Posted on 09/27/2009 12:00:35 PM PDT by Red in Blue PA
WASHINGTON – Students beware: The summer vacation you just enjoyed could be sharply curtailed if President Barack Obama gets his way.
Obama says American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage with other students around the globe.
"Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas," the president said earlier this year. "Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom."
The president, who has a sixth-grader and a third-grader, wants schools to add time to classes, to stay open late and to let kids in on weekends so they have a safe place to go.
"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.
Fifth-grader Nakany Camara is of two minds. She likes the four-week summer program at her school, Brookhaven Elementary School in Rockville, Md. Nakany enjoys seeing her friends there and thinks summer school helped boost her grades from two Cs to the honor roll.
But she doesn't want a longer school day. "I would walk straight out the door," she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
if the teachers are any good the kids do not need longer days or more weeks in class.
If our schools were teaching people *how* to think, instead of *what* to think, they wouldn’t need to be there as long as they are now.
Abraham Lincoln, for example, only had a single year of formal education.
Spending more time on UN Day, physical education, environmentalism, Global Warming, Multiculturalism, Dewey-style group projects, interactive q&a bull-sessions, teaching the answers for standardized tests — simply is not going to build upon the intellectual capital of the American public.
To understand the meaning of this one must consider what it means for the unions affected (in this case teachers unions) and Obama himself.
More teachers, more control, more dues, more taxes.
Coming next, Obama will announce that he wants complete and absolute Federal control of all schools (including colleges).
You know who screamed the loudest and finally got the legislation killed?
The Teachers Unions! I guess those teachers like their summer breaks as much as the kids do.
If the schools were actually doing a good job teaching instead being glorified daycare, this might be a good idea. Its not like we need to let the kids out during the summer to help with the farm work and harvest.
I had the great good fortune to get sent to prep school when my grandmother left some money for schooling in her will.
We spent about a month less time in that prep school than I had in our public school (supposedly one of the best in the country). Yet I learned at least twice as much.
Since then, most public schools use up more time and teach much less than they did in the past.
Obama’s goal is, no doubt, to have school all year long but teach the kids nothing useful at all.
That’s the socialist way.
Heck, here in MA, the kids barely get two months summer vacation anymore! They get out the third week in June, if they don't have to make up any snow days, and they go back the last week in August, or the first week in September!
Is there nothing 0bambi doesn’t stick his fingers into?
He is so hellbent on picking a fight with Americans and controlling everything that when the backlash hits, it is going to really hurt.
This lengthening of the school day is continually brought up. Why am I not surprised?
The implication is that more time in school means improved learning.
The primary people pushing this agenda are naifs (rPresident) and teacher unions’ agendas to increase employment by getting more days for teachers.
Many studies have found no correlation between length of school days and performance.
Example, Finnish schools outperform US students and yet have less homework.
Swedish students go to school 170 days, US kids 180.
“In the United States . . . children go to school for six or more hours per day, five days per week, for approximately 185 days . . . The average times pent at school in the U.S. totals over 1,100 hours, almost double that of children in Finland. By the time children reach the age of 14 in Finland,they will have gone to school for 2,500 fewer hours than students in America (the equivalent of two to four years of schooling). Despite much longer school days, American students routinely score 10% to 20% lower than Finnish students on international tests of achievement” (Baines,2007, p. 99)
See recent study
Extended School Year Fast Facts
Prepared by
Rebekah Bickford, Research Assistant
David L. Silvernail, Director
Center for Education Policy, Applied Research and Evaluation
University of Southern Maine, March 2009
Source:
http://usm.maine.edu/cepare/pdf/Extended_%20Facts.pdf
Some common sense quotes:
“Improving the quality of instructional time is at least as important as increasing the quantity of time in school”
“The issue isn’t time per se, but how it is spent.”
Just like Hilter, get control of the youth, brain wash them, this is BS, if this passes and my kids have to go to school full year we will be looking for another country to call home. I have it with this BS communist @#$@#$!!
I bet the amusement park industry: Six Flags, Disney, etc. will just love this proposal. Vacation destination locations will embrace it too, re: Martha’s Vineyard/sarc.
If garbage is taught for the first 8 months, garbage will STILL be taught for the remainder....
This WET NOODLE has no freaken clue...HOW the fck did this guy get elected... I think this was an anti Bush vote...
The only good thing would be seeing Mausechewitz aka Disneyworld and -land go down the tubes. Not going to happen, however.
I wished I would have had the health to home school ... I give a lot of credit to families who do so ... our present school system seems to be about making robots out of kids and my children, for the most part, never really fit into their “mold.”
There are plenty of kids that do those things, and they are needed.
Parents (like me) like the summer breaks from school, too. After 9 months of never-ending fund raisers, parent meetings, etc., it's nice to find time to recharge.
I'll never forget the two years my two oldest kids were in HS together. My daughter was on the drill team, and my son was in the band. Both squads are world-class quality, and the beast had to be fed. The band traveled to Dublin, Ireland to march in the St. Patrick's Day parade...the cost alone to transport the instruments was nearly $100K.
I don't regret a minute of it, but there's no need to lengthen the school year. Focus on quality of time, not quality.
When I was in 6th grade, virtually everyone in my class was reading at 12th grade level (public school). Class reading projects included The Count of Monte Cristo. We started the week after Labor Day, and ended in early June.
It’s just not increasing the quality of the teaching. It’s also increasing the accountability of the student and the parents for the learning along with the teacher. I am really tired of people (especially high officials who may never have been teachers) saying that I can entice, cajol, and motivate EVERY child to learn if I am the right kind of teacher. If there is no support from the home, and the student decides he/she does not want to learn, then the adage “You can lead a horse to water, but can’t make him drink.” applies. I am not a miracle worker.
Teaching in the public schools is a calling for me, and one that seems to be getting more and more impossible. I will not make it if the school day and year is lengthened. That’s not a lazy teacher talking. That’s one who puts her heart and soul into it with many many extra hours each week.
More time with ignorant, incompetent teachers? Yeah...that oughta help. Or is it just more opportunity to sing “praise to Hussein” songs?
Yep, I agree with that.
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