Posted on 08/10/2007 7:39:17 AM PDT by madprof98
It’s too hot to go back to school! Up in the Midwest, school doesn’t start for another two weeks and, for the most part, it’s cooler up there than it is in Georgia.
Why in the world do students in the heat-oppressed, sweat-drenched, unbearably humid, and monumentally muggy South, find themselves standing in lines waiting for the school bus before the first seven days of August have passed?
If memory serves correctly, folks in my ancient generation usually got out of school just before Memorial Day and returned to school following Labor Day. There was a time when “Summer Vacation” lasted for a summer. We still have a month and a half to go before autumn begins, although, for vacation purposes, “summer” traditionally ends informally following the Labor Day weekend.
Up in Illinois, where I spent two days this week, the teachers are still smiling and occasionally sleeping in, the students are not even thinking about buying school supplies, and parents are planning end-of-summer getaways with their kids. But, in Georgia, when kids should still be fishing and lounging near swimming pools, the grind has already begun.
I realize that some people are happy about school days beginning so soon — parents, mostly. And I concede that for most school children, this is simply life as they experience it and that they have no sense of loss due to an abbreviated summer.
Still, summers are among the most vivid memories that people carry with them. Summers spent swimming in a pond, playing “army” or “cowboys and Indians” in the woods, long, lazy days at the lake fishing or skiing, hanging out with friends, camping out, summer romances that end with the first falling of the leaves, adventures to be remembered and cherished, and time spent doing absolutely nothing except being a kid or a teen.
Now, everything has to be jammed into a decreasing number of weeks and, for many kids, the summer is as hectic as the school year, with baseball, softball, ballet, camps, vacation Bible Schools, rushed vacations, summer reading lists, and a frantic need to pack everything in prior to the resumption of school.
I am aware that the three-month summer break was modeled on an agricultural society that no longer exists and that educators claim that children lose some of their skills during extended breaks.
I recognize that single-parent families or families where both parents work can create child care problems.
And I understand that, in our increasingly isolationist society where kids spend much of their time in anonymity in various chat rooms instead of building relationships and friendships with the neighborhood kids, many are eager to rejoin their friends at school.
Still, I wonder if the price for nearly year-round school isn’t simply too high. I wonder if teachers ever really get rested and recharged and I wonder if relationships between kids and their families aren’t being shortchanged.
Besides, it’s early August. And, in the Deep South, that’s just too hot to go to school!
Of course, kids in Georgia have some of the lowest test scores in the world, but a fact like that would never deter a professional educator. These people have decided that they know better than parents what is good for children, and--not surprisingly--what is good for children is year-round school from infancy onward (with oddly spaced days and half-days off for the "professional development" of educators).
Oh cry me a river!
And the parents have been happy to go along.
I sympathize, after a week of 100+ temperatures ... but nobody's forcing these people to spend their summers in "enrichment" and then start school the first week of August.
Start dates for Texas schools have been pushed back to save on AC bills.
I think Federal aid is dependent upon the number of days attended. Thus the school year gets longer and longer to get the maximum number of days the government will pay.
Checking in from Alabama where I stood at the bus stop with my grandkids at 7AM in 90 degree heat. Kids have had to stay in the classroom at recess and PE since they started school last week. Seems the heat index is too high and the school powers that be don’t think it’s safe. Gee! Ya think?!?
Beginning, middle and end of story. It's all about free babysitting.
Of course, the school buses are not air conditioned, and thanks to the same education establishment that has gifted us with school in August, kids have to ride buses a long, long way to get to the factory-sized school facilities where they are warehoused during the long summer days.
Kinda makes you wonder how the world survived without the NEA to watch out for us all.
We’re seeing longer school years and a corresponding drop in test scores. My generation and my parent’s and back beyond that were much better educated that kids these days, and on less time.
And then they wonder why nobody wants to give them the exorbitant pay hikes they ask for.
Schools are air conditioned in the South, and it’s important to get those football players going...(g)
Last year (when it was much cooler here than it is now), we had several instances of heat-related casualties (including at least one death) among kids in high-school sports programs during August. There was an outcry against the new school calendar at that time, and a few Georgia systems actually gave the kids an extra week of summertime off, but people’s memories are short-lived, and the education bureaucracy is now revising the calendar to get the kids back to school sooner next summer.
Teachers want more money. They work more, they get payed more and your taxes go higher but........the result is not changing. Kids in many big cities still can read or do basic math. In some cities, less than 30% ever graduate from high school. We are really getting our moneys worth from these teachers...........yeah right!
Not at home.
The Education Mafia (a wing of the liberal socialist Democrat party) will always want these items; higher pay, new schools, year-round school, longer school days (beyond sunrise to sunset), mandatory school meals (3 per day), earlier start of mandatory “education” (think daycare to welfare), total separation from the community, total control of the curriculum, no accountability for either student or “educator” performance, tenure, and massive amounts of time not engaged in teaching.
In short, they want your children and your money to do with as they see fit.
That way they can brainwash your children into being good little liberals incapable of thinking for themselves. All totalitarian systems do this; think Nazi Germany and any Communist nation. That is why summer break isn’t all summer anymore.
The children and the nation need to have full summer breaks from the “educators”. And we need to get the federal and state governments out of our schools.
Only then will we start seeing real teaching of real knowledge instead of educating in propaganda.
We had a high school athlete’s death here in the Charlotte area in the last couple of years, too.
My county’s regular public school year starts on Aug. 27, although year-round programs have already started. They must be miserable! It’s already too hot to go outside by the time I get my kids dressed and fed.
My family isn’t starting school officially until the week following Labor Day ... week of Sept. 10? We have our vacation planned the first week of September - off-season prices!
Good grief. My children were out the third week of May. They got a whole summer, just offset a bit. My sister’s children in NY have another few weeks...but they didn’t get off until mid-June.
The concept of having an entire semester before Christmas and an entire one after is a good one, and has this person never heard of AIR CONDITIONING? My middle school son said he didn’t want to wear shorts this week, because his classroom was chilly.
What a bunch of whiners.
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