The Best Advice on Education:
Forget no child left behind and its mediocrity creating testing. The best advice I've come across so far comes from Nancy Kalish, writing on the Op-Ed page of today's New York Times. It's ridiculously simple: Start school later in the morning.
Most high schools around the country now start classes before 8:00 am. This is a schedule dedicated to creating failure. As Kalish points out, teenagers operate biologically on a different time schedule than either adults or their younger siblings. Kalish relates how a number of school districts around the country have set their opening times to somewhere between 8:20 and 8:40 am and have discovered that the students not only learn better but that more of them actually show up to class.
When I was growing up, I attended one of the best high schools in the country, a public school in Illinois, where the administration seemed already primed to this logic without the benefit of any educational psychologists. Our little school with around six hundred students started the day at 8:23 am each day. Absenteeism was rare, and I only ever witnessed one student falling asleep in class.
Kalish has some other good advise too, like setting aside time in school for home work. Our high school did that as well. I was able to complete at least half of my home work while still at school. And the time spent doing home work at school always seemed far more productive than at home.
Just how good was that little high school? Well, I was in my junior year of college before I encountered a course as tough as any I had in high school. The physics course I took in high school was, in fact, the most demanding course I ever took. And yes, I did take a physics class in college, from a professor with a national reputation.
And now for a little enlightenment from our estranged leader: "The California crunch really is the result of not enough power-generating plants and then not enough power to power the power of generating plants." — George W. Bush, The New York Times, Jan. 14, 2001. (He was attempting to cover up for his buddies at Enron at the time.)
Forget no child left behind and its mediocrity creating testing. The best advice I've come across so far comes from Nancy Kalish, writing on the Op-Ed page of today's New York Times. It's ridiculously simple: Start school later in the morning.
Most high schools around the country now start classes before 8:00 am. This is a schedule dedicated to creating failure. As Kalish points out, teenagers operate biologically on a different time schedule than either adults or their younger siblings. Kalish relates how a number of school districts around the country have set their opening times to somewhere between 8:20 and 8:40 am and have discovered that the students not only learn better but that more of them actually show up to class.
When I was growing up, I attended one of the best high schools in the country, a public school in Illinois, where the administration seemed already primed to this logic without the benefit of any educational psychologists. Our little school with around six hundred students started the day at 8:23 am each day. Absenteeism was rare, and I only ever witnessed one student falling asleep in class.
Kalish has some other good advise too, like setting aside time in school for home work. Our high school did that as well. I was able to complete at least half of my home work while still at school. And the time spent doing home work at school always seemed far more productive than at home.
Just how good was that little high school? Well, I was in my junior year of college before I encountered a course as tough as any I had in high school. The physics course I took in high school was, in fact, the most demanding course I ever took. And yes, I did take a physics class in college, from a professor with a national reputation.
And now for a little enlightenment from our estranged leader: "The California crunch really is the result of not enough power-generating plants and then not enough power to power the power of generating plants." — George W. Bush, The New York Times, Jan. 14, 2001. (He was attempting to cover up for his buddies at Enron at the time.)
Labels: Education
posted by Jim | 7:14 PM
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