Butts In Chairs
By Mitch Berg
The Twin Cities’ grievance-based community is clutching its pearls and howling over the proposal by the Sleepy Eye superintendent’s proposal to cut budgets by going to a four-day school week:
A school superintendent in Sleepy Eye says the district needs to seriously consider converting to a four-day school week.
Superintendent John Cselovszki says the move would mean longer school days with more breaks. He says the shift would cut costs associated with busing, teacher substitutes, heating and cooling.
The Journal of New Ulm says Cselovszki made his comments Thursday at a Board of Education meeting.
Board member Ron Geiger acknowledged that a shorter school week could help the district avoid other budget cuts.
This, of course, is heresy to the educational-industrial complex – the teachers’ unions, the educational academy and so on. Leaving aside the logistics issues – teachers seem to have come to enjoy having their days end by 3PM sharp – there are good financial reasons to cut the school week.
And Sleepy Eye being a small town, there’s a certain common-sense nature to their approach to solving those logistics issues:
Fellow board member Darla Remus worried that the change would create daycare issues for elementary students on Mondays when there was no school. Her colleague, Sheila Schmid, suggested that high school students could fill the daycare need.
The problem, of course, is that it’s accepted as a matter of faith by the current educational-industrial complex – along the lines of “smaller classes improve achievement” – that keeping kids’ butts in chairs longer is a key part of a good education. By their logic, more hours equal better education.
Of course, like the “smaller classes” canard, it really just isn’t necessarily so:
As the four-day week unfolded in Hawaii members and institutions of the community stepped in the fill the vacuum. Parents sought activities, and students were flexible. New spaces opened up for young people to learn on Fridays. Museums and Rec Clubs offered Friday learning opportunities, some at little or no cost; others parent-run (parents rotated days off of work to manage supervision of student activities). Parents, wary of potential new costs for child care, welcomed the innovations.
New online learning options could be done during this time, from home, or a coffee shop, or a library, or a friend’s house. What different kinds of combinations can be found when inspired young people, parents seeking new options, and communities come together to pick up the slack? Imagine the potential to capture and accredit the value-added by these types of activities. What if post-secondary institutions began accepting the validation, by a reputable organization or company, for this type of out-of-school learning?
I believe there’s a strong case to be made that kids – some more than others, to be sure, because kids are more unique than most people – learn as much out of class as they do in, provided a decent support system at home (and let’s be honest, the kids without support at home are the ones that largely won’t be helped by cranking up the hours in chairs either).
And cutting the school week to four days, at its best, taps the ingenuity of parents and, best of all, kids to engage in the best kind of education there is – self-education.
February 1st, 2011 at 8:08 am
They’re rearranging the deck chair on the Titanic. This won’t improve one test score. This is what a government monopoly considers when they want to appear to be doing SOMETHING.
February 1st, 2011 at 8:56 am
teachers seem to have come to enjoy having their days end by 3PM sharp
And all of the three and four day weekends throughout the year, the two weeks at Christmas – er – “Winter Break”, another week at Easter – er – Spring Break, five day weekend for Thanksgiving, and three months off in the Summer.
February 1st, 2011 at 9:17 am
Hmmm. I like the logic inspired by the Hawaii example. Just imagine how much education would improve if the public schools only taught ZERO days a week! No, really, I’m serious. At some point you have to say that some of them, for some students at least, are doing more harm than good.
February 1st, 2011 at 10:45 am
We can’t have the parents becoming involved with their child’s education: their children might not be taught Correct Thoughts! And they might even realize that much of what passes for teaching in schools these days is useless crap. And think of where Education Minnesota would be if that secret came out!
In my daughter’s American History textbook they were quite proud of the new graphics, “active” and “bright” they said. I pointed out that there were a whopping 12 paragraphs on the Revolutionary War and the writing of the Constitution. The ditz who was teaching the class then went off and said there’d be more “interactive media” on the DVD she’d be showing that went with the text. By the time the open house was done there were more than a few upset parents making a stink to the school board. That was the only year they used that text, and when the board was talking about needing more money the next year several of the parents mentioned that the board needed to control the spending better on what they were buying and brought up the textbooks as an example. Strangely, the revenue request got significantly reduced that year…
February 1st, 2011 at 11:21 am
And lest we forget, this is to accomodate the unsustainable financial demands, and counter-productive work rules of the teachers union.
I know he doesn’t “do” K-12 (not that he “does” much of anything worthwhile), but every time I see another “tweet” from Mitch’s douchbag U of M Associate Professor/stalker whining for more $, I can’t help but think of the students that are getting bent over the table to pay his salary while he fucks around on the internet all day.
Honest to God, education, high and low, has become the refuge of some of the scummiest MFers the left has to offer.
February 1st, 2011 at 11:30 am
Swift: I wish I could get a sense of what you really think. My daughter is an independent thinker and while she was still in high school she used to drive several of her teachers nuts by insisting the history and social studies curricula was misleading and incomplete. She had figured out what the professional educators couldn’t.
February 1st, 2011 at 12:33 pm
Big;
You done good bro’! You raised what is now a propaganda resistant adult!
February 1st, 2011 at 12:39 pm
At the Night Writer Ninja Academy for Girls the administration is much more concerned with the brain than the butt, and considers a six-hour a day, five (or four) day a week structure an archaic oddity that’s about as useful as an abacus.
I take that back. An abacus actually works quite well.
February 1st, 2011 at 2:05 pm
NW, I appreciate a woman’s brain, but dude, I have to stand up for the butt.
I mean seriously.
February 1st, 2011 at 2:38 pm
Kermit, in the words of George Clinton, “Free your mind, and your butt will follow.” Be aware, however, that graduates of the Night Writer Ninja Academy for Girls are capable of kicking some butt, too.
February 1st, 2011 at 2:43 pm
Does the Night Writer Ninja Academy for Girls have handicapped access, a diversity counselor, transgender bathrooms, a bilingual curricula and an administration capable of placing blame on the Bush Administration for poor test performances?
Or, is it a private school?
February 1st, 2011 at 2:46 pm
Private and exclusive, but dedicated to impacting our city, our state, our nation and the world.
February 1st, 2011 at 3:20 pm
And nothing impacts our city, our state, our nation and the world like a well formed female butt.
Yes, I’m a sexist pig. No apologies.
February 1st, 2011 at 3:40 pm
Well, we do teach that there is a Divinity that shapes our ends.
February 1st, 2011 at 4:13 pm
too much divinity will shape your end, yes…
February 1st, 2011 at 9:48 pm
We’ve met representatives of the Night Writer Ninja Academy for Girls and the faculty as well. One of the finest schools around.
February 2nd, 2011 at 6:05 am
When St. Paul couldn’t plow the streets, school was canceled. Mayor Coleman’s first concern was daycare for working parents.
When Sleepy Eye considering 4-day weeks as an alternative to laying off teachers and shutting down programs. Again, daycare for working parents pops up.
Tells us something about how these “Leaders” view the role of public schools. They’re not primarily places to learn, they’re free daycare centers. With that emphasis, no wonder test scores suck.
.