I would like to be this essay as
1, 1intro 3body paragraphs and 1concloution
In intro, plz add hook and short summary of this article down and transition my thesis statement
2. add one quote from this article in each body paragraph so total 3. ONLY quote the article i provided
3. please be this essay as very clear but not too hard to understand cuz my english is not that good.
this is agree or not agree about this article
i hope 3 reasons are agree
Even less than a hundred years ago, America was an agricultural
society. Most people worked in farming or in fi nishing agricultural
crops—such as the famous butcher, brewer, and baker cited at the
beginning of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, published in 1776.
This last century has seen an incredible transformation of our society
into one that produces information and services. But one thing
has not changed. Though we are no longer agrarian, the agrarian
calendar continues to dominate one facet of American life—
education. The school year still begins late in the summer and ends
late in the spring. It accommodates farming. Eighty years ago it made
as much sense as it did ten thousand years ago, when some of our
ancestors gave up hunting and gathering because they had learned
to cultivate crops and domesticate animals.
For them, as for Americans eighty years ago, tending the crops
was the most important thing. Schooling was a luxury, which could
be carried on when the demands of the fi elds and the pastures
were not pressing. But schooling—the long process of educating
the young—is not in our world and time a luxury. We claim
to believe this, to take it for granted. Yet we still maintain a school
calendar that refl ects life eighty years ago and maybe ten thousand
years ago.
This creates many problems in American education, but the
worst of them are these:
• America will never take schools seriously as long as they operate on
the ancient agrarian calendar—even if few people use the phrase.
• And it will never take them seriously as long as they are open from
only nine to three o’clock or some equivalent.
A short school year and school day cause people to reach the
conclusion that this schooling business is a part-time occupation,
that it is not serious. That is a melancholy opinion. Although it is
not thoroughly justifi ed, either, it is nevertheless prevalent, and, of
course, in part accurate. It seems to me that we could make much
better use of our whole year.
Recently I mentioned this issue to a friend. One of the problems,
he said, was that the schools were doing things that they
should not be doing—teaching sex and drugs and driver’s ed, as he
put it. These things, he pointed out, should be the business of the
family. He claimed that they are wasting classroom time.
He made a good point, but I don’t agree with it. Topics like
these may be putting a squeeze on the time spent on literacy and
numeracy, but they are important. Moreover, I asked him, where’s
the family these days? In our poorest neighborhoods, the family has
often ceased to be. In our richest neighborhoods, we often have
two busy parents in the household, but not so often in the houseMaking the Case
I’m not for letting parents off the hook, no matter how busy they
are. But facts are facts. So, I said to my friend what I have just
written here and added that his argument and my counter to itcould together make a case for a longer school day and a longer
school year. Consider:
If we accept the facts (or at least opinions) that
• Schools must take on some of the instruction traditionally associated
with families;
• These obligations are diminishing the time spent on learning those
things that children need to learn;
• Schools are not in many cases adequately preparing young people
for university work;
• Children have only one shot, or maybe two, at primary and secondary
education, since by the time the nontraditional student reaches
his twenties, he is not quite suited to most third-grade classes; and
• Education is not a luxury.
Then we must conclude that the schools can teach both academic
subjects and other things provided we make it possible for
the schools to do so.
How do we do that? As I’ve been suggesting, by lengthening
the school year, say, to eleven months, and the school day from
9 to 5, or a full shift, whatever the starting and quitting times
may be. This, I think, would have a number of benefi ts.
First, it would convince the rest of the world that the schools
are, at last, serious. Second, with teachers working conventional
hours and a typical work year, it would be possible to begin to pay
teachers what they are really worth. That, in turn, would be certain
to attract more capable young people who would see school teaching
as a career worth pursuing in the fi rst place and, more to the
point, staying with. And fi nally, it would accommodate all the things
that teachers need to teach and young people need to learn.
Now, a few footnotes to what I have just proposed:
A 9-to-5 day would not be spent entirely in the classroom. It
couldn’t be. Eight hours is an exhausting teaching schedule and a
fi dgety learning schedule. But the time could be well spent
otherwise—by providing teachers more preparation time, by
giving more offi ce hours, by permitting time for research, and by
engaging students in other activities, many of which are now
reserved for after school, such as organized sports, clubs, and even
work for the older ones. Please understand that I am merely offering
some possibilities.
The University Model
What I am proposing may look very much like the university
model. That’s exactly what it is. Universities, like schools, are
driven by their double missions of learning and service.
But universities are also driven by the compelling need to be
effi cient, to get the most out of their staffs and their plants.
While universities typically have more of both than schools, the
size is not the issue.
An idle school building is costly because it produces nothing
while still needing to be maintained. Even worse, it represents, in
its idleness, missed opportunities for teaching and learning. I know
there are movements for using schools after hours for other
purposes—for community activities, adult education, and so forth.
