by Christopher Jou ‘12

Of the many issues up for debate in America today, perhaps the most important is education reform. While the country’s school systems are plagued with issues such as nonsensical scheduling, below-par performance and lack of innovation, one rarely discussed but fundamental shortcoming is the nonsensical scheduling of both the length of the school day and of the school year. 

The United States still uses an agrarian-based school year, with school starting at the end of summer and letting out at the beginning of the next. The United States’ school year was originally formulated with the farmer in mind, letting children out of school to assist their parents with the harvest. In the early days of the nation, farmers made up 90 percent of the population. But now farmers make up less than three percent. Thus this agrarian-based school year is no longer beneficial to the common interest.

Furthermore, the long summer breaks make the average student forget much of what they learned last year. For example, most people lose an average of ten to fifteen IQ points over a standard four-week vacation due to them not exercising their minds. Modifying schedules for year-round school would reduce the amount of learning lost and would increase the retention rate.

More practically, parents who cannot afford daycare would benefit from a longer school day. If school was extended, more parents would be able to pick up their kids from school as opposed to sending them to a daycare or leaving them at home, neglecting their children and leaving them to fend for themselves until their parents arrive home from work.

But perhaps the most important reason for a longer school day and year is that students in other nations are surpassing the United States’ students in almost all subjects but most notably in mathematics and the sciences. Obama addressed this problem in his State of the Union speech, stressing that the United States needs to concentrate on these subject because we need more innovation. The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) study showed that for an industrialized nation, the United States scored more than 60 points below Singapore and Taiwan in a standard mathematics test and 30 points lower in sciences. These tests results come from a sample of average 4^th and 8^th graders from each of these countries, which are still compulsory education. Looking at Taiwan and Singapore and other East Asian countries, they have many more school days and much longer hours. Most of Taiwan’s school districts have more than 210 school days a year, with days running from 7:30 AM to 5PM. With these longer hours to perfect their skills, it is no wonder that these students have higher test scores and higher literacy rates.

Some people may say that those schools that do better than the United States focus on memorization, in contrast with the United States which focuses on problem solving skills. But this is generally untrue. People in Asian countries focus just as much on understanding the concept as we do here in the United States, more so even. In my experience in American schools, math and science classes call for memorizing formula and general information. Seeing my own cousin from Taiwan doing problems, the Taiwanese system calls for considerably more problems solving, having three or four step problems.

One valid concern is that the operating costs of schools will increase. Where will the money come from? Does it matter? No. It does not. The cost of the United States having better education for their students far outweighs the slight reduction on the millions that may be saved. Those millions are mere drops in the leaky bucket of the United States’ budget. Even in Obama’s State of the Union address, he stated that without intelligent students, innovation would not continue. He likened cutting education budgets to taking off the engines in a jet to make it lighter.

Change in any society is difficult, as the people need to agree on the issue and some sort of law needs to be implemented to change it from the old. Changing the school year would require a great amount of work, as it would affect the students’ and the parents’ schedules, and changing the infrastructure of the nation to accommodate for that change. This will not be an easy change, but it is a necessary move for innovation and the maintaining of our power in the world.

Jou is currently a student in the Journalism class. The Warrior Online will begin to feature stories from Sherwood High School’s Journalism class as a reward for hard work and to foster a stronger connection to the world of journalism amongst younger writers.