Eight Hour School Days?
November 7, 2007
So I was looking through my stepdaughter’s homework and papers tonight and found TIME for Kids.
Sarah’s in fifth grade (Dutch Fork Elementary) and the magazine is written for 4th-6th graders so I figured I could manage a quick read before bedtime.
I came across this interesting article: Time To Learn, Should kids go to school eight hours a day?
Interesting idea. Expensive? Probably. Would it help us here in South Carolina? Maybe. It couldn’t hurt, could it?
The cynic in me thinks this might just be throwing more money at “the problem”. Also, we don’t want to turn schools into “daycares” until moms/dads get off work. I even wonder if our teachers (who historically are used to getting out before 5pm) would even support something like this?
Who knows? I’m just tired of seeing SC at the bottom of almost every ranking in our country - especially education.
For the past several weeks, my Education and Public Works K-12 Subcommittee has been hearing testimony and debate on changing our PACT tests to something more beneficial. I’m also sure the House will again debate expanding school-choice options (public and private) for our children and their families. Probably most importantly, I’m hopeful next session that we’ll work to improve our Education Funding (method/formula) in hopes that South Carolina truly can “Leave No Child Behind.”
Your thoughts? I’d love to hear them.
Comments
4 Responses to “Eight Hour School Days?”
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I agree and have tried to instill the 8 hour or more school time for my son and others. This can be done through the after school activities that mainly start in 8th grade. I have been helping with the Irmo wreslters for a couple of years and it is amazing to see all the kids doing things like ROTC, Track, Basketball, Band, and other activities.
Unfortunaetly the one thing alot of these programs lack is funding to get the shirts or extras that the kids deserve for particpating in school activities after 3:30 p.m. If you have a business and can donate food or other items let the school booster club know. They are always looking for help.
Thanks for all you do Nathan,
Ralph Bell
I have lived in SC for over 25 years. When I first arrived, I was horrified by how short a time kids spend in school and by the useless 1/2 day kindergarten. Since that time, I have only seen the length of the school day decrease in length and decrease in learning occuring. Why do so many kids get a “late day” every week? School needs to go from 8am to 3:30pm. They need to drop homeroom. This could be incorporated into the first period and you would not have the waste of time of kids again having to move around after 15 minutes in “homeroom”. It is hard to teach the kids if half of the time is spent running from class to class.
We are pampering our children into thinking that they can succeed with very little effort or study.
Teachers cannot teach when kids are not in the classrooms.
Also, the schools complain that everything costs too much. Well, how about starting school later and only having to cool a portion of the school for teacher education days by having them prior to the start of school? That would lower the cost of cooling the schools and would be a great help for parents who have to find alternatives for caring for their children at least one day a month for “teacher training days”.
Another option in a similiar philosphy be to consider year round schooling. Why do we have our chldren take off 25% of the year from studies? This makes no sense, and appears to be an archaic practice that began when children would help with the harvest when we were a farming society.
It is sad to say that our schools are weak and even with the time they currently have do not teach as much as they should to our children. This is evidenced, by the generally superior performance of home schooled children.
Unfortunately, regardless of how much time our children spend at school, they may never get a high quality education when evaluated by international standards. This is because our philosophy of very broad but supericial coverage of topics, as opposed to more narrow but indepth coverage (as seen in most countries with top notch perfomance) does not appear to be associated with long term retention.
i hate this website
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