Obama has plans of lenghtening school hours...

Started by Mitchman September 27th, 2009 8:08 PM
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Age 30
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Southern Europe
Seen January 25th, 2013
Posted October 21st, 2009
7,482 posts
15.4 Years
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090927/ap_on_re_us/us_more_school

So yeah. Personally being a victim of both the American school system and the European system, I can sat that the American system does not need more time just a better curriculum. Its ridiculously easy and you can only notice that when you leave from the country.

Esper

California
Seen June 30th, 2018
Posted June 30th, 2018
It needs better everything. Period.

I do like the idea of opening schools on weekends as safe areas for kids, though I wonder if they'd be staffed by already overworked teachers. That wouldn't be such a good idea.

XxDawnfanxX

The stubborn Pokemon Trainer

Age 31
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Pennsylvania
Seen September 26th, 2012
Posted March 8th, 2011
739 posts
14.2 Years
Wow I wouldn't be for this at all, it doesn't need more hours or more time at all, maybe it could be later in the day because students won't be as lazy if they get to sleep in a little later, but extending like three hours would be pretty horrible, I am glad I am a senior this year lol.

Seen April 9th, 2021
Posted February 5th, 2017
6,779 posts
15.5 Years
Schools need longer hours?
Bollocks, they only need better teachers. Instead of sending teachers to the rubber room, they should just fire them depending on the consequence.
Germany, for example, has a much higher education(Average I.Q of 107), and they only need 6 hours of school. America has an average I.Q of 95, and they have about 8 hours of school on average.
It isn't the school hours, but in fact the teachers and parents.

Aurafire

provider of cake

Age 32
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Seen April 25th, 2017
Posted November 8th, 2011
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15 Years
Schools need longer hours?
Bollocks, they only need better teachers. Instead of sending teachers to the rubber room, they should just fire them depending on the consequence.
Germany, for example, has a much higher education(Average I.Q of 107), and they only need 6 hours of school. America has an average I.Q of 95, and they have about 8 hours of school on average.
It isn't the school hours, but in fact the teachers and parents.
Words of wisdom.

Glad I'm out of high school already! \o/

Feign

Clain

Seen January 24th, 2023
Posted March 12th, 2011
4,293 posts
14.4 Years
I think this video sums up my views on the American school system:



Teachers are lazy that is the problem... But ultimately they are too protected by their contract... I liked the European country being compared in the vid...

Feign

Clain

Seen January 24th, 2023
Posted March 12th, 2011
4,293 posts
14.4 Years
Ouch. o_<; Glad that's not happening here. D:
Wouldn't that mean the current grade would catch up to you just a bit faster? XD

Also that 'no child left behind' stuff, is probably the worst thing to be introduced in America too...

Essentially, if there was competition between schools, and having a kid go to that particular school, schools and teachers would try to compete... Thus trying to be the better teacher...

When you have a monopoly (oh like you can't go to a school outside of your district), then the teacher doesn't have to do anything... Then they dumb down the test and make it look like you've passed... And you hit college, and you're screwed...

Bay

She/They
Dani California
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I'm not in high school anymore, but yeah pretty much the thing is schools need better teachers and curriculum, not longer hours. Also, extra curricular activities are good for the students for building up some social skills, so all work and no play will definitely cook their brains out.

Feign, I'll check out that link if I can tonight or tomorrow. YouTube takes a while to load now. D: Also:

When you have a monopoly (oh like you can't go to a school outside of your district), then the teacher doesn't have to do anything... Then they dumb down the test and make it look like you've passed... And you hit college, and you're screwed...
Guess they do that in Canada, too? Heh, this reminds me when I had to moved at the beginning of my senior year of high school. My family and I stayed at my dad's friend's place for a couple of months due to a legal dispute between the landlord and the previous owner over the place we're supposed to stay. Because my dad's friend's place is outside the district, I had to deal with papers while my sister goes to a different high school for a while.
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Guillermo

i own a rabbit heh

Age 28
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Seen April 11th, 2015
Posted May 18th, 2014
6,794 posts
14.8 Years
If I lived in America and Obama made this a rule, like Nakany Camara stated, I would just walk out the door.

