Sunday, September 27, 2009

Obama wants to shorten summer vacation

In most Asian countries (India, China, Taiwan, Japan, etc), students spend more days in school. They also "persistently outscore the U.S. [students] on math and science tests."

Obama's perspective: "Obama says American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage with other students around the globe." He wants to extend school days until dinnertime and extend the school year.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan agrees. "Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy and not too many of our kids are working the fields today," Duncan stated.

This got me thinking. Many of the students at Aragon either work, play a sport, or do some other sort of activity of hobby outside of school. Personally, I'm involved in a few activities that take up most of my time, with homework fitting in when I get free time. Year round, I'm involved with a coneoing team, Bay Area Dragons (BAD), which competes locally, nationally, and internationally. It takes up 3 days of my week, plus extra effort outside team time. Also, I'm involved with the Aragon Robotics Team, which you may be familiar with. We compete in the FIRST Robotics Challenge at the Silicon Vally Regional (held at San Jose State Univeristy) in the spring, and the WRRF CalGames in the fall. It also takes up alot of time away from school. In the fall, we meet twice a week after school till 5, and in the spring, the team stays at school till 7 four days a week, eating dinner together for six weeks, until mid-febuary. We also spend time at school on the weekends if needed.

If Obama is able to get his way and extend school days, most of these activities students participate in these days will either get cut back or get canceled. Students wouldn't be able to have extra time in the school day to themselves.

Oh, and what about all the extra hours of labor? Teacher's aren't going to work extra for free, right?

What do you guys think on this? Some students like the extended year program so far, being able to learn a lot more information. I would like to hear your opinions on this topic.

Armaan Vachani

18 comments:

Katie Jensen said...

This is a really interesting idea/post actually. I'm glad you brought it up. While I agree that our curriculum is pretty packed and teachers are often complaining about not having enough time, I don't really think that extending the school schedule is a good idea.

I agree with your point about after school activities. Although American is no longer an "agrarian economy" like Duncan said, Americans have traded their work in the fields for really, super jam-packed after school schedules. Most students these days are involved in some sort of time-consuming extra activity. I think these activities are extremely important and provide something that can't be gained in the classroom. They provide opportunities for learning outside of a classic school atmosphere.

In a perfect world, we'd all have time to learn everything at our own pace AND have time for extracurriculars. But I really don't see this ever happening! I'm interested to see how these mentioned Asian countries manage the extra hours.
-Katie Jensen

Franklin Wu said...

Interesting post...

I've actually been wondering and asking around every so often.. Would you rather have a 1 month Summer break and no homework, or keep the schedule as is? I personally would rather have the 1 month summer, but I don't think teachers would be happy without homework. I find that summer break is just too long. I forget everything over the summer. For example, this year in Multivariable, I couldn't do some of the basic review problems from Calculus BC simply because I haven't reviewed them for 3 months. I'm all for extending the school year, but extending the school day, as the previous two posts mentioned, just cuts way to much out of the day. 24 hours isn't that long...

Franklin Wu said...

And I knew I forgot to mention something.

Katie: I can speak a little for China, I dunno about other Asian countries. In China, students score higher because that's all they do. Almost everyone has parents who push them to work harder because they see going to college as a way to work out of "poverty" or into a higher social class. Also, most don't have extracurriculars. Sure, there are the amazing musicians and athletes, but most students study for the college entrance exam and that's it. They don't have a college app system like they do here, with letters of recs, essays, grades and the sort. It's essentially how well they score on the exam. That makes it so that they score higher in everything, but not necessarily have all the skills that we as students here have. For example, through Robotics, Battlebots, and other extracurriculars, I am able to design a robot to an.. OK standard, however, if you go to China, you'll be hardpressed to find someone who can do anything outside of book work.

Please feel free to correct me on this, this is what my mom and dad have told me.. so..=\

lizaj said...

I'm kind of stunned about this. I like Obama, a lot, but that is just overstepping some boundaries. Big boundaries. Made out of Steel and spikes. I understand that he wants American kids to have an equal advantage in our international working world, but extending school days 3 hours and cutting big chunks out of summer break is...evil. Maybe not evil. But close.

I agree with Katie about jam-packed days. The agrarian, bring-in-the-summer-crop calendar doesn't really apply anymore, but I think that now there's more of a "sanity" calendar. As in: if I did not have summer vacation and had to go to school 7.30am - 5pm, I would go insane.

I see the benefits of this plan in dangerous inner city areas where kids would otherwise be running around in glass and mud and whatnot and where parents really have a legitimate reason to worry. Or in areas with dangerously low test scores. But in general, school shouldn't dominate life. Kids are already feeling enough pressure as is, and need that time off to relax, and be with friends, and just be kids. And DO HOMEWORK. 3 fewer hours of homework time a day during junior year would have been... unhealthy.

And really, Obama already has enough issues on his plate right now (healthcare and Afghanistan). If he wants to get things done, he needs to slow down a bit. Little steps are good too.

I'm just glad I'm a Senior.

The new Kevin (a.k.a Kevin Kwan) said...

I saw this in the newspaper just today.

Obama also plans for schools "to stay open late and to let kids in on weekends so they have a safe place to go." - The Daily Journal

Not everyone is in peril during the weekends.



