort of soft social science that engineers make fun of here on Slashdot?
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead of wasting the time of gifted students in order push the herd through a longer school year, we should spend money on more programs to help the high achievers. We don't need to waste more time on the many who amount to nothing, but we do need to nurture the intelligent and motivated, for it is they who move society forward.
We also need more school choice legislation so people can rescue their kids from the public school system and the thug trash that often infests it.
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:4, Insightful)
We don't need to waste more time on the many who amount to nothing, but we do need to nurture the intelligent and motivated, for it is they who move society forward.
I see, so the theory is that those who are worthy will lift themselves up by their own bootstraps, and those who cannot shouldn't be lifted by another. Pretty clear cut. Very much a social "Darwinism" approach. Say, can I borrow your crystal ball this weekend?
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Quality of education is important, not quantity.
And the education secretary might want to get their facts right [pdkintl.org].
From that article:
There is a homespun myth, treated as fact, that the annual school calendar, with three months off for both teachers and students, is based on the rhythm of 19th-century farm life, which dictated when school was in session. Thus, planting and harvesting chores accounted for long summer breaks, an artifact of agrarian America. Not so.
Actually, summer vacations grew out of early 20t
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's on the internet, so it must be true? I see one flat statement being contradicted by another flat statement. Tell me - why should I believe Kappan magazine over the secretary of Education? Or heck, vice versa? All I know is that long summer breaks were common for a long time where I'm from - where a long time is end of 19th century. And they certainly could not have been influenced by american urban middle-class parents.
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And of course, one place I lived had a day off from school on the first day of hunting season every year. Gotta take time for the important things.
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:4, Insightful)
My thoughts exactly. It would be different if teachers would use the extra time to teach more reading, writing, math, science, etc. but we all know they'd either have another study hall period or more fluff like environmental issues awareness bullshit. Obama is obviously doing this as a favor to the teachers unions as more hours worked means more pay.
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:5, Funny)
Of my 6 classes (3 of which are AP) and can already get my normal day's worth of homework done during downtime before I leave school.
Sounds like you could stand to "waste" a little more time in English class...
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand this.
First Obama says kids in the USA don't get enough schooling. Then the article says kids in the USA do get more than most and STILL don't do well in international testing.
Surely the conclusion is not the quantity is wrong, but the quality.
You know, if there's one thing I'd like to change about school - it's homework. There is too much of it, and it's far, far too boring.
My daughter (14) has been leaning about trigonometry. Well, actually she hasn't, she's been learning to use sines and cosines (looked up on a calculator) to solve simple trig problems. But she isn't leaning why it works, what it means, and what really cool things you can do with it. No, it's boring rote work. And she hates it.
There's that crucial word - boring.
Learning isn't boring. It's brilliant. Learning new stuff is hard, but often the most wonderful thing in life. How hard must the teachers has struggled to make it boring. Maybe it's the administrators, those destroyers of joy in life ...
Makes me sad. Maths - boring rote work? ... when e raised to the power of i time pi is minus 1 ... what happened there? Boring? sigh
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:4, Insightful)
No thanks, I waste enough time in school already.
Thats not the only problem with this. My local cartoon government here in Springfield [illinoistimes.com] has been talking about year-long school for a while now.
First, it gets damned hot here in the summer. They're going to have to inatall air conditioning in all the classrooms. There's no way to concentrate or learn when the temperature is 95 degrees and the humidity is 100%. The cost is prohibitive, especially since the city and state are having severe budget problems.
Secondly, there are things kids need to learn that school can't teach. That summer vacation is actually a valuable learning experience, especially for younger students.
Thirdly, why can't we let kids be kids? The best times of my life were when I was a kid and it was summer vacation. It's cruel to take this away from children.
They seem to be creeping toward year-long school anyway. When I was a kid (a long, long time ago) school started in late September and ended in early May. Now it starts in early August and doesn't let out until June.
I had hope for this President, but I'm far less hopeful than I was when he was first sworn in. Yearl long school is a stupid, STUPID idea.
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:5, Insightful)
I highly doubt it. I just escaped 5 years of teaching, and without the break, you'd have a lot of pretty insane teachers.
