Students beware: The summer vacation you just enjoyed could be sharply curtailed if President Barack Obama gets his way. Obama says American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage with other students around the globe. "Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas," the president said earlier this year. "Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom." The president, who has a sixth-grader and a third-grader, wants schools to add time to classes, to stay open late and to let kids in on weekends so they have a safe place to go. "Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy and not too many of our kids are working the fields today," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. - Yahoo News
Dominant Social Theme: More work, less play?
Free-Market Analysis: One problem with an expanded school year is that it likely won't make much of a difference. The American public school system is so rigidly controlled by Washington now - given the standardized tests via No Child Left Behind - that the curriculum itself probably needs an overhaul rather than its resources.
In fact, the public school system in America was basically an invention of the early 20th century, and we tend to believe that school performance has been going down fitfully ever since. It could very well be possible that literacy rates were higher in America prior to public education. Additionally, while sciences and math continue to be upgraded in the American classroom, it is an open question as to whether American students are doing better as a group with these subjects.
Then there is the large issue of public school itself. A bright child, well motivated, will probably learn no matter what. The average child will also learn in due course. The slow child who needs extra help becomes the standard around which the rest of the class revolves. For bright children, and even moderately bright children, education is probably to some degree a matter of interest and application. They would learn in almost any sympathetic environment. Slow children need more help, but at what cost?
Conclusion: American public schools seem to us to be going down the hill rather than up. We tend to believe that all the applications of tests and additional money will not help the system in the long run. It is a system where towns and cities routinely spend between US$10,000 and US$15,000 to educate an individual student, and the results are often disassociated from the actual dollar amount, the time spent by teachers, the amount of teachers per students or any other specific resource. What is needed is likely privatization and decentralization - neither of which President Obama seems inclined to contemplate.
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