Like all the other posts, extending the school day won't benefit us.

Those extra hours that he plans to add in will be when students shut down their minds due to exhaustion, making it useless to teach.

Back when I had a foreign exchange student from China, I smelled a lack of literary skills as compared to math skills. Their math and science are great, but their literary skills aren't equal.

Obama has the wrong idea about education.

Throwing more time at school will make our lives even tighter, but we won't learn much more than we do now.

The key to education is COMPETITION - with all caps because of its importance.

Asian countries like China and India do well in school because there are millions of kids competing for college, and there aren't enough colleges to accommodate them all.

What we need to do to make our schools more competitive is give more incentives and preferential treatments to kids that do well in classes (i.e letting the honor students go first in the lunch lines). Standards must be raised, and we must toughen up on kids that don't do as well.

To all the lesser classmen(women) if Obama is successful:

Suffer well.

Omid Dastgheib said...

I think that a super-long school day works well in other countries, but would never do well in the U.S. Kids would just get even more sick of school and pay even less attention in class.

William C said...

I agree. I also think that the way fifth graders in some places are reading Charles Dickens for homework after school instead of being kids is simply ridiculous. The direction of society is churning out better machines and worse human beings!

Jodi Miller said...

I thought this article was pretty interesting too, but I don't know if I'd be too happy about a longer school day. I can barely keep up with the schedule i have now!

I don't know about the "extending the school hours" part because we already spend more time in school than the Asian countries that seem to outscore us. If they want to "level the playing field" as the article said, then they should try to adjust the curriculum, not the school day.

Like Franklin said, those kids have parents who really push them to do well. That could be the problem with us; some of us aren't pushed enought or at all.

The new Kevin (a.k.a Kevin Kwan) said...

Actually William, reading Oliver Twist is not too much to ask for for a 5th grader. I read Jules Verne's 20k leagues under the sea when I was in 6th grade - that was pretty intense.

Of course, the Oliver Twist I read had pictures, so it wasn't as boring.

The new Kevin (a.k.a Kevin Kwan) said...

"Like Franklin said, those kids have parents who really push them to do well. That could be the problem with us; some of us aren't pushed enought or at all."

Again, competition is key here. Parents can push their kids to be competitive.

Tim dyer said...

I personally think having about an hour of homeworks is worth not haveing an incredibly long school day

Anonymous said...

this is a pretty interesting post and i do not agree with the idea of the school extension. it kills the diversity that our school system allows our kids to have while growing up. we see that a typical student like yourself, armaan, is involved wit extracurricular activities which allow people to follow their interest and hobbies. I believe our school system has a reasonable schedule because it provides the time to teach us the necessary facts of our history, english language, or math skills as well as allow students to learn their own interest and develop social skills.
if obama were somehow able to extend our school time it would decrease diversity and most likely decrease creativity throughout students. i mean im pretty sure most students' hobbies do not include math and science(no offense to those who love those subjects), but i mean something like robotics is an awesome activity that takes time to follow and learn. with a longer school schedule that time would not be available and im pretty sure obamas approval in the younger society would decrease if this were to happen.

The new Kevin (a.k.a Kevin Kwan) said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
The new Kevin (a.k.a Kevin Kwan) said...

"but i mean something like robotics is an awesome activity"

Not to mention that it is also more meaningful than just writing and working out problems. Some of these activities have real-life applications to them, reinforcing what is learned.

I think everyone here would agree that building a robot using the knowledge in math or engineering class is more educational than paper and pencil math.

Amos Yan said...

That is true Kevin..

Hands-on experience can beat just knowing how to do the problems.
Are you going to be able to apply the skill you learned, or just have enough effort to memorize it for the test and move on after its done?

Although Obama is trying to push for extended school hours, will the students and teachers go for it?

Personally I wouldn't want the extra school hours. Not only would that cut off time to spend with friends and family but extra-curriculum activities would cease to exist. However, we would probably have less homework since the teacher can go over all the work at school. This is all speculation though.

Andrew said...

It ultimately all comes down to this: easier said than done. Sure, I agree with Obama, but with my current school calendar now, do I really want to change? Sure, I want to be just as smart, or at least have the opportunity to be, as most of the other students in India, China, Taiwan, Japan, etc, but hmm, do I really want to compromise what I have now in California, in San Mateo, to meet Obama's, the globe's, or maybe even my own subconscious standards? With a little self-reflecting here, we'll eventually make up our minds on whether we want to escape the "agrarian economy" based school calendar.

For those who didn't want to read, it's essentially revolved around compromise. It's tricky.

-Andrew

Goldie said...

I personally don't think this will be a realistic and a good idea that would have positive effects on students. Since American teens are typically rebellious, I feel that most of us won't be able to handle more time at school and less time doing homework and other activities.

sebastian said...

After reading this article, i was left with mixed opinions...

Yes It would benefit us in having more time in the classroom, learning more about school topics, but unfortunately, we would have less time in our own personal lives.
Doing things like homework, extracurricular activities, or even spending time with friends would have to be cut short as a result of longer school hours.
I think that extending school schedules would be less beneficial. plus, there would be a lot more dropped heads in their desks before the endless class time is finally over.


-Sebastian Escobar