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I predict this will be a difficult sell, for the reasons pg outlined in "Why Nerds are Unpopular" (http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.co
by sgentle 11y ago
I predict this will be a difficult sell, for the reasons pg outlined in "Why Nerds are Unpopular" (http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html):
> Now adults have no immediate use for teenagers. They would be in the way in an office. So they drop them off at school on their way to work, much as they might drop the dog off at a kennel if they were going away for the weekend.
Schools are government-subsidised daycare first, educational institutions second, which is the reason they often fail at teaching students but rarely fail at keeping them in place.
From that perspective, why would you change a child's school hours to anything less compatible with their parents' work hours? If anything, I would expect the trend to be towards longer hours at school, perhaps by more tightly integrating after-school activities.
- MichaelGG 11y agoSo start actual classes later, then kids/parents can decide if the parent's poor scheduling should impact the child.
- peter_mcrae 11y agoHaving a job (which provides for your children) that requires you to be at work at a certain time is poor scheduling?
- terinjokes 11y agoIf classes ending at 3 happened across an entire area, I'm sure the high school jobs would move to accommodate. My 11th and 12th years happened in 2008/2009 so good luck having a job as a high schooler.
- monocasa 11y agoHe was talking about the parents' jobs.
- MichaelGG 11y agoWhy wouldn't it be? It might be necessary but it's still a bad thing.
- superuser2 11y agoExcept we're not talking about people who need babysitting, but people who are babysitters. High school students are perfectly capable of waking up and getting ready for the day after their parents have left the house. There's no good reason for high school hours and parents work hours to be coupled, unless it is necessary for a parent to drive the kids to school on their way to work (i.e. because the bus is too slow and would require waking up hours earlier). In which case the actual problem has nothing to do with education policy, and everything to do with the parents' decision to live in sprawl.
- Rangi42 11y agoWhich is also not likely to change. Again: "Now adults have no immediate use for teenagers." Why move just for the sake of your kid's four years in high school? This may not apply to urban families who take a train or bus to work. I commuted to high school on a subway by myself, and would have preferred leaving an hour or two later.
- superuser2 11y agoI could be mistaken, but don't most people move to sprawl in the first place because it's "a good place to raise your kids"? Also, living in a city isn't the only solution. I lived in a suburb ten miles away from the city but all 3 schools were <15 minute walks.
- agentdrtran 11y ago> High school students are perfectly capable of waking up and getting ready for the day after their parents have left the house. Unless, of course, they need a ride to school.
- auxym 11y agoWhat is it with parents driving their kids to school these days? Or is it a US thing? Back when I was in school, every single kid would ride the school bus. Well, except those close enough to walk/cycle, or those old enough to own and drive a car or scooter.
- aab0 11y agoThere's also the much-cited football problem: if high schools ended at a more reasonable hour like 3PM or 3:30PM, this causes problems for football coaches, who might see their after-school practices running to 6PM or something. I'm reminded of how my school district carefully made sure that the austerity or budget-freeze budgets which happened when voters failed to approve their preferred budgets always just happened to not have enough funding for football...
- tedmiston 11y ago> There's also the much-cited football problem: if high schools ended at a more reasonable hour like 3PM or 3:30PM, this causes problems for football coaches, who might see their after-school practices running to 6PM or something. I checked my high school and others districts to confirm they operate on an 8 am - 3 pm schedule +/- 30 minutes. Is this uncommon?
- danieloaks 11y agoSame over here in Aus, those are standard hours for most every school I've seen.
- _kyran 11y agoLittle later in my experience (vic) 9am to 3:20
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoThat's standard UK primary school (4-11yo) hours too.
- Normal_gaussian 11y agoAnd pretty much the same for secondary. 560 min or 650 min periods, 45 min lunch, 15 min morning break. 6 hour minimum day. Any extra time is padding for registration or longer breaks.
- padobson 11y agoThanks for the PG article. Here's the money paragraph: The problem is, the world these kids create for themselves is at first a very crude one. If you leave a bunch of eleven-year-olds to their own devices, what you get is Lord of the Flies. Like a lot of American kids, I read this book in school. Presumably it was not a coincidence. Presumably someone wanted to point out to us that we were savages, and that we had made ourselves a cruel and stupid world. This was too subtle for me. While the book seemed entirely believable, I didn't get the additional message. I wish they had just told us outright that we were savages and our world was stupid.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoThe last page actually pointed that out, as un-subtly as possible. Sure you didn't read the Cliff Notes? Or maybe didn't finish it? Also, its not just kids. The Stanford prison experiment showed that. Also riots during power outages. Also the Serbo-Croatian war. Any time a breakdown of public order happens, folks all over revert to savagery.
- yulker 11y agoThis puts the punishment of suspension in context. It's to punish the parent, not the student (i.e. forbidding use of the daycare).