http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/0 … 29411.htmlOpen your notebooks and sharpen your pencils. School for thousands of public school students is about to get quite a bit longer.
Five states were to announce Monday that they will add at least 300 hours of learning time to the calendar in some schools starting in 2013. Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Tennessee will take part in the initiative, which is intended to boost student achievement and make U.S. schools more competitive on a global level.
The three-year pilot program will affect almost 20,000 students in 40 schools, with long-term hopes of expanding the program to include additional schools – especially those that serve low-income communities. Schools, working in concert with districts, parents and teachers, will decide whether to make the school day longer, add more days to the school year or both.
A mix of federal, state and district funds will cover the costs of expanded learning time, with the Ford Foundation and the National Center on Time & Learning also chipping in resources. In Massachusetts, the program builds on the state's existing expanded-learning program. In Connecticut, Gov. Dannel Malloy is hailing it as a natural outgrowth of an education reform law the state passed in May that included about $100 million in new funding, much of it to help the neediest schools.
Spending more time in the classroom, education officials said, will give students access to a more well-rounded curriculum that includes arts and music, individualized help for students who fall behind and opportunities to reinforce critical math and science skills.
"Whether educators have more time to enrich instruction or students have more time to learn how to play an instrument and write computer code, adding meaningful in-school hours is a critical investment that better prepares children to be successful in the 21st century," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a statement.
I don't get it, honestly. Do kids really need to spend an extra two hours a day or an extra two months in school every year? Is that really the problem? Seems like a really good way to increase the dropout rate to me.
Maybe the real problem is saturation? Too many largely useless topics shoved into a typical day of school? I'm sorry, but much of my junior year was wasted memorizing trigonometric proofs that I never ever used in my heavily math oriented degree. Is it utterly important that kids learn about ancient Egypt or can history class realistically be rolled into English classes? The problem isn't with the time spent at school, it's the structure in which it is taught. There's honestly no reason in the world that kids can't learn Calculus beginning in 9th grade. It just means cutting out the needless BS that currently fills school curriculums.
Have kids take two or three subjects at a time instead of trying to cram in seven. Spend less time doing remedial shit at the beginning of every school year/semester. There's a million ways to fix the system without resorting to turning school into another 13 years of 9-5 grinding. Isn't the future 47 years of that enough? Let kids be kids, jesus.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat
