Longer school year

[Hctib]

In jolly old Vancouver, British Columbia, Canadia, the school I go to will be closed for the winter Olympics. Thats 2 weeks out. Then we have Winter vacation. Another 2 weeks. AND we have a week off for Easter.

Thats 5 weeks off without the pro-d days. And the answer?

16 minutes of school every day.

I really like my school.

 

[soren7550]

Having to only serve one more year in the NYC Public School System, I can safely say that making the day longer and shortening the holidays is pointless.

The fact is, you're not learning anything essential to use in the outside world. You're only learning how to take standardized test. That's all you'll really spend your time doing: preparing for and taking the god damn standardized tests. At my school, they cut the forensics class to make room for another science class that focuses on topics that will appear in the S.T.s. Everyone has to take two or three science classes, and all of the teachers are pissed because the state requirements prohibit them from teaching anything but what will appear on the tests.
Take my 11th grade history teacher. He wanted to really get into the Vietnam war, but because of the state requirements, we could only spend a week on some of the politics that happened in the vietnam era. (and the only politics we could cover were mainly the presidential debates.) He also wanted to teach us about the Clinton administration and what happened (like the First Battle of Mogadishu), but again, state requirements wouldn't allow him to do so.
But what I have and had to deal with for high school was no where nearly as ridiculous as what happened at I.S. 10. Two periods of math, two periods of english, and a science class or two. That's it, that's all you were allowed to do, day in, day out. The whole day was spent preparing for the S.T.s. The school even made it so that we only had a minuet to get to each class, lunch was 30 min. long (if you were lucky) and the school day went from 8-3:30 pm.

The last summer vacation didn't start until the very end of June and school started back up the first few days of September. Everyone joked that we were going to Hogwarts. (the Hogwarts semester starts Sept. 1.)

 

[Zamn]

I can't believe people in the UK think their summer holidays are too long. When I was in secondary school I had 13 weeks summer holidays a year and I had no idea how anybody survived with 6 weeks.

Now I'm in college and I have even less of an idea of how you'd survive. I have 24 weeks between my last lecture of the 08/09 year and my first of the 09/10 year, including no less than 17 weeks from my last exam. Really, 6 week summer holidays is already astonishingly short.

EDIT: Incidentally, there hasn't been shown to be any correlation between longer school years and increased academic performance.

 

[NaumWolf]

make it go as long as possible, we're already falling behind other countries.. or better yet do like they do in japan. make kids test into each new grade, will weed out the kids who want to fuck around and the ones that actully learn. then everyone will start paying attention so they can continue on.

 

[Bulletinmybrain]

Why teach them exceptionally if they are just going to work in blue-collar jobs? But, the intelligent are getting battered by the "No child left behind" which basically focuses on bring the lower up at the sacrifice of the more intelligent kids down from budget cuts to AP classes and such. But, if you show that you're exceptional in schoolwork you probably stand a far better chance of finding GOOD teachers. Such as last year where I was full of honor classes and all were great teachers, and every one of them knew their stuff. To further this I have applied to go into a special education curriculum for high school.. With focused and dedicated teachers..

 

[Radeonx]

Personally, since I'm in college, I wouldn't really care. My school day ends at around 2:00 now anyways, so, if the year went longer and I had shorter classes I'd be fine with that.

 

[G1eet]

Maybe not a whole year, but I think they should extended it in the UK most schools get 6 weeks off in the summer. I always thought that is far too long.

6 weeks is too long. It should be 3 weeks and the other 3 spread around.

No, it's not too long. Not at all.

i think they should have better education rather than longer school years.

Thank God someone had the balls to say this. I'm not going to ever come back to my excuse of a hometown because of the 1) corrupt bureaucracy, and 2) its shitty schooling. I want my kids to actually learn something from their schooling that stays with them.

I went to a Catholic private school until my 7th year, when I was almost immediately disappointed in the local public school system. It was only until this recent year of school that I started to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I think school days should be 6-7 hours long and should start around 9 am.

See, I've heard from so many reputable people that the average teenage mind isn't "awake" until around 8-9, and in my experience, that makes loads of sense. I wouldn't care about going later in the day, when I'd actually learn something and not think about sleep that I could be having.

 

[Twilight_guy]

1. Nothing is going to fix our educational system it sucks, period.
2. Longer school days would help to add time for teachers to teach but that doesnt solve the fact that there are 35 kids in a room.
3. Where is the money going to come from to fund the extra school time?
4. What did summer vacation ever do to you?

 

[ClaptonKnophlerHendrix]

See, I'm in Australia and this is my school system. We go to school from 9-3 with about an hour and a half for recess and lunch. We have 3 seperate holidays of 3 weeks each (though most schools do 2)and we have 8 weeks over summer (christmas for us). I think its a good system. Its largely stress free and still leaves us with enough time to learn what we need to learn.

 

[crazy-j]

absolutely not!

 

[ClaptonKnophlerHendrix]

My thoughts is that american schools are too easy,and the teens too lazy. Here we have 7 classes a day,some 14-16 subjects per school,and we dont choose the subjects,only which type of education we want. Also in american tests you got several answers and one is right,here like in many other places you dont have any answers you just need to know the right one,and sometimes write a few sentences about it. I think longer school days would be great for americans,education is valuable

Really? Wow thats really different from the system we use. I have 6 45 minute periods a day and 4 30 minute periods and 2 hours of sport on a thursday. From 9-10 we choose 2 of our subjects and in 11-12 we choose all of them.

 

[Tartarga]

they tried to do that here in Ohio but they failed due to budget issues but they are apparently going to limit the number of school closings from 5 to 3

 

[the_dancy_vagrant]

Very hard to say which system is better. On the one hand, you have the benefit of keeping lessons fresh by extending the school year and breaking it up with shorter mini-vacations. Seems to me less stressful and easier to get a flow moving for lesson plans.

On the other hand, you have the long Summer break which is a great way to go out and travel, exercise, or otherwise pursue interests outside of school. Plus when you get old enough it becomes much easier to make money because you can work full time.

When I was in high school, they used to do what was known as mixed block scheduling - on M,T, and F we'd have a normal 6 period day but on W and Th we would only have 3 classes per day, but double the length. So the teachers, being lazy, would just treat the block days like normal 1 hour lessons and we'd have an extra hour to do...nothing. It was a huge waste of time and really harmful when it came time to take our mandatory state sanctioned tests because we were basically only getting 4 days worth of lessons every week. They eventually abandoned the schedule, but oh man...it brought havoc down when the test scores got back and they were astoundingly low.

 

[IxionIndustries]

i think they should have better education rather than longer school years.

Agreed. Start getting better staff, and start background checking the teachers. You know, one of the teachers at my school was a pedophile. They found child pornography on him just a week ago I think.
The funny thing was, we all kinda had a feeling that he was a freak.

 

[Aardvark Soup]

I don't really see the necessity of longer school years. At my school everything we had to learn is usually already finished weeks before the end of the year and then we barely had anything to do.

 

[Agrosmurf]

Well, as a student of the school district with the shortest school year in my state. (Oregon) We are the best tested school district. because there is so much competition between schools to attract students with special programs and such. This causes schools strive to meet the current education standards.

What I mean to say is, quality over quantity.

 

[L4hlborg]

I think school days should be 6-7 hours long and should start around 9 am.

See, I've heard from so many reputable people that the average teenage mind isn't "awake" until around 8-9, and in my experience, that makes loads of sense. I wouldn't care about going later in the day, when I'd actually learn something and not think about sleep that I could be having.

This shows that people are different. I have always been a morning person, so 9 am is good for me. But I think we can all agree that 8 am is too early. For me, it's pretty hard to concentrate during day time and I would rather do something else then.

 

[AlphaOmega]

They should up both quality and quantity; americans have below averige school hours.

My next year Ill have 1 week xmas, 1 week in between and 4 weeks summer.

Also, school isnt torture its your future and youll be happy later in life that you went there; afterschool activities and sports arent maditory either.

 

[G1eet]

I think school days should be 6-7 hours long and should start around 9 am.

See, I've heard from so many reputable people that the average teenage mind isn't "awake" until around 8-9, and in my experience, that makes loads of sense. I wouldn't care about going later in the day, when I'd actually learn something and not think about sleep that I could be having.

This shows that people are different. I have always been a morning person, so 9 am is good for me. But I think we can all agree that 8 am is too early. For me, it's pretty hard to concentrate during day time and I would rather do something else then.

True, true. I can wake up "early" on the weekends and during vacation, say 8-9 am, but at least I don't have to worry about the rat race.

 

[strength of 7 men]

In Ireland we get 3 months, and it's great!