by Michael Patrick

Created on: May 19, 2008

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

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