I got in trouble once again last night for questioning why schools are only open nine (or so) months of the year. I was in no way suggesting that teachers don’t work hard enough, or that they’re paid too much, or that I disrespected them in any way. I just don’t understand why (other than historically) the academic world should run on a different schedule than the rest of the world.
The response I seem to get from teachers is “because it’s a really, really hard job and we don’t get paid enough”. “If it weren’t for the time off you’d lose a lot of teachers.” Somewhere down the line, it’s suggested that students need some time off in order to process what they’ve learned, tho as far as I know (which isn’t much) there aren’t a lot of places that have true year-round schools, so how do we know this – and even if it’s the case, then shifting the schedule so they’re studing something different for a few months would do the trick just as easily. Do they really benefit from sitting at home watching TV and playing video games, or from hanging out a the mall? Traditionally this was time off because the children were needed on the farm to help with planting and/or harvesting – parents wouldn’t have given their school-aged children months off to waste.
I’m sure that managing a classroom full of children is very, very difficult. More difficult than managing the same number of employees? I don’t know, but I suspect not (if you expect those employees to actually get anything done). Smaller classes would be a great idea. Paying teachers an appropriate wage would be a good idea as well – and if we don’t have enough willing to work, then obviously the wages should go up. More money on schools, less on weapons systems and nation-building? Of course, and I’m sure it pays off as a country in the long run.
And of course all of these factors are different for elementary, middle school, high school, and college students. Many high school and college students (myself included) spend most of the summers working, if they can find employment. What do teachers do during the three months a year when they’re not in class – I’m sure they can’t be working on lesson plans the whole time.
No doubt there’s also some affect in the fact that (again in my limited knowledge) many elementary teachers are women, and these women are still expected to support family at home, often twelve months a year. At the same time, some parts of the system are based on the entirely outdated assumption that one parent, usually the mother, would be home all the time for when kids weren’t in school – and most likely performing “home schooling” of some sort during that time.
Naturally I think the teachers’ union is a scam. Why, for example, should teachers get full-ride health insurance, but other people in society (I don’t know, how about software engineers) don’t get any? Why should they get pensions when people working in manufacturing jobs don’t? Why, with tenure should they have bulletproof job security when other people don’t? It just doesn’t seem fair to me – and I’m not arguing that we should take these benefits away from teachers – it just seems that “because they’ve got a powerful union and you don’t” isn’t a good enough reason. It’s also not fair that teachers end up having to buy their own supplies, and spend a lot of “off” time working on grading papers and writing lesson plans.
With so-called “year-round” schools, of course, the system is recognizing that wasting massive amounts of prime real estate for 1/4 of the year isn’t efficient; but this means that teachers in “tracks” no longer have fixed classrooms and have to “float” for at least a portion of the year. It also means we can cram more people into the system, though since both the students and teachers are idle (non-tasked?) for a portion of the year, something is being lost to efficiency. And of course it puts a burden on struggling parents as well, who then have to work around their young childrens’ schedules, or produce “latchkey kids”.
The most paid vacation I’ve ever had was two weeks a year. I understand that in Euro, Australia, and other parts of the civilized world, a month is standard and two months is not out of the ordinary. I think vacation is a good thing, tho I believe it’s better taken in small pieces – say no more than a week or so at a time – with an extended sabbatical every few years. But in the U.S. because of the capatalist work ethic we squeeze every last working day out of our employees – oh, except for teachers.
Mainly I think it’s interesting to question things like this that we take for granted. In this morning’s LA Times, there’s an editorial by Bill Gates that says we should be preparing all of our students for college rather than expecting most of them to conveniently slip through the cracks and occupy an ever-shrinking working class. Despite the fact I think he’s just using this as a platform to sell more faulty software, he has a certain point. According to him, up to fourth grade our students are far better than world average; then by twelfth grade they’re far worse. Wouldn’t we do better if we put our kids in school all the time?