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The Myth Behind Public School Failure

sailordeac said:
Both teachers and students need a long summer break. Summer vacation did not result from some accident or mistake. Education works better that way.
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I worked in camping for a number of years, and I love it and believe in it. My wife was a teacher, and is now in graduate school for school counseling. This just isn't true. Year round school is better for learning. I'm not sure there is even a debate at this point.
 
sailor's post doesn't even make basic sense. How does a 2+ month long break from learning help retain learning from year to year?
 
PhDeac said:
sailor's post doesn't even make basic sense. How does a 2+ month long break from learning help retain learning from year to year?
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It doesn't make sense on a lot of levels, including the basic
 
Deacon923 said:
lolwut? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_learning_loss

You're right about one thing, summer vacation is not a mistake. it's a direct result of agrarian societies needing child labor on farms, which has never caught up to the industrial age, much less the post-industrial knowledge economy. nobody seriously questions that kids would be better off educationally without long summer breaks. Middle class and upper class parents know this intuitively, and they have their kids in high-quality learning experiences all summer because they can afford it. The main opposition here are the industries that profit off summer break (camps, tourism, etc.).
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Actually tourism should be for year round schooling because it gives them a steady flow of vacationers throughout the year, not just when the kids are out of school for months at a time during the hottest part of the year. I go to Disney World pretty regularly and the best times to go are in Jan/Feb and Sept/Oct. If year-round schooling was nationwide, there would be kids out of school from different parts of the nation almost every week of the year and parents could take off accordingly.

Long camps would be hit hard, although I imagine week long camps would do fine and could work with the school system to coincide with the breaks.
 
Nah, the summer camp industry would be gutted. Small price to pay for bringing education into the 21st century.
 
bigdoublezero said:
Nah, the summer camp industry would be gutted. Small price to pay for bringing education into the 21st century.
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It definitely would be. Summer Camps don't exist without staff from college and HS kids on break. From a personal standpoint, that breaks my heart, but pragmatically what is better for education is more valuable. I think the day camp model could survive though.
 
bigdoublezero said:
In a severely diminished capacity, and on a very local scale.
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Day camps are very local by nature. Y's all over the country are running day camps with year-round scheduling already. Raleigh is for sure. They call it a "track-out program" IIRC. The struggle for day camps that operate out of larger single-use facilities would be generating enough revenue over winter breaks in colder weather climates to pay the bills.

Some resident camps will survive, but they will have to adapt in a big way.
 
PhDeac said:
Conservatives and the private sector. The people who make and grade all the standardized tests, the businesses who run charter schools, online education companies, etc.

Follow the money.
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You really think that a giant conservative conspiracy is causing all of this nation's problems, don't you?
 
TR1982 said:
You really think that a giant conservative conspiracy is causing all of this nation's problems, don't you?
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Not all of them, but when you look at the changes in education set forth by Republicans about 30 years ago and who has benefited from them, it's pretty clear. Conservatives ushered in a redistribution of public money, resources, and space to the private sector in the name of accountability in education.
 
I don't care what they do to the schools as long as they don't cancel the Enchantment Under the Sea dance this weekend. I'm planning on getting my dick wet with a nice piece of ass.
 
I thought the models I had seen for year round education included a larger "summer break" of 4-6 weeks and a longer "winter break" as well.

You could still have camps.
 
DeaconCav06 said:
I thought the models I had seen for year round education included a larger "summer break" of 4-6 weeks and a longer "winter break" as well.

You could still have camps.
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That's what I thought (at least with summer), but a 3 minute Google search for calendars didn't confirm that.
 
DeaconCav06 said:
I thought the models I had seen for year round education included a larger "summer break" of 4-6 weeks and a longer "winter break" as well.

You could still have camps.
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I don't see why the summer camp industry would be crippled. There would still be lengthy (2+ weeks) breaks during the summer, probably more than one. As long as they were more or less staggered throughout a geographic area parents will still need and want to put their kids in camp.

I do understand the argument that the camps need the HS and college workforce, but nobody is talking about mandatory year round school for college students, and not necessarily even for HS. Most of the proposals I've heard have been centered on grades K-8 to reduce the summer learning loss in those critical early years.
 
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