Obama tries to shorten Summer Vacation!?!?!

It's not about how long the days are, it's about what is learned.

Shortening summer vacation would help education since kids tend to forget what they learned due to the long break and spend the first month or so reviewing it.

Making days longer though would really hurt children's attention span and overall they would be pretty ticked, especially if it was the old way one year and this way the next. The three extra hours would prove useless, and plus not only will students be stuck at school, so will the faculty. Teachers have lives too, and this time plus the time spent after school for helping kids and faculty meetings would be murder on their social life. You'd get to school early to prepare, spend the time teaching it, then have to spend more time at school afterwards. I had a high school teacher who lived an hour away (He was poor and needed a job), so under this law he would leave around 6 AM, arrive at 7, start at 7:30 and teach till 5:52 (When my school ends), then say spend about an hour with after-school activities, then an hour to get back home at 8 PM.

And that's another thing, after-school activities, where would those fit in? I'm sure kids wouldn't want to stick around at school for that long and parents wouldn't want their kids gone much longer.

It's not about how long the days are, it's about what is learned.

Shortening summer vacation would help education since kids tend to forget what they learned due to the long break and spend the first month or so reviewing it.

Making days longer though would really hurt children's attention span and overall they would be pretty ticked, especially if it was the old way one year and this way the next. The three extra hours would prove useless, and plus not only will students be stuck at school, so will the faculty. Teachers have lives too, and this time plus the time spent after school for helping kids and faculty meetings would be murder on their social life. You'd get to school early to prepare, spend the time teaching it, then have to spend more time at school afterwards. I had a high school teacher who lived an hour away (He was poor and needed a job), so under this law he would leave around 6 AM, arrive at 7, start at 7:30 and teach till 5:52 (When my school ends), then say spend about an hour with after-school activities, then an hour to get back home at 8 PM.

And that's another thing, after-school activities, where would those fit in? I'm sure kids wouldn't want to stick around at school for that long and parents wouldn't want their kids gone much longer.

CJL13

Although I disagree with the increase in the length of the school day (God only knows 8AM to 3PM is enough) I never really saw the point of having such a long summer vacation. Hell, I'd even restructure winter vacations as well. Instead of a week for Christmas and New Years, make it a month. Start school in mid to late January and go until late July, take a month or so off in August and restart school around Labor Day, to go until mid December.

[QUOTE="SAGE_OF_FIRE"][QUOTE="jakehouston88"]

3 months, June - August into school early September.

:D

Pirate700

As with me.

[QUOTE="Locke562"]The American Primary and Secondary education is suffering. Solution? Look at the countries with the best system and model ours after them. Pirate700

The problem is our teachers don't teach anymore. Not the amount of time spent in the classroom. :|

I also don't think he'll do it because the group he'd be pissing off most are the future voters. Making the 14-18 year old crowd angry can hurt.

[QUOTE="CJL13"]

It's not about how long the days are, it's about what is learned.

Shortening summer vacation would help education since kids tend to forget what they learned due to the long break and spend the first month or so reviewing it.

Making days longer though would really hurt children's attention span and overall they would be pretty ticked, especially if it was the old way one year and this way the next. The three extra hours would prove useless, and plus not only will students be stuck at school, so will the faculty. Teachers have lives too, and this time plus the time spent after school for helping kids and faculty meetings would be murder on their social life. You'd get to school early to prepare, spend the time teaching it, then have to spend more time at school afterwards. I had a high school teacher who lived an hour away (He was poor and needed a job), so under this law he would leave around 6 AM, arrive at 7, start at 7:30 and teach till 5:52 (When my school ends), then say spend about an hour with after-school activities, then an hour to get back home at 8 PM.

And that's another thing, after-school activities, where would those fit in? I'm sure kids wouldn't want to stick around at school for that long and parents wouldn't want their kids gone much longer.

LJS9502_basic

Did you remember everything you were taught at school the previous year after 3 months? I remembered some of it, but not all of it.

