Increase the Amount of Time Children Spend in School (Essay Sample)

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Increase the Amount of Time Children Spend in School
Many school reforms have been put forward, but recently the increase of school hours has been the focus when it comes to school reforms. There are ongoing negotiations whether or not the US should embrace longer school hours. Even President Obama is for longer school hours, arguing that there are many countries such as South Korea, Japan, and China, which have their children attend school one month longer than the American children do (Seattler 77). Longer school hours will surely benefit students who perform poorly in class, but it will not benefit all of them. Concurrently, increasing the time of day students spend in class might translate to better grades than making the year longer. We should not let the student spend more time in schools.
The issue of increasing school hours sprouts from the fact that countries that have longer school hours have a greater academic achievement and are doing well economically. Often schools such as KIPP that have increased its school hours thus leading to favorable academic results is always used as a comparison. (Ornstein 520). The schools argue that longer school hours is key to improving the results of standardized tests especially in math and reading, which pose as a hard task for many students.
In the United States, it is normal to see most kids learning in school for at least six and half-hour in a day. In a year, the children would spend 175 to 180 days in school, compared to their counterparts in Germany who do at least 240 days a year and produce outstanding results on their tests than the American kids. In total, the U.S. students spend 32 hours a week studying in class, while statistics shows that students in Denmark and Sweden spend 53 and 60 hours a week respectively. In some countries, schools are putting their children through longer school hours by cutting on the length of summer vacations to increase the days in a year and lengthen the daily school time from 3 pm to 5 pm. These alterations on school hours, researchers say to improve on the test scores in English, Math, and Science (Ornstein 524).
The prospects of longer hours are not yet clear, as it is not known if the longer hours will be used to probe kids into mind puzzling tests, or there will be some creative features incorporated into the curriculum (Seattler 78). The school fraternity has not sat down and come out with parameters of how the long hours will mean for the school thus showing that even they are not ready for the increment of hours in the normal school days.
The increase in school time also means an increase of the resource allocation, regarding teachers, materials, and electricity among other things. The extra costs will fall in the hands of taxpayers, which they cannot afford. Statistics suggests that if the time would be increased by 10 percent then there be a 6 to 7 percent (Ornstein 521).
The school hours in the U.S. are just right for the students because it is clear that when the last bell of the day rings, the students together with the teachers are always exhausted and are not in high moods of learning. Therefore, if the learning hours will be increased then, the quality of education will be compromised, since what the teachers will be offering is quantity without quality. There must be other ways of improving the academic success of students and boosting the economy, without necessarily increasing the school hours. The existing school hours are just enough to facilitate quality learning, as a research showed that children were in action task wise for at least a third of the time spent in school. Thus, the findings suggested that lengthening of the school hours is not the solution to academic success, rather working on improving the delivery, and quality instruction would pose as a better investment (Cizek 255).
If after the current school hours students are always tired, now what about if the hours are increased. The students will get even more tired and bored of school. When the students get home, they will have less time and be too tired to play with their friends. It is important for kids to interact with other kids since they will have the chance to interchange ideas and learn from each other (Ornstein 520). Statistics shows that kids learn a lot from their peers than from their parents and teachers. Adding more hours will compromise the interaction kids have with other kids. Kids should also have enough time to do their homework, and the addition of extra hours will compromise the kids’ ability to do their homework.
If the kids spend, more hours in school, it will take away the precious time children spend with their family. When kids spend time with their family, they get to bond and make their family ties strong. Distance and lack of enough time that families spend together is one of the contributing factors that make families distant (Cizek 252). Children always express their problems with their parent and thus if there is no time for them to interact then, children will feel like their parents do not have time for them anymore because parents to have to go about their businesses (What's 13). Children will not be comfortable to share their problems with their parents since they will feel distant from them. All these negativities will occur if the additional hours are added and there is no promise that the move will improve the academic achievement of children.
Every child has a talent and a hobby, which they engage in during their free or leisure time. Hobbies and talents help a kid to bring out their creativity and through that, they can realize their strengths, which may amount to building their careers or professions. If it happens that, the school hours are increased, and then the time that these kids spend on their hobbies and talents will be reduced or in some instances, the kids would be too tired to carry out their hobbies. Many musicians, actors and other people in different professions have got to where they are because of their talent and hobbies. It is without a doubt that they had ample time to perfect them and utilize them accordingly. Therefore, if school hours are increased the world might miss the greatest actors, comedians, and musicians that have ever walked this earth yet (What's 12).
Tompkins argues that, the time spent in school needs to be increased since kids will have more time to learn and recall what they had forgotten. Thus, kids will advance academically. Students will g...