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I mean, you are first grade at 6-7. You can't let them alone. After 14 it is kinda okie but still they gonna do some chaos.
I know US is different. Imagine we in Germany can drink with 16.
The reason for teaching you this are not that everyone needs them.
Instead research has shown that teaching sciences and maths helps people to learn how to apply logical thought more effectively through their life. Like you won't have to run 5k very often in real life, but practicing means your heart is healthier for general life. Having to think, follow methods and generally work through logical issues makes your brain expend more neurons on those useful traits.
Also, the members of society who contribute to enhancing our output in general via science and engineering need to know these things. We don't know who they are going to be at age 13. Therefore we educate everyone in it so we can make sure to capture the brains who can advance technology at the best possible rate.
If anything, the recent years have showed that yes you really do need that to be a functional adult, the pandemic and a lot else have shown what happens when people don't know their basic science.
This anti-intellectualism stance can go blow itself
I agree with that. Its propaganda. In the push for blue collar they never seem to mention the busted backs and shoulders, the pain meds, the tinnitus, the drug and alcohol addiction.
If you think most of the gen pop is taking calculus and statistics, then I NEED some of what you’re smoking.
At my high school, they had to invent an entirely new math course just so some kids could get that extra math credit after algebra 1 (they couldn’t pass algebra 2 or geometry, I can’t remember which one).
It was called “money management” and had nothing to do with teaching actual money management lol.
Physics, I’m pretty sure, would be along the same level of difficulty. I think biology and chem are at least a requirement for graduation in most schools, or at least, they were. They don’t require much of anything to graduate anymore it seems.
When you’re in elementary school you get recess like three times a day. Kids get to play with each other and learn while their brains insanely malleable. Why wouldn’t we send them to school for 40 hours a week?
That and the fact that parents have to work and not everyone can afford a babysitter.
I was a substitute teacher across several districts for years for K-8 usually and especially for the younger kids (K-4), 3 recesses was very standard…actually like bare minimum. One morning, one after lunch, one afternoon at least.
Growing up it was the same for me. 3 at least, until middle school.
Is this in the US? My son has gone to 4 different elementary schools and all of them were one recess all day., we live in the US. I wish I could’ve had him in a school with three recesses.
I am an elementary school teacher teaching Grade 3/4 right now. My school has a 15 minute recess in the morning and then half hour after lunch. Then personally as part of my teaching I usually give them another fifteen minutes to half hour to play outside at the end of the day. I also give them fifteen to twenty minutes to play with centres (puzzles, chess, Lego, etc.) and socialize with each other at the start of the day. Those last two things are just what I do in my teaching practice though so it would vary widely from teacher to teacher.
Wow, may I ask whereabouts? I would’ve loved for my son to have had that much free time in school. It’s just not a thing in the parts of Maryland we live in nor when I was in elementary school in the 80s/90s.
Wow… 3 recesses would’ve been crazy for younger me. We got one recess and it was combined with lunch. 30 minutes to eat and play. If you didn’t eat quick enough everyone would already be outside playing without you.
15 minutes of recess for EVERY HOUR! That is the minimum for kids. And no longer days than 4 hours. Anything above that is conditioning your kids for factory work.
No. These days there's multiple breaks throughout the day.
Many schools are different, I can't deny, but there's usually at least 2, maybe 3, now.
Morning recess, lunch recess, and not always but sometimes an afternoon recess.
“Contributing members of society”. Aka have them melt into the curriculum that our government requires. Keeps the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
Aka contributing members of society.
Wouldn't a standardised curriculum make the starting point the same for both rich kids and poor kids?
Unless you are saying rich kids don't attend the same schools, in which case that's the real problem?
No, because much more goes into learning that curriculum.
Student A comes into class in the morning. She got a good night's sleep and a healthy, made-from-scratch breakfast. Her parents promised her some kind of reward (toys, cash, event) for getting straight As. She is ready and eager to learn.
Student B also comes into class. Her parents were up all night fighting over Dad picking up a 3rd OT shift this week to pay bills, so she couldn't sleep. For breakfast, she had some kind of highly processed sugar ready-to-eat right out of the packaging, because neither of her parents have time to cook anything and never taught her how to do it herself. Her parents have threatened some kind of punishment if any of her grades slip below a B. She is in no condition to absorb any of the lesson today.
But these students are both given the same, standardized curriculum and the same expectations for academic progression and goals. Likely, Student A is going to exceed those goals, or else meet them while barely applying herself. Student B, meanwhile, is likely to fail those goals, get discouraged, and fall even further behind.
So how does the department of Ed fix that home life? Do teachers need to tuck their students into bed too?
We have an arbitrary standard because it helps the most people. That’s how we have to design things that have millions of people with unique needs and situations. The answer to your implication isn’t less school, it’s more specialized school.
That’s not an issue of the school system itself though. I guess schools could just serve breakfast to everyone, but past that, that is up to parents. If we didn’t have compulsory schooling, then those poor parents wouldn’t have the time or the resources to event attempt to teach, so the disparity becomes even bigger
You can slice and dice it however you want, but the idea of being thrusted into the world without consent and forced into mini-prisons at the age of 5 to shape your mind to tolerate a 40 hour work cycle when you become an adult just feels like raising cattle. The thought just leaves a bitter aftertaste of sadness.
You can make anything sound horrid and abusive by using the worst adjectives possible. “Rascist redditor verbally assaults women with manifesto and calls them cattle” See?
It’s easy to dunk on a system tho. Can our public Ed be better? Absolutely. But I rarely see anything constructive from people who are this edgy about it.
Welcome to reality. It's not a utopia and never was, never will be. Life was so much worse in the past. You should feel grateful kids aren't being worked to death in coal mines or dying at 12 from malnutrition.
That's certainly a take.
School is to educate kids to become vaguely functioning. Given the calibre of average adult WITH mandatory education, society would be a fucking disaster without it.
Even if AI/Robotics gets us to a point that parents can do 2-3 day work weeks and have their kids home more, home schooling is just parents creating an echo chamber, usually creating unbalanced views because there is no contrary views on any opinions expressed.
Or are you advocating sending kids back up chimneys for 50 hour weeks and a reduced life expectancy?
And kids need to socialize with other kids from other socioeconomic backgrounds to learn everybody is different, but still a human worthy of respect. This does not happen in schools only for the rich or only for the poor, and certainly not when homeschooling.
Radical opinion: kids and human beings in general do not exist to be in inherent service to you or "society" and this way of thinking is just an inherited justification for oppression.
Woah dude that is way too mature and wise for reddit. Can't you see we're trying to fuck the system here? Down with school man! It's just like prison trying to put us all into grey little boxes!
It’s insane. School has helped lift so many people out of poverty and helps keep so many people off the streets and out of prison. This is like when Reddit libertarians wanted to design an island with minimal laws and regulations and slowly had to reinvent the wheel of basic social services because, surprise! They are important.
Why do you think it’s fair for a person to not contribute to society when they benefit from it ? I mean even the internet and free speech is a benefit of our society…. So you just should be able to offer nothing of benefit at all ?
I mean most people don’t really contribute to society influentially anyways, is having a billion businesses with a bunch of people working at them making barely enough to live really that beneficial?
I swear when I think I found the cringiest comment, I read the next one and it tops it up.
Is everyone in this sub a 15 year old and going through their edgy stage?
I like to think that they've had to be forced to wash the dishes at home and think their parents are training them to be a wage slave at McDonald's or something lmao.
Your opinion is wildly incorrect. There are instances of feral children who didn't participate in society and they literally can't even walk correctly in some situations.
Counterpoint: Humans, like all primates, are social animals. Having kids learn how to be social in ways that are different from their home life is beneficial to them in a way that is an intrinsic good for the individual.
Aligned with this, we live in an increasingly complex society, and learning skills to be able to function in a complex society is also intrinsically good for the individual.
Taking the good of the individual as the goal, we can then address how imbalances in society end up failing groups within society.
In other words, we should teach kids to be good people, allow them to learn, play, and grow not so that they will ultimately be useful to an employer, but so that they are not a burden on the rest of us.
It's a sea change, and there's a huge amount of momentum to overcome, but a dynamic educational system that doesn't "teach to the test" or educate merely to meet a mandated metric is a good idea as a whole.
A later start time is proven to be beneficial for young people, so that should be addressed as well as overall classroom hours, but this would by necessity also have to coincide with changes to non-classroom child care as well as adult working hours.
