Day 4 - You Can't Do it All

You can't do it all. You really can't. School starts at 7:45. School ends at 2:15. In between there, we're supposed to do one hour of guided reading, one hour of writing, one hour of Language/Word Arts, one hour of math, and one hour of social studies/math every other day. Oh and don't forget lunch, recess, and rotation classes (music, art, keyboard, computers, and library). Yes, technically there is enough time. If you add it all up, we have 5 extra minutes at the end of the day. But that doesn't account for transition time, bathroom time, extra help time....the list goes on and on. In real life, there's not enough time for half of what we need to cover. We haven't done a science or history lesson all week.

The people who write the curriculum have good intentions, I'll give them that. Yes, it is important for our kids to learn all of the things in it. Yes, the kids need to do well on their state assessments (or, I should say, the school needs the kids to do well on the assessments). Yes, the parents want the kids to learn all of this stuff so they can grow up and be doctors, or whatever. But there's just not enough time. Not unless we make the school day longer by about 3 hours and the year longer by about 3 months. Something's going to have to give.

The whole process looks good on paper. It really does. But it doesn't take a genius (or even an experienced teacher) to realize that it just doesn't work. If we want it to work, we're going to have to make some sacrifices in other areas. There are reasons why children in Japan are in school until six or seven at night, and all year long. That's what it takes. Do I want to be in school ten hours a day? Heck no. But if the government wants kids to learn everything they say they do, then I'd have to be. And so would the kids. And I don't think many parents would be up for that.