Posted on 09/30/2010 7:57:22 AM PDT by ConservativeStatement
President Barack Obama says we need a longer school year if we want our public school graduates to be more competitive in the world.
He said: "We now have our kids go to school about a month less than most other advanced countries. And that month makes a difference. It means that kids are losing a lot of what they learn during the school year during the summer." He added that children from poor and low-income families suffer even more than others during the long summers because they may not have access to books, educational summer programs and other activities that will stimulate learning.
(Excerpt) Read more at sun-sentinel.com ...
Our kids would not need more hours in school if they’d drop the political correctness brainwashing and get back to teaching math, science, reading and writing.
done
“Note that the students you see are at Kumon, not the local imbecile factory”
LOL,,, that line could have been written by Mark Twain.
Increased teacher salaries.
Increased school costs
Higher taxes
Total disruption of the travel\leisure enconomy.
More time to teach the kids to be better "global\green citizens"
I could go on and on but I think that covers the major selling points.
Obama is NEVER right.
What do you think?
Is President Obama correct that there should be a longer school year?
Yes. Our kids are falling way behnd the rest of the world. We should have a longer school year with a couple of short vacations, rather than one long summer vacation. (327 responses)
34%
No. As usual, Obama is wrong. Kids need the summer vacation to get away from the pressure of school, or maybe to work. Obama is being unrealistic. (245 responses)
26%
What makes Obama such an expert on education? Let him worry about getting the economy back on track. (381 responses)
40%
953 total responses
Precisely.
What is he suggesting? Sending the parents back to school for their failings in parenting and family failure?
If parents had a time machine they would send their kids to school in the 50’s and early 60’s.
More school would be fine if the schools were like they were in the 50’s and early 60’s.
“freshener” is an SAT word. “Spray” only has one syllable. Probably too taxing to think of the longer word.
..this from the media’s genius?
“If we had proper education it would take LESS time not MORE time”
German kids go half day. If you cannot give a child a *first class* education in 4 hours a day, you are doing something wrong on an epic scale! (of course, that leaves little time for condom rolling, global warming class,, etc)
FWIW, were someone to ask me a like question, depending upon just how they phrased it, I might also ask if they wanted to mail a letter, or a package. If just a letter, then any U.S. mailbox will suffice. However, if they wanted to mail a package, they might need a post office rather than a mailbox. Just saying.
“More school would be fine if the schools were like they were in the 50’s and early 60’s.”
And yet, in those days, they felt like summer beak was just fine. Hmmmm
I agree entirely. Asian students often do better in math because of their extra time in school. But they are not taught and encouraged to be creative. That’s the reason why they steal our patents. They might build and implement, but we invent.
Tell him to keep at it. 90% of anything (beyond entry level) at work is talking to people.
Having hosted exchange students, who do not get the whole summer off, I can safely say that they are well ahead of local students. There is a lot more to learn these days and students will benefit from a longer school year. No other industrial country runs a school year on a century old agricultural schedule.
Or we can continue to let the rest of the world outpace us in the brainpower department because we’d rather risk dumb kids than indoctrinated ones.
Go ahead, let the flames begin.
Well, I mean, like .... whatever.
People's abuse of language is pathetic these days, isn't it?
Interestingly enough, all (everyone, without exception) of the homeschooling parents that I've talked to, say the same thing.
Typically, they say "We're done by noon, and that leaves the rest of the day for (volunteering/work/play/sports/music/fill in the blank)."
Interesting, no?
NO, NO, NO OBOZO, you have it all wrong – as usual!!
If you and your Marxist buds over at the Dept. of Indoctrination (Education) would pull out all the socialist PROPAGANDA (such as the extreme example at the link), and devote that time to actually educating these kids in critical thinking skills and the Three Rs, the school YEAR could probably be compressed into the school QUARTER. A far better solution is for the incoming crop of new legislators to DEFUND the DOE, shut it down (one of Reagan’s platform planks) and then turn the states loose to scrap the entire rotten system for one where the parents decide where their kids are indoctri – er – educated.
At the trial of a dangerous “criminal” home-schooling mother many years ago, a previously overlooked aspect of the government schools was put into sharp focus for those paying attention: The Director of Instruction for the DeKalb County, Georgia schools testified that the then current 7 hour school day consisted of an average of approximately 3 hours or less of instruction.
At that time, this dangerous “criminal” mother (who won after beating their brains out in court) was devoting 4 to 5 hours a day to direct instruction.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u0GJSZttZE
Having lived in Germany, Obama's statement is simply not true.
In the Rhineland, where we lived, German kids had 4 year round sessions, but there are varying "vacations" associated with each of them. The names they used for their vacations: Easter - 2 weeks, Summer: 5.5 weeks, Fall: 2 weeks, Christmas: 2 weeks.
That's 11 weeks of vacation with various other holidays off school.
IMPORTANT:
There are also huge differences in the school day. Most kids we saw would leave about 7 and return home right around lunchtime. That was the school day. It was possible for some kids to take more education at the gymnasium level, but mostly it was about a 5 hour school day. (Compare that with America's 8-3 (7 hour school day))
Then there's the whole systemic difference once one gets to roughly high school age where only some go to school and others go off to learn trades either at schools OR in actual businesses/trades. (We had a neighbor girl, part of whose "schooling" was at the local supermarket.)
I've often wondered when we compare our high school math/science scores with Europe if we aren't comparing our entire group of kids (A through F) with their gymnasium group which consists mostly of A to B students who've been permitted to continue in scholastic endeavors.
My wife has had a number of German foreign exchange students in her upper level math classes, and they have NOT been ahead in math, and in some cases they've been behind.
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