I teach my kids two things:
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You can do ANYTHING you want to do
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Everything you do has consequences.
Ha, I am 31 and my daughter wakes up at 7. I wish she woke up later. 
But if both parents work a full day, it’s already de-coupled. I’ve always thought having kids in school 9-5 makes sense, with room for homework or school-based after-school activities for the last couple of hours. When they get home, they have more time available to just be a kid with the family, since their “work day” is done.
This would be beneficial especially to adolescents, because of the physiological changes they go through. It’s for a reason that they would rather sleep a lot in the morning, and studies have shown that they become more alert and better able to concentrate later in the day.
You know, people complain that American workers are lazy, but American workers work more hours with less vacations and lower pay and benefits than European workers. This sounds like the same thing: people are saying American students should be in school more to catch up when they are already in school more than their peers. To me, it sounds like the solution is ‘work smarter, not harder.’
Were Obama posting here (maybe some day…), I’d ask him for a cite on the idea that American kids spend less time in school than their peers. The article contradicts him:
That’s about 9 percent more school hours than Taiwan and 27 percent more than Singapore. Granted these are averages and I’m not sure which schools they are from and so on. But my conclusion, from this article and from my own experiences in school, is that kids do not need more time in school or longer days. They need better instruction. I might get behind having a few more days and slightly longer school periods, but getting rid of summer vacation sounds like a terrible idea. My experience is that students are overworked as it is.
My high school had, I think, eight periods of 48 minutes each. You didn’t have to take a lunch period. They’ve changed that system now, and I think it’s become nine periods of 43 minutes each. So my youngest brother gets a lot more electives and AP classes than I did, and is still getting more time off during his senior year. (Bastard.) And I think our district already had more than 180 days per year because - here’s a shocker - they could get more funding. I’m guessing plenty of schools already work this way.
The idea of keeping school open at nights and on weekends to provide a safe place for kids to go, I’m fine with. You have to pay teachers or advisers to handle that and so on, but it could work, and more after school activities is never a bad idea. But if you think they just have too many days off and more time in school will fix it… I doubt it. Have a heart already.
Its called block scheduling. Some schools already do it, but it has it’s own downsides. For one, kids can’t focus on one thing for all that time (usually), so you wind up doing several different things in that block just as if you had the shorer schedule.
Last year, one of my second graders remarked to her mom, “You know, I can do whatever I want. But there will be consequences.” In other words, nearly verbatim what you said.
I try to get this idea across to my students, as well. I give them directions, and if they hesitate, I absolutely validate their power to choose not to follow the directions. I remind them that such a choice will have consequences, and that choosing to follow the directions will have a different set of consequences, and that they know what both sets of consequences will be, so there are no surprises.
Some kids get the idea faster than others :).
AMEN! Most of the stuff I learned I just picked up…I even taught myself to read when I was three (no mean feat for a late dx deaf kid who’d just gotten her hearing aids, and who also has a syndrome that can and does cause mental retardation)
You know…my girlfriend was unschooled and is very smart and well educated.
Oh…and maybe a good idea might be to put kids with legitimate documented special needs in specialized programs/schools. Right now, we have the kneejerk response to think " Oh kids with disabilites need to be mainstreamed. The mainstream is the BEST thing in the world!" What happens is that the teachers (including sped teachers) really don’t have the training in how to teach kids with more classic disabilites. So those of us who are “classicly disabled” don’t achieve as well as we could.
Like I know that research from Gallaudet University says that kids who attend special (non public especially for a disabilty) schools do better then kids who attend public schools.
I also know of countless parents whose kids were in regular classes, regular school and were just floating along in the mainstream. They got transferrd to a deaf school/program and started REALLY doing well!
Seperate programs/schools would raise test scores since the mainstream teachers could concentrate on the mainstream kids, instead of expending all the energy on the speical ed kids. (and even a lot of the kids with "just physcial issues, may act out or not do as well as they could under a teacher really trained on how to teach kids with their particualr issues)
Personally I think that kids spending more time in a structured environment rather then hanging around on street corners unsupervised can’t be an entirely bad idea.
As to the arguments put forward that kids need more time for socialising,kissing members of the opposite sex and SLEEP for gods sake.
Kids at school ARE socialising for much of the time.
As for kissing other kids, apart from the emotional trauma that so many seem to go through because of trying to act like adults when they are in fact only older children,maybe the underage pregnancy rate might go down a tad.
And the “sleep” thing sounds more like the excuses of lazy parents who are thinking about their own lie ins,not their childrens.
Kids usually never want to go to bed early,nor to get up early(Not all but many of them) so the last ,so called plea for childrens rights,is an insult to peoples intelligence.
I thank my lucky stars I didn’t go to school under Obama. More school time? My god, I thought this board was against cruel and unusual punishment.
