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| No | 68% | 695 votes | Total: 1018 votes | |
| Yes | 32% | 323 votes |
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Add to FavoritesWith the experience of working in a tough, low-achieving secondary school, my firm belief is that the school year shouldn't be lengthened at all because it would only help to alienate the pupils, put more pressure on the teachers and result in even poorer exam results.
Most of the pupils I know struggle to get to school on time and find it difficult to get to the end of the day because of boredom and low attention spans. So would a longer school year be for them?
HOLIDAYS AREN'T HOLIDAYS
Even though people tell me I have an easy life as a teacher, most people don't realise the amount of hard work and effort a teacher puts into their job. I might only teach lessons during the school day, but in the evenings, at weekends and during my holidays, I'm planning and preparing lessons, marking books and filling in paperwork.
A longer school year will only put more pressure on teachers who already feel weighed down by the hidden work that others don't see.
STRESS
A lot of my spare time during the day is taken up finding pupils who have misbehaved and need detentions or phoning parents to inform them of their child's bad behaviour, poor attitude or lack of homework.
A longer school year will only make this problem worse and add to teachers' stress levels, not make life any easier.
AFTER SCHOOL CLUBS
For any pupils who want to learn, extra-curricular activities are always available. These are in sports, academic clubs or whatever they want. A longer school year would mean teachers are too tired or stressed to run these, but for the more gifted, talented or brighter pupil, these are still here and should remain by choice rather than making them compulsory.
DE-MOTIVA TION
A longer school year will only serve to de-motivate pupils and teachers who already feel there is enough to do during the year. It won't raise exam results because everyone will already be fed up with too much time in school.
A CHANGE IS AS GOOD AS A REST
Holidays are a vital part of life because without them, we wouldn't be able to rest, have a lie in or recharge our batteries. School is important for learning, but children also learn through play and socialising which they do in their own time. Just as teachers deserve a break, so do students.
MAINTENANCE
My school has recently been painted and had an area of the playground extended. Could jobs like this really be done without a break in the school year? It would make life much more difficult for the running of the school and the workmen if everyone had to work around each other.
So for the health and general sanity of both pupils and staff, it's important to keep the school year as it is and not lengthen it because someone thinks it's a good idea. I presume that person wasn't one of the many parents from my school who are only to glad to hand the responsibility of their children over to someone else.
Learn more about this author, Ben Hughes.
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Yes
Yes, school should be year-round. The benefits are the consistent attention of students to learning, an awareness of education as a full-time job (just like Mom and Dad), a reduction of the temptations of too much summer leisure, and a reduction of the years spent in K-12 and on to college.
Statistics show that most high school dropouts do so after yet another summer of languid inattention to any responsibility whatsoever. When the school year approaches after three months of unstructured play, drugs and drinking (or in the case of younger students, sitting at home alone in front of the TV or video games), Johnny or Jill decides it's too hard to get up on dark mornings and trudge off to school where he or she can't remember what was learned last year and teachers are likely to be irritable for having their "vacation" ended. The result is three months of everyone trying to regain focus.
That's not good for students or teachers. Many of my teacher friends decry those first months as being "impossible." The "school year" was first established in the early Thirties for reasons that included our agrarian economy. Summer was a time to replenish the soil, replant, and grow. There was a work ethic in which children participated. The Industrial Revolution and WW-II changed that fundamental, but even after that at least one parent was at home, usually Mom, to care for and keep the children occupied during summer. Those times are gone and so is any justification for holding on to that obsolete tradition, the nine-month school year.
Intense opposition to lengthening the school year is led by lobbyists from the NEA and AFT, two teachers' unions with strong constituencies. The AFT reports that the average teacher pay was $47,600 in 2005 for a 39-week work-year. That doesn't include "teacher planning days", sick leave, and better health benefits than 52-week-a-year jobs. While the average person making $48,000 a year with two weeks' vacation and six days sick leave grosses around $950 a week, a teacher grosses the equivalent of $1,230 a week. Good work if you can get it.
A new paradigm looms before Americans. India, China, Japan, France, and other industrialized nations are beating us to death on education. Most have twelve-month school years. We need to keep our children focused on education as evidenced by our plummeting standing against those nations. Our distractions are rampant: MTV, teen reality shows on TV, drugs and alcohol, the celebration of self-indulgent ghetto and celebrity characters all contribute to a disinterest in the long-term benefits of education over short-term excitement.
Change is difficult in the face of entrenched traditions, but change we must, in spite of the ramifications. The resistance of parents, teachers, and kids themselves, to surrender traditional perquisites is a major impediment. Parents have come to view school as daycare. Teachers count on summers for revitalization of credentials and languorous vacations in the Greek Isles. Kids want summer to do whatever the hell they want without supervision.
So, how can the twelve-month school year work? Try beginning on an graduating scale where, in a national program, grades one through four are the first to go full-year, with an increase of one grade per year, every year, until all grades are included. It's not enough to simply extend each school year with more of the standard material; no, it means reinventing and adjusting courseware to fit a four-quarter cycle. This has to take place with tradeoffs for higher pay to affected teachers complemented by legislatively enforced requirements of parents to contribute time or financial support to public schools. Those who object may opt out and home-school their children (monitored by the Department of Education), but that's even more time-intensive for parents than public school.
The transition can't be done by simple executive decree and it won't happen overnight. It takes inspired leadership and a gradual process that has to be sold as much as it's implemented with all its gnarly complications.
Will there be resistance? You bet. But the need is great and the old school is out.
Learn more about this author, Michael Patrick.
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