You don't truly grasp the insanity of a public school as a kid in it. Herding teenagers wore me out like no other job I've ever done. It's amazing to be immersed in a pressure-cooker of immaturity, hormones, and lack of private space. Add in the tendency of youth to rebel against authority, push boundaries, and do stupid things, and you end up with probably one of the more stressful places outside of operating rooms. (If you've got pre-teens to teens, imagine a population-density of one per square meter in your house, 6 hrs a day. Now imagine trying to get them to do something useful that ENTIRE time.)
We don't have great teachers for a number of reasons:
First, the pay sucks. There's all sorts of public bitching about what teachers get paid, but it's really not that much. After 5 years of teaching, with a Master's degree in Education, I was making $40k. Not bad, except for the amount of school loans I had put into that.
Now, while I could have gotten something part-time in the summer, I had to take classes. Finishing a degree, moving to a Level 2 license, becoming eligible for equipment grants with training seminars, etc.
More importantly than the pay, I wasn't ALLOWED to be a good teacher. I was asked to teach stuff that was horrifically boring, in a boring way. Because success was determined based on how well kids filled in bubbles on a test. How do you demonstrate the ability to do science with a bubble-sheet? You don't. You demonstrate that you can MEMORIZE science facts.
Eventually, after I was off my probation period, I started really teaching. I said fuck all to the standardized test, and we actually did science. However, coming down the pipe was the district-wide curriculum revamping, where we got to help formulate the approved curriculum which was aligned to the state standards. Once I saw that coming, I bailed to head back to grad school.
Standardized tests are blatantly anti-education. They measure the ability and motivation of a kid to memorize answers from other days, and fill in those answers on one day out of 180. Treating one day in the life of a teenager as equal to all the others is moronic, for anyone who's spent any time around teens. Do what most of the country does and place no student motivations in place to do well, and you've destroyed an already flawed test. (Most states never put NCLB test scores on report cards, transcripts, or even give them to teachers or parents. As if teens weren't apathetic enough already....)
There was a time when we had masters and apprentices. Where we actually taught kids what they needed to learn, what they wanted to learn. Those days are far gone. Today, we have factory-schools, like we have factory-farms. Stinking places crammed to the gills, where the livestock has shit jammed down their throats until the folks in charge deem they're ready. I was in a fairly extensive farming community, in a state well known for farming, but our state standards don't cover much in the way of soil science. So my success was judged based on whether I could convince multi-generation farmers to fill in bubbles about stellar life cycles on a test that didn't count, and which their parents would never see the results of. That's brilliant!
As long as we treat every student the same, and give them the same material, we're doomed to failure. We need to tear ass through the basics of reading, writing, and math, and then start giving kids what they NEED to learn. Not what some group of six retired teachers in a conference room somewhere thinks they should learn. Actual, relevant stuff. Then, we need to actually assess whether they've learned it, by watching them DO IT. Not see if they can logic away two answers out of four, and then guess one of the remaining two.
As far as I can tell, I was a pretty good teacher. And now I'm in grad school, doing actual science. Frankly, I should have done this earlier. I'm much happier out of that clusterfuck.
Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score:5, Informative)
Ah, the misplaced hatred of standardized tests. Never mind that such a label is also applied to psychological profiles that are beneficial in classification and therapy decisions, or that those "other countries" who are supposedly so far ahead of the U.S. use standardized tests with higher stakes than Americans could imagine. (When was the last time someone committed suicide for failing their state tests?)
The effectiveness of an assessment is largely independent of its format. I've seen rote-recall essay and practical (lab) assessment tasks, and I've seen critical thinking restricted-response items. But good items take work to develop - work that most states are not willing to invest. The typical method is for the state to contract out the development of their tests to a textbook publisher - who will often sell the tests as a loss leader for textbooks. My state (NY) releases the technical reports for the publishers, but then doesn't do anything about low reliabilities (alpha of .50 on the CR items on the 3rd Grade Math in 2006), inaccurate placements (only 90% of 8th graders were accurately classified pass/fail on the English/Language Arts test in 2006), or other bizarre psychometric stats (only 24% of the variance in the student scores being explained by the dominant factor).