By the end of the school day kids are either bored to tears or ready to burst at the seams.
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Drastically increase pay.
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All wannabe teachers (fresh from college) must first pass a battery of tests: Mental ability, knowledge in their field, psychological evaluation, communication skills, criminal background, etc.
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All candidates must attend the National Teachers Academy, where they will be taught all aspects of the trade by the best educators we have: Grading, ethics, interaction with parents and administration, behavioral sciences, psychology, self defense, communication, etc. You will ONLY teach in your field. Coaches will never teach class.
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All school administration wannabes must attend the National Administration Academy, where they will build on their minimum 10 years of teaching experience with applicable courses.
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All schools will be given equal funding. All classes will be taught from national textbooks. All testing will be nationally distributed. Schools which do not “make the grade” will not be punished. They will be visited by experts who will assess and resolve the issues on a case by case basis.
/waves wand…
Forget college. Ever have a good highschool teacher? They are rare. I had two. Ever have an unqualified/psycho/jaded/horrible/lazy teacher? I had eight and I went to an exclusive $12,000/ year private school (for free, my father was head of history dept.) There are no real standards, not enough weeding out. We all know why. It’s the low pay. (My family are all teachers.)
The best teacher I ever had later turned out to be a horrible total molester of dozens of kids and died in prison. He was a coach who taught science. His communication skills were amazing, however. Every single student actually UNDERSTOOD what was taught and, as a result, everyone in the class made straight A’s, every year. And he was lazy as crap. He simply had communication skills and enthusiasm.
Most teachers seem to become teachers by default. The previous 3 career tries did not work out. They also seem to have more psycho’s per capita than any other job.
Yeah, I know, blame the teacher. But, a great teacher can inspire students even if all they have for a classroom is a stump under a tree. There simply aren’t enough great ones. Let’s make more.
What? The drop in sleep over the past few decades may not be causally linked to the increasingly early school start times, but there’s a pretty nice little correlation there. Cite.
Add99 interesting ideas, but I think you drastically overstate the problems with the current field of teachers. It’s not that most teachers are lazy psychos, it’s that too many teachers are simply unqualified. People go into teaching sometimes because it’s a calling, sure, and those tend to be pretty good teachers IMO; but some people do go into teaching because it’s the best-paying job they can get, and that’s a scary thing. People who are looking for good pay will go to the best job they can find, and when you have such low pay relative to jobs with similar education requirements, you get the bottom of the barrel in the teaching profession.
I certainly agree that we need to tie pay to a concomitant increase in qualifications. Make teaching competitive with other professions.
Kids need parents and friends to be raised, not handed over to the state. The need less time in schools, not more.
- IMHO
This will happen when every citizen votes in favor of funding schemes that make it financially feasible for salaries to increase. Some districts, for example, have a lot of older residents who don’t have kids in public school and who see no reason why they have to pay taxes to educate someone else’s kids. How do you get around that?
Already happens. In Pennsylvania, where I live, prospective teachers must take the Praxis I, which tests reading comprehension, basic math, and writing. They must also take the Praxis II, which tests specific knowledge in their subject areas. Finally, they undergo three separate background checks: one through the state police; one through the Department of Public Welfare’s abuse database; and fingerprinting through the FBI’s criminal database. Communication skills are assessed through student teaching, as well as the Praxis III, which is done during the first year of teaching. The rest of it is handled during teacher training.
As for the psych evaluation, who decides what qualifies as acceptable and who doesn’t? Would a person under treatment for bipolar disorder be permitted to teach? And who would pay for it?
Isn’t that what college and continuing education are for?
Isn’t that what advanced education is for? In Pennsylvania, principals and superintendents must go through a program above and beyond a master’s degree in order to be certified.
Where would this equal funding come from? Would it be restricted to certain uses, or would districts be able to use it as it sees fit?
In the US, textbooks may as well be national. Texas has a huge influence over the textbook market, and many publishers just use the Texas editions nationally. If by “national” you mean “one textbook that every school would have to use”, you’re seeking to strip states, districts and teachers of their academic freedom. States should be free to adopt books based on their own needs, and the same holds true for individual districts. Finally, teachers must be free to use what they prefer, and not all use the assigned textbook, or any textbook at all.
In terms of assessing problems, too much has to happen before that can become reality, and not all of it is politically palatable. And, frankly, some problems can’t be resolved through experts. If you have a school full of parents who can’t (or won’t) take the time to get involved in their kids’ education, all the experts in the world can’t fix things. You can’t force people to give a shit.
I’m glad you understand that part.
It sounds like you went to a bad school. There are some out there. And I’m not saying the education system is perfect; in fact, it’s far from it. But all the money in the world, and all the experts in the world and all the nationalization can’t change things if people don’t want things to change.