Obama Wants More School, Shorter Break
WASHINGTON
Students beware: The summer vacation you just enjoyed could be sharply curtailed if President Barack Obama gets his way.
Obama says American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage with other students around the globe.
“Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas,” the president said earlier this year. “Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom.”
The president, who has a sixth-grader and a third-grader, 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.
“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.
Fifth-grader Nakany Camara is of two minds. She likes the four-week summer program at her school, Brookhaven Elementary School in Rockville, Md. Nakany enjoys seeing her friends there and thinks summer school helped boost her grades from two Cs to the honor roll.
But she doesn’t want a longer school day. “I would walk straight out the door,” she said.
Domonique Toombs felt the same way when she learned she would stay for an extra three hours each day in sixth grade at Boston’s Clarence R. Edwards Middle School.
“I was like, `Wow, are you serious?'” she said. “That’s three more hours I won’t be able to chill with my friends after school.”
Her school is part of a 3-year-old state initiative to add 300 hours of school time in nearly two dozen schools. Early results are positive. Even reluctant Domonique, who just started ninth grade, feels differently now. “I’ve learned a lot,” she said.
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?
Obama and Duncan say kids in the United States need more school because kids in other nations have more school.
“Young people in other countries are going to school 25, 30 percent longer than our students here,” Duncan told the AP. “I want to just level the playing field.”
While it is true that kids in many other countries have more school days, it’s not true they all spend more time in school.
Kids in the U.S. spend more hours in school (1,146 instructional hours per year) than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the U.S. on math and science tests — Singapore (903), Taiwan (1,050), Japan (1,005) and Hong Kong (1,013). That is despite the fact that Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong have longer school years (190 to 201 days) than does the U.S. (180 days).
“The Children’s Story” by James Clavell. illustrates the power and techniques of brainwashing. It is scarily appropriate for today. It is chilling and all too close for comfort after seeing that video of the kids singing praises of 0bama. I am posting part 2 and 3 below of the story.
What’s brainwashing? And what’s the difference between “education” and “re-education”?
The movie is from the 80’s and has since disappeared.
When the teacher suggests to the children that instead of praying to God they pray to their Dear Leader.
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Wild Thing’s comment……..
One more area the Obama (federal government) is taking over I guess. Obamacare, ObamaED, Obama Motors…It is a brave new world…….NOT! More hours to subject kids to indoctrination….NOT!
Is there anyplace this pig won’t put his snout? He is out of control!!! He wants the govenment to raise the children of our Nation. It is NOT his role to define the school year.
Where did he gets his facts? Most the kids both my hubby and I grew up with either worked the fields on farms or with cattle on ranches. Lots of pig farms out there too. I guess he knows too little about us country bumpkin folks. When it’s harvest time, you work.
This is a stupid idea. Big time stupid.
Gee, how about actually improving the existing school year before extending it?
And gee, whatever happened to education being left to the state and local governments where it belonged? As if the feds have enough to do with the economy and the military?
I know, how archaic of me…
At least Obama has alienated the nation’s children. Making them sing praises to Obama will be a much less effective brainwashing technique when they know he is shortening their summer vacation.
Personally, I wish kids would stay in school all year long and on the weekends. That is only because there are three school age kids in the apartment above me. LOL.
We can go back to Jimmy Carter and blame him for putting schools under Federal control. His Dept of Education has resulted in the dumbing down of students and a rising cost of education(school taxes). Like his Dept of Energy which has not produced one drop of oil, only regulated it to near strangulation.
Now obama wants to run the schools. Like most politicians he has his kids in private school. So he feels free to impose his ideas and plots on the majority of kids who are in public school. He and the NEA can then have the kids singing little ditties of praise to Teh Won(obama).
I really think the guillotine is perfect for this traitorus douchwhore.
Great… I just means that it’s even more likely that kids are gonna get beat up on the bus. Kids these days don’t learn anything anymore, and I can attest to that. I’ve seen people MY age (21) who don’t even know where the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA is on a map. All they teach kids now days is America is evil, go have sex when you’re 5, and get that check the gubment owes you.