Rather than blame an inanimate objects (standardized tests), why not blame the policy makers who use them inappropriately and in violation of the 1999 Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing put out by AERA, APA, and NCME?
Oh, and the issue of testing 1 day out of 180 - Assessment people have known about that for almost a century. It's called Classical Test Theory and error due to occasion sampling. There are techniques to establish and mitigate its effect on test scores, but, again, states don't really care about the quality of the assessments.
The problem ain't quantity... (Score:5, Insightful)
...it's quality.
It's not a matter of there being not enough time in the school year to get learning done. It's a case of the pace of learning being too low (essentially zero in some cases).
Re:The problem ain't quantity... (Score:4, Insightful)
Even compared to the secondary education I received, things are very dumbed-down today - with existing curriculae preferring to push boutique ideologies instead of the actual history, science, and mathematics. Rhetoric, Civics, and Logic aren't even taught anymore in most high schools, and a second language (no, not ESL) is usually Spanish if you're lucky enough to even get that as an option.
The teachers' unions like to blame the class sizes (e.g. they're not hiring enough new union member- err, teachers), and everyone else finds it convenient to blame the budget (in spite of private schools doing far more with far smaller budgets).
Personally, and from experience? I blame the districts and state management offices. There are far too many support personnel than there are teachers in a school (my last teaching position was at a regional college that had 150+ employees and 38 actual faculty - not teachers, "faculty"). There's too much middle management, too many niche positions (no, not special-ed teachers, I mean the really damned niche positions, like "state licensing facilitator", "curriculum specialist" and similar). Most school district employee lists read more like a who's-who of political favor recipients than of employees who actually contribute something useful towards educating a student. Sure a teacher's salary is crap - because the millions of dollars aren't going to them - it's mostly going to that great big grey hole down at the district office (and to vendors at exorbitant rates... if you think software vendors are greed-driven in the enterprise IT realm, you ain't seen shit).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
High IQ/Disciplined - fast track to higher learning
Low IQ/Disciplined - fast track to skilled job training
High IQ/Undisciplined - try to salvage them but not at the expense of those above - there may be diamonds in the rough here, but don't mess up the good ones finding them.
Low IQ/Undisciplined - just keep them away from the rest
There needs to be a method of changing groups as well. A stude
So... (Score:5, Insightful)
How about we require them to actually pass the classes they do attend before letting them move on...
Misleading stats (Score:5, Interesting)
Many kids in Asian countries also spend a lot of time at private institutes, after their regular classes.
Nevertheless, yes, American kids no not work hard enough to compete on a global level. The Economist had an article about this very issue [economist.com] a few months ago.
The real problem with education (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is not the length of the school year. It is the profound incompetence of the public school monopoly and the lack of accountability of the teachers unions.
Re:The real problem with education (Score:5, Interesting)
From everything I've read about it, it's very hard to fire a teacher. It's all but impossible to fire them if they are tenured. The only halfway pleasant and effective way to get rid of a teacher that needs the sack is to take them off any class they can do damage in and make their job as unpleasant as possible until they leave.
Have read several accounts of superintendents trying to fire a teacher that really needed to go. Typically involves over a year of gathering as much dirt as possible, building what would appear to be an "airtight case" against them, then spend the next four months fighting the union, school board, appeals, etc etc until you can finally shove them out, kicking and screaming. And then they just sue (usually more than once) and it just drags on and on. Altogether probably the most challenging aspect of being a superintendent. All you can do is try very hard to hire winners, and pray you don't get started in the hole.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Or say they are acting inappropriately with a student of the opposite sex.
I don't think the student's gender would be that much of a factor.
education SHOULD be a monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the educated benefit from being educated, but everybody benefits from having educated people around. The former is why private schools are seductive to many, but the latter is why we should embrace education as a public good - external to the market - and support/fix our existing socialized system.
So you're right, the problem is the incompetence of public schools. But privatization ain't the solution.
Libertarians, who are often persuasively consistent (and I really do appreciate your consistency), have given monopolies, governments, and other non-market institutions a bad reputation. Even the term for something that doesn't jibe with a market - "an externality" - belittles the importance of things like pollution, basic science, education, overfishing, national defense, a judicial system, national highways, and on and on and on.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The real problem with education (Score:4, Insightful)
The amount you receive per student is disconnected for the results you produce, and it is indeed exorbitant. What a con!
