Longer School Days, Extended School Year: For or Against

[Blair]

Masturbation Superhighway?

gross!!!

behaving badly again.....

 

[kkddbb]

gross!!!

behaving badly again.....

are you surprised by that comment? im sure not

 

[Blair]

are you surprised by that comment? im sure not

No...I'm not....but "different strokes for different folks"

 

[kkddbb]

No...I'm not....but "different strokes for different folks"

absolutely.....

 

[Winnie]

I can't remember which of two books-of-the-moment -- Outliers or Nudge, I think it was Outliers -- explained why so many students with low socioeconomic status struggle to keep up. With most of the kids who don't have a lot of parental involvement in their education, they manage to catch up to their peers or close to it during the school year, but then the summer comes and without reading or enrichment activity that many other students get, they fall behind again, and spend the next school year catching up again.

So there is a very good argument to be made for this, as a society. I also think there is a good argument for ramping up our education to match that of other industrialized countries, simply because we are now in a global marketplace and to compete economically we have to prepare our students. Unfortunately not every American family places a high priority on quality of education, in the way that some other cultures do.

The main problem I see is that this is an ivory-tower idea that will be tough to implement, even if it is the right thing to do. It makes me wince because I really think this is a lot of change at once and all these potentially good ideas and plans may end up backfiring on Obama if the people start digging their heels in even more.

Could you elaborate on the bolded part? I don't think I understand what you are saying. Is it too much change at once to extend classroom hours? Or are there more changes that go along with this?

At the very least, I think it would be beneficial to add homework lab in the afternoon. For those students who have no good custodial care it would help if there were support while they tackle homework assignments. Much like many colleges do by having a math, chemistry, or physics lab available daily.

I am a firm believer that the main problem with our education system is lack of parental involvement. Any support would help those students.

 

[Matt J]

I don't think extending the school day is going to help. If anything it'll hurt since kids just stop absorbing information at a certain point.

Extending the school year seems like a slightly better idea, but kids still need breaks. It seems to me it would be more beneficial to give breaks throughout the year as opposed to a long break that they can completely forget or unlearn everything they've been taught.

 

[Teresa]

yes, it is time we take steps to rebuild our education system. the following (from above article) is really key...

Obama and his Secretary of Education Duncan, are truly advocates for a superior education system than that we’ve previously and currently known. It’s imperative that states use the stimulus package money to rebuild curriculum, increase teacher pay, improve school conditions, offer newer technologies to students and even extend the school year to ensure that this generation can not only keep up with their international peers, but even surpass them in the professional environment of the coming decades.

there are so many ways to accomplish this. starting with teacher qualifications, pay. and excellent curriculum and education philosophy, etc etc. I would not like to see longer school days or longer school year. it may be helpful to working parents, but I am not convinced longer day/school year is what children need - children do need time to play - a lot of time to play! what they need is an outstanding education provided within their school day and school year. we can do that with real long term work and transformation of the school systems at every level. it won't be accomplished through testing however.

there are many schools (private and public) throughout our nation providing outstanding education to children. why not observe these models, in addition to educational models in other countries.

 

[aggieb]

Masturbation Superhighway?

gross!!!

behaving badly again.....

are you surprised by that comment? im sure not

No...I'm not....but "different strokes for different folks"

absolutely.....

:roll: lemme spell it out for you. P M

 

[Teresa]

:roll: lemme spell it out for you. P M

thank you so much aggieb. I was trying to ignore these comments. they starting to get old.

 

[Minnie]

thank you so much aggieb. I was trying to ignore these comments. they starting to get old.

I think they need to spend some time in detention hall. ;-)