Education Part 1: The "Traditional" School Year

This is the first in a series of several written opinions addressing the subject of education in America.

While I am a HUGE believer in a private system of education as opposed to a socialized (public) system, I also realize that there is too much ignorance and greed in America for such a system to ever be put into place. Most people are unaware that one of the main tenets of the communist system was to have a public school system. As such, the government can to some degree have control over what is being taught and what the children are being brainwashed into. But today I don't want to talk about why a private system would be better. I want to talk about practical solutions that could be applied to improve today's socialized American school system.

One of the main obstacles to learning is the "traditional" school year that gives kids and teachers a 3-month summer holiday. Children in most industrialized countries go to school more days per year and more hours per day than those in America. Most American children are required to go to school 180 days a year, and spend about 5 hours a day in an actual classroom. And we wonder why the rest of the world is catching or passing us in education.

First, the problems with this system. Out of about 250 business days per year, only 180 at most are days that kids are in school. That's about 72% of possible business days. What a waste of taxpayer money to let school buildings go to waste for more than a quarter of the year. But more importantly, what a waste of time for kids. We've all seen how happy kids are to get out for summer break. But within a few weeks, most are fairly bored most of the time, and are inventing ways to spend their time, which sometimes gets them into trouble. Then, come fall, teachers spend weeks reminding the kids of the information they forgot over the summer. It takes the average child until the age of 18 to learn very little, where it could all be taught to the child by age 16 if so much time were not wasted.

Some easy solutions come to mind. Unfortunately, most of these would be outright rejected by teachers and their unions, because it takes away their precious summer break and makes them work more. Don't get me wrong. I feel that teachers are woefully underpaid to do an immensely important job (teaching the adults and leaders of tomorrow). So I sympathize with them. But in my plan (which will be discussed at a later time), teachers get paid a lot more than they do now.

My solution is to have children attend school for 210 days a year (as opposed to 180), and for 6.5 to 7 hours of classroom time per day (say 8 to 3:30 with a lunch and 5 minute breaks between classes). This would give a child an extra 465 to 570 hours in the classroom each year. Currently there are 900 hours a year of classroom time, and this plan would increase that dramatically by more than 50% to about 1400 hours a year. Imagine what a child could learn with almost 50% more hours in a good classroom environment. To graduate from HS (grades 1-12) it currently takes 10,800 hours in a classroom. If we divide that by 1400 hours a year instead of 900 hours a year we get 7.7 years. So by the end of the 8th grade a child could have just as many hours under this system as a HS graduate does now.

Of course, everyone needs a break from time to time. This 210 day system would consist of 4 11-week terms and would include a full 3 weeks off around Christmastime (the last 2 weeks of December and the first week of January), 3 weeks off around the 4th of July (last 2 weeks in June and first full week in July), and 1 week off between the first two terms and the last two terms (roughly last week of March and last week of September, respectively). The school year would start in January, and end in December.

This would still give families plenty of time for a long summer vacation (as long as most parents' work schedules will provide), but also give families more time off around the end of the year and a week for mini vacations each spring and fall. But it saves parents from having to find day care for their kids all summer long. Too many parents can't even afford that, and end up leaving kids at home alone, or with just an older sibling all day. Rather than learning from Mr. Smith or Mrs. Jones in school, as they could be, the kids are learning from Mr. TV and Mrs. X-box at home.

So rather than letting our kids waste too much of their childhood, or worse, let's increase learning and extend the school year to something more intelligent than the 100+ year-old "traditional" system.

Huge highway bill full of pork

President Bush today signed a $286.4 billion transportation bill into law. Incidentally, that comes out to about $1000 for every man, woman, and child in the US today. That seems a bit stiff to me. Of all that money, about $24 billion (which is about $81 for every man, woman and child in this country) went to the 6,371 "special projects" that legislators got for their states.

Now, I have a family of 3, and I don't know about you, but don't really like the idea of paying $3000 in taxes for road work when the bill is so long (1,000 pages) that I will never read it or know anything that is contained in it. And I like the idea of paying $243 for some legislators' pet projects even less.

One of the reasons this particular issue irks me so much is that I use roads very little. I telecommute, and my wife is at home with our baby, which means that our road use is pretty light. On the other hand, someone who drives on the roads for hours a day still has the same amount of taxes going towards the roads that I do. And what about all those trucks? They take up lots of room on the roads, cause more pollution, and cause much greater wear and tear on the roads than a passenger car or even an SUV. Most of the time, a road or freeway must be built much tougher because of the weight of trucks.

I have a solution. Not everybody will like this solution, but that will be mostly the people who currently use the road system on the backs of others who pay for it. The solution consists of two parts: The use of toll roads, and the use of a vehicle's weight in determining its rate of payment. It makes sense to me that a person who uses a road more than another should pay more. And it makes sense to me that someone who drives a heavier vehicle (or a semi) should have to pay more than someone who drives on that road with a geo metro (because heavier vehicles force the roads to be constructed thicker, which costs more, and causes the roads to deteriorate faster, costing more in rebuilding and maintenence).

The practical application is that freeways and other long roads are paid for by tolls, and shorter and local roads are paid for by registration fees and gas taxes. Tolls for freeways are more than viable, and with today's technology they can be cheaper to run than ever before. A car could register to pay automatically and would then be tracked electronically as it entered and exited the toll area to determine the price, which is either billed to the owner, or payed for in advance. Registration fees can be adjusted based on a vehicle's weight to account for the damage of heavier vehicles, and gas taxes typically already tax heavier vehicles more than light vehicles.

We need to move more to a society where you pay for what you use, rather than one where everyone pays for everything (otherwise known as socialism), and this would just be one small step in that direction.