Class Time Increases In 5 States In Effort To Improve U.S. Public Education. (n.d.). Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/02/class-time-increases-in-5_n_2229411.html
5 states: Colorado, Chicago, Massachusetts, New York and Tennessee are all increasing the time per day that a student is in class.
It's a three year pilot program that's being tested in under performing schools in the state.
The purpose behind it would be to raise our global performance in Education since many other countries are in school for more hours per day or more days per year.
For me this struck a chord for this class--because I don't think it's about longer school days--it's about improve the school day we have.
If we could develop physical learning commons and virtual learning commons where students could work on projects that involved technology and problem solving skills--we would probably be giving our kids a better education.
If we could create big thinks and help our students develop their own ideas and find their own answers--we would be better off than just spending more time in a traditional classroom. A few weeks ago-I took my students to the computer lab to do a big think that we were later going to put into a Google presentation together--only to find out--there's no computers in the school that will support a large group working on Google because our computers don't have enough memory for that.
Yesterday at a site council/department head meeting we talked about changing our cell phone policies and moving towards integrating technology into our curriculum and creating bench marks for our students. If we could teach our kids 21st century skills--they'd learn more than just being in the traditional classroom.
The article mentions Japan which has less schooling than we do-but still outperforms us. Japan is based more on Inquiry and has fewer standards to achieve each year--so that subjects could be studied in depth. We could start to move towards more inquiry if we have PLCs and VLCs.
What if we had a teacher librarian who actually taught and created collaboration? (My school doesn't have this--so I apologize to anyone who is a teaching librarian that I might have offended) We could bring our kids further academically.
It's not about the hours in school--it's about how we use those hours.
I am of the same opinion that education is more a matter of quality, versus quantity. However, it feels like American culture is convinced that "more" always means better, regardless of the evidence which exists demonstrating otherwise. Of course *more* high-quality, meaningful, interactive instruction could be beneficial, but more rote and "kill and drill" style instruction seems doubtful for making improvements, Then again, this assumes that the states which are implementing the pilot program are only changing the time spent at school and offering "more of the same" style learning--perhaps they will in fact also increase the quality of instruction, as well? I certainly hope so!
ReplyDeleteThe statistics about Japanese educational trends reminds me that there is also the cultural difference in the importance of education in general; while adults still rhapsodize about the importance of "information is power," the perception that developing intelligence comes at the expense of developing social skills/physical beauty/athletic ability, as arcane as it is, continues to persist in American culture, such that "not caring" and being famous for being famous/beautiful/rich are still prized as desirable traits by most teenagers and adults.
As a tangent: I was listening to NPR over the weekend and heard a short snippet talking about how, in some Asian countries (parts of China, in particular, it mentioned) academic tutors can actually attain celebrity like status, earning advertisement deals worth millions!? I definitely need to read up on this, but the initial point is just to try and imagine a society where intelligence and studiousness were the defining characteristics of celebrities, rather than merely tolerated as long as the person is otherwise very wealthy/physically attractive--it blows my mind to imagine it, and yet...apparently it exists, as a tantalizing prospect to work towards!