Quote:
Originally Posted by Slava
I do agree with you on the report cards, and I would encourage you in that office hours kind of idea. I wish my childrens teachers took that kind of initiative!
I realise that I didn't go to school longer when I was a child. I just know that its not enough. Teachers were saying then how hard it was to stay caught up to the curriculum, so basically in 30 years we've made no progress that way. Thats silly. There is no legitimate reason that kids can't be in school say from 8-4 and participate in a variety of activities.
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Adding more instructional hours doesn't really have a benefit. You might be able to cover more material, but children are going to have trouble absorbing it and are more likely be be burnt out from 8 hour days than they are to benefit from any extra material. Finland is often brought up as one of the model education systems and they have among the fewest instructional hours in the world, particularly among elementary age students.
If teachers are having trouble fitting the material in, I'd hazard a guess that it's a combination of a few things. One, teachers having to spend a lot of their time on a few students who need extra help which leaves less time for the bulk of the class. Also an increased focus on standardized tests as a means of evaluation can mean more time is spent on test preparation which squeezes out the time available for the rest of the material. And in some cases, teachers themselves are implementing poorly designed lesson plans which can make things take longer than they need to. This is sometimes the case with older teachers whose methods haven't changed to suit a modern curriculum. Teachers that barely understand how to use a computer will tend to have trouble teaching technology efficiently, as an example.