I think it's about time (Score:4, Insightful)
From wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
It doesn't mean it's more quality but I think it's a start.
How is the amount of time in school measured? (Score:5, Informative)
In South Korea, after going to "normal" school, a lot of students go for additional studying/tutoring. These are called "Hagwon" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagwon [wikipedia.org])
I believe Japan has something similar with their cram schools [wikipedia.org].
Not trying to say more amount of time in school is either better or worse, but it'd probably be useful to look at how the total amount of time in school was determined before relying on it too much.
Some people criticize these other school systems as stressing memorization and test-taking abilities over individual/creative thought. Of course, that's an anecdotal statement, so take it for what it's worth...
Re:How is the amount of time in school measured? (Score:4, Insightful)
Somewhere in between is where we want our average students to be headed. Unfortunately most students see they are neither valedictorian quality or star quarterback material and become disinterested, settling with 'just enough' and getting by with minimal effort.
NCLB seemed to try to address this, but is the wrong answer. More time in school would be a good idea if only we weren't already using so little of the current school hours- a wrong answer. Not sure what the right answer is, but until the average student sees benefit to working hard for those A's the smart kids earn in their sleep, I won't expect our education system's report card to improve.
higher test scores with a simple sacrafice-NCLB (Score:5, Interesting)
LEAVE SOME CHILDREN BEHIND
sorry- is that too callous?
http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=338&catid=13&subcatid=82 [factsanddetails.com]
" According to government statistics, 95 percent of all children start school but the drop out rate is high. Only 80 percent graduate from elementary school. In poor rural areas the enrollment is only about 60 percent, with only 70 percent completing the first four years of primary school. Fewer than 35 percent of China's youth enter high school, and of these the drop out rate is high."
individual circumstances aside, with limited resources, don't you think it far more likely that the really good students, somehow find a way to be among those who remain.
The evelopmentally disabled ones are the ones who fall by the wayside and do not continue their education to the point where these internationalized standard tests are taken?
drop the ten% worst performers results from the US kids "math and science tests" and you may find that they don't suck after all.. APPLES & APPLES COMPARISONS PLEASE!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
LEAVE SOME CHILDREN BEHIND
sorry- is that too callous?
It is callous, but my bigger problem with it is that it's stupid.
drop the ten% worst performers results from the US kids "math and science tests" and you may find that they don't suck after all.
First of all, unless you're going to be executing that 10%, I think you'll find they create problems. The chinese are willing to take the necessary steps to keep their dropouts in line, we are most definitely not.
Second, that goes against something intrinsically american. And for several good reasons, not the least of which being academic performance in grade school and high school doesn't exactly correlate with academic performance later on
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, China the land of opportunity. That's why so many Americans are flocking to China to work in shoe factories, and why there are no longer any Chinese immigrants looking for a better life in America.
Hint: Quantity isn't the issue here (Score:3, Insightful)
On top of that, the USA produces a fair number of top notch scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and computer scientists right now, but those top notch individuals tend to be results of family pressure, personal ambition, or sheer-jealousy-inducing talent. Forcing those top level people into more hours of classes that tend to bore the living daylights out of them is not helpful. Mandating more school time for inner city or rural kids isn't going to be terribly useful for obvious reasons. The only students it might benefit are those who are capable and talented, but just a bit slow on picking up new concepts.
Of course, the biggest issue is what happens when you multiply the current school times by 25-30%. As best as I can remember, I spent about 9.5months in school in Virginia (a state in the USA.) If that time increases by 25%, that results in students spending roughtly 11.85 months in school. Alternately, students can spend 10 hours away from home for school, which I'm sure will work really well.
All in all, no thanks, the problem isn't the quantity of time spent in school, but rather the quality of said time.