[QUOTE="Pirate700"]

[QUOTE="Locke562"]The American Primary and Secondary education is suffering. Solution? Look at the countries with the best system and model ours after them. Locke562

The problem is our teachers don't teach anymore. Not the amount of time spent in the classroom. :|

How long do you get in the US? We have 6 weeks in England, but much of Europe has longer summer hols.jimmyjammer69

[QUOTE="Locke562"]The American Primary and Secondary education is suffering. Solution? Look at the countries with the best system and model ours after them. Pirate700

The problem is our teachers don't teach anymore. Not the amount of time spent in the classroom. :|

You want the government keeping a 24/7 watch on teachers? You have to rely on the principal to try to improve teaching.

I also don't think he'll do it because the group he'd be pissing off most are the future voters. Making the 14-18 year old crowd angry can hurt.

Pirate700

[QUOTE="Locke562"][QUOTE="Pirate700"]

The problem is our teachers don't teach anymore. Not the amount of time spent in the classroom. :|

Pirate700

And one school = all U.S. schools? Granted I had my share of bad teachers but there are some good ones.

[QUOTE="Pirate700"]

[QUOTE="Locke562"]The American Primary and Secondary education is suffering. Solution? Look at the countries with the best system and model ours after them. CJL13

The problem is our teachers don't teach anymore. Not the amount of time spent in the classroom. :|

You want the government keeping a 24/7 watch on teachers? You have to rely on the principal to try to improve teaching.

thank god! keep those little boogers in school longer..

get that edge-uma-cation kids! :P

[QUOTE="Locke562"]The American Primary and Secondary education is suffering. Solution? Look at the countries with the best system and model ours after them. Pirate700

The problem is our teachers don't teach anymore. Not the amount of time spent in the classroom. :|

I think both go hand-in-hand. If we make our public schools more capitalized and as efficient as other countries, schools would have more incentive to hire better teachers and fire the bad ones. This episode of 20/20 really opened my eyes to how much we need to reform the school system to a more capitalized, competition based industry.

[QUOTE="CJL13"]

[QUOTE="Pirate700"]

The problem is our teachers don't teach anymore. Not the amount of time spent in the classroom. :|

Pirate700

You want the government keeping a 24/7 watch on teachers? You have to rely on the principal to try to improve teaching.

My teachers gave lectures, but those lectures sometimes weren't any more helpful than the textbooks. Also sometimes the teacher never bothered to call out a student for not listening.

:x Hell.... NO! If he does that, then that leads me to no choice...I will give kids the T-Virus.

My summer vacation has already been nerfed enough.

[QUOTE="Locke562"][QUOTE="Pirate700"]

The problem is our teachers don't teach anymore. Not the amount of time spent in the classroom. :|

Pirate700

Start with the schools, then with the working class, then out comes mah lazer.

[QUOTE="LJS9502_basic"][QUOTE="CJL13"]

It's not about how long the days are, it's about what is learned.

Shortening summer vacation would help education since kids tend to forget what they learned due to the long break and spend the first month or so reviewing it.

Making days longer though would really hurt children's attention span and overall they would be pretty ticked, especially if it was the old way one year and this way the next. The three extra hours would prove useless, and plus not only will students be stuck at school, so will the faculty. Teachers have lives too, and this time plus the time spent after school for helping kids and faculty meetings would be murder on their social life. You'd get to school early to prepare, spend the time teaching it, then have to spend more time at school afterwards. I had a high school teacher who lived an hour away (He was poor and needed a job), so under this law he would leave around 6 AM, arrive at 7, start at 7:30 and teach till 5:52 (When my school ends), then say spend about an hour with after-school activities, then an hour to get back home at 8 PM.

And that's another thing, after-school activities, where would those fit in? I'm sure kids wouldn't want to stick around at school for that long and parents wouldn't want their kids gone much longer.

CJL13

Did you remember everything you were taught at school the previous year after 3 months? I remembered some of it, but not all of it.

[QUOTE="Pirate700"]

[QUOTE="CJL13"]

You want the government keeping a 24/7 watch on teachers? You have to rely on the principal to try to improve teaching.

CJL13

My teachers gave lectures, but those lectures sometimes weren't any more helpful than the textbooks. Also sometimes the teacher never bothered to call out a student for not listening.

I think both go hand-in-hand. If we make our public schools more capitalized and as efficient as other countries, schools would have more incentive to hire better teachers and fire the bad ones. This episode of 20/20 really opened my eyes to how much we need to reform the school system to a more capitalized, competition based industry.

Lab392

this has to be a troll, right?

right?

This is the wrong way to go about fixing our education system. Longer days and longer school years won't do anything. The problem isn't that our schools don't have enough time to teach kids everything they need to know, it's that they aren't teaching kids what they need to know. What we really need to do is centralize the education system in this country by creating a federal department of education. States can still have the ability to fine tune their education systems, but the federal government should be the ones setting the curriculem and standards. They should also be the ones creating, administering, and grading school assessment tests (most states try to cheat by making their's insultingly easy). Basically the whole system across the country needs to get streamlined instead of being so extremely variable like it is now, and we need set standards and curriculem in place so that every student learns the same necessary things instead of leaving it up to each school district to go about things on their own. That's not to say that school districts couldn't add their own classes or extra requirements, but rather that there would be a set of things that they have to teach no matter what as well as goals that they have to actually reach instead of just giving up and lowering the goal post.

Throwing money around doesn't help either. It is true that a lot of schools need budget increases in order to hire more teachers and build more classrooms, but they don't need budget increases for unnecessary novelties like upgraded computer labs and HD projectors. Sports teams also tend to be bloated with funding (especially football teams), sometimes to the point that a district may actually place more priority on the sports teams than academics.

To sum it all up, our education system is grossly inefficient. Adding more instruction time just makes it even more inefficient. What's really needed is an overhaul of the system combined with one hell of an audit.

Yes I did. I never had a teacher review the year before....LJS9502_basic

I also don't think he'll do it because the group he'd be pissing off most are the future voters. Making the 14-18 year old crowd angry can hurt.

Pirate700

And this right here is why no problems in America ever actually get solved. :P

[QUOTE="CJL13"]

[QUOTE="Pirate700"]Where did I say that? I just said teachers, as a whole, need to actually start teaching again. Not just surfing the web all class while the students read the text.

Pirate700

My teachers gave lectures, but those lectures sometimes weren't any more helpful than the textbooks. Also sometimes the teacher never bothered to call out a student for not listening.

[QUOTE="LJS9502_basic"]Yes I did. I never had a teacher review the year before....Hewkii

[QUOTE="Pirate700"]

[QUOTE="CJL13"]

My teachers gave lectures, but those lectures sometimes weren't any more helpful than the textbooks. Also sometimes the teacher never bothered to call out a student for not listening.

LJS9502_basic

[QUOTE="CJL13"]

[QUOTE="LJS9502_basic"]If they forgot it in a couple months then they didn't really learn it.:|LJS9502_basic

Did you remember everything you were taught at school the previous year after 3 months? I remembered some of it, but not all of it.

I don't know how other schools do it, but our schools are very different.

[QUOTE="LJS9502_basic"][QUOTE="Pirate700"]Teachers need to be more hands on is what I'm getting at. There are a lot of great teachers, but as a whole, they seem to really be slipping and only there to collect a pay check and get 3 months off.

Pirate700

Obama wouldn't even think of doing this if Highschool students could vote...

[QUOTE="Pirate700"]

I also don't think he'll do it because the group he'd be pissing off most are the future voters. Making the 14-18 year old crowd angry can hurt.

GabuEx

And this right here is why no problems in America ever actually get solved. :P

At least involving 14-18 year olds, GO BACK TO VIETNAM!

[QUOTE="Lab392"]

I think both go hand-in-hand. If we make our public schools more capitalized and as efficient as other countries, schools would have more incentive to hire better teachers and fire the bad ones. This episode of 20/20 really opened my eyes to how much we need to reform the school system to a more capitalized, competition based industry.

Hewkii

this has to be a troll, right?

right?

Wrong-o Hewkii. I'm all real. And all man. But, honestly, If children were given government vouchers (money) to choose where they went to school, schools would have an incentive to improve.

[QUOTE="Hewkii"]

[QUOTE="Lab392"]

I think both go hand-in-hand. If we make our public schools more capitalized and as efficient as other countries, schools would have more incentive to hire better teachers and fire the bad ones. This episode of 20/20 really opened my eyes to how much we need to reform the school system to a more capitalized, competition based industry.

Lab392

this has to be a troll, right?

right?

Wrong-o Hewkii. I'm all real. And all man. But, honestly, If children were given government vouchers to choose where they went to school, schools would have and incentive to improve.