Summer Vacation Shortage?

Is school too short?



Is school too short? No, i do not think that this is true, school time is definitely not too short, I think that it is just right. I think this because if we add 3 more hours to school, then there would be no time for after school activities. That means that we would go to school, come home, eat dinner, do homework and then go straight to bed. We might not have enough time to do homework without staying up late. Then do that all over again for 5 days a week. Plus, if we started summer school, there would be no time to do summer camps, and that is learning too. Petra Cliffs summer camp teaches you how to rock-climb. Sleep away camps like Camp Billings lets you hang with friends and try all sorts of activities. I think that it wouldn't be right to add 3 more hours of school, or do summer school because that is just subtracting our experience of trying new things.



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Students beware: The summer vacation you just enjoyed could be sharply curtailed if President Barack Obama gets his way. Obama says American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage with other students around the globe.

"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."

The president, 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 so they have 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 with The Associated Press.

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."

Her school is part of a 3-year-old state initiative to add 300 hours of school time in nearly two dozen schools. Early results are positive. Even reluctant Domonique, who just started ninth grade, feels differently now. "I've learned a lot," she said.

Does Obama want every kid to do these things? School until dinnertime? Summer school? And what about the idea that kids today are overscheduled and need more time to play?