Luckily I live in Australia. :)
credittoDukey
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wakachamo

Seen February 15th, 2020
Posted August 10th, 2019
2,709 posts
17.9 Years
Schools need longer hours?
Bollocks, they only need better teachers. Instead of sending teachers to the rubber room, they should just fire them depending on the consequence.
Germany, for example, has a much higher education(Average I.Q of 107), and they only need 6 hours of school. America has an average I.Q of 95, and they have about 8 hours of school on average.
It isn't the school hours, but in fact the teachers and parents.
IQ has no correlation/causation factor with academic success.
Age 30
Male
Melbourne, Australia
Seen January 8th, 2013
Posted April 30th, 2012
1,031 posts
14.1 Years
First off, IQ has little to do with your education. Most people can get IQ tested at a young age and then keep that score for their entire life with only small changes of a few points. But in regards to the actual topic, I don't believe America needs longer school hours. I'm Australian myself, but from what I've seen the education system seems pretty good over there. I'm only learning in Chemistry now what I would have learned a year beforehand if I was living in America. By the end of it, what we know is basically the same, but over here it seems all of the important education is stuffed into the last two years of school and everything beforehand goes incredibly slow.

I'm not claiming to be an expert on the American education system because I'm definitely not, but it always looks pretty well handled. My mother studied her final years of school in America and from what I've heard it's a lot better than the school system we have over here. Either way, lengthening school hours is not the way to go. There are other alternatives. I've heard about this "no child gets left behind" thing. No idea what it is, but I'm assuming it means taking things slow so slow people aren't so far behind the smart kids. That's stupid in itself. Kids who are smart enough to learn faster should be allowed to do that. I'm not bragging, I'm sure a lot of other people could do this as well, but I'm pretty sure I could have learned the basics of trigonometry and algebra in year five, but instead we did fractions and shapes for a prolonged period of time. Now, suddenly in year ten and onwards it is all thrown upon you and I'm struggling and getting Cs on all of my tests because we're learning everything at once. That's why I believe this whole slowing down to accommodate for stupid people is a bad idea.

.little monster

Age 30
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Ohio
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Posted March 23rd, 2015
4,291 posts
13.9 Years
OH NO WE HAVE TO LEARN MORE AND FILL IN THE GAP OF WASTED TIME IN OUR DAY~ Boo hoo. 99% of people in school in the US just waste their time after school. Also, longer school days will only do good for us. :/ The people who have jobs can just get early release if they have good enough grades and don't miss a lot of school. If they do get bad grades and miss a lot of school they shouldn't have a job.

Also, it doesn't need better curriculum or longer hours. It needs better teachers and more organization. We have the same curriculum as everyone else, just a lot later. That needs to change too. (We actually have more..than some)
Age 31
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San Diego, CA
Seen May 25th, 2013
Posted May 27th, 2012
181 posts
13.7 Years
after they arrive in high school, if they dont want to learn, they should be left behind so that they can ask me "would you like fries with that?". Lets face it, we all love our Micky D's. I hate to be so negative but i HATE the pure stupidity of the kids in my country.

donavannj

Age 32
Male
'cause it get cold like Minnesota
Seen 1 Hour Ago
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Also that 'no child left behind' stuff, is probably the worst thing to be introduced in America too...I concur

Essentially, if there was competition between schools, and having a kid go to that particular school, schools and teachers would try to compete... Thus trying to be the better teacher...

When you have a monopoly (oh like you can't go to a school outside of your district), then the teacher doesn't have to do anything...
Open enrollment is employed here in Minnesota (as well as vouchers/multi-district student swapping) among the public schools... and districts like the one I attended and graduated from have benefited from having higher quality teachers (and spending more on those teachers than even many private schools in the area) by getting even more funds from the state because more students attend the district from poorer districts. It has also been outperforming most of the private schools it's been competing with (though it's scores have been declining because a new private school's been sapping the richer, better students that it had been leaching off of districts that have been performing worse than it for decades).

Of course, last year's freshman class (the Class of 2012) in the district did terribly last school year with nearly the exact same quality of teachers that my graduating class had (Class of 2009, which was academically fantastic).

Though Minnesota's been slipping academically (and it's quite the subject of discussion here) on college test scores... and the root of the problem here is partially in the overcrowding of some of our poorer districts because our governor's been cutting from the budgets of schools for the six years he's been in office to balance the state budget (and it seems to show here that they've been on the decline since he started cutting money away, which is evidence that surprised me: throwing more money at the problem has actually worked in my state for some odd reason).
whoops

Ru

|| Unforgettable Promise ||

Age 30
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花舞う街で
Seen May 15th, 2014
Posted April 2nd, 2013
215 posts
13.8 Years
I'm not going to tr;dl on this subject (okay... I am. But in a different matter), but I am going to say that America does not need longer hours of school. Not only because it'll make kids wanting to go to school even less, but there are those who have activities after school (Band, Acting, Sports), and if they extend the hours, when will the practice times be? My school already gets out at 3:25, so unless they start school earlier, school will extend to around 6:25, which will be five minutes before I leave school on Tues and Thurs anyways because of Band Practice. If we were to still have our three hours of practice after school, we wouldn't be home until around 10, and with homework and everything, it'll only cause us art students to be very stressful.

