Is it a good idea to have longer school days?

Great Debates
21

School is for learning, it is not child care. I was always vexed by the length of school days, there’s already a lot of breaks and filler time, I can’t imagine making the days even longer. The school reforms suggested in this thread were all worthy but they could be accomplished without making the school day longer or shortening summer break. Education is very much about quality and efficiency; spending more time and money when both are at a premium strikes me as counter productive.

We need to raise teachers’ wages. We need tort reform and a serious reexamination of the authority we extend to teachers and staff. Teachers do a tough job with few resources, we need to help our teachers, not turn school into daycare.

22

I agree - we need to have more emphasis on schooling in this country. As it is at the moment it’s just something you do to get by. Longer school days, though not significantly and I like the idea of optional after school things, and a half day Saturday would be great.

My aunt tells me of when she was in school in India, she’d go to school for the regular stuff all week, and then on Saturdays, have dance class and music class and sports.

BUT the teachers and the schools need to have a whole lot more money, and it needs to be way more organized. We need to quit spending money on stupid things. When I think of how much money we threw away on the Iraq war, and how all of that money could have gone to educate our youth, I want to cry.

23

My wife’s school district has a 6.5 hour duty day for teachers. I beleive there is a 40 minute lunch at the eight grade level, and the only other break is the time between classes. As a guess, it probably comes out to over 5 hours of class time, but under 6.

More hours in a school day is not the answer. Nor do I think it is more school days. But a change in the school calendar is in order. Why not three one month breaks through out the year, or six two-week breaks? In many cases, better facilties would make a world of difference. What does it tell kids when their school is in disreapair and looks unclean?

24

Man, I would love for you to expand on that. Another thread?

25

Agreed. I am thinking very hard about home-schooling my kids. Though ideally I’d want to setup a home-school cooperative where several families are involved and there is a class of at least a dozen kids.

As per your example, I have this fantasy of teaching my kids how to play Eve Online. I could teach them, Algebra, Geometry, Economics and Politics through that video game. ‘A radian is a measure of distance on a circle. If your Heavy Neutron Blaster tracks more radians per second than the angular velocity of your target then you’ll hit. Angular velocity is determined by the speed at which you are approaching one another modified by the angle of attack.’ Hehe, I’d have to learn more about these subjects myself, but it would be fun and a reason to study them myself which could only be to my benefit. If Nascar is your thing you can talk to them about calculating CCs and about how the size of the tire x the RPMs will determine the velocity of the car. You could teach a whole physics class focusing solely on Nascar.

Point being just as you said, there are so many fun and individually relevant ways to teach people basic skills. I am not concerned about our kids being able to read and write though, both myself and my wife are professional writers, she’s a professional editor and her grammar skills put mine to shame. With all the problems I have getting people to understand my rhetoric around these parts, I could’ve totally used a more practical curriculum. I was lucky though, I had this course called, ‘Humanities’, which was sort of like an AP curriculum where Language Arts and Social Studies were one class taught by two teachers over the course of two periods. It was cool in terms of how they fit it into the curriculum, but it wasn’t seemless. One hour was Social Studies and one hour was Language Arts. They could’ve integrated it completely, but they didn’t. More’s the pity.

For me the Straight Dope is actually where I learned a lot of my writing skills. I had trouble communicating my ideas, still do, and had to learn the skills as an autodidact. I don’t see any reason why my children shouldn’t be able to write at 18 as well as I could write at 25. I’d like to provide them with the opportunity to not feel so hamstrung as I did by the whole process.

26

One point, briefly touched-on (sort of) by LHOD is what a longer school day would do to teachers. I’ve had a few friends who were teachers. Sure their hours look cushy. But here’s how my friend Sue’s days go (she teaches 7th and 8th grade science): At school for 7 hours; 3 more hours at home spent grading papers/organizing paperwork; at least another hour at home doing lesson planning (yes, the school gives her one planning period a day; she insists it’s not enough time for proper lesson planning, plus if the principal wants to meet with you, or if one of your students needs to talk to you, or if you need to return a call to a parent, that’s all supposed to happen during your ‘planning period’, too). Teachers are already overworked and undervalued, and I don’t see lengthening the school days helping. Thus, some good teachers would be driven out of the profession, and the upcoming crop of teachers would be discouraged from pursuing teaching. Bad idea.

Now, a shorter summer break, I can see. When I homeschooled my oldest two kids for several years, we had school year 'round. They would have five weeks of school, followed by a full week off. The only exception is that I’d give them two weeks off in July, when their public-school friends were out of school and wanted to hang out more.

This doesn’t have to mean less all around “vacation” time, just that the time would be more evenly divided.

Oh, and I do think it would be great if the schools were open on weekends, not for classes, but so students would have access to the gym, library, computer lab, playground, etc. The only question about that would be, where is the money coming from to have a weekend staff?

