Canada states that schools across America are cutting P.E and art programs to focus more on the regular academics because the length of the days and school year aren't enough to teach it all. He says that "longer school days can lead to fewer crimes committed by young people and a decline in teen pregnancy". Canada also reports how SAT scores and the graduation rates are low due to the fact that school isn't long enough. He makes very good points but he is only speaking in statistics. He isn't factoring in variables such as homework, studying and personal lives.
Vicki Abeles brings this up in her article "Quality vs Time in the Classroom". Abeles did her own research and found no actual studies that support longer school days improving test scores. She did find however, that an average school year leads to unhealthy, sleep deprived, and anxious children. She offers the solution that instead of longer school days, resources should be used to have after school programs to better fit students for college and the real world and reduce homework size.
Both authors bring up the point that non academic things like sports or art should be in students lives but I agree more with Abeles' way of making sure kids get those chances. At the end of a normal six hour day kids are tired and tend to lose focus on whatever the last class of the day is. Making the day longer would only harm students in the long run especially if their last class was a science or math. What do you think? Is making the school days or even the school year longer a good idea? Would it still be a good/bad idea if homework wasn't an issue?
-Jeremiah S.
I have to agree when you say that longer school days would only makes students focus less. It has been proven in many studies that resting after receiving information can help retain that information. Our minds need to rest in order to process the knowledge we are given and lengthening the school day will only hurt that process. Homework would have to be little to nonexistent if the school days were extended because with school and homework, I barely have two hours to myself on an average school day. As for lengthening the school year, that is a terrible idea as it only encourages teachers to be less efficient with there time because they have more days to teach. A longer school year would also only make recollection of information learned early in the year more difficult.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Maximus. The regular school day is already enough and making it longer would make everyone focus less. The long hours would make going to school awful. I think that it would also make the amount of people ditching school even higher if it meant that the day was going to be longer. A longer school day would not make test scores higher. That also puts a lot of stress on the teachers as well. Test scores won't improve unless every teacher was fully committed to teaching for such long periods. I agree with Max again that longer days would make the teachers less efficient. Would the staff get the pay they deserve? Staff and students wouldn't have the much needed rest time. I think making the school day would do nothing but make everything worse.
ReplyDeleteMaking the school days longer is a horrible idea. Most of the school and I can barely function with the amount of hours we have right now. It gets worse for the people, such as myself, that are in band, extracurricular activities or zero period. We are at school for nearly ten hours. It is mentally and physically exhausting. Even with all of this class time, there are still hours of homework to do. Our minds never have a break. The work loads get bigger and bigger. If school hours were extended, students would focus less and won't do their work. Our brains can only process so much at one time, how can we add more to the spectrum when we can barely focus as it is?
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