School isn't only about reading, math, and writing. It's also trying to find what you want to do, and the many arts that it provides. Music and Acting is already getting cut, we don't need it to be cut more because of ridiculous school hours. Like movies and the Symphonic Band/Orchestra Music that goes in them? Let us have our practice time, then.

For me, the matter for them making longer school hours not a good idea isn't academic reasons, but for the sake of the arts. Thank you and have a nice day.
this signature exploded. whoops.

donavannj

Age 32
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'cause it get cold like Minnesota
Seen 1 Hour Ago
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I just had a thought that could save money AND possibly make students and teachers more enthusiastic (thus improving results in theory): shorten the school week by a day, but extend each day by an hour or two. It's working in districts in outstate (read: rural) Minnesota, and it saves on operational expenses, allowing more money to be spent on everything else. I have yet to see if it's working academically, since I don't have access to the test scores from these outstate districts.
whoops

Feign

Clain

Seen January 24th, 2023
Posted March 12th, 2011
4,293 posts
14.4 Years
after they arrive in high school, if they dont want to learn, they should be left behind so that they can ask me "would you like fries with that?". Lets face it, we all love our Micky D's. I hate to be so negative but i HATE the pure stupidity of the kids in my country.
Lol I know what you mean... And furthermore on that note, if they were the type to apply for welfare, I'd be declining it, just on their pure lack of motivation...

Open enrollment is employed here in Minnesota (as well as vouchers/multi-district student swapping) among the public schools... and districts like the one I attended and graduated from have benefited from having higher quality teachers (and spending more on those teachers than even many private schools in the area) by getting even more funds from the state because more students attend the district from poorer districts. It has also been outperforming most of the private schools it's been competing with (though it's scores have been declining because a new private school's been sapping the richer, better students that it had been leaching off of districts that have been performing worse than it for decades).

Of course, last year's freshman class (the Class of 2012) in the district did terribly last school year with nearly the exact same quality of teachers that my graduating class had (Class of 2009, which was academically fantastic).

Though Minnesota's been slipping academically (and it's quite the subject of discussion here) on college test scores... and the root of the problem here is partially in the overcrowding of some of our poorer districts because our governor's been cutting from the budgets of schools for the six years he's been in office to balance the state budget (and it seems to show here that they've been on the decline since he started cutting money away, which is evidence that surprised me: throwing more money at the problem has actually worked in my state for some odd reason).
Interesting indeed...

To bring up another point as well, it would probably be best if teachers weren't so protected by their union, and furthermore that students could chose which school to attend...

I just had a thought that could save money AND possibly make students and teachers more enthusiastic (thus improving results in theory): shorten the school week by a day, but extend each day by an hour or two. It's working in districts in outstate (read: rural) Minnesota, and it saves on operational expenses, allowing more money to be spent on everything else. I have yet to see if it's working academically, since I don't have access to the test scores from these outstate districts.
That does sound theoretically good XD


Also I want to point out that post secondary is more or less independent of the grade school system, so generally their educational system there is of higher standards than grade school (the college wants your money after all...).

Sarah Paliner

:: Zetsubou no Carnival ::

Male
Where it is
Seen September 3rd, 2011
Posted September 3rd, 2011
139 posts
13.7 Years
Schools need longer hours?
Bollocks, they only need better teachers. Instead of sending teachers to the rubber room, they should just fire them depending on the consequence.
Germany, for example, has a much higher education(Average I.Q of 107), and they only need 6 hours of school. America has an average I.Q of 95, and they have about 8 hours of school on average.
It isn't the school hours, but in fact the teachers and parents.
Teenage angst much, my friend? Hahaha. And I thought that IQs were decided long before schooling ever began. Anyhoo, longer hours with more overworked teachers and using the same bad curriculum are just about the worst possible route American education can take. As a person who has a Vietnamese, American, and Canadian education, I can safely say that Canada's is the exemplenary one so far. It doesn't need as many hours as an American's, but its curriculum is diverse and encourages hard work over memorization, which is basically the American and Vietnamese system. And it shows on standardized testing, too.

Also, academics shouldn't be the be-all-and-end-all of schooling. Like Miniryu stated, extra-curricular activities are important to build a well-rounded person, and school has a part in that. Schools should be teaching children a large variety of life-enriching studies, not just torture them with classroom confinement.

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Feign

Clain

Seen January 24th, 2023
Posted March 12th, 2011
4,293 posts
14.4 Years
Let's see, I have about 17 hours each week, so not to bad at all. XD

Of course, there is studying/homework/assignments too, but who does those, amirite? XD