Taking away the youth of students

Lagging far behind the rest of the world academically, American schools have been struggling to catch up. Now, we take action!

The proposed solution is longer hours of schooling per day and shorter summers. The old school system is based on the "agrarian economy". Since most students are no longer working on farms, the system needs to be fixed. Society, students and student lifestyles have changed dramatically since the days when most children helped their parents in the fields after school. Today, we have a mix of rural and urban students who have different struggles than those my parents and grandparents. But those struggles are not addressed. Instead, we assume that today's students have more free time with no additional obligations.

From middle-school to senior year of high-school, the test scores in core subject areas dramatically decrease. In science, for example, the US drops from being ranked 3 to being 16 from 4th to 12th grade. The number of hours spent in the classroom is also lower than those in other classrooms globally. US students spend 180 hours in the classroom versus the 243 that Japanese students spend. Charter schools in the US have longer hours as well, with better test scores to show for it. Somewhere about this point in the national discussion on improving US test scores, the connection between longer hours in the classroom and better test scores was made. Obviously, this is the answer! No need to investigate any further! Problem solved, smiles all around, and we can now improve our national image.

By increasing the amount of hours spent in school, something will have to be cut. Students in public school today have school to attend, homework to do, extracurricular activities to do at school, extracurricular activities outside of school, a job, and family/friend time. The first thing to go, if students are like me, is sleep. In order to do "everything" as normal, hours must be added to the day. Students will be more likely to fall asleep in classrooms, and what can they learn when they are sleeping? Should we instead cut the extracurricular activities? Let's take all the fun out of being a child. Many Japanese students spend extra hours outside the classroom attending private tutor lessons. How long will students have to focus on school before we deem it too long?

We have already started educating children earlier. Kindergarten went from being a fun-filled day to strict guidelines and drills. Now, we have introduced Pre-K. If you dare go into Kindergarten without having been to Pre-K you will be at a disadvantage and "behind" other students. When mothers start comparing about the knowledge and understanding of 3 and 4-year-olds then you know there are problems. Not that I don't think that 4-year-olds are smart. I know one who is, arguably, the smartest little boy I know. But, it is not because he spends his days undergoing number and letter drills. What are we willing to sacrifice to improve our national image? We have already sacrificed our small children. And what has this gotten us? Well, the scores have not improved, but our children's lifestyles have been compromised. Now, we want to take the happiness and fun away from school-age children and teens.

Quality education beats the quantity every day. Instead of having our students sit under the same learning environment for longer and expect them to improve, maybe we need to change that learning environment. Maybe the problem is not with the students. Perhaps it is in the curriculum, or the teachers, or the learning environment, or the class size.

One of the best examples of the positives of a smaller classroom size, relaxed learning environment, and shorter hours in the school day are homeschoolers. Being raised in a homeschool learning environment, I can speak first-hand about the positives. I watched my peers and siblings achieve lofty goals. One such homeschool graduate graduated junior college at age 16 and is a college senior at age 18. This is not atypical of the homeschool community.

Most of my friends are public school graduates. I would argue that each of them is incredibly gifted. Several got full funding to universities and grad school. So, obviously not all hope is lost for the public school system.

Solutions are never as easy as lawmakers present. And I don't anticipate this will be any different. Adding hours of schooling will not make a big impact on children if we ignore other factors.

Colleen is a graduate student.