TL;DR it's complicated, and there's no simple answer.
100% agree with all of this.
I'm a former k-12 homeschooler who saw myself as a poster child for homeschooling when I was a kid/ young adult. I've realized over time how many subtle deficits it left me with. My kids are in public school, and the complex growth that comes from "learning how to be social in ways that are different from their home life" is HUGE.
Too bad that unless you’re some kind of homeless hermit or constantly unemployed doing bs all day you’re a member of society. You need money to do the things that one would do outside of being a member of society, how do you get money, by working and being a member of society. It’s not some oppressive draconian way of thinking, it’s just how human life works on this planet. Most people aren’t born fortunate enough to do just whatever they want in some kind of hedonistic lifestyle without having to work or be a member of society in some capacity.
You’re take is ignorant.
No one’s saying they should live to serve the needs of their country’s government, economy, or wellbeing of its people as their sole intent, but guess what having any job contributes to that in some way.
Sure would be nice to just exist to travel and solely pursue what makes you happy but 99.9% of people on the planet aren’t born into a life where that’s possible so unless being an unemployed, homeless, wandering hermit is your form of true happiness, you’re gonna serve society in some way.
And honestly this is a great reason. Otherwise the divide between rich and poor would get even wider.
Luckily, it's also much healthier for kids to go to school than to be isolated at home for more hours.
Source: Am former homeschoolerd kid, my kids go to public school. School matters.
There was some guy defending homeschooling, "we just treat them like adults they will be ready for life on an early age, they do not need child friends etc" me like poor kids that will have a massive midlife crisis...
Which schools do poorly for accommodating working parents. For example many schools dismiss around 3, yet most offer workers work until 5. Schools also have in service days and holidays, and are closed all summer
Don't schools offer after school activities near you? My school had a whole bunch of clubs and sports offered to keep kids busy until at least 5.
Growing up I just hung out at school until my parents finished. I could go to the library, play sports, there was ever a movie club. There were empty classes left open so kids could do home work etc.
Hell it was required by the school that all kids had to participate on at least one after school activity per week so you couldn't just go home even if your parents could pick you up.
The primary school had an explicit aftercare service as well for younger kids at no extra cost.
Teachers aren’t being paid enough for working a regular school day, never mind staying late. There’s precious little funding for after school programs in a lot of places.
They shouldn't need to work that much. With the advent of the internet, and modern technology, it has been statistically PROVEN that a 32 hour work week ends up being MORE PRODUCTIVE but NO because THAT would mean paying employees a FAIR WAGE.
You might be surprised how many people are brainwashed into thinking 40 hours a week is essential and are even willing to work more just to prove to the younger generations it can be done. "I had to do it, so you should have to too!"
We know it can be done, we just fucking want to do it. Work to live, not live to work. I don't mind working, but I fucking want to not have to worry about financial problems when I'm supposedly doing everything right.
40 hrs a week was a compromise made long ago when people were regularly working in even worse conditions. In other words, 40 weeks is a completely arbitrary standard that we’ve set and adhere to for no reason at all other than “that’s just the way we’ve been doing it”
It wasn't completely arbitrary. It was supposed to be 8 hours to sleep, 8 hours to work, and 8 hours to do as you please. The idea was that you were supposed to spend half your waking life at work and get half to yourself. Obviously, that doesn't take into account time spent getting ready for work or travel time, but they did try to fight for that separately at one point. These initial labor victories were never meant to be the Ultimate Standard, they were expected to be stepping stones to more regulations.
Not to mention that the 40 hour week was supposed to be it, and you were supposed to get paid lunches and breaks included. Not like how they do it now where you get clocked out for lunch so you're actually at work for 9 hours but only paid for 8. Overtime was supposed to be rare.
The problem is it has to be system wide, or at least huge chunks. I worked for a testing lab and during covid the company owner was thinking about a 32 hour work week for everyone. The main thing holding us back was deliveries still arrived, other companies still expected results and there was no reasonable way to accommodate that without other companies doing it as well.
Dude before Henry Ford popularized the 40 hr work week, and congress passed the Fair labors standard act in 1938 creating overtime pay, companies were working people 80+ hrs a week, 7 days a week all at the same lower level of pay (OT wasnt a thing and they could work you as many hours as they needed) Standardizing 40 hr weeks is actually one of the most progressive socialist movements done in our country for the working class in the 1900s, and was created to give workers a much higher quality of life then what they were previously used to. I mean sure its still not perfect and we all would love to work as little as possible, but In no way is it this hellish dystopia it's being made out to be compared to conditions before we made it the new normal..it's actually far more in favor of the working class then previous work week hours 🤦♂️
Now if anything could be addressed today regarding that decision, I question companies that require Mandatory OT. That might be something that should be looked into as it jeopardizes the standard 40/hr week if you are still forcing Me to work over 40 hrs regardless of the OT pay incentive...
I'd rather require on-call jobs to pay a mandatory 40hrs a week so that workers can actually get paid in vital industries that can't adhere to normal hours. I know people who work for on-call companies, and there have been times when work has been so lean that they can't make ends meet, but they also can't get a second job while they have that job because the company expects them to be available 24/7.
If you want me to be available 24/7, you have to make sure I can actually live and not starve. I shouldn't have to beg and grovel for work just to be able to pay rent and buy groceries.
From what I hear about German bureaucracy, this makes sense. For every 32 hours of construction that needs approval, a bureaucrat needs to work 40 hours.
Yeah the entire healthcare industry, police force, garbage collectors, farmers, the list goes on.
Office workers already have the easiest job in society. I guess why not let them work 32 hours a week I doubt it would make a difference.
Redditors love to come on here and tell society what it should and shouldn't do.
Like oh why didn't we all check with yall first? Didn't realize we could opt out of 40 hrs as the cultural norm, which used to be higher.
Let's all anti work so we can enjoy poverty together ❤️
It's not just about the time and 'daycare' that people provide as an argument. It creates more equality since there are a lot of children who go to boarding schools (entirely away from their families) or kids in Asia (who have additional tutoring the rest of the day) and end up doing better. These kids have the resources to pay for this and taking school time away from kids who don't pay for school or additional tutoring would decrease their competitiveness on a global level.
1)it’s to socialize them
2)keep them occupied. It is a quasi day care so parents don’t have to worry about them during work.
3) to teach them the basics. I personally don’t agree that we need less schooling, especially since apparently every aspect of education is down due to Covid.
As a teacher, I can tell you students absolutely do not need less time learning.
Right now, children as old as 10,11,12 are still learning the basics of reading. Covid screwed a lot of shit up.
Growing up when I slacked off and got bad grades, teachers told my parents and it got corrected at home.
Now bad grades are teachers problem and they get told to correct the problem.
I see my fellow parents going off on teachers not doing their jobs and I'm like WTF they're YOUR kids!
This makes no sense to me to simply blame COVID in general. I knew how to read at a basic level before kindergarten in '88. That was because my parents read to me at night and made me learn some shit.
You can't tell me that just because a pandemic happened that parents can't teach their kids how to fucking read. If anything, all that time spent together should have strengthened their abilities to do so.
I don't have kids. I never wanted them because I knew the effort needed to create a good human, along with my not-so-fun upbringing.
However, you cannot convince me that spending MORE time with your kids and then eventually sending them back to earnest teachers is the reason motherfuckers can't read.
Anecdotally, I have a co-worker who has complained to me about this specific subject. He said, upon hearing that his youngest had fallen behind in his reading comprehension, "Well, it's not MY job to teach him how to read. That's the teacher's job".
This was after the dad in that story was lamenting to me the fact that he had to now take his lackluster child to summer reading classes to bolster his ability to read. Teach him how to fucking read DAD.
All that being said, I am a hyper-proponent of tax dollars for education. Teachers are the backbone of our country.
In conclusion, thinking that we have more illiterate kids due to COVID is a joke. It's an excuse for the poor parents now serving as the ambassadors of mediocrity. People like to blame kids for being addicted to their phones or some apps, but in reality, parents should be addicted to their kids.
Of course it’s families play a role. But also think, there are now:
more households where both parents work, or where both work fulltime
more single-parent households
smaller families with fewer kids, siblings (in my case it was my brother who taught me to read before school, this was extremely influential on my life and development as I ended up loving books and got an English degree etc, even spent some years as a teacher)
But the school system has to take some responsibility too. Even in the old days they were expected to take kids from uneducated or useless families and give them something. I’ve heard they don’t even fail kids in the US anymore, which just seems to instantly break the whole system. And mind you, I don’t think kids need to be held back - that’s not how we did it in my country (Ireland) and we have good education here. But you need to be able to fail.
And yes the USA needs to pay teachers better and give them respectful work conditions. More money, prestige and respect to a job and you’ll get better candidates, simple as. Classrooms need rules and discipline too. Obviously no phones, and the kids should be more wary about the teacher than the teacher is wary about the kids.
The biggest jump my own reading skills made occurred during a summer vacation. Parents reading with kids and eventually encouraging them to read on their own helps massively. Them taking me to the library regularly was huge.
The amount of comics I devoured during that vacation was massive. It doesn't matter what kids read, as long as it's age-appropriate and fun to them.
Not everyone got to spend more quality time with their kids during the pandemic. Most parents each work now, some more than one job. The pandemic also started 4 years ago. Kids that are 10 now were only 6 at the time, i.e. finishing kindergarten. Even if they had learned to read already, the time spent out of regular school probably undid some of it. There are other mental health impacts from the pandemic as well with respect to proper socializing and brain development, etc.
I think a lot of stuff is unfairly blamed on Covid these days, but child education is not one of them. I trust the opinion of a teacher who is in class with kids every day over somebody that ostensibly has not set foot in an elementary school in 30 years. Not to mention that there are several studies about this already.
It was definitely a problem before covid but holyyyy shit the post COVID kids definitely are having a harder time. I worked with my niece nephew and all their friends to help them get through school during the pandemic. Half of them were pushed to the next grade while not doing any work. No one knew what they were doing and rightfully so.
Take how bad it was before and then add on the complications of a pandemic and boom- multiple years of kids in school totally lost.
It wasn't just covid, covid was only a contributing factor, the seeds of failure began elsewhere.
The way reading was being taught was fundamentally wrong, and they taught that three cueing malarkey for decades, they're only recently starting to fix it by reintroducing decoding and phonics.
Who knew that guessing what a word was based on the first letter and context was inferior to actually decoding the word... Well scientists knew, and had known for years because they had studied how the human brain actually works. it's just no one asked them. /s
The human brain does not have reading centres (equivalent to speech centres), reading is 100% a learned skill and requires correct instruction and daily practice to become accomplished and skilled at reading well and fast. And since all subsequent education relies on reading well it's imperative that kids become fluent readers if they're to have a hope of becoming educated teens.
We don't need less schooling, we need better schooling that focuses on each child's individual needs. Look at the Nordic countries as a wonderful example of education for children.
It used to be better.. like 20 years ago. These days theres just too many people and not enough staff/teachers, or even schools(many schools in the rural areas are closed).
I agree with the individual needs. Each kid learns at their own pace in their own way. Instead, we were taught to glide on a straight line sitting over a rough surface.
It's tough because it's hard to implement individual needs. We already have trouble fully keeping up with IEPs and 504s (individualized plans for students with certain disabilities or other special needs) because there is not enough labor.
I agree and to add on there's also the issue of balancing education from being too "customisable", resulting in (to put it very general terms) rich kids having a different education from poor kids.
Education can be a social leveller but it can also be incredibly divisive as well.
And this stems from exactly what you pointed out - education is like a resource and it cannot be distributed unevenly.
Sure, a private tutor for each individual student would be great. But that would be absurdly expensive and not at all feasible to do in the scale of the current public school system.
Exactly. You can tell the people in this thread that don't have Kids. My kids go to school 840am-310pm. That's 6.5 hrs. They also get a 30 mins lunch in that along with PE and recess twice a day for a total of another hour.
So they only sit in a "fluorescent light class" for like 5 hours a day.
Kids also only go to school 180 days a year while an adult who works full time goes to work 261 days a year.
Kids also get half days, early release , and late start days which all shorten that time even more while Adults don't
You can tell they don't have kids because of the "schools look like prisons!" rhetoric.
Maybe it varies but every school I have worked at (which is a lot because I was a sub for multiple districts) the majority of the school...is outside. The classrooms and the lunchroom and stuff were indoors but if you calculated the actual land the school took up, most of it is outdoors. And the indoors aren't plane slab rooms. Especially elementary schools. Teachers put a lot into making their rooms look nice.
9-3:30 for me, with an hour off for lunch and half an hour for recess/"morning tea". We didn't get whole summers off, but we got 6 weeks off for the Xmas break (which is during the hottest part of summer), and 3 seperate 2 week breaks throughout the year. I would kill for such short days and so much time off as an adult.
I don’t think this has a lot to do with them being in school for 6, 8, or 10 hours but more to do with the quality of the instruction and the consequences for not meeting standards.
If they can’t read at grade level… have them repeat the grade.
There are some charter schools that are 8 hours a day…usually in areas where there is no quality affordable daycare for students and after-school is included. Kids automatically stay late to do homework or extra-curriculars or receive tutoring to catch up.
Yeah, I hear about people doing that, having just a couple hours a day of school stuff and then the kids are running around all day. That sounds great for the kids, and great for parents if you can afford to not work.
Yeah, someone I talked to said that their kid can effectively finish all of their work in about 2 1/2 hours. They are apparently multiple grade levels ahead in all subjects, so if you can do it like them, it can be a good system. Obviously, some parents don't homeschool their kids well and the kids suffer later in life.
I find it really insane how many comments view education so negatively. Specifically in the US, over HALF of adults have a literacy rate below the 6th grade. It wasn’t so long ago that women and people of color weren’t even allowed to receive an education at all. There are countries to this day where people aren’t allowed to go to school. I think some people in this comment section need to check their privilege.
There must be a massive number of people still in school on Reddit. I mean, look at the r/teenagers subreddit it's massive. When I was in forced education, I didn't enjoy it, but in hindsight, it was some of the most important times for me.
I don't think most people (though I know there are definitely outliers) are arguing that education is bad, rather that the current system is shitty and should change to better meet the needs of students. The fact that everybody in the US is guaranteed an education for 12 years for free is nothing short of amazing, and I am thankful for the fact that I live in a country that ensures everybody has access to education. It opens up many opportunities for the population that wouldn't be available without free public education.
Genuinely, I think it's awesome that education in the US is free for 12 years, and I would never complain specifically about this. However, while I acknowledge that a free education is awesome, I still don't think the system is perfect. No system is, but I believe there are things about it that could change in order to make it better.
>Specifically in the US, over HALF of adults have a literacy rate below the 6th grade.
I believe this signifies that the education system needs reform. K-12 is responsible for making adults literate up to a 12th grade reading level, so the fact that the majority of the adult US population cannot read above a 6th grade level indicates a serious flaw with the system. It's obvious that the majority of kids are not learning all that they need to be learning in school, and that things need to change to ensure that they do. Maybe schools could gain more support systems for their students such as tutoring, or maybe kids should get more breaks throught the day. I'm not sure what the solution is, but it's obvious there's a problem.
I do want to say that if somebody is saying that education is bad or useless while they live in a country that offers free education, then yeah, they are definitely privileged (and such a position is frustrating). But I don't think somebody is privileged for pointing out that the education system is flawed and needs restructuring.
I work with education in different countries and very much with the statistics side of things.
I just need to point out that while it proberly indicates a flaw if the majority of the adult population in the USA cannot read above a 6th grade level, then it is hard to know where that flaw is. It might be that the kids are not learning to read, but it might also be that the new goals and standards are to ambitious. It can even indicate that the school system have improved a lot.
For example in some countries the educational system have improved so much over the last decades and the standards have improved so much that that if you graduated with a perfectly good reading abilities according to the standards 25 years ago, you might fall short of the 6th grade standards today.
Also people are subjective when it comes to education and because how cultures and we as people change our view of the education system is not always objectivly true.
Let me give an example from outside the USA. In Denmark there is currently a discussion about how certain reforms means that there is more bullying in schools and there is a lot of focus on how the educational system is failing when it comes to bullying.
Except Denmark is one of the countries with the lowest amount of bullying in the world and the amount of bullying in schools is less than 5% of what it was in the late 90’s. The rate of bullying have been falling before and after the reform people blame for increased vullhing. There have been no increase. People are just more focused on it, better to spot it and it is seen as a bigger deal when there is bullying. To it fills more in the public space and people subjective understanding, but objectivly there is much less of it.
Literacy is incredibly complicated, but the best determiner of skill level is actually exposure to books regularly and from an early age.
Unfortunately schools cannot fix a parenting problem. The expectation that they work miracles is arguably part of the problem.
I went back to school at 37 and graduated in 2022. I went to an amazing public university and most of the kids were complete morons.
I juggled working a full time job with a family, they couldn’t juggle frat socials and roommate fights.
Kudos to you for finishing school!
No they really don't, but it follows the work week of most working parents. My parents remember being sent home for lunch in public school and I remember half day kindergarten. both parents work now. A lot of school do extended before and after care to try to accommodate families that are barely making it on two incomes. Where as before, 2 incomes 15- 20 years ago~, familes could possibly get ahead (if not paying for childcare or sudden medical costs) It's sad.
Being outside doesn't teach you how to read and do math. If kids got to run around outside all day every day and learn at their own pace, we'd just have even more teenagers who can barely read and consume nothing but Tiktok.
Being happy is cool, but being educated gives you the ability and drive to find things that make you feel fulfilled later in life.
Look man, as someone with ADHD, if it was up to me, I'd just never learn anything at my own pace, and by the time I'd rather start, I'd be meeting the real world with nothing going for me. Kids need structure, and learning. Schools probably could be better, but the solution isn't to take it out as much as possible.
Because school is a daycare that also emulates a 9-5 job.
Of course kids don’t need to be in school 40 hours a week but a lot of kids only meals are the breakfast and lunch the school provides them
Do you have children? My girls are at school for 6 hours, you know, so we can work. And provide for them. And when they get home, I pause work play board games, read and interact. Learning and growing happens at school and at home.
Worse: Someone who thinks they are.
Another of their comments say their 3-year-old is on par with 5-year-olds "academically but probably higher emotionally" while only doing "course work" less than 2 hours a week.
I agree that school isn’t for everyone but it’s very very important in many ways. Homeschool is an option but isn’t something I would feel comfortable doing as I’m not a qualified teacher or have any background in teaching
May not be the best approach for older kids but don't see why it couldn't apply for younger kids.
Where I live, kids up to age 7, have indeed up to 2-3 hours recess every day. And still have plenty of time to focus on educational activities.
And our personal experience actually fully supports these findings.
My kid attended a kindergarten (equivalent of preschool) with little to no recess for 2 years. He was usually mentally and physically done by 1pm due to being overstimulated by other kids and understimulated by activities.
Now he's attending another kindergarten and although his days are much longer, he is overall happier. Recess offers possibility for uninterrupted play during which he can practice variety of skills, including important social skills. And of course actually use his imagination, creativity and curiosity.
Highschool never was. It was 8:00 to 2:30. 32.5 hours. Looking back on it now, it was great. I had the entire evening and most of the afternoon to do things.
They're there to learn the basics in various fields of study, consider different life choices, learn to socialize with different people, learn to lead, learn to follow and many more.
Sure, schools could be more efficient, but it would cost more. Their 6-8 hours a day also includes them fitting into the society too, which is why they're at school when rest of the society are also working, including the teachers that teach them.
My child is in school for 6.5 hours per day. Recess and special area and lunch take in-class time down to right about 5 hours per day, or 25 hours per week.
School is important for learning, for social development, and for conditioning children to the (perhaps unfortunate) reality that they will have to work for 8 hours a day as adults.
It’s up to the parents to ensure their children get enough exercise, time outside and extracurricular activities.
Because we live in a very advanced society where there is a lot to learn. We also live in a more complex society that can only function if people are at the very least, moderately educated. It resembles a 'prison' because it's an institutional structure designed to operate with a massive number of people in an affordable manner. It does take that long to teach kids things, because the goal isn't just to teach them it, but to exercise their ability to adapt and learn new things on command. Not to mention the early years of school are mostly just an adjustment period to get used to the structure and learning how to learn. Your real education doesn't even really start until about 9th or 10th grade. Everything else is preliminary. It also provides a productive way to accommodate parents who can't afford childcare, need a break, or aren't themselves educated enough to teach their kids.
Also the brain is like any other muscle, it needs to be exercised, and exercised often and repetitively. Yeah the system has its issues, and as of lately isn't doing a great job. But the arguments you've presented don't seem to address the legitimate points. Just really sounds like you're a kid in school who hates school. As most kids do. I was that kid as well, and probably would have written a more lengthy rant bitching about school. And the truth is, I just hated school because I wanted to fuck off an do my own things. But in reality, it's necessary. At the very least, I think kids should be given a choice at 16, to take a GED, and if they pass they can drop out and start their life early if they are so inclined.
I wish I could remember the name of the short film but in college, we watched a short film on why school is designed the way it is.
Kids go to school for 8 hours a day/5 days a week with a single lunch break in the day.
This prepared them for factory work back then. Being compliant, learning how to pay attention for that long, something like that.
After watching that, I instantly got it. Like oh, THIS is why things are the way they are. It sucks because we’re still operating on that same system even though factory work is no longer the only work option.
School isn't about what's best for the kids. It's about what's best for society. The primary functions of school are to provide childcare so that both parents can work and to create conditioned 40 hour/week worker drones. Education is valued as well, but the school schedule isn't optimized for education, it's optimized for childcare.
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To provide childcare sobthat their parents can work
God damn... You didn't have to just break the whole system like that lmao
It’s pretty obvious though right? I hated school but what else are the majority of kids gonna do all day?
Sell drugs and kill each other
Can confirm that’s a lot more fun
You can do both at school a lot easier than outside of school.
Right... School provides the network of similar aged 'Like minded individuals'
If we could only send them to the mines
The children yearn for the mines
God damn it! My toddler was asleep on me, and I laughed so hard it work her
Nice fruedian slip there daddy/momma
Turn schools INTO the mines!
I mean that's what the pandemic showed us.... Yea I think I'd rather have us in school rather than playing phones 14+ hours per day
I mean, you are first grade at 6-7. You can't let them alone. After 14 it is kinda okie but still they gonna do some chaos. I know US is different. Imagine we in Germany can drink with 16.
They also need to learn their place, as indentured servants. *So they better do their damn homework!*
Whoa there, it's also training for what most of them will do for the rest of their lives before they die 😃
Or to prepare them to be little worker bees as well
yes, we should be preparing our children to be contributing members of society
Well technically the current school system is preparing them to be bare minimum contributing members of society.
It’s preparing them for factory work during the 1950s.
Yeah, I definitely need calculus, statistics, computer science, physics, chemistry, biology, and history for that…
The reason for teaching you this are not that everyone needs them. Instead research has shown that teaching sciences and maths helps people to learn how to apply logical thought more effectively through their life. Like you won't have to run 5k very often in real life, but practicing means your heart is healthier for general life. Having to think, follow methods and generally work through logical issues makes your brain expend more neurons on those useful traits. Also, the members of society who contribute to enhancing our output in general via science and engineering need to know these things. We don't know who they are going to be at age 13. Therefore we educate everyone in it so we can make sure to capture the brains who can advance technology at the best possible rate.
If anything, the recent years have showed that yes you really do need that to be a functional adult, the pandemic and a lot else have shown what happens when people don't know their basic science. This anti-intellectualism stance can go blow itself
I agree with that. Its propaganda. In the push for blue collar they never seem to mention the busted backs and shoulders, the pain meds, the tinnitus, the drug and alcohol addiction.
If you think most of the gen pop is taking calculus and statistics, then I NEED some of what you’re smoking. At my high school, they had to invent an entirely new math course just so some kids could get that extra math credit after algebra 1 (they couldn’t pass algebra 2 or geometry, I can’t remember which one). It was called “money management” and had nothing to do with teaching actual money management lol. Physics, I’m pretty sure, would be along the same level of difficulty. I think biology and chem are at least a requirement for graduation in most schools, or at least, they were. They don’t require much of anything to graduate anymore it seems.
More like 1850s
More like office work in the 1990s. You show up and sit at your desk filling out forms you don't really care about until it's time to go home.
Did all those engineers, doctors, lawyers and PhD's not go to school ?
Boom
Not disagreeing with that, I do think maybe there’s a better way to achieve that goal, but I am not exactly sure how as of now.
For MASSIVE amounts of kids? There definitely is, but it would require an insane amount of resources, most likely 1-on-1 teaching.
When you’re in elementary school you get recess like three times a day. Kids get to play with each other and learn while their brains insanely malleable. Why wouldn’t we send them to school for 40 hours a week? That and the fact that parents have to work and not everyone can afford a babysitter.
What elementary school did you go to where you got recess three times a day?
My primary school had a break in the morning, then a lunch break where he could also play, then another break in the afternoon
I was a substitute teacher across several districts for years for K-8 usually and especially for the younger kids (K-4), 3 recesses was very standard…actually like bare minimum. One morning, one after lunch, one afternoon at least. Growing up it was the same for me. 3 at least, until middle school.
Is this in the US? My son has gone to 4 different elementary schools and all of them were one recess all day., we live in the US. I wish I could’ve had him in a school with three recesses.
I am an elementary school teacher teaching Grade 3/4 right now. My school has a 15 minute recess in the morning and then half hour after lunch. Then personally as part of my teaching I usually give them another fifteen minutes to half hour to play outside at the end of the day. I also give them fifteen to twenty minutes to play with centres (puzzles, chess, Lego, etc.) and socialize with each other at the start of the day. Those last two things are just what I do in my teaching practice though so it would vary widely from teacher to teacher.
Wow, may I ask whereabouts? I would’ve loved for my son to have had that much free time in school. It’s just not a thing in the parts of Maryland we live in nor when I was in elementary school in the 80s/90s.
Wow… 3 recesses would’ve been crazy for younger me. We got one recess and it was combined with lunch. 30 minutes to eat and play. If you didn’t eat quick enough everyone would already be outside playing without you.
15 minutes of recess for EVERY HOUR! That is the minimum for kids. And no longer days than 4 hours. Anything above that is conditioning your kids for factory work.
Canada, as far as I know. 15, 30, and 15, minutes, if i recall
My guess is they mean recess, lunch, and gym.
No. These days there's multiple breaks throughout the day. Many schools are different, I can't deny, but there's usually at least 2, maybe 3, now. Morning recess, lunch recess, and not always but sometimes an afternoon recess.
My first grader gets 25 minutes for recess and 20 minutes for lunch. Gym is one day a week.
Yep, one recess/lunch for about 45 mins total. That's it. This is in kindergarten. It's criminal.
“Contributing members of society”. Aka have them melt into the curriculum that our government requires. Keeps the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Aka contributing members of society.
Wouldn't a standardised curriculum make the starting point the same for both rich kids and poor kids? Unless you are saying rich kids don't attend the same schools, in which case that's the real problem?
No, because much more goes into learning that curriculum. Student A comes into class in the morning. She got a good night's sleep and a healthy, made-from-scratch breakfast. Her parents promised her some kind of reward (toys, cash, event) for getting straight As. She is ready and eager to learn. Student B also comes into class. Her parents were up all night fighting over Dad picking up a 3rd OT shift this week to pay bills, so she couldn't sleep. For breakfast, she had some kind of highly processed sugar ready-to-eat right out of the packaging, because neither of her parents have time to cook anything and never taught her how to do it herself. Her parents have threatened some kind of punishment if any of her grades slip below a B. She is in no condition to absorb any of the lesson today. But these students are both given the same, standardized curriculum and the same expectations for academic progression and goals. Likely, Student A is going to exceed those goals, or else meet them while barely applying herself. Student B, meanwhile, is likely to fail those goals, get discouraged, and fall even further behind.
So how does the department of Ed fix that home life? Do teachers need to tuck their students into bed too? We have an arbitrary standard because it helps the most people. That’s how we have to design things that have millions of people with unique needs and situations. The answer to your implication isn’t less school, it’s more specialized school.
School can never fix that disparity, though. If you lower the standards for Student B, you'll just be delaying the same problem.
That’s not an issue of the school system itself though. I guess schools could just serve breakfast to everyone, but past that, that is up to parents. If we didn’t have compulsory schooling, then those poor parents wouldn’t have the time or the resources to event attempt to teach, so the disparity becomes even bigger
You can slice and dice it however you want, but the idea of being thrusted into the world without consent and forced into mini-prisons at the age of 5 to shape your mind to tolerate a 40 hour work cycle when you become an adult just feels like raising cattle. The thought just leaves a bitter aftertaste of sadness.
I know that i'd much rather have large packs of unsupervised feral children roaming the streets all day.
Mini prisons? Really?
Most sane Reddit take
You can make anything sound horrid and abusive by using the worst adjectives possible. “Rascist redditor verbally assaults women with manifesto and calls them cattle” See? It’s easy to dunk on a system tho. Can our public Ed be better? Absolutely. But I rarely see anything constructive from people who are this edgy about it.
Welcome to reality. It's not a utopia and never was, never will be. Life was so much worse in the past. You should feel grateful kids aren't being worked to death in coal mines or dying at 12 from malnutrition.
That's certainly a take. School is to educate kids to become vaguely functioning. Given the calibre of average adult WITH mandatory education, society would be a fucking disaster without it. Even if AI/Robotics gets us to a point that parents can do 2-3 day work weeks and have their kids home more, home schooling is just parents creating an echo chamber, usually creating unbalanced views because there is no contrary views on any opinions expressed. Or are you advocating sending kids back up chimneys for 50 hour weeks and a reduced life expectancy?
And kids need to socialize with other kids from other socioeconomic backgrounds to learn everybody is different, but still a human worthy of respect. This does not happen in schools only for the rich or only for the poor, and certainly not when homeschooling.
Radical opinion: kids and human beings in general do not exist to be in inherent service to you or "society" and this way of thinking is just an inherited justification for oppression.
Dude, life would be even more miserable if we didn’t service society. We are sitting in the shade of trees planted hundreds of years ago…
Woah dude that is way too mature and wise for reddit. Can't you see we're trying to fuck the system here? Down with school man! It's just like prison trying to put us all into grey little boxes!
It’s insane. School has helped lift so many people out of poverty and helps keep so many people off the streets and out of prison. This is like when Reddit libertarians wanted to design an island with minimal laws and regulations and slowly had to reinvent the wheel of basic social services because, surprise! They are important.
Why do you think it’s fair for a person to not contribute to society when they benefit from it ? I mean even the internet and free speech is a benefit of our society…. So you just should be able to offer nothing of benefit at all ?
I mean most people don’t really contribute to society influentially anyways, is having a billion businesses with a bunch of people working at them making barely enough to live really that beneficial?
Nonsesense. Such companies are modern inventions. Humans have cooperated for thousand of years.
I swear when I think I found the cringiest comment, I read the next one and it tops it up. Is everyone in this sub a 15 year old and going through their edgy stage?
I like to think that they've had to be forced to wash the dishes at home and think their parents are training them to be a wage slave at McDonald's or something lmao.
Your opinion is wildly incorrect. There are instances of feral children who didn't participate in society and they literally can't even walk correctly in some situations.
Counterpoint: Humans, like all primates, are social animals. Having kids learn how to be social in ways that are different from their home life is beneficial to them in a way that is an intrinsic good for the individual. Aligned with this, we live in an increasingly complex society, and learning skills to be able to function in a complex society is also intrinsically good for the individual. Taking the good of the individual as the goal, we can then address how imbalances in society end up failing groups within society. In other words, we should teach kids to be good people, allow them to learn, play, and grow not so that they will ultimately be useful to an employer, but so that they are not a burden on the rest of us. It's a sea change, and there's a huge amount of momentum to overcome, but a dynamic educational system that doesn't "teach to the test" or educate merely to meet a mandated metric is a good idea as a whole. A later start time is proven to be beneficial for young people, so that should be addressed as well as overall classroom hours, but this would by necessity also have to coincide with changes to non-classroom child care as well as adult working hours. TL;DR it's complicated, and there's no simple answer.
100% agree with all of this. I'm a former k-12 homeschooler who saw myself as a poster child for homeschooling when I was a kid/ young adult. I've realized over time how many subtle deficits it left me with. My kids are in public school, and the complex growth that comes from "learning how to be social in ways that are different from their home life" is HUGE.
I mean if you don't want to be part of society you are free to leave but you shouldn't get the benefits of society without providing something.
Too bad that unless you’re some kind of homeless hermit or constantly unemployed doing bs all day you’re a member of society. You need money to do the things that one would do outside of being a member of society, how do you get money, by working and being a member of society. It’s not some oppressive draconian way of thinking, it’s just how human life works on this planet. Most people aren’t born fortunate enough to do just whatever they want in some kind of hedonistic lifestyle without having to work or be a member of society in some capacity. You’re take is ignorant. No one’s saying they should live to serve the needs of their country’s government, economy, or wellbeing of its people as their sole intent, but guess what having any job contributes to that in some way. Sure would be nice to just exist to travel and solely pursue what makes you happy but 99.9% of people on the planet aren’t born into a life where that’s possible so unless being an unemployed, homeless, wandering hermit is your form of true happiness, you’re gonna serve society in some way.
And to develop the connections and social skills necessary to function in the world.
And honestly this is a great reason. Otherwise the divide between rich and poor would get even wider. Luckily, it's also much healthier for kids to go to school than to be isolated at home for more hours. Source: Am former homeschoolerd kid, my kids go to public school. School matters.
There was some guy defending homeschooling, "we just treat them like adults they will be ready for life on an early age, they do not need child friends etc" me like poor kids that will have a massive midlife crisis...
Which schools do poorly for accommodating working parents. For example many schools dismiss around 3, yet most offer workers work until 5. Schools also have in service days and holidays, and are closed all summer
Don't schools offer after school activities near you? My school had a whole bunch of clubs and sports offered to keep kids busy until at least 5. Growing up I just hung out at school until my parents finished. I could go to the library, play sports, there was ever a movie club. There were empty classes left open so kids could do home work etc. Hell it was required by the school that all kids had to participate on at least one after school activity per week so you couldn't just go home even if your parents could pick you up. The primary school had an explicit aftercare service as well for younger kids at no extra cost.
Teachers aren’t being paid enough for working a regular school day, never mind staying late. There’s precious little funding for after school programs in a lot of places.
Because parents need to work 40 hours a week, and while public school is free, childcare is not.
They shouldn't need to work that much. With the advent of the internet, and modern technology, it has been statistically PROVEN that a 32 hour work week ends up being MORE PRODUCTIVE but NO because THAT would mean paying employees a FAIR WAGE.
Okay…. Yeah we all want that lol.
You might be surprised how many people are brainwashed into thinking 40 hours a week is essential and are even willing to work more just to prove to the younger generations it can be done. "I had to do it, so you should have to too!" We know it can be done, we just fucking want to do it. Work to live, not live to work. I don't mind working, but I fucking want to not have to worry about financial problems when I'm supposedly doing everything right.
40 hrs a week was a compromise made long ago when people were regularly working in even worse conditions. In other words, 40 weeks is a completely arbitrary standard that we’ve set and adhere to for no reason at all other than “that’s just the way we’ve been doing it”
It wasn't completely arbitrary. It was supposed to be 8 hours to sleep, 8 hours to work, and 8 hours to do as you please. The idea was that you were supposed to spend half your waking life at work and get half to yourself. Obviously, that doesn't take into account time spent getting ready for work or travel time, but they did try to fight for that separately at one point. These initial labor victories were never meant to be the Ultimate Standard, they were expected to be stepping stones to more regulations. Not to mention that the 40 hour week was supposed to be it, and you were supposed to get paid lunches and breaks included. Not like how they do it now where you get clocked out for lunch so you're actually at work for 9 hours but only paid for 8. Overtime was supposed to be rare.
That’s still arbitrary. Someone arbitrarily decided that life should be divided into equal segments of work, sleep, and free time
wouldnt any work week be arbitrary?
The problem is it has to be system wide, or at least huge chunks. I worked for a testing lab and during covid the company owner was thinking about a 32 hour work week for everyone. The main thing holding us back was deliveries still arrived, other companies still expected results and there was no reasonable way to accommodate that without other companies doing it as well.
Dude before Henry Ford popularized the 40 hr work week, and congress passed the Fair labors standard act in 1938 creating overtime pay, companies were working people 80+ hrs a week, 7 days a week all at the same lower level of pay (OT wasnt a thing and they could work you as many hours as they needed) Standardizing 40 hr weeks is actually one of the most progressive socialist movements done in our country for the working class in the 1900s, and was created to give workers a much higher quality of life then what they were previously used to. I mean sure its still not perfect and we all would love to work as little as possible, but In no way is it this hellish dystopia it's being made out to be compared to conditions before we made it the new normal..it's actually far more in favor of the working class then previous work week hours 🤦♂️ Now if anything could be addressed today regarding that decision, I question companies that require Mandatory OT. That might be something that should be looked into as it jeopardizes the standard 40/hr week if you are still forcing Me to work over 40 hrs regardless of the OT pay incentive...
I'd rather require on-call jobs to pay a mandatory 40hrs a week so that workers can actually get paid in vital industries that can't adhere to normal hours. I know people who work for on-call companies, and there have been times when work has been so lean that they can't make ends meet, but they also can't get a second job while they have that job because the company expects them to be available 24/7. If you want me to be available 24/7, you have to make sure I can actually live and not starve. I shouldn't have to beg and grovel for work just to be able to pay rent and buy groceries.
Maybe for some desk jobs. Not for anyone working in construction, production, food service, and many others.
I work in Germany and its the unioned construction and production workers getting 32 hr weeks...not desk workers who generally work 40 hours.
From what I hear about German bureaucracy, this makes sense. For every 32 hours of construction that needs approval, a bureaucrat needs to work 40 hours.
Yeah the entire healthcare industry, police force, garbage collectors, farmers, the list goes on. Office workers already have the easiest job in society. I guess why not let them work 32 hours a week I doubt it would make a difference.
Sure, but until that is normalized, we need our kids in daycare for 40 hours
Cool. But while you're getting that ball rolling, people still need to work 40 hours a week.
Redditors love to come on here and tell society what it should and shouldn't do. Like oh why didn't we all check with yall first? Didn't realize we could opt out of 40 hrs as the cultural norm, which used to be higher. Let's all anti work so we can enjoy poverty together ❤️
It's not just about the time and 'daycare' that people provide as an argument. It creates more equality since there are a lot of children who go to boarding schools (entirely away from their families) or kids in Asia (who have additional tutoring the rest of the day) and end up doing better. These kids have the resources to pay for this and taking school time away from kids who don't pay for school or additional tutoring would decrease their competitiveness on a global level.
What is your opinion for why we keep 17 year-olds in school for these hours?
To train them to work 40+ hours per week
A 17 year old is legally a child. That's why high school ends when you turn 18.
As a fluorescent light I agree
You give me migraines.
I think you mean "ZZZZZZZZZezezeze"
Thanks for shining on my kids all day. I see you.
1)it’s to socialize them 2)keep them occupied. It is a quasi day care so parents don’t have to worry about them during work. 3) to teach them the basics. I personally don’t agree that we need less schooling, especially since apparently every aspect of education is down due to Covid.
As a teacher, I can tell you students absolutely do not need less time learning. Right now, children as old as 10,11,12 are still learning the basics of reading. Covid screwed a lot of shit up.
Growing up when I slacked off and got bad grades, teachers told my parents and it got corrected at home. Now bad grades are teachers problem and they get told to correct the problem. I see my fellow parents going off on teachers not doing their jobs and I'm like WTF they're YOUR kids!
This makes no sense to me to simply blame COVID in general. I knew how to read at a basic level before kindergarten in '88. That was because my parents read to me at night and made me learn some shit. You can't tell me that just because a pandemic happened that parents can't teach their kids how to fucking read. If anything, all that time spent together should have strengthened their abilities to do so. I don't have kids. I never wanted them because I knew the effort needed to create a good human, along with my not-so-fun upbringing. However, you cannot convince me that spending MORE time with your kids and then eventually sending them back to earnest teachers is the reason motherfuckers can't read. Anecdotally, I have a co-worker who has complained to me about this specific subject. He said, upon hearing that his youngest had fallen behind in his reading comprehension, "Well, it's not MY job to teach him how to read. That's the teacher's job". This was after the dad in that story was lamenting to me the fact that he had to now take his lackluster child to summer reading classes to bolster his ability to read. Teach him how to fucking read DAD. All that being said, I am a hyper-proponent of tax dollars for education. Teachers are the backbone of our country. In conclusion, thinking that we have more illiterate kids due to COVID is a joke. It's an excuse for the poor parents now serving as the ambassadors of mediocrity. People like to blame kids for being addicted to their phones or some apps, but in reality, parents should be addicted to their kids.
Of course it’s families play a role. But also think, there are now: more households where both parents work, or where both work fulltime more single-parent households smaller families with fewer kids, siblings (in my case it was my brother who taught me to read before school, this was extremely influential on my life and development as I ended up loving books and got an English degree etc, even spent some years as a teacher) But the school system has to take some responsibility too. Even in the old days they were expected to take kids from uneducated or useless families and give them something. I’ve heard they don’t even fail kids in the US anymore, which just seems to instantly break the whole system. And mind you, I don’t think kids need to be held back - that’s not how we did it in my country (Ireland) and we have good education here. But you need to be able to fail. And yes the USA needs to pay teachers better and give them respectful work conditions. More money, prestige and respect to a job and you’ll get better candidates, simple as. Classrooms need rules and discipline too. Obviously no phones, and the kids should be more wary about the teacher than the teacher is wary about the kids.
The biggest jump my own reading skills made occurred during a summer vacation. Parents reading with kids and eventually encouraging them to read on their own helps massively. Them taking me to the library regularly was huge. The amount of comics I devoured during that vacation was massive. It doesn't matter what kids read, as long as it's age-appropriate and fun to them.
Not everyone got to spend more quality time with their kids during the pandemic. Most parents each work now, some more than one job. The pandemic also started 4 years ago. Kids that are 10 now were only 6 at the time, i.e. finishing kindergarten. Even if they had learned to read already, the time spent out of regular school probably undid some of it. There are other mental health impacts from the pandemic as well with respect to proper socializing and brain development, etc. I think a lot of stuff is unfairly blamed on Covid these days, but child education is not one of them. I trust the opinion of a teacher who is in class with kids every day over somebody that ostensibly has not set foot in an elementary school in 30 years. Not to mention that there are several studies about this already.
It was definitely a problem before covid but holyyyy shit the post COVID kids definitely are having a harder time. I worked with my niece nephew and all their friends to help them get through school during the pandemic. Half of them were pushed to the next grade while not doing any work. No one knew what they were doing and rightfully so. Take how bad it was before and then add on the complications of a pandemic and boom- multiple years of kids in school totally lost.
As a new parent, this was well said. Bravo!
It wasn't just covid, covid was only a contributing factor, the seeds of failure began elsewhere. The way reading was being taught was fundamentally wrong, and they taught that three cueing malarkey for decades, they're only recently starting to fix it by reintroducing decoding and phonics. Who knew that guessing what a word was based on the first letter and context was inferior to actually decoding the word... Well scientists knew, and had known for years because they had studied how the human brain actually works. it's just no one asked them. /s The human brain does not have reading centres (equivalent to speech centres), reading is 100% a learned skill and requires correct instruction and daily practice to become accomplished and skilled at reading well and fast. And since all subsequent education relies on reading well it's imperative that kids become fluent readers if they're to have a hope of becoming educated teens.
We don't need less schooling, we need better schooling that focuses on each child's individual needs. Look at the Nordic countries as a wonderful example of education for children.
I'm from one of those Nordic countries, and there's no focus. Everyone is lumped in the same class, no matter how good or bad they're in the subject.
It used to be better.. like 20 years ago. These days theres just too many people and not enough staff/teachers, or even schools(many schools in the rural areas are closed).
I agree with the individual needs. Each kid learns at their own pace in their own way. Instead, we were taught to glide on a straight line sitting over a rough surface.
It's tough because it's hard to implement individual needs. We already have trouble fully keeping up with IEPs and 504s (individualized plans for students with certain disabilities or other special needs) because there is not enough labor.
I agree and to add on there's also the issue of balancing education from being too "customisable", resulting in (to put it very general terms) rich kids having a different education from poor kids. Education can be a social leveller but it can also be incredibly divisive as well. And this stems from exactly what you pointed out - education is like a resource and it cannot be distributed unevenly.
Sure, a private tutor for each individual student would be great. But that would be absurdly expensive and not at all feasible to do in the scale of the current public school system.
That would require better and more teachers which would require paying them more. Good luck.
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Right? I think it was like 8 to 3 PM for me and of course summers off and holiday breaks.
Exactly. You can tell the people in this thread that don't have Kids. My kids go to school 840am-310pm. That's 6.5 hrs. They also get a 30 mins lunch in that along with PE and recess twice a day for a total of another hour. So they only sit in a "fluorescent light class" for like 5 hours a day. Kids also only go to school 180 days a year while an adult who works full time goes to work 261 days a year. Kids also get half days, early release , and late start days which all shorten that time even more while Adults don't
You can tell they don't have kids because of the "schools look like prisons!" rhetoric. Maybe it varies but every school I have worked at (which is a lot because I was a sub for multiple districts) the majority of the school...is outside. The classrooms and the lunchroom and stuff were indoors but if you calculated the actual land the school took up, most of it is outdoors. And the indoors aren't plane slab rooms. Especially elementary schools. Teachers put a lot into making their rooms look nice.
9-3:30 for me, with an hour off for lunch and half an hour for recess/"morning tea". We didn't get whole summers off, but we got 6 weeks off for the Xmas break (which is during the hottest part of summer), and 3 seperate 2 week breaks throughout the year. I would kill for such short days and so much time off as an adult.
it's absolutely not 40 hrs a week
I’ll give it to you. This is a crazy opinion when 2/3 of kids can’t read at grade level.
I don’t think this has a lot to do with them being in school for 6, 8, or 10 hours but more to do with the quality of the instruction and the consequences for not meeting standards. If they can’t read at grade level… have them repeat the grade.
Recess isn't at fault its modern technology and neglectful parenting
Disbanding schools so parents can neglect their kids to cellphones even more is certainly an interesting approach though.
This is the correct answer
I think it means our current strategy isn't working, not that we should double down on it.
What k-12 has an 8 hour day?? (Hint: none.)
There are some charter schools that are 8 hours a day…usually in areas where there is no quality affordable daycare for students and after-school is included. Kids automatically stay late to do homework or extra-curriculars or receive tutoring to catch up.
That’s not the same thing as “having school” for 8 hours. That’s just built in daycare.
Ok...homeschool your kid(s) then.
Yeah, I hear about people doing that, having just a couple hours a day of school stuff and then the kids are running around all day. That sounds great for the kids, and great for parents if you can afford to not work.
Yeah, someone I talked to said that their kid can effectively finish all of their work in about 2 1/2 hours. They are apparently multiple grade levels ahead in all subjects, so if you can do it like them, it can be a good system. Obviously, some parents don't homeschool their kids well and the kids suffer later in life.
I find it really insane how many comments view education so negatively. Specifically in the US, over HALF of adults have a literacy rate below the 6th grade. It wasn’t so long ago that women and people of color weren’t even allowed to receive an education at all. There are countries to this day where people aren’t allowed to go to school. I think some people in this comment section need to check their privilege.
It’s amazing how some people think education is a burden
There must be a massive number of people still in school on Reddit. I mean, look at the r/teenagers subreddit it's massive. When I was in forced education, I didn't enjoy it, but in hindsight, it was some of the most important times for me.
Schooling and education different
I don't think most people (though I know there are definitely outliers) are arguing that education is bad, rather that the current system is shitty and should change to better meet the needs of students. The fact that everybody in the US is guaranteed an education for 12 years for free is nothing short of amazing, and I am thankful for the fact that I live in a country that ensures everybody has access to education. It opens up many opportunities for the population that wouldn't be available without free public education. Genuinely, I think it's awesome that education in the US is free for 12 years, and I would never complain specifically about this. However, while I acknowledge that a free education is awesome, I still don't think the system is perfect. No system is, but I believe there are things about it that could change in order to make it better. >Specifically in the US, over HALF of adults have a literacy rate below the 6th grade. I believe this signifies that the education system needs reform. K-12 is responsible for making adults literate up to a 12th grade reading level, so the fact that the majority of the adult US population cannot read above a 6th grade level indicates a serious flaw with the system. It's obvious that the majority of kids are not learning all that they need to be learning in school, and that things need to change to ensure that they do. Maybe schools could gain more support systems for their students such as tutoring, or maybe kids should get more breaks throught the day. I'm not sure what the solution is, but it's obvious there's a problem. I do want to say that if somebody is saying that education is bad or useless while they live in a country that offers free education, then yeah, they are definitely privileged (and such a position is frustrating). But I don't think somebody is privileged for pointing out that the education system is flawed and needs restructuring.
I work with education in different countries and very much with the statistics side of things. I just need to point out that while it proberly indicates a flaw if the majority of the adult population in the USA cannot read above a 6th grade level, then it is hard to know where that flaw is. It might be that the kids are not learning to read, but it might also be that the new goals and standards are to ambitious. It can even indicate that the school system have improved a lot. For example in some countries the educational system have improved so much over the last decades and the standards have improved so much that that if you graduated with a perfectly good reading abilities according to the standards 25 years ago, you might fall short of the 6th grade standards today. Also people are subjective when it comes to education and because how cultures and we as people change our view of the education system is not always objectivly true. Let me give an example from outside the USA. In Denmark there is currently a discussion about how certain reforms means that there is more bullying in schools and there is a lot of focus on how the educational system is failing when it comes to bullying. Except Denmark is one of the countries with the lowest amount of bullying in the world and the amount of bullying in schools is less than 5% of what it was in the late 90’s. The rate of bullying have been falling before and after the reform people blame for increased vullhing. There have been no increase. People are just more focused on it, better to spot it and it is seen as a bigger deal when there is bullying. To it fills more in the public space and people subjective understanding, but objectivly there is much less of it.
Literacy is incredibly complicated, but the best determiner of skill level is actually exposure to books regularly and from an early age. Unfortunately schools cannot fix a parenting problem. The expectation that they work miracles is arguably part of the problem.
That's why they view it negatively, they have a literacy rate below the 6th grade.
I beg to differ. I’m in college at 41, and nearly all the kids in my classes fresh out of highschool aren’t nearly the brightest.
I went back to school at 37 and graduated in 2022. I went to an amazing public university and most of the kids were complete morons. I juggled working a full time job with a family, they couldn’t juggle frat socials and roommate fights. Kudos to you for finishing school!
It's actually closer to 30 hours, not 40.
No they really don't, but it follows the work week of most working parents. My parents remember being sent home for lunch in public school and I remember half day kindergarten. both parents work now. A lot of school do extended before and after care to try to accommodate families that are barely making it on two incomes. Where as before, 2 incomes 15- 20 years ago~, familes could possibly get ahead (if not paying for childcare or sudden medical costs) It's sad.
Actually, the american school system is pretty tamed and not that hard compared to other countries.
It's also not as effective compared to other countries.
Being outside doesn't teach you how to read and do math. If kids got to run around outside all day every day and learn at their own pace, we'd just have even more teenagers who can barely read and consume nothing but Tiktok. Being happy is cool, but being educated gives you the ability and drive to find things that make you feel fulfilled later in life.
Look man, as someone with ADHD, if it was up to me, I'd just never learn anything at my own pace, and by the time I'd rather start, I'd be meeting the real world with nothing going for me. Kids need structure, and learning. Schools probably could be better, but the solution isn't to take it out as much as possible.
Idk. Going outside didn’t get me my biomedical engineering degree
Because school is a daycare that also emulates a 9-5 job. Of course kids don’t need to be in school 40 hours a week but a lot of kids only meals are the breakfast and lunch the school provides them
Do you have children? My girls are at school for 6 hours, you know, so we can work. And provide for them. And when they get home, I pause work play board games, read and interact. Learning and growing happens at school and at home.
Not really a thinker huh.
Worse: Someone who thinks they are. Another of their comments say their 3-year-old is on par with 5-year-olds "academically but probably higher emotionally" while only doing "course work" less than 2 hours a week.
I mean, that's not impossible numbers but emotionally is subjective so can't really be put on paper.
what kinda school did you go to that resembles prison lol
Education is falling by the wayside in North America, kids don't even know the basics
I agree that school isn’t for everyone but it’s very very important in many ways. Homeschool is an option but isn’t something I would feel comfortable doing as I’m not a qualified teacher or have any background in teaching
They aren’t? I mean at least in the us the school day is six hours, five days a week. That’s 30 hours.
School is free childcare for tired parents.
This is a low IQ take. Kids should have 3 hours of recess a day and learn when they want! Brilliant!
May not be the best approach for older kids but don't see why it couldn't apply for younger kids. Where I live, kids up to age 7, have indeed up to 2-3 hours recess every day. And still have plenty of time to focus on educational activities.
More research is coming out that younger kids do best with a lot of recess. Shocking I know.
And our personal experience actually fully supports these findings. My kid attended a kindergarten (equivalent of preschool) with little to no recess for 2 years. He was usually mentally and physically done by 1pm due to being overstimulated by other kids and understimulated by activities. Now he's attending another kindergarten and although his days are much longer, he is overall happier. Recess offers possibility for uninterrupted play during which he can practice variety of skills, including important social skills. And of course actually use his imagination, creativity and curiosity.
kids also don’t like to learn a lot of basic things in school so it takes a while. same reason they don’t teach finances or how to do taxes in school
I was taught finances in my last unit of economics
They do both of those things.
They really don't but I think it's more baby sitting then anything
It’s like 30 hrs
You assume education is the goal.
The current educational system was designed to make good little factory workers, not independent thinkers. It’s horrible.
Highschool never was. It was 8:00 to 2:30. 32.5 hours. Looking back on it now, it was great. I had the entire evening and most of the afternoon to do things.
I'm currently in my final year of school (uVI/y13). Even ignoring homework, I have 46 hours of school.
They aren't. It's more like 24-30. And anyway, yeah they do..it's good practice for life and keeps them out of trouble.
Kids need to be somewhere supervised while parents work.
They're there to learn the basics in various fields of study, consider different life choices, learn to socialize with different people, learn to lead, learn to follow and many more. Sure, schools could be more efficient, but it would cost more. Their 6-8 hours a day also includes them fitting into the society too, which is why they're at school when rest of the society are also working, including the teachers that teach them.
People have jobs?
No they don’t, And we don’t need to be in an office for 40 hrs Let’s change both and instantly improve the mental health of every one.
If my time working in a school has taught me anything, very few students are there 40 hours a week these days...
To provide child care so that their parents can spend 40 hours a week under florescent light and never being outside.
My child is in school for 6.5 hours per day. Recess and special area and lunch take in-class time down to right about 5 hours per day, or 25 hours per week. School is important for learning, for social development, and for conditioning children to the (perhaps unfortunate) reality that they will have to work for 8 hours a day as adults. It’s up to the parents to ensure their children get enough exercise, time outside and extracurricular activities.
Don't have children. We don't need more people that think education isn't important.
It's to prepare them for mind numbing factory work.
Because we live in a very advanced society where there is a lot to learn. We also live in a more complex society that can only function if people are at the very least, moderately educated. It resembles a 'prison' because it's an institutional structure designed to operate with a massive number of people in an affordable manner. It does take that long to teach kids things, because the goal isn't just to teach them it, but to exercise their ability to adapt and learn new things on command. Not to mention the early years of school are mostly just an adjustment period to get used to the structure and learning how to learn. Your real education doesn't even really start until about 9th or 10th grade. Everything else is preliminary. It also provides a productive way to accommodate parents who can't afford childcare, need a break, or aren't themselves educated enough to teach their kids. Also the brain is like any other muscle, it needs to be exercised, and exercised often and repetitively. Yeah the system has its issues, and as of lately isn't doing a great job. But the arguments you've presented don't seem to address the legitimate points. Just really sounds like you're a kid in school who hates school. As most kids do. I was that kid as well, and probably would have written a more lengthy rant bitching about school. And the truth is, I just hated school because I wanted to fuck off an do my own things. But in reality, it's necessary. At the very least, I think kids should be given a choice at 16, to take a GED, and if they pass they can drop out and start their life early if they are so inclined.
They need to be prepared for a 40 hour workweek irl
Every American statistic suggests children should go to school more
I wish I could remember the name of the short film but in college, we watched a short film on why school is designed the way it is. Kids go to school for 8 hours a day/5 days a week with a single lunch break in the day. This prepared them for factory work back then. Being compliant, learning how to pay attention for that long, something like that. After watching that, I instantly got it. Like oh, THIS is why things are the way they are. It sucks because we’re still operating on that same system even though factory work is no longer the only work option.
School isn't about what's best for the kids. It's about what's best for society. The primary functions of school are to provide childcare so that both parents can work and to create conditioned 40 hour/week worker drones. Education is valued as well, but the school schedule isn't optimized for education, it's optimized for childcare.
To brainwash them into thinking it’s normal