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Comment by protomyth | Hacker News Reader

An 11 month school year would be a nightmare and screw up summer activities. Plus, the misalignment of HS and College schedules will hurt advanced students. School going to 6pm in the northland is a non-starter and dangerous.

(getting a little sick of the down votes without comment)

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Also, it's a very American attitude to deficiency (just work more/harder) that ignores the far deeper problems. Outside of the Asian countries, who nobody should be emulating, the countries that do education well all have sane school hours. let kids be kids and figure out what you're doing fundamentally wrong. Poverty and a basic lack of respect for education are a good place to start.

Look at the Jews (not the Chinese, they go a bit overboard). They take education and achievement seriously. When my buddy Dave was in grade 11, his father was making him spend an hour a day studying for the SATs. He volunteered in research labs, got great grades, and got into a very good combined college/med school (rpi). He now does medical research, at 25.

Dave's parents placed a lot of emphasis on educational achievement, and it paid off. His brothers are similarly successful, and this attitude pervades Jewish culture in away that can't be said of society as a whole. Now, obviously, this is a value that individual families must hold, and something that Government can't just legislate. Still, there are ways of encouraging this behaviour that don't involve determining funding by standardized test scores. Most of it, however, needs to come from Americans themselves.

I thought that the "American Dream" was to be an all-star quarter back in high school and college, and then get signed by the NFL. Now that's a sound career path that everyone should follow... </sarcasm>

For some people this actually is. It's a problem with a number of externalities especially when it's parents forcing it on their kids.

I will agree with you. I grew up way too fast, have a few kids of my own, and they are growing up way too fast for different reasons than I did. My reason? I worked from 13 on for wages. My kids? They're working much harder than I had to just to get a chance to go to a decent university.

The pressure on our kids is pretty significant. To the point they WILL NOT miss school when they are sick. Can't miss this, can't miss that. It's better to go to school and get everyone else sick. It's out of control.

6PM would be a nightmare. The amount of homework my kids have is astonishing. I never experienced anything like it when I went to school. They are ALREADY working on it most of the night trying to get it all done.

Yes, they are in AP classes - maybe it's a little different than the normal classes, but it's an option to those who desire it. Shall we keep them in school from early hours of the day until late hours at night?

When do most of you eat dinner? 7PM? 8PM? 9PM? Anyone recall that "family dinner" - or did we all forget because we work 10, 12 or 15 hours a day trying to "do something." I can see how this is especially difficult in the midwest, and other parts of the U.S., where it is dark very early in the day in the winter.

Dunno...just don't agree with this plan.

Maybe Steve imagined something like the European system. You go to school until 5/6pm but you do your whole homework in school and the afternoon is for that and other activities to broaden the mind.

Otherwise, that's a stupid idea. In Germany teachers are civil servants so they can't build unions, they can't get fired too, but they can pushed off their position when they are bad teachers.

Huh? I went to school till 3:15pm.

"the European system"? The systems in individual European countries are about as different from each other as any of them are different from the US system.

One attempt to somewhat align the different European systems for higher education was the ECTS [1], but even that isn't quite perfect..

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Credit_Transfer_and_Ac...

Fair enough on the 6pm thing. However, there seems to be evidence [1] that the typical 2 month summer break is hurting student performance - especially for poorer students whose parents can't afford to put them into enrichment activities in the summer. How, exactly, would 11 month school years be a nightmare? Misalignment already exists - Colleges get 4 months off, don't they?

I also recall seeing a talk about this exact topic, but I can't seem to find it at the moment.

[1] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/parenting/education/lear...

So Chinese factories along with Chinese style education?

I strongly disagree. Finland leads the world in education because they provide individualised learning and teach critical thinking. The children start school there at a much later age too. They don't run a 9 hour a day, 11 month military camp for kids.

Importance of play: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland#Readiness_...

"Children too busy for playtime": http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-05/13/content_871182...

I agree that 6pm is too late to end the school day. I don't see the issue with 11 month school though. Especially since it doesn't necessarily mean less vacation time overall - that "lost" month can be spread across 2 week windows elsewhere in the year. The point is avoiding the big 2 month gap.

I would rather ask what is wrong with our educational system that makes a 2 month gap bad but a 1 month gap ok?

