This is something that has bothered me for awhile. Why aren’t the hours kids in school
(1st - 12th) like the hours parents work. *-4 or 9-5, with two breaks during the day, including lunch.
Of course, thinking back to my educational days, the clock seemed to be stuck as it approached the 2:30 mark.
I read in some advertisement " Love. The Anti Drug" ( It’s on page 146, People’s Sept 13 issue. www.theantidrug.com)) it has a stat that “between 4-6pm is when kids are most likely to try drugs. So keep them busy. Encourage them to try out for the basketball team or school play… What matters is your involvement.”
Well, hello there is a gap of a couple of hours from when school gets out and when Mommy and Daddy get home from work.When the kids are to old for latch key and do you really want them home alone without a watchful eye before they are 90, what do you do? Why not keep them in a (forget Columbine and Jonesboro for a moment) safer and more secure inviroment with adult supervision and constructive things to do. They could have study time or run-around-till-your-exhausted-time…something other than veggin’ in front of the TV or hanging out with a bunch of other kids wondering what it would be like to smoke a cig or play doctor.
I think that if schools adapted a more business like system, it would relieve the parents of “what if” in those long hours before they get home of what can happen to their kids. Maybe the schools could add a couple extra courses or open gym time to encourage group activity.
What do you think?
People change not because they see the light but because they feel the heat.
I don’t know,maybe way back when,adults Didn’t work 9-5.Maybe there was always an older brother or sister at home,given the much greater number of kids back Then!
Oh come now! You aren’t looking back far enough. The school hours are a carryover from farming days when everyone was working at dawn. Get the cows milked, get your chores done, off to school, back home, afternoon chores, milk the cows again. No worries about no one at home – Mom was home doing her chores.
School starts after harvest and goes till it’s time to plant in the spring. You’ve got your help home all summer to keep the weeds down and tend to the crops.
Durn 20th century mishmash! Why go around messing with a system that’s worked purfeckly well for me and my pappy and his pappy afore 'im?
“non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem”
– William of Ockham
I think the current school day is based on the idea that seven hours is the max that kids can handle a day (6 + lunch?). I don’t know when that idea started or how much relevance it has, now, but it is probably nothing that is going to change soon. To keep the kids longer is going to require hiring more staff. (Without getting into the whole “are they worth it” debate, teachers are generally putting in eight hours a day to keep the kids in school for seven hours, now.) To keep the kids at least two hours longer is going to require a whole separate staff. Don’t even bring teacher unions into it(yet!), the government frowns on people working in excess of 40 hours without specific compensation.
There have been a couple of small, private academies that have begun taking kids from 7:30 to 6:00 (at least a few years ago). It would be interesting to see how they did it (and if they have been successful).
(Of course, then we’ll get to listen to the day care operators screaming that the schools have taken their livelihood away.)
While the school hours are from farming days, it makes sense to keep them where they are.
Sports, music, clubs (and other after-school-hours) extra-curricular activities would have to go way into the evening so kids would have to go home very late. Most parents are able to get the kids off to school and still get to work on time because the kids start earlier. They are safer on school buses that travel before the rush hour starts in metropolitan and suburban areas. What they could consider is optional school hours (where some start early and some start late) to fit parent’s needs. Also, they need to eliminate half-days, teacher’s work days, and a holiday every third or fourth Monday. That’s really hurting working parents who must find someone to watch Junior.
Most people in our area start work by 7:00AM. The only people starting later are said to be working banker’s hours. The stores are even opening at 7:00AM for shopping now.
None of you watched 60 Minutes last night did you?
One of the segments was on the KIPP programs in Houston and Bronx where the kids go to school for extended hours and sometimes on Sat. in the summer. Basically it’s for the middle school years, grades 5-8. They were mostly inner-city kids and they were getting the best performance numbers in the area and were getting full scholarship offers for private high schools and academies. More time to learn = better education, a pretty simple equation in my opinion.
