Kerri’s Two Cents:

I felt mixed emotions while reading this article, More School: Obama would curtail summer vacation Yes, the U.S. is lagging behind other countries when it comes to academics. However, is elongating the school day or doing away with summer vacation the real answer to the education problems our nation faces today?

As I read this article, selfishly I thought here goes our summers back east. Every summer since we moved to Colorado, we’ve been lucky enough to take the kids and spend close to a month vacationing in Massachusetts with our families and friends! What about authentic fish & chips, the ocean, frolicking on the Cape Cod beaches? I’m just saying, it would be very hard to give that up. Many children, as well as parents, enjoy their summer vacations. Summer camps, family vacations, play dates, museums, and road trips provide a nice escape to the school year. They can be educational too. I wince at the thought of sending my children to school year round. Don’t kids need a summer break to re-energize and refocus? At the same time, we moms are always thrilled about the anticipation of sending our children off to school again, so maybe giving up two weeks of summer vacation doesn’t seem that bad.

I don’t know if elongating the school day is the answer either. As it is now, my children get home around 4:00. They eat a snack, play for a while, do homework, eat dinner, take a bath and the next thing you know, it’s their bedtime. We can barely fit that routine into the three and a half hours they have from arriving home from school until their head hits their pillow. If you add on a couple of extra hours of school each day, I don’t know how everything would get accomplished. I think back to my own childhood. In middle school and high school, I participated in seasonal sports, dance, majorettes, tutoring, etc. If the school day was lengthened, what would happen to the extracurricular activities that make us well rounded individuals. However, as a former teacher, I always heard myself saying, there’s just not enough time in the school day to do it all. Some days I could’ve really used an extra hour or so to complete all the projects planned.  It’s a tough dilemma.

I commend President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan for their commitment, passion, and resolve in their efforts to improve education here in the United States. I think it’s all about quality education, not quantity. There is no one answer that is going to solve the many educational issues we face in our country today. However, if they are considering having children spend more time in school why don’t we do away with early release days and minimize school vacations? Maybe this would be a good start.

Jenn’s Two Cents:

Kerri’s right; it is about the quality education versus the quantity of education.  You could send a child to school year round, from 8:00 to 5:00, and accomplish nothing if there weren’t quality educators, lessons and enrichment to develop that child’s brain.  To me, it makes no sense to extend the academic school day – even if the curriculum is structured.  I do feel that offering after school enrichment is a better choice.  This way, parents and children can choose subjects and activities that are engaging to the child.  Giving a child the choice to participate in something that is of specific interest to them can only benefit the learning experience.  If they were forced to follow a routine lesson plan for more than 6 hours a day, I don’t think they would thrive.

There must be some research done on how a child’s brain responds and absorbs after being in a learning environment for an extended day.  In my experience, young brains and bodies are completely sucked of their energy after 4:00 PM.  They just can’t absorb any more.  Certainly we’ve all tried asking our young ones how their day was and what they did in school when they come home.  Were they too exhausted to tell you?

Extending the school year is a different story.  Patch working together a myriad of summer camps, activities and vacations is a royal pain in the butt, not to mention costly.  Working parents need to fill the time they’re at the office with various activities for their kids and inevitably scramble to get one kid to swimming and zoo camp and the other to soccer and a play date.  My sister-in-law in Chicago sends her five year old daughter to an eight week day camp (for the same as it would cost to send her to public pre-school) that spans the entire summer vacation and incorporates all the various activities (zoo & museum trips, sports, swim lessons, art, etc.)!  I think that if this option were available here, that I’d be first in line to sign-up.  It may not be rigorous math instruction but some of these camps are designed for children to learn outside of the classroom.  Cramming more and more information into our children’s heads just so we can “get ahead” does not seem like the right path to take. For me, it’s that the quality of the instruction and lessons can make up for the quantity of time spent regurgitating multiplication tables and who was the 23^rd President.

On the other hand, I do think extending the school year another couple of weeks makes a lot of sense.  Six weeks is plenty of time for summer trips back east or road-tripping to Yellowstone. I don’t think an additional two weeks will give the United States much of an academic boost over other countries, though.  There is a lot more that needs to be done to fix that issue.

Please make a comment and tell us your two cents on the subject!