In the US there are plenty of summer programs for low income children. More important, summer is a time many kids work or be kids. This belief that he only place to learn is school is bunk. It is bad enough the amount of busy work students are assigned now (3+ hours) of homework a night. Adults get mad at our work / life balance, yet we seem bound and determined to heap soul destroying hours on our children. We need to get out of the mode we are raising factory workers and give children back some time to be creative and dream.

How can anyone justify putting children in a school for 10+ hours a day for 11 months? You wouldn't work that job and neither would I. Heck, in many countries it would be illegal to have an adult work those hours. College & HS are pretty close in most states.

Imagine being able to skip the annoying 2+ weeks of review at the beginning of every school year - that's the goal/benefit of trimming summer vacation to 1 month.

So, to save 2 weeks we take another month of the students time away from activities that might have been teaching the student different things than the school is willing to teach? Sounds like an unfair trade-off. School is not the only place of learning and cutting down the large breaks removes possibilities of doing something else just as educational and often times more fulfilling.

Here in Australia kids get 6 weeks off in summer, plus 2 weeks in autumn, winter, and spring. This seems much more sensible than getting everything off over the summer.

Here in France kids get 2 months off in summer, plus 1 week in autumn, 2 weeks for Christmas, 2 weeks late winter, 2 weeks in spring. The best of both worlds from the kids point of view.

That's pretty much what my son has at his school here in Scotland.

I'm pretty sure these studies have been debunked in the past. I tend to agree with the debunking, because the arguments against summer vacation always stand up a strawman with the assumption that "good parents" send kids to camp, take the summers off, etc.

None of my circle of friends went to camp. We played outside, hung out with grandparents, etc. My parents weren't teachers, so they didn't have summers off.

Personally, I lived for summer vacation until I was like 14. If you took that away, it would have negatively affected me, and many others.

> Personally, I lived for summer vacation until I was like 14. If you took that away, it would have negatively affected me, and many others.

I honestly think this is a product of society and not some intrinsic driver for kids in school. Would a 14 year old me like it if someone told me summer vacation was canceled? No. But if I had been in a system with a shorter summer vacation from the beginning, I don't think I would care too much.

Maybe I'm biased, but my best times with friends were usually during school months. Summers were usually spent playing a lot of video games and going on boring camping trips with various relatives. At the time I loved the break, but I can hardly remember a summer where something really interesting and eventful happened.

"No. But if I had been in a system with a shorter summer vacation from the beginning, I don't think I would care too much."

I suppose it's like someone that lives in North Korea: They don't know the freedoms they are missing because they've never had them.

" Summers were usually spent playing a lot of video games and going on boring camping trips with various relatives. At the time I loved the break, but I can hardly remember a summer where something really interesting and eventful happened."

Most of my favorite childhood memories happened during summer vacation. The thing is, once you are older..you can't ever re-create that time of complete freedom because you have life responsibilities. I don't want to take that a way from kids.

These are inconveniences, not fundamental obstacles. Our preference for convenience at the expense of results has led us to our current position of having a poorly educated underclass and a higher educational establishment in which the biggest earners are football coaches. Jobs' specific proposals may not be the right ones, and simply jacking up time spent in school without addressing educational methods etc is not going to take care of the problem by itself. but we have some serious catching up to do.

I didn't downvote but would you care to explain your reasons for all of these statements? What is so nightmatish about schools open 11mths of the year? How is school being open until 6pm dangerous? Is it something to do with darkness? Is darkness inherently dangerous?

Personally I think the suggestion about union rules and hiring/firing based on merit is the most significant of the bunch. More of the same type of school environment is not going to help.

I'm guessing that in the northern states, part of the year is a harsh winter and early sunset, so having kids leave school at 6pm could lead to them walking home in the snow and in the dark.

Yep, having a bunch of K-6 students on a bus at 6 - 8pm every night in the winter is a safety hazard. It gets dark early and school buses are not the best for long term warmth when they break down.

Working 11 months for 10+ hours a day is a nightmare for most parents. Add to that the inevitable homework and you get a "work" / life balance that is a nightmare. No time for friends, dance, music, or play. Wakeup, goto school, do "approved" activities then come home and eat, do homework, and go to bed. More hours are not the answer. We need creative workers in science, math, engineering, and vocational. Not a bunch of factory robots.

A lot of people in this thread seem to think that being in school until 5 or 6 PM would mean being in the classroom for ten hours a day or more.

That additional time would be fantastic if used for athletics, self-study, club activities (with a lot of personal freedom for the students), and so on.

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