Posted on 09/27/2009 8:05:16 AM PDT by COUNTrecount
WASHINGTON – Students beware: The summer vacation you just enjoyed could be sharply curtailed if President Barack Obama gets his way.
Obama says American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage with other students around the globe.
"Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas," the president said earlier this year. "Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom."
The president, who has a sixth-grader and a third-grader, wants schools to add time to classes, to stay open late and to let kids in on weekends so they have a safe place to go.
"Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy and not too many of our kids are working the fields today," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
Clip
Domonique Toombs felt the same way when she learned she would stay for an extra three hours each day in sixth grade at Boston's Clarence R. Edwards Middle School.
"I was like, `Wow, are you serious?'" she said. "That's three more hours I won't be able to chill with my friends after school."
Her school is part of a 3-year-old state initiative to add 300 hours of school time in nearly two dozen schools. Early results are positive. Even reluctant Domonique, who just started ninth grade, feels differently now. "I've learned a lot," she said.
Does Obama want every kid to do these things? School until dinnertime? Summer school? And what about the idea that kids today are overscheduled and need more time to play?
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Before I retired 3 years ago, my patients were voicing the same complaints about the government schools.
It seems those running the government schools are deliberately attempting to disrupt family time, family vacations, visits to grandparents,....and...especially the summer family reunion.
That ass in the WH doesn’t understand the difference between QUANTITY & QUALITY. More time with a shoddy curriculum, warehouse classes and teachers with no intellectual rigor isn’t going to improve anything — it will only make it worse.
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Just more time away from family influence and more time for indoctrination
that’s one way to tick off the NEA
It’s not more days in the classrooms. It’s providing a learning environment that actually works.
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Absolutely! What you have described is chaos. But...Even if this problem were addressed and corrected, the government schools would not be fixed.
Please read post #29.
Government schools are socialism. Socialism can not be fixed.
LOL!!!
Excellent point.
If they cut the crap out of school, and focused on core studies, 6 hours a day is more than enough time.
“It seems those running the government schools are deliberately attempting to disrupt family time, family vacations, visits to grandparents,....and...especially the summer family reunion.”
We talked a grandmother with 5 adult children and 12 grand kids in school up and down the left coast. They hadn’t had a family reunion for 3 years.
So the grandparents started telling their adult children, you will take a week in the spring, summer and fall and come back to our farm/ranch. So now they are doing that at Easter, July 4th and Thanksgiving. The parents just take the kids out of school.
We have so many illegals in our school system, our school does a week plus after Thanksgiving and before Christmas and again in the springtime as their illegal kids and parents go back to Mexico to be with their grandparents.
That puts our kids out of sinc with many other year round school that don’t do the illegal time off thing.
That one word could work in the other direction OVERTIME pay.
more time under government supervision= less time with parents
it’s the obama way of showing his faith in and love for the American people, by taking their children and raising them in a socialist collective. Not his kids of course- yours
If they cut the crap out of school, and focused on core studies, 6 hours a day is more than enough time.
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Please read post #29.
Cutting out the “crap” and focusing on core studies for 6 hours will not fix the government schools.
Government schools are socialism. Government schools teach children every day to be comfortable with taking money from their neighbor to pay for a service their parents want for free. After 13 years of this kids are very comfortable using the voting mob to steal from their neighbor for all sorts of socialist programs.
Kids are tired, and society is getting a bit burned out. Push them that hard, and I think productivity will go down. He needs to educate himself on the details. countries like Spain who have long school days - BUT, they stop school in the middle of their day for a very long break, so they can enjoy lunch and have time with their families. That's right - family. Spain is encouraging time with family - not less time with family.
Now he wants these kids to do hundreds of hours of service and add hundreds of hours of school.
It will never fly - but, I find it quite irritating that he thinks that citizens do not have a life outside of his agenda, and if they do - to he would like to try and remove it.
They will add teachers.........
And we will be taxed more!
Some day, these nitwits need to ask themselves why, since its existence, America has been the source of far more invention and innovation than any other part of the world. It still is, and maybe that has something to do with freedom, and less regimented education, and maybe most of all that free time during summer kids have always had to play and experiment and just be free to let their imaginations wander.
I believe, that for families and students who take education seriously, those summer months off, and away from formal education, are one of the secrets to our historic lead in invention and innovation.
More school won't solve the problems of those who do not take education seriously, but it will likely stifle the creativity of those who do.
It is not up to the President to decide such things. And longer school terms means higher costs, which must be borne by the taxpayer, mostly in the form of higher property taxes. Almost all of the states are in financial extremis and it will get worse next year without another stimulus package.
In fact, kids spend to much time in school for what they have to learn. It is a fact that 4 hour days are more conducive to learning than 7 or 8 hour days. Bozo simply wants more time to brainwash the kids. He doesn’t think we will catch him at it, although we have twice caught him, once on his propaganda speech to the schools, which changed after the fact, and once with the brainwashing songs that were videoed.
You get it!
Government schools are the government collective. Government schools teach children every day to be comfortable living in the government collective cocoon!
The younger teachers are always enthusiatic that the magic bullet has been found. I remind them that the era of screw down desks and inkwells took us to the Moon and we've never been back.
Or higher utility bills, bus and other transportation costs, etc. You can’t keep schools open more days without incurring higher overhead costs.
Instead of being served 2 government food program meals a day, they will increase that to 3. And they will build more indoctrination centers. (formerly known as schools.)
Teacher salaries will double of course.
That is a bogus argument. The same can also be said of adults, and everyone. People retain what they use. Who has retained everything they were exposed to in college, or any level of education? And, people review and refresh when necessary. Not a reason to indoctrinate kids year round with no long breaks.
These nitwits need to study the benefits of time away from school, for the good students. Some of the greatest learning experiences come during free time and travel with parents during vacation.
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