27

That’s less classroom instruction time than here. Breaks other than lunch (aka recess) end in sixth grade, so older middle schoolers have an identical schedule to high schoolers, just starting their days twenty minutes later to cut down on the number of buses needed. Eighth graders start at 7:40 and leave at 2:30. 25 minutes for lunch is the only break, and there’s only 2.5 minutes to switch classes. Kids in NH go to school 185 days instead of the usual 180 days too.

That said, despite being the state that spends the least in the US on education, NH always ranks in the top 15 when student performance is compared. And for years now we’ve been tied with a couple other states for highest graduation rate. So something is working, and it’s not too much of a stretch to think that additional classroom time (at least 5 days of it even when not comparing lunch and break times) is part of what works.

If we’re talking about small changes, like another 5-10 days in the school year, or another 10 minutes of classroom time a day, I’d be for it. However, I do not want to see big increases in the length of the school days without a corresponding in breaks. How come if you’re an adult working for 7 hours the many states requires you be given a 15 minute paid break and an unpaid lunch, but 12-18-year-olds spend 7 hours in a classroom with no break but lunch? To lengthen the day without more breaks is just asking for increased discipline problems.

28

Yes yes yes.
I have a brother-in-law and a friend who both teach in public schools. One teaches spanish, the other biology. Their schools cram 6 classes, plus lunch, into each day. That comes to about 50 minutes/per class. How do you do any indepth work in 45 minutes (giving time to get settled down)?

I was talking to my BIL over the weekend. Last Friday was Homecoming, so there were no classes in the afternoon. Rather then have half the number of classes, they cut the length of each class in half. What the heck do you do with a 25 minute class?

How about 4 classes per day, with 80 minutes of contact time? Rotate the time through the day, so that the same class isn’t the first thing every day.

29

I used to volunteer at a “Big Brothers” type program and let me tell you there are lots of places for these kids to hang out if they don’t want to get into trouble.

The trouble is most parents refuse to do anything about it. The attitude seems to be, “As long as my son isn’t doing anything wrong, he shouldn’t be subject to any kind of punishment.”

I would say “Your son is hanging out with gangbangers, every friend of his is a gangbanger…” The answer was alway “Stop judging me, you can’t judge me or my son who has a right to hang out with whoever he wants if he ain’t doing nothing.”

Then you see that mother on the news crying “My son was killed he wasn’t no gangbanger.”

OK you insisted your son has a “RIGHT” to hang out with whoever he wants, now he’s dead. You let your son die all for the sake of making a point.

Oh she was right, her son should not be judged by who he hangs out with, but now he’s dead.

It’s sad, I’d walk in and talk to these kids and in 5 minutes you can tell who is going to be behind bars in a few years. It truly is the parents. And it bunk if you say it’s socio-economic. I have seen mothers on welfare in projects that make damn well sure their kids are attended to.

Of course the majority of them are spouting off about their rights to safety.

Again it’s not blame the victim but it’s like if I take $100 bill and hold it in my hand and walk through Humbodt Park in Chicago. Chances are I’d get mugged and get that $100 taken off me. And people would say “That’s what you get for flashing money around in a bad neighborhood.” Do I deserve to get mugged? No. Do I have a right NOT to get mugged? Yes. And if I did that I’d be $100 poorer all for the sake of making a point.

We spend all this time teaching people their “rights” but fail to teach them there are consequences to exercising them. We don’t live in a nice world, so when you exercise them you may get into a mess.

I talked to one lady who’s son kept skipping school. I asked her, “Why don’t you walk with him and make sure he gets into his class.” She said “I wouldn’t embarass him in front of his friends, besides I’m too busy.” I was like “Doing what?” You don’t work, what are you doing from 8am - 8:30am that you can’t see to it that he gets into class?

Of course it’s “Don’t judge me.”

I had another lady, she said she had to go to work, I asked her if she could explain and change her start time. She said, “No,” she did ask they changed her start time and she still didn’t follow through.

If you’re gonna use schools as “prisons” to keep them safe, I can agree as a stop gap measure, but you really aren’t addressing the real problem

I disagree kids forget in three months what they learned. Most of what you learn in school has little value anyway. At least the facts are.

30

Would kids graduate at an earlier age if there were longer school days, or year round school? What then - go to college at age 15? What about jobs? There are no jobs for adults now, much less kids ready to enter the market place. It’s all a lot of talk, anyway, and it’s been proposed as a swell idea since the first school was invented, and nothing will come of it. (It’s like the annual spring headline on the fashion page: “hats are BACK!” No. Hats are NOT back. Maybe a few where you live.)

31

Markxxx, I do agree with you that parents play a huge role in how well their kids do in school! It really seems to have little to do with socio-economic factors. Some parents get involved with their kids’ schools and schooling; other parents send them off to school and think “Well, they’re the teacher’s problem now!”

The parents who groused at you about their ‘rights’ and their children’s ‘rights’ are no doubt the same parents who would come and bitch me out when I called their monsters out for doing something unacceptable! You are correct in stating that, at the same time they are being taught about rights, they need to be taught about the responsibility that comes with those rights!