Wrong Approach, Try Again Mr. President.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The article and even the summary states that countries which continually outperform America in tests send their children to school for less hours than America. That doesn't even warrant the correlation vs. causation fallacy that's just crappy incomplete analysis by Obama's Secretary of Education. Forcing students to spend more hours in the mindnumbing clusterf*** that is the modern lecture system in America is not going to educate them or make them learn more, its just going to push them closer to brainless downer activities after school like more TV. I mean really, who wants to go home and play with an electronics toy/learning kit when they just spent 8+ hours listening to someone they hardly respect drone on about a bunch of topics that they haven't been given a reason to care about?
Don't increase the schoolyear Mr. President, increase teacher salaries giving intelligent people a reason to teach other than philanthropy and find a way to inspire invention and innovation in the classroom. Increasing the time spent in a broken system is just going to increase the number of broken children's minds.
Re:Wrong Approach, Try Again Mr. President.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Read the story again. The argument is for a longer school year, and not necessarily more hours in school. Think about that for a minute, especially on how it affects knowledge retention. If you have a good argument, by all means make it, but if the debate on education in the country in general is at the same level as in your post, we are in a very sorry state indeed.
Sigh. Not this shit again (Score:5, Insightful)
This is stupid for several reasons:
1) Countries don't do an even job testing their students. In the US, everyone gets tested, even kids with severe emotional disabilities (meaning from broken homes and such). In some countries, only kids who are in the "college track" schools get tested. Yes, in some places young kids are tracked like that. In Germany students go to the Gymnasium, Hauptschule, or Realschulabschluss depending on ability. The Gymnasium is for kids who are going to university, the Realschulabschluss is for kids going directly in to the work force. Unless they changed it since last I checked, they only test kids in the Gymnasium with these higher level math tests.
2) Standardized tests don't do a good job of measuring things that are really useful. You can have pupils that do very well on them if you spend a lot of time teaching specifically for the test, and if you have a curriculum that emphasizes memorization heavily. Yes well that is not so useful in this day and age of computers. What is more useful is the ability to creatively problem solve. So just because countries produce kids with good math scores, does not mean they are producing the kind of workers you want.
3) Studies consistently show that the biggest factor in kids doing better in school is parental involvement. If their parents care, the kids do better. A simple measure of this is books. The more books parents have in their house when they have kids, the better the kids do. Not because the kids read the books, but because owning the books is heavily correlated with bright, involved parents and THAT produces better achieving kids. So what seems to be needed isn't more school, but more parental involvement.
I get real tired of crap like this because what they seem to want to do is work hard to turn kids in to little calculators. "Oh let's make sure our kids can score really high on number crunching tests!" Ya, how about not. We get students like that in university (I work for a university) in particular some of the foreign grad students form China and India. They are great at memorizing and slogging through formulas, horrible at doing any real world problem solving.
To them, knowledge is learning what other people know. If you don't know something, the answer is to find someone who does, or find a book with the answer. You look it up and then you know it. The idea of solving a problem through trial and error is totally alien to them. Thus they have a lot of trouble understanding what our group does (I do computer support and as such trial and error is a large part of the job). If you tell them "I don't know," they look at you like you are an idiot and want to know who does know.
We really need to stop worrying about how our kids do on contrived tests so much. Yes, they have uses to make sure kids aren't learning nothing, but we shouldn't have this penis contest over who gets the highest scores. It just doesn't matter. If we want to only test our best and brightest and tell the rest of our kids "Sorry, it's a life of menial labor for you," and spend all our time teaching those bright kids how to do the very best on the test, well I'm sure we could have top scores in no time. I'm also sure that we'd find the quality of our workers would decline.
Outliers (Score:3, Insightful)
Money (Score:4, Insightful)
Where's the money going to come from? Adding a few days onto the school year will cost the states billions of dollars. I dunno what state you're living in, but here in California we're already in such a big hole we can't see the sky. Is Obama planning to raise federal taxes for this, or is it going to be another one of those unfunded mandates?
Japan is a bad ideal. (Score:5, Insightful)
From personal experience, many of the students who go to juku go because they don't pay attention in class. They sit around and draw pictures, stare out the window, or talk to their friends. There are students who simply sit and cross their arms, refusing to do anything in any class despite coming to school. And of course, there are students who just don't come to school, because there's nothing that can be done to them; they will move up through the grades and graduate from junior high regardless. There are also students who DON'T go to juku, or go once/twice a week. These students are the ones who actually do their homework and listen in class. Guess which of the two groups generally has better test scores in my school.
