Too much time in school an economic waste
This was written by Zander Sherman who is the author of The Curiosity of School.
by Zander Sherman
Last week, as Alberta’s students headed back to school, some were probably wishing they’d had a longer summer holiday.
Easily overshadowed by other issues, the question of our academic calendar and its number of vacation days has long troubled educators. Those who say we should spend more time in school often suggest cutting into the summer break, when kids were once needed to help hay the fields. Because we no longer live in farming times, the tradition is irrelevant. If such reasoning is meant to sustain an argument, it might be pointed out that what we call school today was also invented during the same timeframe—and no one is arguing the irrelevance of it.
While it still eludes Alberta, all-day kindergarten has been adopted to Ontario’s educational legislation, with similar initiatives gaining momentum in other parts of the world. In the US, extended learning has become a central tenet of the charter school movement. In the UK, politicians are campaigning on a proposal that would legally force public schools to provide 45 hours of education a week for 45 weeks. Lengthening school days and cutting holidays is said to be “the perfect election promise.”
Proponents argue that their plan would create more “successful” students. To find out whether this is true, let us first agree that “educational success” is the reason we go to school. Sadly, the phrase “educational success” has come to be defined by a third party. The OECD is a global economic organization that administers PISA, the standardized test taken by all 15-year-olds. Because of the correlation between PISA results and a nation’s gross domestic product, PISA is academia’s raison d’être: If students do well on the test, it means their country is doing well financially. (This is why governments obsess over test results. They indicate a country's rank on the global stage.)
If educational success is the reason we go to school, it will be surprising to many that more time in school does not necessarily lead to it. While there is correlation between PISA outcomes and GDP, there is little correlation between PISA outcomes and the number of hours we spend in school. Consider, for instance, how Canada spends roughly the same number of hours in a classroom as the US, but as a whole does a lot better on PISA than they do. China and Japan spend about the same amount of time in school and come out at or near the top, while India also spends approximately the same number of hours in school and comes out at or near the bottom.
Clearly, instructional time does not lead to better PISA outcomes.
If more classroom hours have little to do with educational success, what does? School’s terrible secret is that students’ “success” is determined long before they enter a for the love of learning: Too much time in school an economic waste:
by Zander Sherman
Last week, as Alberta’s students headed back to school, some were probably wishing they’d had a longer summer holiday.
Easily overshadowed by other issues, the question of our academic calendar and its number of vacation days has long troubled educators. Those who say we should spend more time in school often suggest cutting into the summer break, when kids were once needed to help hay the fields. Because we no longer live in farming times, the tradition is irrelevant. If such reasoning is meant to sustain an argument, it might be pointed out that what we call school today was also invented during the same timeframe—and no one is arguing the irrelevance of it.
While it still eludes Alberta, all-day kindergarten has been adopted to Ontario’s educational legislation, with similar initiatives gaining momentum in other parts of the world. In the US, extended learning has become a central tenet of the charter school movement. In the UK, politicians are campaigning on a proposal that would legally force public schools to provide 45 hours of education a week for 45 weeks. Lengthening school days and cutting holidays is said to be “the perfect election promise.”
Proponents argue that their plan would create more “successful” students. To find out whether this is true, let us first agree that “educational success” is the reason we go to school. Sadly, the phrase “educational success” has come to be defined by a third party. The OECD is a global economic organization that administers PISA, the standardized test taken by all 15-year-olds. Because of the correlation between PISA results and a nation’s gross domestic product, PISA is academia’s raison d’être: If students do well on the test, it means their country is doing well financially. (This is why governments obsess over test results. They indicate a country's rank on the global stage.)
If educational success is the reason we go to school, it will be surprising to many that more time in school does not necessarily lead to it. While there is correlation between PISA outcomes and GDP, there is little correlation between PISA outcomes and the number of hours we spend in school. Consider, for instance, how Canada spends roughly the same number of hours in a classroom as the US, but as a whole does a lot better on PISA than they do. China and Japan spend about the same amount of time in school and come out at or near the top, while India also spends approximately the same number of hours in school and comes out at or near the bottom.
Clearly, instructional time does not lead to better PISA outcomes.
If more classroom hours have little to do with educational success, what does? School’s terrible secret is that students’ “success” is determined long before they enter a for the love of learning: Too much time in school an economic waste:
