Academic

Is this a good idea?

By Tung Yin

President Obama is calling for more school for kids -- a longer calendar, and a longer school day.  One can only assume that he is speaking aspirationally, as opposed to setting a new federal agenda.  Then again, maybe the Commerce Clause is broad enough to allow Congress to regulate public school hours and calendars.  After all, poorly educated kids make for poor workers, which when aggregated makes for a less effective national workforce, which impacts the national economy.  Oh, wait.

Is this a good idea?  There's something not quite right about our secondary school educational system, since we have the best universities in the world, but our high school students don't do very well in comparisons against our peer nations.  But running the school day to 5 pm seems a bit much.  The longer calendar makes more sense to me, at least if we're talking about primary school -- as it is, this last summer, we sent my older son (who just started Kindergarten) to a bunch of summer daycamps (nature, science, zoo, safety, etc.) for the enrichment and educational value.  I could see how more school would fill that role.

Full post as published by The Yin Blog on September 28, 2009 (boomark / email).