   Extended school year
  I was listening to MPR (Minnesota public radio) yesterday, and the eleven-oclock hour was dedicated to the idea that the Minnesota school year is too short. I would suggest listening to the program, available here. Scroll down to 'Tuesday'. It's a .ram file, but it is well worth the trouble if you have to install something.In short, Minnesota's school year is ~170 days long right now. The MASA wants to push it up to 200 days a year. They want to do this by shortening the summer vacation to six weeks, lengthening the Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter breaks, and doing some other trimming and tweaking amongst the year. The program, if approved, would be phased in over four years at the cost of roughly eight hundred million dollars.I'll be very upfront and say that I've never been to a public or private school. I was homeschooled from day one, all thirteen years (K-12). Over the course of these years I never understood why my friends had to spend so much time in school, and then come home with more schoolwork to do. Recently I started dating a girl who is still in highschool, and the amount of time wasted there is even more apparent. Personally, I'd like to see eight hundred million dollars go towards helping schools do a better job with what they have now. Because, frankly, the school my girlfriend goes to is shit, yet is ranked as a Minnesota School of Excellence.   
  Haha, yeah.. Minnesota's school system blows. This is my last year of it before University, and I won't be missing it at all. Foreign language doesn't even start until highschool in most parts of the state, also around the rest of America. Fortunately, my senior year has been streamlined by teachers to allow me to focus more on my 3-week exchange trip to Germany after graduation [wink]   ;Quote:Original post by KattaRecently I started dating a girl who is still in highschool, and the amount of time wasted there is even more apparent. Personally, I'd like to see eight hundred million dollars go towards helping schools do a better job with what they have now. Because, frankly, the school my girlfriend goes to is shit, yet is ranked as a Minnesota School of Excellence.Sounds about typical.   ;  Public high schools, IME, all suck. The teachers claim to not have enough time, but that is only because there have no control over the classroom. Many administrators don't want to start issues with the students because then parents complain, and the administrators get into trouble. Teachers, without the backing of the school administrators, have no power. Detention is a joke, consisting of sitting in a room for an hour talking with friends, and that is really the only punishment I've seen ever used. As such, the students rule the school, and the teachers just teach in the five minutes the students are calm enough to pay attention. Oddly enough, I don't think this is an issue of students being disrespectful. Out of my classes, the ones in which the students listen and pay attention the most is the classes where the teacher treats the students like adults and equals. In these classes, the teacher can quickly get the attention of the class, and keep it. In the classes where the teacher treats their students like unworthy beings incapable of reasoning or thought, who need to be guided like a dog leads the blind, the students are out of control. Basically, the issue here isn't that school doesn't last long enough, it's that teachers don't have respect for the students, who in turn won't respect their teachers.EDIT: All of this is my own opinion, based off of my experiences.   ;  Quite a bit of criticism, but no suggested solutions.  That's what sounds typical.  Everyone complains and yet nothing is actually being done to reform the education system.  It has a lot of problems and most of them stem from the fact that our system is strongly based on the "factory model" of the industrial revolution.  Students go through an assembly line education from ages 5-18, if not through college as well.  We need to completely rethink this fundamental structure of our school system, including a breakdown of the "grade level" system, different evaluation processes, heavier use of new, more effective instructional strategies, and fewer stupid requirements written by people who don't know anything about education.Now don't get me wrong, poor teachers do have something to do with it, but as someone going into education myself, this isn't generally the fault of individual teachers, but the system that recruits and trains teachers (colleges and universities throughout the country).  First, to major in education you have to either be (1) crazy enough to go into an occupation you will never be adequately paid for when any potentially good teacher could easily choose another, "better" major, or (2) because of the "those who can do, and those who can't, teach" philosophy.  You can probably guess which of the two creates more teachers..Second, teacher training also contributes to this because student teachers are not thrown into classrooms until their final semester in college.  After 4-5 years of school, no evaluator ever has the guts to fail a student teacher and send them back to square 1, so even the worst teachers that should never be put in a classroom simply get a pat on the back, a couple of pointers, and a certificate so they can graduate.  Now even with poor feedback from their respective college or university, teachers are in such high demand, that even the worst get hired.Between the lack of adequate recruitment of potential teachers, and the pathetic certification process, our current system is just a breeding ground for teachers that should never be allowed to teach.  Education needs to be a more appealing profession (which it's not because the school system itself first needs a major overhaul) and then the certification process can become more difficult as soon as schools stop being completely desperate for people willing to teach.Gah, I could go on, but I think I've ranted long enough.;Quote:It has a lot of problems and most of them stem from the fact that our system is strongly based on the "factory model" of the industrial revolution. Amen. Don't forget that many believe the ideal school will train sudents to be the "model citizen"; complete with praise for democracy, soluting the flag action, and a kong-fu grip on support for the government.Quote:Now don't get me wrong, poor teachers do have something to do with it, but as someone going into education myself, this isn't generally the fault of individual teachers, but the system that recruits and trains teachers (colleges and universities throughout the country). I agree, however you can't blame the  system entirely. I have relatives going through the education system to become a teacher, and they come home and talk about how they will teach like they were training a dog. Their training may not be ideal, but that is no excuse for not thinking of students like human beings capable of thought on the same level as they are. This isn't an isolated issue, I see this with a lot of teachers.Quote: Education needs to be a more appealing profession (which it's not because the school system itself first needs a major overhaul) and then the certification process can become more difficult as soon as schools stop being completely desperate for people willing to teach. For that to happen, more money would need to go into the education system. Many schools are going into debt, and falling apart. It would also help if teachers were paid more. The education system needs to be reformed, right from the base. However, the government thinks just making harder requirements will make schools perform better.   ;  School suck, yo! (especially doing presentations)   ;  Eight hundred million?Why don't you just outsource it like everything else?   ;  Having actually gone through the Minnesota K-12 public school system, I honestly think its long enough. [smile]The simple argument against a longer school year is the lack of air conditioning. Minnesota is supposedly famous for being cold, but summer gets pretty damn hot. Starting late May everyone just shuts off. If they put that $800 mil. into air conditioning, hell it'd work but I would imagine it would cost more than that and AFAIK Minnesota is trying to cut expenses right now.That said, whether or not grade school (and college and life and everything for that matter) is a waste of time or not is (surprise!) entirely up to you. I went to a school in the west suburbs of Minneapolis and we were offered college-level courses (AP, PSEO, and other options) starting from middle school even (albeit middle school offered only mathematics ... and I was far too lousy to test in [wink]). These courses were demanding and I can say I got a lot more out of them than in the babysitter G courses that stereotype public schools. It's true that you can't avoid classes that waste your time, but that doesn't mean the entire experience is wasteful.I'm personally skeptical about private school. Unless your parents hire an army of tutors, you simply won't get the kind of education you would in a public school. My parents are both college graduates and my father even holds a PhD, but there is no way they could have taught me the things I picked up from grade school. Parents are not able to spend enough time or provide enough breadth to make it work. Sometimes you just need a good old fashioned teacher.For me, the final nail in the home-schooling coffin though is the lack of competition and other kids going through the same thing. Grade school teaches some harsh lessons in this respect and it's as good a place to learn them as any. There truly is nothing like grade-school to remind you of your every deficiency. [smile] You may feel miserable about it at the time, but it sure pays later.   