For Our Health

Not long ago, an acquaintance reminded me of the Year-Round-Education [YRE] strategy as opposed to what he referred to as the Carnegie Model. The Carnegie Model being the concept of 9-months of schooling and summer time off so kids could help on the farm, which he indicated was terrific for the agrarian society, but as we know today, we have machines to assist us in doing farming and our industrial base is quite diverse, and thus, he and others have indicated; why keep such an antiquated system?

That my friends is a very good question indeed. Further he introduced another scheduling idea during the year-round-school concept where the classes would be 85-90 minutes long, and instead of one hour or less each in most of today’s high schools. In fact, he wrote a very decent paper on this decades ago, which discussed the combination of the two strategies. In which the Copernicus Plan would be coupled with YRE and the longer classes.

If you will recall, as I recall such YRE schools in the 80s and 90s had been successful, and today there are still many in CA, and in many other parts of the country too. In his paper, he mentioned some of the challenges such as human’s unfortunate reluctance to change, and issues with teachers, parents, misconceptions, over-taxed budgets, thus, fear that it might make things worse, etc.

Indeed, anyone who has ever been to a PTA meeting can concur with his statements in the report about the passionate politics that go on. The issue with teachers unions is also an issue, many like their long vacations over the summer months. Thus, I agree on the difficulty in transition, but totally appreciate the value of the YRE strategy, and fully agree that the class length is a real issue in trying to get anything of real value done.

Why, do I like the longer classes, well, like you I was once in High School and it felt more like a prison for kids to me, rather than a learning institution. And with the short class sessions, just about the time you get everyone really interested in the topic and a great discussion going, the darn bell rings – or you can’t start something of relevance due to time constraints, it’s like everyone is in a rush, and kids get lost, or no one values the education part, only adherence to the time factor.

Now then, maybe we need more of this? Maybe we need more community involvement, more guest speakers at the schools. And, I have some other thoughts about mentorships, apprenticeships, and junior high and HS level internships. Would you be interested? Good, I am happy to hear that.

You see, I’ve always wondered why we shell out huge benefits like Medicare and Social Security and then don’t ask our seniors to join up with mentorship programs at all levels based on their expertise. We need help in our classrooms from K through 12, and for our budding entrepreneurs, and we shouldn’t be wasting any of this talent as people are living a lot longer, and have a lot more to give back, plus, most of them all would love the opportunity for continued productivity to help the next generation.

Maybe it’s time for a complete “reboot” of our education system, I mean really bring it all into the twenty-first century. Maybe we need to take a look at what works. Please consider all this.