is more school better?

"Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas," the president said earlier this year... The president wants schools to add time to classes, to stay open late and to let kids in on weekends so they have a safe place to go. (Because you don't trust parents? Because you believe children would be better off with unionized employees?)

"Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy and not too many of our kids are working the fields today," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. (No, but children need time to play, discover, explore, to relax. They will be slaves to the 40+ hour work week soon enough.)

Does Obama want every kid to do these things? School until dinnertime? Summer school? And what about the idea that kids today are overscheduled and need more time to play? (Maybe I feel this way because I just read an old classic of homeschooling by Raymond Moore who emphasizes starting late and unschooling, but children think better when they are free to explore, to research their own passions. Studies prove that earlier and longer schooling is not better.)

Obama and Duncan say kids in the United States need more school because kids in other nations have more school. (Haven't these people ever been asked, "If everyone else starts jumping off a bridge are you going to join in?" So... if Japan has kids committing suicide because they are overstressed by testing, then we should too? Instead of thinking along the same tired lines of "need to make more jobs so the union be bigger and will campaign for us," perhaps the administration could actually take a look at what actually produces bright, creative kids and attempt to recreate that model for public schools.

What is it about America that has given the world more inventions and ideas for improving the world? It certainly isn't the concept of locking children in prison for 12 years of their life. It is freedom and the opportunity to become wealthy from one's own work. Socialism and Communism squelch this drive because there is no incentive to be better than mediocre, to create something for posterity. Why study and invest and toil just to have one's reward be taken to give to another who didn't study,invest, or toil?

More school is not going to fix any of the problems inherent in the current system. It will push out those children who just don't want to be there sooner, it will dull the minds of those who don't play the game, and it will only enrich the coffers of the NEA.)

blue print is from yahoo