I don't really believe in the whole longer school hours argument, either. We have school from 8:50 AM to 3:35 PM; at my school, it was 8:10 AM to 3:10 PM, slightly longer. On top of that, they only have six periods in a day, with a lunch break after fourth period. And on top of THAT, Monday and Friday only have FIVE periods. I fail to see how Japanese children spend more time in school unless they count club activities (generally an hour before school and an hour or two after school). Or perhaps they're counting juku, which SHOULDN'T be counted; it's completely optional and you pay for it. Basically you're paying to go to a classroom with a cubby where you're forced to do what you should be doing in school to begin with.
For another rant, a lot of students who get good grades are simply memorizing and regurgitating facts, especially in liberal arts courses. They aren't learning how things fit together, or how to apply their knowledge, or even how to use their knowledge outside of regimented series of tests. If you think the SATs are bad in America, come here for a bit. This is a land where tests are God, so you learn to please God.
If that's what Obama wants America to aim for, I don't think I approve. At all.
Wow (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to seriously wonder why so many people here are so passionate about not needing an education.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
"I have to seriously wonder why so many people here are so passionate about not needing an education."
Many geeks are autodidacts and will learn much more when less impeded by conventional formal education. We may show up to get the certificate, but what drives learning is passion.
Many of them (self included) were bored by school and despised many of the people they were forced to go to school with. A system that would help such folk would work less well for the torrent of retards that make up most of the public.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
How to make the school system better (Score:4, Informative)
For starters, how about we repeal that idiotic, asinine "No child left behind" act, that does absolutely nothing of the sort. The only reason this passed is because of the name. Everyone thought, "Oh, that sounds like a good idea!".
Know what this thing really did? It penalizes those schools with the lowest test scores. If your students can't make the grades, it means you lose some of your funding.
My ex girlfriend teaches at a school that serves the lowest income demographic in my area. She had recently graduated from college and this was the only teaching job she could get anything remotely in the local area, and she still had to beat lots of other applicants. Kids come into the school not knowing how to read basic words or do any arithmetic from families with parents that are spending more time selling drugs in the evenings then they are with their kids. The school, surprisingly enough, was already one of the lowest funded schools in the area, and had some of the lowest scores in the area before it passed.
When "No child left behind" passed, know what it did? It cut the schools funding even further, when they already didn't have enough money for books and other things. The school is so overcrowded that several classrooms are actually "temporary" buildings that have been present for years. The principal started yelling more at teachers about bringing test scores up and having less money to do it with, upsetting the faculty. They didn't have enough money for school supplies. My ex started having to buy (some) of her own paper to use for class projects and other things because funding was so short. Some of the few decent teachers the school had left decided on early retirement or other career changes because they became so fed up with it.
The net result, of course, is that the students scores have not improved, they are losing good faculty left and right because everyone is tired of the crap, and their funding isn't getting any better because neither are the scores. Nice, big, circular cluster-****. Last I had heard, morale was at an all time low and things aren't getting any better.
"No child left behind". Right. As one semi-famous teacher would put it, "Crack is bad, mmmmm'k?"
A Kid's (7th Grade) Opinion (Score:5, Interesting)
More time? Give us Vouchers!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are really concerned with having a better outcome, and better education, with kids learning more - give us vouchers.
Let people go to private schools who would never be able to otherwise.
Let families afford to be able to homeschool, where learning can really be around the clock with committed parents.
For whatever reason, private education is poison to the current political leaders (like the whole DC voucher fiasco). If you care, let us have more choices for how we educate our kids.
Outsource Education to China or India.... (Score:5, Interesting)
It would cost only 3,000 dollars a year to educate a child in China, plus air fare both ways for summer break would be a little over 4,500.00 dollars.
In Washington D.C. taxpayers pay 10,000 per child. Clearly the best solution is outsourcing. Plus punishment can be handed out byt the Red Chinese, when you kid gets suspended they get sent to a weeklong shift in a factory. It lowers labor cost and kids learn discipline and when they get back they will respect their elders, RESPECT THEIR ELDERS!!!!!!!
