Obama presses more class time

American children at disadvantage to others, he says

By: JournalNow Staff | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 28, 2009

WASHINGTON

Students beware: The summer vacation you just enjoyed could be sharply curtailed if President Obama gets his way.

Obama says U.S. children spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage with students around the world.

"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."

Obama, 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 for 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.

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."

Though it is true that children in many other countries have more school days, it's not true they all spend more time in school.

Children in the U.S. spend more hours in school than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the U.S. on math and science tests.