Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 6, 1990 TAG: 9006060392
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ILENE BARTH NEWSDAY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The school year reflects a bygone time when children were needed at home to help sow and weed, and kids didn't crack open their books until most of the harvest was in. The legacy is that public schools are open 180 days a year - and closed for 185 days.
In Japan, children go to school 243 days a year.
I'm not suggesting we keep children in school all summer. More child-hours spent in mediocre or bad schools will not make this country great.
Schools should be so good that children and teachers alike will be happy to spend more time in them. What the Japanese example shows us is that children don't die from a longer school year.
Many Americans don't take school seriously because they don't take seriously anything part-time. Teaching is not respected because respected professionals don't take the summer off.
The public gets away with paying teachers relatively low salaries because of their two weeks off at Christmas, their one week off in spring and their long summer holiday, not to mention other holidays during the school year.
During the first 60 or 70 years of this century, the decades that made America great, many talented individuals were attracted to teaching. It was a secure job, and an open and respectable field for women.
But the pool of people ready for service today as public school teachers contains too few of the best and brightest. Those folks can earn more money and respect elsewhere. And too many schools, and not only inner-city ones, have become combat zones.
Money is tight at federal, state and local levels. Local school budgets are being challenged by taxpayers, and slimmed-down versions pass by only small margins.
Making all citizens responsible for public schools, regardless of whether they have children in them, is one of the more splendid civic virtues. But voters can't be expected to keep opening their purses wider as they hear the schools are failing.
Announcements of the death of public schools are greatly exaggerated, as Mark Twain once observed on hearing reports of his own passing. Some schools are vital; others can be resuscitated by the hiring and rewarding of talented and committed teachers and counselors.
We should keep schools open 44 weeks (220 days) a year instead of 36, and offer teachers salaries competitive with those of other professionals. It's also important to link salaries to performance. To a meaningful extent, talent, loyalty and respect can be bought.
Consider, too, the trickle-down benefits of a longer school year:
Fewer children would be mistreated or neglected by their parents; reports of child abuse shoot up in summer.
Fewer kids would lose life or limb in accidents, most of which occur when they're not in school.
Children wouldn't have a long enough summer holiday to forget what they'd already been taught; much of the fall wouldn't be consumed by reviewing last year's work.
Youngsters would still have eight weeks annually, four or five of them in summer, to run free. Teachers would have those weeks to recover - which is a darn sight more than most of us get.
Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service
by CNB