Plus during the School year you won't have young punks all over town, instead they will be in another country wrecking that place up. DOUBLE WIN-WIN
Now get off my damn lawn you whippersnappers!!!
Re:Wrong solution (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wrong solution (Score:5, Insightful)
"Doesn't that mean that the problem is not how long US kids are in school?"
The problem is American popular culture, which exalts stupidity and is savagely anti-intellectual.
No public education system changes will affect this, and the solution is to facilitate school choice so the parents who appreciate the superiority of private education can rescue their children. We can't have an educated
public, but we can and should cultivate an educated. self-aware counter-culture from which we can groom future leaders.
Re:Wrong solution (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not so sure about that. From what I have seen of how the public is educated, most people have an inherent curiosity that is slowly and methodically destroyed. Instead of being allowed to explore, they are herded into overcrowded classrooms and forced to learn things through repetition.
Then we are screwed. No democratic republic will stand long if the population is ignorant. The educational system needs drastic and immediate reform. There needs to be competition and the red tape and various nonsense which is stifling exploration and experimentation needs to go away.
Re:Wrong solution (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is not the amount of money or time available for schools. The problem is it is assumed we are all equal and the schools cater to the lowest denominator in the classroom, handicapping the rest of the class. Unfortunately, segregating students based on ability is an unpopular idea because it does not reinforce the idea that we are all equal.
Re:Wrong solution (Score:4, Insightful)
the schools cater to the lowest denominator in the classroom, handicapping the rest of the class
That doesn't explain the prevalence of Honors classes, AP classes, etc.
The problem is that there isn't a single problem but a whole rash of much larger, much more subtle problems. There's the problem of anti-intellectualism in American society. There's the problem of school funding being tied directly with property taxes (creating separate-but-unequal education that only reinforces class division). There's the problem of parents not giving a damn about their kid's future. There's the problem of those same parents having to work three jobs to make ends meet, making them too tired when they get home to give a shit about if their kids did their homework.
And there's the problem of people thinking there's just one problem, and if we could just fix that problem! then everything would be alright.
Re:Wrong solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it doesn't mean that.
It would seem to indicate that the problem isn't that the number of instructional hours is insufficient, but it does not mean that the problem isn't "how long" US kids are in school, either in hours per day or days per year or both.
That US students are in school fewer days and that they are in school more hours per school day could both be problematic; its quite possible that fewer hours of school per day but m
Re:Someone's gotta say it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:More time for students to ignore their teachers (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, just like with the drinking age, the federal government is unlikely to actually mandate that states lengthen the school year, but rather they'll take more money from the states, lose a chunk of it due to the overall federal bureaucracy that will undoubtably be created, and then blackmail the states into changing their laws in order to get their money back (while redistributing more of the money to states/districts that support the political party currently in power). All the while the politicians can look like they're doing something productive, ignore the constitution, piss away money, and slowly chip away at the last remnants of sovereignty that individual states once had.
Phil
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Change... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bad Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like the problem isn't needing more time put into schooling, but, making the current time spent more productive and worthwhile!!
For one..maybe we need to quit teaching to the lowest common denominator. Perhaps we need to start rewarding actual success and progress, rather than giving everyone a reward for just showing up, eh? How about competition again and quit worrying so much about everyone's fucking self esteem...and try to prepare the kids more for a real world with competition...
How about stopping drugging the kids so much? In my day, it was called being a 'boy' they way I and my friends acted...now, they just dose you.
How about not assuming every kid is academic? How about making votech type schooling a positive thing, and if kids want to go that way, let them, encourage them....and don't keep them in classrooms bored and distracting other students...? How about rather than making school a right...make it a privilege that you earn by behaving, and progressing....?
Re:Bad Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
IT said they're already doing more hours than kids in the rest of the world.
Sounds like the problem isn't needing more time put into schooling, but, making the current time spent more productive and worthwhile!!
Actually, I suspect the "hours in school" statistic refers purely to state-run schools. In Korea, and most of Asia, probably students leave school in the afternoon, only to continue studying at private learning centers until evening to get advantage for the next placement test. They spend a lot of time there. So I'll bet Asian kids study many more hours than Americans when you factor in these "hagwans".