That could be the case soon enough. The new Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, is seriously considering giving the kids longer school years, reducing their time off during the summer. It seems that this might be a necessary step in keeping our kids competitive with countries like China and India where they have longer school years, weeks, and even days. I'm pretty sure that China only lets those kids out of class to sleep and pee.
Though I understand and support the need to strengthen our current system, and I don't pretend to have a suitable alternative plan that will help, I just want to say: How bad is that gonna suck? Even though we never did anything worthwhile with our summer vacations, I loved it. We should all be thankful that we've already graduated.
Now when we tell our kids about walking to school, uphill both ways, through seven feet snow drifts, carrying firewood for the little one room school house, fighting off wild Dingos, and dodging occasional meteor shower, but that we were thankful anyway, they're just going to say: "But you didn't have to go school all summer."
And they'll be right. Even though we won't let them know that. Ever.
I think it will hardest on the kids and Teachers who are already in the system. My kids won't even know because is will just always be that way, they'll see old movies where the kids are on summer break and ask questions like: "Was it really like that dad?" "You guys didn't go to school all year?" "Why are you making me watch these crappy old movies?" "If this is all we're gonna do, can I go back to school?"
But there are Teachers out there who have been doing their job for 30 years or more. They count on those two and half months off to hold on to what's left of their fragile sanity. What about them. I bet a lot of them retire, and understandably so. Is anyone considering what that will do to our education system? Without cranky old ladies to yell us about Shakespeare or Mitosis, how will we ever absorb that information?
Well, I hope that whatever plan they come up with works, because I do realize the need to strengthen our educational foundation before it completely crumbles away underneath us. Ideally this would start at home, with the parents of school children not only helping to teach their children, but also by reinforcing the importance of education in general, but I could go on about that forever, so I'll save it for a later blog.
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Our district seems to shorten the summer break by a few days every year, and they add 15 or 20 minutes to the school day every couple of years. I don't have a huge problem with it, I can understand the need for more classroom time, BUT, if they cut out a lot of the nonsense I don't think they would need to lengthen the days and shorten the vacations.
Our kids seem to have some kind of assembly fairly often, the worst is when they take the kids out of class for 2 hours to have a fundraising "pep rally". A lot of time is also spent teaching them how to take standardized tests. Not just teaching the material that will be covered, but actual test taking tips. I think if common sense could be used when planning the curriculum that the amount of time the school has my children every year would be sufficient. But since it seems very unlikely that common sense would ever be used by any government agency, I suppose the next best thing is cutting out summer vacations. I just wonder what they will do when that doesn't work. Because the way I see it, the problem isn't the amount of time spent at school, the problem is the way that time is being used.
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