I KNOW that six or seven hours of school was all I could take when I was a kid – even in the fifth and sixth grade, the last hour and a half was sheer torture. And, since I was a shy kid who hated sports and team games, a structured after-school recreation program would have been just as bad. Usually I couldn’t WAIT to go home and have some time to myself. I don’t I was unusual in this regard. Kids need unstructured and yes, unsupervised time – something most folks in our hectic society seem to forget.
I KNOW that six or seven hours of school was all I could take when I was a kid – even in the fifth and sixth grade, the last hour and a half was sheer torture. And, since I was a shy kid who hated sports and team games, a structured after-school recreation program would have been just as bad. Usually I couldn’t WAIT to go home and have some time to myself. I don’t I was unusual in this regard. Kids need unstructured and yes, unsupervised time – something most folks in our hectic society seem to forget.
Farmer, I caught part of 60 minutes last night and that is what inspired this question. I only saw about 5 minutes of it and wished I could have seen more.
I have also long wondered why more school systems are not on a year round program instead of the summers off. Taking all that time off in the summer screws up all the parents vacation time and “what to do with Jr. and Suzy” .
You are scaring me with your thoughts about making kids go to school MORE. Do you know how cruel, mean-tempered, and EVIL kids are? I hate it at school. If I could pull it off, all my classes would take place in chat rooms and message boards. I participate in several extra-curricular activities, but these are with adults and seniors. Maybe I’m REALLY mature, but standing around, chewing gum (people think its funn to throw it around?), spitting out sunflower seeds (really gross…), and picking on the “nerd” (nerd = Guy who will eventually rule the world with an Iron Fist j/k) don’t appeal to me. You folks here on the SDMB are probably the people closest to my level that I’ve ever found. But ignorant posts like this scare me. You think that they’re “just being kids”, well, spend a day in my shoes why don’t ya? You’ll want to abolish the educational system altogether and have half the population thrown in prison with no chance of parole.
"No job’s too small, we bomb them all."
-Ace Wrecking Company
Interestingly, NPR had a segment this evening on a program in Ohio that sounds like the ones mentioned by funneefarmer. Ohio got a $10M grant from the U.S. that they had to match with state and local money. They used it to fund programs in inner city schools, providing extra schooling for about 3,000 kids for some period of time. The test results were (apparently) startlingly good. The Fed money ends in November and the state has already started scraping up money from the general fund and twisting arms for donations from various foundations and trusts to expand the program and keep it going even without Federal money.
They did not name the program, so it would probably be more work than I’m excited about spending to track down the program and see whether it has good PR or an actually good record. (They also didn’t say how many years the $20M covered. $20M to do the initial research and establish and monitor small programs in multiple locations for 3,000 kids for some number of years might be OK. $20M per each group of 3,000 kids in an ongoing program would probably bankrupt a few states pretty quickly. $20M divided by 3,000 gives about twice the current Ohio median cost per child per year–and that only covers the two or three hours after the seven hours where that median spending had already occurred. Of course, if the $20M was spent over five years, that is a really good payback provided the kids were truly learning.)
Teachers also need time to finish up the work they have after the last class. Custodial staff has to clean up after the kids are gone, etc. If you keep the kids there for 8 hours, the teachers are going to have to be there for 10.
The interesting part of the KIPP program was that the students, parents, and teachers were required to sign a contract with certain reguirements. Parents were required to sign child’s homework/tests and read with them for a given time daily. Teachers put in the extra time for the same pay and stated they liked it because the kids that were there were attentive and liked being even though some of them started the year being considered part of the “problem groups” from the previous year. The students were sat down at the beginning and told what was expected of them. Also discipline is a large part of the system from the very beginning, both by teachers and by the older peers that have been in the program ( grade older etc.)
I think this would be possible to implement across a state or the country, but the cost, both monetarily and trying to convince voters of it’s worthiness, would probably be to much for most people to stomach.