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The Myth Behind Public School Failure

sailordeac said:
Don't confuse reality with the net.
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The net: decades of scientific study on summer learning loss.

Sailor's reality:
Garden_kids.jpg

Gotta bring in that harvest!

You are a good poster on a lot of things but you're way off the mark on this.
 
I'd hope any one discussing Year round schools would understand that it doesn't mean schools are in session 52 weeks a year. I teach, I'd love for us to go such a schedule. More frequent short breaks would be beneficial for all involved.
 
Deacon923 said:
there are a lot of different kinds of "special needs". a kid with ADD or a learning disability is one thing. A severely autistic or disabled kid who needs one to one care is another. The public schools have to provide that one to one care, private charters will not. Drives up the per pupil cost significantly, especially in urban districts. parents with severely disabled kids will very often move to urban districts to get into those systems.
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wasn't talking about private charters
 
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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Traditionally most people who went to school were members of the elite. What would they have to do with the harvest?
 
we're talking about 2014 and the applicability of 19th century policies - wtf are you talking about?
 
1. Make assertion about education that defies reform
2. Fail to back up with data
3. Repeat
 
So I actually googled "History of Summer Break". https://www.google.com/search?q=history+of+summer+break&rlz=1C1CHMO_enUS504US504&oq=history+of+summer+break&aqs=chrome..69i57.3087j0j7&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8


It turns out that sailor's opinion would be considered correct - about 110 years ago. Here's a good summary:

City school officials began listening to reformers around the turn of the century. Gradually, they shortened the school year by about 60 days and eliminated the summer quarter. Reformers could have instituted a long break in winter, or spring, but they picked summer for three main reasons. 1) Poorly ventilated school buildings were nearly unbearable during heat waves. 2) Community leaders fretted that hot, crowded environments facilitated the spread of disease. 3) Wealthy urbanites traditionally vacationed during the hottest months, and middle-class school administrators were following in their footsteps.

Meanwhile, the school districts outside cities had quite different academic calendars. In the 19th century, rural kids spent just five or six months in school—two to three months in summer and the same in winter—and the rest of the year laboring on farms. So while urban educators worried that children were overtaxed by their busy schedule, officials in rural areas thought their students were mentally undertaxed. By the early 20th century, public-school officials in many farm states had lengthened the academic year and introduced a summer break to bring agrarian districts into line with urban ones.
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Luckily, it is no longer 1901, and we have real science and air conditioning now.
 
sailordeac said:
Captain, you can't be serious. Because a general article in Wikipedia on education and the Enlightenment did not mention summer breaks, or vacations, in schooling you have come to the conclusion that there were none?
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How did you come to the conclusion that there were summer breaks during the Enlightenment?
 
Fact is, during the Middle Ages, the Early Modern period and into modern times schools and universities in Western Civilization did have extended summer vacations.
 
sailordeac said:
Fact is, during the Middle Ages, the Early Modern period and into modern times schools and universities in Western Civilization did have extended summer vacations.
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what in the hell are you talking about. are you being serious?
 
sailordeac said:
Fact is, during the Middle Ages, the Early Modern period and into modern times schools and universities in Western Civilization did have extended summer vacations.
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Fact is you're using that as some sort of justification for education policy in the 21st century which is nothing short of absurdly stupid.
 
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