Schools out for summer...or not?

Alice Cooper once sang all students national anthem of school. "Schools out for summer!" Well, if Obama has his way, maybe not Mr. Cooper.

While going to check my email yahoo posted an article about the Obama administration and education reform. The gist of the article that you need to get is that administrators and politicians are thinking about extending the hours of schools and cutting down on the summer.

So what does this mean? No more summer!? Of course not. Everyone realizes that kids need that break away from education. It provides a time for relaxation and growth that school can not give to kids. Rather, a new policy would limit those summer days.
As Arne Duncan, Education Secretary said,

"Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy and not too many of our kids are working the fields today."

The calendar has been based on the agrarian calender when children were needed for the planting and harvesting seasons. Now, yes, some areas  still need that. However, most cities and school areas have migrated towards a capitalist society and no longer work on the family farms. If this is the case, why not lose some summer day and replace them with school? Kids are not planting in the summer, they are chillin at the pool. Obama feels the same way (not necessarily in the same terms). Even if we don't extend the year, why not have more summer programs and summer school things?

Summer School, eh? Now, I don't know what other kids school years were like, but summer school was a source of shame for me. Back in the day, it meant you were not smart enough to pass the grade and needed more time to finish. Sadly, this is a stigma still in summer school. However, it shouldn't be that way. It is very frustrating to see kids leave school with a high reading level then come back from the summer and they drop two grade levels in their reading. What happened? It was only a few months, how could it drop so low? Lack of practice. Reading is a skill you have to do everyday to fully excel in it. Most of the times, kids just don't read. There are always amazing programs like the summer reading program at public libraries. However, the sad truth is that if you are not forcing a kid to read in the beginning, then they just won't. Educators look to summer school to fix this problem, or at least a summer school program disguised as "camp."

Clip Art by Mark A. Hicks

There have been plenty of organizations that realize that summer time is critical for students. So what to do? Make summer school fun! They implement a school like curriculum into the program. The thing is, they realize it is summer, and they give a lot of time to field trips and hands on learning to make it fun. In my personal experience, I never attended summer school or a real camp in the woods sort of deal. On the other hand, I went to a lot of "educational" programs through Girl Scouts. I did everything from dinosaurs to mad scientists things. I was learning without knowing it in a sense. I was lucky and had that offered to me. Some kids don't.

Are there other benefits to longer school days? Yes! Did you know that juvenile crimes are highest between 3-6 in the afternoon on week days? What time is that? After school time. After school programs are in high demand throughout the country and the cost is just as high. So why not extend school time to half of that and provide that extra learning time? I remember working in the school system in Boston. It was difficult because all you could do was focus on reading and math. There was hardly any time for the fun subjects like science and social studies. If there was that extra time, students could have more time to really absorb the information brought to them in class. Crazy huh?

So extend school time or have a longer school year. Personally I would do both, but each one cost a lot, so I know we would have to pick one. So maybe school isn't out for the summer...but it is still rocking.