On a recent visit to area schools US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced his plan to improve national education: by lengthening the school day, the school week and the school year. Duncan says he thinks "schools should be open six, seven days a week; 11, 12 months a year."Personally, I think it's laughable to assume that kids will suddenly to better in school if you just make them endure more of it. One of the things that we've discovered here in our home school is that teaching the kids does not take that much time. We deal with each subject in our daily lessons for about 15 minutes at a time, which is enough time (at their current ages) for the subject to be interesting without becoming boring or too frustrating. We spend less than an hour a day on formal "lessons". This is our 3rd year of doing it this way with Simon and he is at least a year ahead in math, spelling, reading, etc.
Duncan does have an idea I do find laudable, though. In the article he calls for more "autonomous" schools. He doesn't describe exactly what this means, but it fits in with changes I have in mind for public education.
In short, I would be very much in favor of eliminating large administrative boards of education. Instead I would have each individual school run by a board composed of parents and teachers who would have autonomous authority to choose curriculum and establish school policy and spend their own budget. This would give teachers and parents, rather than state and national administrators, considerably more influence and control over the schools in their neighborhoods. Along with this, of course, I would prefer that schools were much smaller with considerably smaller class sizes.
I think it is a big mistake to have schools run by gigantic state bureaucracies and a national department of education that sets rigid curricula for all children everywhere and which, by nature of the size of the bureaucracy, is highly resistant to change and flexibility.
So, I like the idea of "autonomous" schools, but I think the all day, all week, all year school idea really sucks.
1 comment:
We spend very little time on "schooly" stuff each day, as well. It makes you wonder what the heck they're doing all day at school (mostly "classroom management," I fear).
There's long been a creeping trend toward more schooling. E.g. preschool used to be the exception, and full-day kindergarten was unheard of -- but now half-day kindergarten is simply not offered in many districts. Then there's "universal preschool," while on the other hand states are raising the age at which you can drop out to 18. Plus lowering mandatory attendance laws from 6 years old to 5.
In another generation I suppose no one will remember what childhood was supposed to look like, so there won't be any more objection to a 40-hour school week, 50 weeks a year, starting at age 4.
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