True Education
Rachel Kumler Mr. Friedrich English 12 12 December 2012 Crunch Time for Education True education is knowledge obtained by one and to be able to use and comprehend that information in their everyday life. Education should be a thing in a child’s life that they should look forward to coming to five days a week. The fulfillment of learning something new in every single class, every single day should be the reason a kid gets out of bed every morning. Today’s society is very different though, majority of the students dread having to wake up in the morning knowing that they have to sit through school all day.
If kids were truly learning something new, they would be happy to be at school. A big problem in today’s education is the way a school day is set up. A typical school day, which is eight hours in length, wastes way too much time on things that are not education-related. For example, four minutes between every class is wasted just for kids to walk to a different classroom, totaling over a half-hour of time that could be used for educational purposes instead. Another example is that the lunch periods are 30 minutes long, when it only takes a majority of the kids between 10-15 minutes to eat, the rest of the time is used socializing.
A third and final example of wasted time is study halls. During study halls kids do one of two things; They either sit there the whole 45 minutes goofing of with friends or they do their homework. Homework, work to be done at home, is given to reinforce information that students have learned that day. If kids are doing their homework at school anyway, then the establishment of “home”-work was not a very judicious thing to create. The time in the length of a school day should be made more valuable. The Bay Village High School has a block schedule set in place for everyday of the week, not just two of the days.
It is a known fact that Bay Village tests very well on their state tests. Due to not having as many class changes, and having more time to learn in a period could be the reason they are succeeding. At the Indiana Prison where some inmates were receiving an education through Ball State, the inmates were learning faster and more material than what was being taught at the actual Ball State College. The reasoning behind this is because all they had to do at prison was eat, sleep, go to class, and study.
If kids had nothing else to do after school, they would have more time to focus on their studies. To solve the problem of wasted time and not enough focus from students, public schools can make a few changes. First, block scheduling is vital for success. Students should be able to come to school for a few hours, sit in one classroom without leaving or having any distractions such as fire drills, announcements, or being called down to the office. School should not be 8 hours long but only a total of about 4 hours.
If a class has the same teacher just teach multiple subjects, a majority of the time wasted can be eliminated because there are no classroom changes or lunch breaks. Another thing is that school sports and clubs should be eliminated right after school so that kids can go home and study or do homework. If kids are sitting through school all day worrying about their basketball practice or how the swim team gets to leave school early for an away meet, it takes the focus off of learning. If school was not so long and a waste of time, kids would not dread coming to school.
