LITTLE ROCK — FINALLY, some good news out of the offices of Pulaski County’s school district. After all the fightin’ and fussin’ over the past few months, it’s about time. The kids in this school district don’t need to watch replays of those old Schoolhouse Rock episodes to learn about innnn-ter-JECtions! They can find plenty of interjections in the quotes from the education beat. (Hint: They’re generally set apart from a sentence by an exclamation point, or by a comma when the feeling’s not as strong.)
It appears as though some elementary schools will be in class longer starting this fall, giving students upward of 40 more minutes a day to learn the functions of interjections, conjunctions, prepositions and who knows what-all. The firstbell wouldring at 7:30 at many elementary schools, and classes would be dismissed just before 3 p.m. That’s the plan, anyway.
This being the Pulaski County Special School District, naturally somebody’s complaining.
It shouldn’t need to be said that a longer school day is in the best interests of the kids. It shouldn’t need to be said, but of course it does.
Although the school district says the extra time is going to be used to help the kids make progress in math and literacy, some parents are objecting. For example:
-Some of the grown-ups say they will have a hard time meshing their work schedules with the new school hours. Possible solution: Keep the kids in school till 6 p.m.! That way, mom or dad could pick up Junior on the way home from work. With an additional three hours of school time, some of it could surely be devoted to homework and tutoring. So that when the whole family does get home at the end of the day, school can be left at school. Extra Added Bonus: Parents won’t have to re-live the Pythagorean theorem ordiagramming sentences.
-Other grown-ups don’t like the idea of a longer school day because it might wear out their kids. It might help lend perspective to look across the Pacific to another country and culture-mainland China. Kids there go to school from 7 a.m. till 3 p.m. while in elementary school. Then their school hours change to 9- to 12-hour days in junior and high school. That’s longer than their parents are required to be at work. And students in China don’t get out ofschool for Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July, or Martin Luther King Day.
Clever people, these Chinese. They know the importance of education. They also know long study hours won’t do the kids any permanent harm. And just might do them a lot of good. Besides, have you seen how long a fourthgrade girl in this country (and in what’s left of this culture) can spend watching Hannah Montana without a break?
-One parent told a reporter that, if school starts 30 minutes earlier, sheand her child wouldn’t get to see each other as much. Solution: Wake up an hour or so earlier on Saturdays and Sundays. Just to make up for lost time. (You’d be forgiven, Patient Reader, if some of the complaints sound more like excuses tokeep the status quo.)
-Some members of the teachers’ union say they weren’t involved in the decision, and the president of the union says teachers “weren’t expecting” the change. Solution: Announce the change in the paper! Which, as it happens, has now been done. On the front page. Consider this editorial lagniappe.
PRESIDENT Obama has said he wants not only longer school hours, but a longer school year. Which means he’s just lost the under-15 vote. But he’s just making sense when he says the United States can’t keep following a schedule that was put in place when children worked on farms in the summer and afternoons.
To quote the president last fall: “Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas. Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours.But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom.”
The man is saying the right things about education-and the need for more of it. And he did the right thing by hiring Arne Duncan as his secretary of education. Secretary Duncan wants longer school days and school years, too.
It may take a little getting used to, but schools around the globe-not to mention certain charter schools on these shores-seem able to cope with longer school hours. And it shows in the kids they’re educating, really educating. It’s time more of our schools followed their pace-setting example. Promptly and smartly.
Lolly, lolly, lolly, get your adverbs here.
Editorial, Pages 16 on 07/23/2010