I make it a point, every year, to send a note to my kid’s new teacher, introducing myself, and explaining that I think learning is a cooperative measure between teacher/student/parent.

As an aside, I do think it’s unfair that my daughter got “marked down” for bringing in papers unsigned by me on two days I was in the hospital for surgery and she was staying with a sitter. I even sent the teacher a note several days in advance explaining that, not only would I be in the hospital, I would be in a whole other town, two hours away.

32

What to do with a 25 minute class? Schedule a quiz so the kids come to class prepared.

33

Not everyone is you. Many of my high school classmates came from poor (and often immigrant) families, and you can bet their summer jobs contributed a lot to their family’s income. There are more high school students than you think who use their paycheck from Taco Bell to buy food and school supplies for their younger siblings.

But more than that, the summer job gives young people a way to get started in the job market, to learn the value of a dollar earned with their own hands, and give them help in learning how to focus their career (hopefully away from Taco Bell.)

34

All I can say is whoa!. I was educated in a similar evil Asian style school, where the empahsis was on acedemics to a large degree, I got off at 9 pm pretty much everyday. Yet I did manage to explore town, stolel many kisses, earnt my own money, wrote articles for magazines was a member of the national debating team, since I liked public speaking. I fail to see how it was deficient. Must be the lack of maturity that I display, afterall I am an automaton.

35

Obviously you did just fine in that environment. And there are plenty of posters here who did just fine with American public schools, too. That doesn’t mean that either system is perfect or ideal, or even necessarily very good.

36

What Americans often forget is how easy it is to get into university in the US compared to other places. In India/China/Pakistan/SE Asia/Middle East, you may have lets say 2000 seats for a new acedemic year in one university and close to 200,000 applicants. The competition is extremely fierce, a mark can be difference between studying in the halls and cleaning them. In addition unlike the US, most professional programmes begin at undergraduate level, which also increases competition and probably raises the standard expected in A-Levels (the rough equivalent of the last year of US High School, I don’t know what the Chinese do). To take my own example, I qualified as a lawyer when I was 22.

I actually think the US College experience is better, no need to decide what to do at the grand old age of 18.

37

For the last 3 years of my high school education, I attended a school where we were required to attend from 8:30am to 8:30pm. Actual classroom instruction time was largely the same: 9 - 3:30. But there was also mandatory sports/extra-curricular from 4 - 5:30, dinner from 6 - 7 & homework from 7:30 - 8:30. Additionally, we were all required to spend another half day Saturday on sport.

Was it a better or worse than the conventional system? It’s tough to say. For me, as a geeky kid, I would have to say it definitely provided more time for socialization. When I used to go home, all I would do was watch tv or use the computer alone. At least being in school forced me to interact with other people during my non-classroom time. On the other hand, having so much of my time being structured was pretty institutionalizing. I really never learned how to constructively manage free time until college.

As for even sven’s objection: What I would like to see from schools is a more modular system of education focused on achievement rather than time. Instead of 13 years of 2 semesters, split school up into a series of 6 week modules which you can take at any time and take repeatedly until you pass. This would give some students the freedom to leave school for 3 months a year to work while others can only take a month if they so choose.

38

I went K-8th grade in the public school system (all classes for around 50 min or so every day) and then for high school (9-12) went to a private school with a “block” system similar to what **Tastes of Chocolate **describes: half your classes one day, half the other day, and three rotations of the 90-min. classes, which I can still recall with ease:

1234
5678
1423
5867
1342
5786

then back to 1234…

Thus, the 1st class of the day in the morning you didn’t really have to think, just blearily rush into whichever classroom you weren’t in yesterday morning, then it rotates from there.

I have to say, having learned in both environments, that the block system works better. More time to get in-depth, but 90 mins. is still a manageable length of time to sit through the more hellish subjects.
But to be fair, I was older, and I could see 90 mins. being too long for, say, 1st-graders.

A 25-min. class is rigoddamndiculous.

39

To get a better education, simply spend more time in school? That has got to be the most ill-thought out idea ever. The solution is to teach better, not teach longer. I was extremely bored for the vast majority of school. At times it felt more like a holding pen than an educational facility.

For the record, the school day needs to start later anyways. School is there for the kids, not the teachers. Kids don’t wake up at 6am naturally like old people.

40

I think that’s still not enough time. A longer class will teach a kid about staying on task and focusing until they get it right. We try to cram too much into to short periods of time. I failed Algebra II because I didn’t want to do the homework, not because the problems were too hard but because it took me like 5 minutes to write out a single problem, and was assigned like 30 a night. If my homework had been 5 problems, I might have actually sat down and worked hard with them rather than just doing a cost-benefit analysis on my attention span. How exactly does rushing through 30 problems teach me Algebra? Of course if it was 30 problems a week rather than 30 problems a night, I could probably have handled that as well.