Comment Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score 4, Interesting) 1073
Wolvenhaven's comment about budgets is on target; our small, rural Iowa district had to let 8 teachers go this spring because of declining tax inflows due to the economy. Funding teachers across more time would be a financial benefit to our family (my wife is a teacher in the district and doesn't receive compensation for when she's out of school not teaching as would be expected), but it'd cause the district to lose more teachers. In a small district, this would be devastating.
But there's another aspect some (including Obama) are missing. The United States is a highly diverse nation with a diverse workforce. Like a fool who would prescribe public transportation to replace all motor transportation in the U.S. -- a proposal that simply fails to understand the large spaces the U.S. covers and treats Wyoming like Berlin -- the educational system has similar heterogeneous aspects. During the summer months, our system is not to "send the kiddies to the field" as Obama's inept education administration official claims, but rather to supplement education in a highly diverse, non-governmental-decreed manner.
Yes, many kids get summer jobs, and there is considerable education for those working in a shop, grocery store or other light skill or service economy function given the probability that such students will be moving into this workforce upon graduation. In case you didn't notice the recent unemployment statistics, this demographic (16-24) now suffers over 50% unemployment, mostly due to the recession and the increase in minimum wages (which causes employers to substitute an unexperienced teen with an adult with experience for the same higher wage).
But many kids destined for college go off to specialized camps. My son spent 5 weeks of the summer at one of the top national debate institutes, working harder in the summer than he did during the year. Music camps, international travel, student summer foreign exchanges and local university summer programs all round out the options available for the college bound to receive much more intense and specialized education, necessary for their advancement in higher education. Obama's plan would replace that with more of the same -- as Gilles Deleuze would say, smoothing terrain by pushing more of the same hegemonic, institutional programme and eradicating diversity education that predominates summer break.
While it's not appropriate to debate this on the terms of "more education vs. kids sitting around watching tv" (those kids are also preparing for their future career through the choices being made), it is appropriate to debate this on the terms of whether we desire the heterogeneous workforce we're encouraging through the current model, or seek a more homogeneous model (ala "sameness"). Should further globalization be desired, as Obama's administration advances and his financial backer George Soros promotes, then perhaps the United States would be better served by creating more interchangeable service sector jobs. Given that both political parties desire a global model, Americans are less likely to be programmers, system engineers, architects, creative thinkers, product designers, etc.; even finance and legal professions are increasingly being offshored with great financial benefit to the global corporation. Preparing students for a career where they're part of a replaceable, worker-commodity workforce may be more appropriate in the long term, given the unified desire of Americans through the expression of those pro-globalization representatives they continue to elect.