Year-round School.....WHY NOT?

Knox County school system although improving has not reached its full potential in educating our youth. More specifically, my children attend school in Powell, TN (one in elementary, 2 in middle and 1 in high school) and they, on average, are about a "C" when evaluated among the Knox County public schools. This is completely unacceptable to me, I don't even accept a "C" from my children (unless I have knowledge of a struggle that they have in a particular subject, such as Math) and I don't want to accept a "C" from the overall school system.

Then I read an article dated Sunday, November 18th, 2007 a couple of months back and the article further validated my concern with my children's education. There is a public out cry that children should start school later in the year (as they did when I was in the public school system) and this outcry changed the start date of the public school system and just like that! A complaint, a "vote' and its a done deal!

I, personally stay on top of my children's grades which can be validated through my daughters teachers at Powell High School. I am sure that they are really relieved that she is moving on to other classes this next grading period! Now, I do not attribute all of her grades to the teachers, trust me -- she is a teenager is is much more concerned with what her best friend is doing on Friday night than the test that the teacher is reviewing at the time. However, I was a product of the public school system and graduated from High school NOT equipped for what it took to survive in college. I can honestly share with you that when I graduated high school, I never had written an essay and no, I was not in remedial classes. I took my first essay test in a Western Civilization class and made my first 40 ever! I had NO idea what to do with an essay test. Needless to say, being the ambitious person that I am, I quickly educated myself on writing essays, term papers, research papers etc., and managed to routinely pull out A's on those things. However, I do blame the school system for not ensuring that I graduated with this knowledge already obtained, a necessary skill for college.

This too is ridiculous and absurd. The traditional school calendar pales in comparison to other school systems, including ones overseas. No wonder our children are the way they are regarding work, regarding being outside with physical activity -- more specifically, being L-A-Z-Y! The traditional school calendar was put into effect TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO -- yes, 200 years ago! It made sense then, children worked on the farm, they needed the summer time to do this work so their family could survive in the winter months. These days, our children only focus on vacations and while I have informed my 15 year old and my 14 year old that they WILL be doing SOMETHING constructive this summer, such as working v/s sitting around playing the game stations, on the computer or calling me and harassing me that they "are bored". I told my mother that ONE time in my life, she cured me from that quickly by putting my body to work!

What is wrong with the year around school calendar, it more accurately reflects the real world, not to mention that it assists our children in retaining what they learned the previous year v/s spending the first 9 weeks reviewing what they learned the previous year. The arguments that arise in support of the current, traditional school calendar reminds me of a discussion between parents and children that results in "because I said so" with no validity to the argument other than "we just always done it that way."

I hear the argument that I must be "evil, wanting to steal the summers away from the children" So then the debate ensues between the "SUMMER GRINCH" and the "DO GOODERS" who want to save the summers. I want to do what is best for my children and strongly feel that assisting in education retention (i.e., shorter summers so less time is spent reviewing what was learned last year, but forgotten over the 12 weeks) is the best way to go. Evidence suggest that year around school prevents summer regression, which means................more time spent on learning NEW information v/s re-learning OLD information!

Another argument that I have is that MOST children do not have a parent home all summer with them, so children often sit idle (I know mine do at times), so they sit and play game stations all day, or on my-space or worse things occur along with sitting and eating all day long out of boredom. Over 50% of American are obese and our children these days are not getting smaller, they are larger than I ever was at their age.

To further validate this argument that this would be good for our children in the way of educating them and preparing them for REAL LIFE is that students globally attend schools year around and some for more days than American students and what does this mean? Well, students in India, for example, attend school 225 days v/s our 180 days, this is an additional three years of education by the time they are graduating seniors. China attends 250 days, nearly five more years, equivalent to a college degree.

So, while Knox County quibbles over this issue, emotional thoughts and responses have no place in the factual arguments and we need to engage in more thoughtful debate and ask more questions and put more thought into what the outcome would be rather than just keeping the same educational calendar because that is what we've done for 200 years. Maybe its time for a change!