Posted on 09/28/2010 6:16:04 PM PDT by Steelers6
What do you think of President Obama's call to make the school year longer?
Good idea Bad idea or view results Thank you for your vote. Good idea 55% Bad idea 44% Total votes: 178
Good idea or bad idea?
How about Disingenuous idea?
FReeped. Homeschool-the only way to go.
Well,.. he just lost the NEA and AFT vote.
I'll consider it when he agrees to make his term in the oval office shorter.
Rotted garbage, like everything else he does.
I think it’s a great idea, as long as they lengthen summer vacation to 4 months to go along with it. ( Kind of like the federal budget, you know ? )
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I know that the Kipp schools have had great success and they operate on a longer schedule, including time on Saturdays. So, although, they are not lengthening the school year, the day is longer.
I know many parents would love having a longer day as child care can be an issue for a parent whose child is dismissed at 2:30 or 3:00 and the parent is not home until 6:00 from work. That’s a lot of free time for kids to get into trouble (and they do). Of course, this is also the time kids often do band, drama, choir, and other after-school (but worthwhile) pursuits.
However, I also see that with lengthening the school day or year, we then have our kids spending more time with their peers and NOT with their families and, generally speaking, I don’t like that. It gives more time for indoctrination, which is what’s happening in schools today. The whole multicultural-diversity thing is not about respecting other cultures at all; rather it is a way of trying to force our kids to believe that ALL cultures are equal and this is simply not true. Some cultures and ideologies and religions really ARE better than others.
I just see kids being in school for longer periods as putting an even further divide between kids and their families,unless the parents are really sharp.
So, in summary, there are pros and cons and I’m not so sure changing the system is the way to go.
Any reasonable person could tell you that the problem is not the length of time spent in school but the quality of the time spent. 40 years ago our kids (I was one of them) did much better than what they are doing today. They were going to school for the same amount of time that they do today. So the problem cannot be the number of days a kid goes to school. I’m appalled at the number of people who think (or believe) this to be a good idea.
I hate it. We should limit the time our children are exposed to the Prussian-modeled state education propaganda machine and we should not over expose our children to the opinions coming from 40 year old humanists masquerading as teachers.
Only a liberal Democrat can look at the camera and tell you how he’ll fix public schools while sending his kids to 30 grand a year private ones. It’s a special kind of hypocrisy that they teach in the Ivy League.
Right, because the reason they want kids to go longer, has nothing to do with educating children.
It’s about MONEY.
They get money for each student, for each day they attend.
Well that and having your kids longer to indocrtinate them.
Rotted garbage, like everything else he does.
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It is. This is just to keep the indoctrination going year round. There is no intent to teach hard facts, just agitprop.
Why is the Federal government so involved in a state issue?
“I just see kids being in school for longer periods as putting an even further divide between kids and their families,unless the parents are really sharp.”
Exactly right. I’ve read comments by Obama’s Secretary of Education about wanting the schools to be open year-round, seven days a week, providing services like meals, etc. The entire plan seems to be about breaking down the family structure and the role of families to provide for their children — whether it’s food or intellectual engagement.
I cannot believe that if I had gone to school a few more weeks a year I’d be any “better educated” or “smarter” than I turned out to be (Phi Beta Kappa in college). There’s a finite point where you just can’t jam any more information into a child’s brain at one time. So much of school is about “classroom management” and not direct engagement or instruction, anyway.
And there’s no value placed on what children *lose* if they spend more time in a structured school setting — the ability to develop imagination, creativity, read on their own, play with peers, exercise through play, cook, clean house, etc. All these activities have an intrinsic value of their own as part of a child’s developmental process and acquisition of skills, and people like Obama don’t see the value or the fact that there will be unexpected consequences in removing time for these activities.
Kind of like how public schools, including our neighborhood school, cut recess and P.E. time way back to “focus on academics,” then wondered why children were becoming chubbier. They eliminated elementary school music and then wondered why no one was signing up for marching band in high school. And so on. It was about that time I pulled my kids out and we have been homeschooling for all but high school (just began my eighth year as a homeschooler).
It’s downright disingenuous of Obama to claim that he wants to make the school year longer in order for our kids to be better able to compete in the world. The fact is that homeschooled students have much shorter school days and school years than public or private schooled kids and are better prepared academically. The reason he wants kids in school longer is so that they have more time to be indoctrinated.
Any reasonable person could tell you that the problem is not the length of time spent in school but the quality of the time spent.
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Absolutely. By the way, as part of the at home portion of the education, I just let my kid vote for the first time in an opinion poll.
;-)
Spending more time in failing school systems won’t help, IMHO.
You said it, sister. I totally forgot to make the point that you did so well. Learning is life. To think that what a kid learns in school is all that there is is simply insane. Lots of kids learn how to cook, bake, sew, garden, fix things, etc. etc. and do lots of creative things while in their HOME. Even games played among siblings teaches lots of skills, esp. one that seems to be so needed today, which is just basically learning to get along with each other.
I know a lot of kids go camping and fishing and stuff with their families in the summer; some go to religious camps. This would all be screwed up.
I do think there is something nefarious going on with all of this “all year school” talk.
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