In 2009 Obama announced one of his goals: to lengthen school time.
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.
...
Does Obama want every
kid to do these things? School until dinnertime? Summer school? And what about
the idea that kids today are overscheduled and need more time to play?
___
Obama and Duncan say
kids in the United States need more school because kids in other nations have
more school.
"Young people in
other countries are going to school 25, 30 percent longer than our students
here," Duncan told the AP. "I want to just level the playing
field."
While it is true that
kids in many other countries have more school days, it's not true they all
spend more time in school.
Kids in the U.S. spend more hours in school (1,146 instructional hours
per year) than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the
U.S. on math and science tests – Singapore (903), Taiwan (1,050), Japan (1,005)
and Hong Kong (1,013). That is despite the fact that Taiwan ,
Japan and Hong Kong have
longer school years (190 to 201 days) than does the U.S.
...
Aside from improving
academic performance, Education Secretary Duncan has a vision of schools as the
heart of the community. Duncan, who was Chicago's schools chief, grew up
studying alongside poor kids on the city's South Side as part of the tutoring
program his mother still runs.
"Those hours from 3
o'clock to 7 o'clock are times of high anxiety for parents," Duncan said.
"They want their children safe. Families are working one and two and three
jobs now to make ends meet and to keep food on the table."
and I wonder:
- does more equal
better?
- as families are
working one and two and three jobs, they need school to keep their children.
Why should someone need three jobs to make ends meet? Should we change school
or our society?
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