Spending More Time in School?

[CSolarstorm]

In a new Yahoo article, Obama says he'd like more schools to cut summer vacations to only four weeks, add time to the school day (unclear whether he means ten minutes or three hours), and make school "available" on weekends as a safe place for students.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090927/ap_on_re_us/us_more_school

IMO, we need less school, not more school. Parents and children need to spend more time together to help make the family unit effective, and if kids are always at school - summer - weekends, and - until dinnertime - it cuts the family apart. I mean, what are they going to do, go home, eat dinner, do their homework and sleep?

What's your opinion on this?

 

[Mawile412]

no! thats wrong! he didn't have to go to school like this, why should we?

 

[BigLutz]

You know I am sitting on the fence with this. On one hand Sunny has a point that parents need to spend more time with their children. On the other hand we are falling behind many other competitively nations in terms of academic level.

 

[Mandi.]

LMAO. the hell?

Glad I already graduated, ahaha.

 

[Fused]

No. We don't need to force chidlren into even more schooling and work, esecially not teenagers when they should be getting work experience, are hopped up on hormones and whatnot. Seriosuly, since I've started high school three weeks ago, I lost almost 15 pounds. The stress right now as it is is a lot so we don't need to keep piling it up. How about we take a serious attempt at stressing how important education is rather than shove into kids' lives?

EDIT: NCLB, while it has a few good aspects, amkes so if schools want decent funding they need to accomodate not so educated stduents, which in turn drags some of the smarter students down. Standardized tests aren't much help - all they do is make you regurgitate information rather than actually think. Our education system really just needs to be revamped rather than be added to. It's like patching a crappy road - the patches just make it bumpier.

 

[Togekiss•Torchic]

we already have like 6-8 months of school why make it longer then it is now ?

 

[Icosahedron]

How about we take a serious attempt at stressing how important education is rather than shove into kids' lives?

Agreed. I think that in most cases, kids in America can perform just as well as kids in other countries, regardless of the length or number of school days. The problem lies in their failure to realize just how important education is, as you said.

 

[Vernikova]

I like the idea of opening schools on weekends as a safe place. It could help give kids somewhere to go to avoid any issues that they don't want to deal with at the time.

What I don't like is that he wants to extend the amount of days kids have to spend in school. Personally, I see summer vacation as a time for famalies to spend time with each other whether it be staying at home together or going on a vacation. I think that it's important to do this because the school year already takes up so much time from for the majority of the year and there's only so much time during the school year to do this.

 

[Slushy456]

That's horrible. 10 minutes is survivable, but 3 hours? That's just cruel


And besides, it's not going to do any good to the economy

Schools have to pay for more electricity - Like lights and AC/Heater

 

[Fused]

Agreed. I think that in most cases, kids in America can perform just as well as kids in other countries, regardless of the length or number of school days. The problem lies in their failure to realize just how important education is, as you said.

The problem lies in the No Child Left Behind Act. It pretty much makes it impossibile to academically challenge the kids who need to be challenged. All we're doing is spoon feeding them informationa dn then making them spit it back up on tests. There's nothing out there that challenges kids to interpret and digest the information before using it.

 

[HoennMaster]

I don't agree with this. Granted I have already graduated. But school can be stressful enough. We don't need to add more to the school. There are plenty of students who do perfectly fine with the time they are already there.

The problem is that too many students don't want to apply themselves and don't care about school anymore.

 

[Cousin_Dan]

Well in Britain we have 6 weeks of summer holidays and it's fine to be honest. It's got time for a 1-2 week trip abroad or something (not that my family can ever afford to go on holiday anyway ;_; ) and then around a month of day trips and hanging out with friends. No sure what the "it'll take away family time" thing is about since all the teenagers I know spend most of the time in hanging around with mates when they're off school anyway. xD

Can't comment on lengthening school hours since I don't know what the American ones are. x:

 

[Rosemary]

I don't agree, school can be way too stressful, I hardly see my parents , but more school time ?

It's enough when in summer vacation arrive with a lot of homework that never ends , I don't see spending too little time in school as being there from early in the morning to almost 3:30 pm, the less I want to see is school on weekends

oh well I almost graduate.

 

[GoodPokemonTrainer121]

Haha yes I'm glad that I graduated but is still not fair too others. Obama should just focus on that health care... What would the Obama girls think of this..

 

[Fused]

Not to mention, Obama said he supports school until dinnertime. When is dinnertime? You'd have to make sure that every family has dinner after a set time, which means this will start putting a lot of other people at disadvantages. My mom's boyfriend leaves for work at 4:30, meaning we have early dinners around 4.

And how early are we starting school? I start school at 7:30 in the morning, meaning I'm awake at 6. This weekend, I slept roughly 11 hours Friday night and Saturday night to catch up on sleep. By Wednesday I'm already exhausted from sleep depravation, now you want me to get even less?

Then the articles does state that other countries do better academically, not because they spend more time a day in school (the US actually spends more time per day in school), but because their school years are only about 10 to 15 days longer than ours. Is it really much of a difference? As I said, if we could challenge kids more like we desparately need to, we wouldn't have such suckish grades. If classrooms weren't so jam packed (my school is notorious for this) teachers could spend more one on one time with the students who need it rather than spending only two minutes with them.

We need to get out of this economic shithole before we start forcing kids into school longer. Once we have money to run more schools, well everything falls in line. For example, this past year, my school district downsized from 26 schools to 14. Yeah.

 

[granbull guy]

He didnt have to do this we shouldnt either school is stressfull enough as long as it is! I mean seriously its sunts like these that make me dislike Obama!

 

[Imagine]

Don't we spend enough time at school already? This is unreasonable...D:

 

[Sohashi]

NOOO thats crazy kids have time off to do homework and to rest so there brains won't be overloaded and make kids crazy or some other thing. Also to much pressure!If this were to happen children would be sure to rebel (me being one of them)

 

[ChedWick]

no! thats wrong! he didn't have to go to school like this, why should we?

Yea! "That kid has a cookie why cant I mommy!" Kinda the same mentallity here...


I don't think spending more time in school is really going to improve much. At least anymore than improving the current quality of our education systems would.

 

[Farmermon]

Obama's on crack!

He gets us to do that, what the f*** am I gonna do with my life? I'm already up late every night with chores and homework, and he wants to expand our school days?

If Obama could get that to happen I'd drop out, regardless of what my states school laws are. They can't force that upon me. Doesn't he remember what its like to be a teen? Oh right, of course not.