New Summertime Blues

Campus Report ^ | October 2, 2009 | Allie Winegar Duzett

[bs9021]

New Summertime Blues

by: Allie Winegar Duzett, October 02, 2009

President Obama doesn’t just have plans to reform American policies on health care, national security, and international relations—he also has great plans for education reform, including lengthening both school days and school years.

Although the president is aware that “longer school days and school years are not wildly popular” with any student or family, he appears to believe that longer school days and years are necessary to compete with other nations’ education systems, despite the fact that American students already spend more time in school than their primary competitors in education. According to the Associated Press, “kids in the U.S. spend more hours in school (1,146 instructional hours per year) than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the U.S. on math and science tests — Singapore (903), Taiwan (1,050), Japan (1,005) and Hong Kong (1,013).” It is worth noting that students in those countries spend fewer hours in school than do U.S. students, even though Taiwan, Japan, and Hong Kong have school years up to three weeks longer than the United States.

President Obama may have let his true agenda slip when he went on to say that not only should schools open longer to provide more education—schools should also “let kids in on weekends so they have a safe place to go.”

In other words, President Obama’s suggestion that schools be open longer may not be entirely motivated by concern for education. In fact, it is entirely possible that “education” in the traditional sense of the word is not his goal at all....

[La Lydia]

Uh oh. You have successfully planted an earworm that I had just gotten rid of a couple of weeks ago. Had to go to YouTube and listen to all 15 versions, from Eddie Cochran to Bruce Springsteen to Blue Cheer. I’m a gonna raise a fuss, I’m a gonna raise a holler. Thanks.

[dfwgator]

The Who’s version from “Live at Leeds” is the best.

[La Lydia]

That was one of the ones I listened to, too. “Well I called my Congressman and he said, quote, I’d like to help you son but you’re too young to vote.”

[HighlyOpinionated]

0bama is a m0r0n. A longer school day with a bad teacher is not going to make a student a better student.

Get rid of Teachers Unions involvement with tenure. Toss out bad, under educated, non-American English speaking teachers. My daughter's 4th grade English teacher spoke EBONICS and not American English. If she hadn't studied for spelling tests, there's no way she would have recognized the spelling word in the sentence the teacher used as an example.

0bama was taught in a Madrassa and then an exclusive Private school. He doesn't have a clue.