Thursday, January 10, 2008
Painesville City Schools to All-Year Calendar?
It was brought up in the January PTA meeting that the Painesville City Schools have been discussing the possibility of going to a year-round school program. You'll see the poll in the right-hand column. Let us know if you are for or against. If you have other thoughts you'd like to share, please post them here by adding a comment to this post. It can be anonymous. Anissa Preston would also like you to email her your thoughts to: ChestnutPTA@oh.rr.com.
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I mainly went to school overseas in Asia (where I was raised) because of my father being in the US military. Unlike the US, Asia has a very long, year-round school schedule. This schedule starts at Kindergarten and only gets worse as the children get older. Children are practically adults by the age of 10, commuting via public transportation to other cities by themselves for an hour, doing the shopping/groceries, helping parents raise their younger siblings, working after school at times to help the family, spending more than 8 hours a day in school and on homework, and basically not having the choice to use what little free time they have on extracurricular activities, on building relationships, on pursuing hobbies, and on just being kids.
I would attend my class from 6AM until 4pm, then I had to come back for a class at 5pm until 6pm in high school. Some classes were an hour long, a couple were 2 hours. If a teacher is absent that day and has no substitute, the teacher from your previous class would extend their teaching through that period as well.
College was worse; you could choose a day shift or night shift -- but you still had a class or 2 that wasn't on your shift. (If you took most of your classes during the day time, you still had to attend 2 of your classes in the evening, anywhere from 6pm to 9pm.)
Sure, the stereotype exists that asians are very intelligent and driven, but that's because they don't know what life is. Most of the children have never had a marshmallow, licorice, nor have owned any toys like barbie dolls or hotwheels cars. Instead, they owned "neat" pencil boxes with hidden compartments and anime on it, scented pens, tons of uniforms (even public school students), an iron, and are heavy smokers (or drinkers) by the time they're a freshman. Keep in mind that since they work hard, they also party hard.
I had the choice to go back overseas (where my parents still live) and enroll my children in school there, but having gone through it firsthand -- I can honestly say that I would never put my children through that. I want them to be kids, have fun, get an education, and become well-rounded, well-adjusted, well-balanced citizens. I don't want them to be high-strung, stressed out adults who work hard starting in Elem. school until they are past their 80s (if they aren't suicidal) and wonder what good it did, what they are bringing with them to their grave, what of their accomplishments can be handed down to their children -- assuming they had time to have a family and raise children.
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