For the past five years I've been telling my sons that if I had my way, there would be no such thing as summer vacation for kids, and their reactions have been, shall we say, not extremely positive. Sure, most kids love their summer vacations, but all good things must come to an end.
If President Obama follows through with his proposal to significantly shorten summer breaks and possibly even lengthen school days, that alone garners my vote for him in 2012. Why? Because as most working parents here know, it's not good to have a teenager home by him- or herself while both parents are out trying to make money to pay the rent (for we all know the old saw about idle hands), and if the child is too young to be alone, then the parents wind up forking over a lot more C-notes to pay for day care. Most importantly, lengthened school days and shortened summer breaks will mean our kids will be more competitive in the modern world — for it's no secret that America's turning out substandard graduates even compared to many Third World countries.
Now, the increased school hours in and of themselves do not solve the problem; after all, there are countries in Asia where kids spend fewer hours in school than we already do. But I think most of us can agree this is a big step in the right direction, if we take this step.
There's one more consideration: politics. Since it's a Democrat (and especially one who's a liberal black president who many claim is Muslim, isn't native-born American, and pals around with terrorists), the conservatives are sure to cry out against this new assault on a sacred agrarian tradition kept since the founding fathers worked the fields as kids. Not only that, but lengthened school hours will cost more money, more taxpayer money more taxes - Horrors! It's another step towards socialism! Be afraid! Praise the Limbaugh and pass the ammunition; there be a census taker a-comin' down the road.
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Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - roger nowosielski
I'm sorry but I disagree, Glenn.
We're children only once, and the idea of shortening this most happy period of our lives just doesn't sit well with me. The parents should do their best to put their kids' welfare first - no matter what it takes.
And we shouldn't be using the excuse of our inadequate education system at the expense of the kids. If it's inadequate, then let's fix it. Stretching something that's not good to begin with somehow doesn't strike me as a viable solution.
2 - Julie
Personally, I don't see how more school for MY children would be a good idea. They come home from school sometimes not understanding what the teacher has tried to teach in their overcrowded, noisy classroom and I take up the slack and teach them what the teacher couldn't/didn't. I am there for my kids and don't need someone else raising them. I am not in need of free daycare as some others in this country are, and I do not wish to have my children raised by other people anymore than they already are. That, in essence, is what is being proposed here, as far as MY children are concerned. Because MY children have a loving mother and father who both work full-time but are still home with them whenever they are not in school and who do take the time to sit down with them and TEACH them, LOVE them, NURTURE them, and PARENT them. My children will be home-schooled if this proposal goes through.
3 - Joanne Huspek
Some school districts in Michigan already have the year-round school. Their summer break is actually broken up in winter, spring and summer, with only three weeks between instead of three months.
I think year round school is a good idea. Kids brains go soft, and it's not just the modern ones. I distinctly remember forgetting a vast amount of information by the first few days of August. However... try and sell that to the teachers' unions. They want their 180 days, nothing more or less, year long or not.
The flip side to all this school leads me to wonder why we can't do better with the time already allotted. I'm in schools quite a bit and in more than a few, it's just organized babysitting services, even for high school. (Oh, yes... the argument that teachers are underpaid and overworked. Not in Michigan they aren't.)
4 - Julie
Oh, and PS... just so you don't get the wrong idea... I am a liberal Democrat and voted for Obama and still strongly support him. So, I'm not a gun-toting, pass the ammunition, praise Rush Limbaugh nut.
5 - roger nowosielski
Besides, Julie, the argument tends to make an unwarranted assumption that what's wrong is the kids, that somehow the kids don't want to learn or are somehow deficient.
Let's put the blame where the blame is.
6 - roger nowosielski
Same here, Julie, but what's a bad idea is a bad idea - no matter who initiates it.
Now, that would really be government's intrusion into people's lives.
Some people may need help or a safety net, but nobody needs a Big Brother.
7 - roger nowosielski
School is school, Joanne, and recreation is recreation.
If there was a school to speak of, then recreation is an excellent idea.
So if the kids' brains "go soft," as you say, it's because there had never been to school. But that's my take.
8 - Ruvy
...if the kids' brains "go soft," as you say, it's because there had never been to school.
Funny how that seems to be on the mark....
When my kids were in school in the States, |I remember having to teach them an awful lot of basic things that they never learned in school. It really pissed me off, the way most teachers seemed to be only time-clock punchers - no better than cashiers at the Burger King I managed.
9 - roger nowosielski
Well, I went to the primary and high school in Poland, Ruvy. And we were subject to quite a regimen, the satellite country that it was. (And Israeli high school was no picnic either.)
So when the two months vacation were on, it was like manna from heaven.
10 - Baronius
Roger, I've got to tip my hat to you. My instinct is with the President's proposal, but you raise a very good point - the same point that I've been raising about health care, incidentally - that the first thing we should do is fix what's actually wrong.
11 - Jeannie Danna
Why are there people on school-boards in this country.. If anyone believes it is for the betterment of the students they are dead wrong.
They don't give a damn about the children. It's their taxes they want to keep down.
Good luck trying and get more education for your kids.
12 - Glenn Contrarian
Woo-hoo, I didn't expect these replies! Just goes to show how much I still don't know....
But I still think that two months' break in summer is a bad thing, because the first three to four weeks in September are always - ALWAYS - spent re-teaching the kids what they forgot during the summer.
If you've just got to have breaks for the kids, then spread it out during the year - a week here, a couple weeks there - long enough to be enjoyable but not so long that everything they learned in the last month of school has to be retaught when they return.
13 - Glenn Contrarian
And FYI to all - I'm all for school uniforms, too. Fewer fights, less problem with the local fashion gestapo, less money the family has to spend....
14 - Cindy
My nephew is in school again now for 3 weeks. Already he has:
1 Warning for PDA (public display of affection): for kissing his gf goodbye as they headed off to class.
1 Detention for Insubordination: for politely declining to give up the name of said gf and thereby refusing to aid authorities with the enforcement of their punishment scheme.
1 'Go directly to the Vice Principle': for advocating for a vision impaired student who was punished by being seated in the back of the classroom.
1 'Just for that you can sit in the back of the classroom too': Not as a punishment of course, just for being a 'distraction'.
He's a good kid. I'm proud of him.
15 - roger nowosielski
Thanks, Baronius.
Perhaps this issue is clearer to me than the other one. But what seems indisputable here is an attempt to redirect our attention from the real problem - which is our failing education system - and lay the blame on the kids.
As if putting more hours in what's essentially not a right learning environment would somehow made that very environment better. The logic is just preposterous.
16 - Clavos
Well, Glenn, this conservative/libertarian agrees with you regarding year-round school, though I do think Roger is right about addressing the flaws first.
17 - Cindy
Just goes to show how much I still don't know....
Yeah, well, I don't think you're alone there. ;-)
18 - Cindy
*makes her way to the back of the thread and exits out a door onto the lawn...feeling kind of sick*
19 - Ruvy
Roger, you went to school 50 years ago, or more (sorry to make you seem so ancient, but you're just a bit more ancient than me). And the schools you went to were tougher than anything I ever attended. You had to actually learn. In all truth, I read the textbooks the first weeek I got them in school, and for most of elementary school and high school (except for Spanish, Math and Chemistry) I breezed through, bored stiff. If not for Math, Spanish and Chemistry in high school, I would have been on the Dean's List with a 90 average when I graduated Midwood, would have gotten higher SAT scores, and therefore would have gone to Brooklyn College, instead of Hunter in the Bronx (which was a couple of notches lower academically).
My boys would never have gotten the level of education I got because I was curious on my own to read encyclopedias - (you know, egg-head, geek, nerd, four-eyes) - and when we were raising the boys in the States, we didn't have the money to buy encyclopedias.
In Israel, since we didn't and still don't have a TV, they learned how to read English at at least grade appropriate levels for the States (which is a lot higher than the typical Israeli kid these days).
The school systems in both the States and in Israel have declined woefully.
The bottom line is that teachers, like most people, come in the "I love my job" variety (a couple such fellows write here), and the "I love my paycheck" variety. The second kind of teacher only damages the kids. The first kind is a blessing, an angel. The second kind outnumber the first - for a variety of reasons.
20 - roger nowosielski
And now she's about to recover from her dizziness and nausea with the help of smelling salts.
21 - Ruvy
Also, it always struck me that the teachers seemed to make school boring - far more boring than it needed to be. If you go check out books by Carroll Quigley, you eventually understand why. The educational system is not supposed to educate - it is supposed to indoctrinate, kill original thinking, dumb down kids and dampen curiosity. And heck, if after three years of indoctrination in all these things, they don't succeed! Is it any wonder that kids "don't learn"? Why do you think home-schooling is so popular? And why do you think the home-schooled kids seem so much smarter?
In America, you are not supposed to be an independent thinker - you are supposed to be a good boy (or girl) who does as you are told.
22 - roger nowosielski
I'm certain, Ruvy, that the standards are no longer the same.
I wasn't any different from the other kids. I didn't want to learn, but I had no choice. The regimen was there. We had Latin in high school, and German, and Russian, and Logic. No typing or home economics classes or basket weaving.
It was either that or going to a vocational school and work in a factory. And when I was delinquent, my father's belt kept me (more or less) on the straight and narrow.
23 - Cindy
*reopens the door and whispers futilely to nobody in particular*
Would it be too much trouble for you people not to feel you have to determine and dictate every facet of life for for every human being you've never even met? Has anyone ever woken up and said to themselves, "You know what, self?--I'm sort of tired of telling every other person in the world what to do and how to live, I think I'll go to a museum, or a movie, or sing a song instead, maybe do some living myself, less time for telling other people how to live that way."
24 - roger nowosielski
Well, my advantage was that I've never had the privilege to attend American high school.
Straight to college - Brooklyn College. And it was quite alright in the sixties.
25 - Ruvy
Hah! I told you so, Roger. I never had to take Latin or German (Spanish is easy compared to either, and I damn near failed that!) or Logic in school. I there had been a few hours of Latin or Logic each week in the schools I went to, the level of my formal education might begin to match yours. And school would have been a lot harder - though not necessarily more interesting.