In the presidential election of 1960, my school friends assured me that if John F. Kennedy won we would have more school days, fewer vacations and school on Saturdays.
In the gubernatorial election in the mid 1980’s, my children came home from school terrified that if Clinton lead the state government, they would have school on Saturday.
I was out of the educational loop during the last election, so I don’t know which candidate garnered the dreaded more days of school platform that terrifies little school children. It does not really matter. We evidently elected that person with Barack Obama. “American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage with other students around the globe,” he was reported to have said in a recent Associated Press story. Obama has added education to his list of issues to tackle.
“The challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom. 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 AP.
Actually the school calendar has already shifted with summer schools for making up work or providing a chance to leap ahead.
My sister, an educator in Arizona and now in Colorado, taught at a school with nine weeks of school followed by two weeks of vacation and then six weeks off in the summer – not three months. The teachers and students returned to school refreshed and ready for education, but it had not been so long that they forgot the previous nine weeks of work. She enjoyed time to travel to visit family throughout the year. But even with the varied distribution of vacations, her school year still added up to the U.S. 1,146 instructional hours per year or 180 days. Not quite the same as the hours endured by school children in other countries.
“Young people in other countries are going to school 25, 30 percent longer than our students here,” Duncan told the AP. “I want to just level the playing field.”
While it is true that kids in many other countries have more school days, it’s not true they all spend more time in school, according to the AP story which compared the U.S. hours to those of Asian students — who persistently outscore the U.S. on math and science tests. Yes, students in Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong have longer school years — 190 to 201 days — compared to the U.S. with 180 days. But, they attend school fewer hours: Singapore, 903 hours; Taiwan 1,050 hours; Japan, 1,005 hours and Hong Kong, 1,013 hours.
I think the unseen factor in those countries comes in the off-school hours with the family expectation that education does not begin and end at the school door. That children need to work at home on homework.
As my own tortured children learned, it did not matter which party won the election, they still had Saturday school and lessons in the summer. They still did not veg on the couch and watch television endlessly or play hours of video games.
We had a heap of books to read and cool stuff to learn. One discovered computers and spent hours teaching himself the ins and outs of computers. Another took out his father’s books on carpentry and practiced building forts and huts. At least one child and a couple grandchildren have spent their summer days on the couch practicing arithmetic flash cards to improve their skill and speed in math. With my prompting the children have written stories, practiced home economics and had physical education requirements at home.
When it was offered, I took my children to kids college at South Arkansas Community College to study science, math or literature on Saturdays in a fun, but educational setting. Through out the year, I expected them to study their lessons, memorize verses for Sunday School, Awana or Vacation Bible School. Because I sincerely believe that a brain is a terrible thing to waste, at our house, school continues long after the school doors close.
Obviously Obama, also a parent, agrees. Perhaps longer school years will remedy the educational weaknesses. Perhaps not. A lot of education begins and ends in homes where hours of education continue on Saturdays and over vacations.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at joanh@everybody.org)