All those are praiseworthy. But, if there can be a hierarchy of
praise, I would save mine for using more of the day—and of the
plant and staff—for teaching the young.
Another footnote: applying the university model to schools
would help to create what university administrators like me spend
a lot of time and effort doing—promoting an atmosphere of
learning. I think one of the problems of education in America is
that, to a lot of boys and girls, school is not their real occupation.
It is something they have to do, in many cases want to do, but it
is not what they are really about. Their lives begin when they are
furloughed for the day.
I confess that universities are not populated exclusively with
young men and women whose thirst for learning and knowledge
is so great that they will sit in classrooms, libraries, and laboratories
until they keel over from sheer exhaustion or hunger. I will even
confess that some have no idea why they are there. I will confess
even worse in some cases.
But after twenty-fi ve years as a university president, I will
not confess but assert that by far most of the students I have
observed quickly realize that they are here to learn and the
opportunities are everywhere. All they have to do is look around
and seize them. In other words, they are responding to the
atmosphere.
They are also responding to what is available. An atmosphere
of learning without the fi rst-rate instruction or the various tangibles
and intangibles that make learning possible is nothing but
a disappointment. But if you have the teachers and the school
facilities, then you already have the means for teaching. Lengthening
the school day and convincing the young that they are present
for long hours because this is what their occupation really is will,
I believe, go a long way to create an atmosphere of learning.
Expanding Offerings
What I am proposing implies more than just additional time to
teach what is already being taught; it implies expanding academic
offerings. It is dismaying to me that many students come to us
without any training in foreign languages, or that only a couple of
languages, typically Spanish and French, were offered to them; they
were offered no classics, no Russian, no Arabic, no Asian languages.
I could say the same about other subjects, including art history,
advanced math, and so on. The result, in any case, is a defi cit.
Speaking of languages, let me add this: many school districts
must deal with immigrant children who, among them, may speak
twenty-fi ve or even fi fty languages other than English. One thing
is clear: the children are learning another language—which is
good—but at the expense of learning other essential things such
as history, math, and science. Certainly something is being sacrifi
ced, because there are not enough hours in the teaching day and
not enough days in the teaching year, as those are currently constituted,
to do all that should be done. Again, this is a defi cit.
But with more time in the day, more days in the year, and an
atmosphere of learning, all these defi cits can be made up. Perhaps
not everything is possible—budgets are not infi nite. But give talented
teachers more time and a great deal more becomes possible.
One more note, on collateral amelioration. The benefi ts to
schools and education that I believe would follow from a twentyfi
rst-century school calendar would provide something for
teachers—two things, in fact. First, a greater sense of pride, both for
emulating the university model and for being able to accomplish
more. In turn, such benefi ts would aid in recruiting gifted young
potential teachers and help to retain those, of any age and experience,
who are already teaching.
At least three objections can be raised against this proposal.
First, that there’s not enough money available to pay teachers for
working conventional hours and a typical work year. Second, that
time off from school allows real learning to take place while the
preconscious mind processes the past. Third, that any additional
resources that are made available would deprive the community the
opportunity to spend money on helping single mothers cope with
the educational needs of their children or to help families understand
that mastery, not mere familiarity, is the aim of education.
The fi rst and third objections are, at heart, issues of resource
allocation. I’ll attempt a brief answer with questions of my own. Are
our teachers better at their professions because they work at other
jobs during the summer—often menial jobs with trivial pay and benefi
ts? Would our youngsters be better off learning from teachers who
devote their full effort to teaching rather than scrabbling for a living?
Will we persuade families that their children need to excel when
their role models, their teachers, are overworked and underpaid?
The second objection is more interesting. No doubt time for
refl ection and debate is critical to learning. But simply because we
ask teachers to work longer doesn’t mean we must ask them to do
the same thing hour after hour. Additional time can be devoted to
individual instruction, tutoring, and creating challenging assignments
and projects for different talents. We can fi nd ways to encourage
refl ection and debate and still allow our children suffi cient time for
frolic and for the preconscious mind to do its cogitation.
It is very important to note that I have not meant anything
I have said to be an indictment of schools or parents. The problem
here, like many institutional problems, can be explained in the
same way—inertia. This is the way things have always been, we say;
this is what has always worked and will continue to work. Maybe,
but I do not really think so, if only because the world has changed,
and not just in the last century, but in the last twenty years.
The computer revolution put a lot of jobs out of business, and
it will be the undoing of more as time goes by. Other changes—
social as well as technological—have reset the clock we live by.
Thus, we must reset our calendar. We cannot be sure what boys
and girls entering school today will need to know in twenty years.
But it is certain that they are going to need as much basic preparation
in literacy and numeracy as possible—and as early as
possible—if they are going to be able to adapt to more change.
What they miss in second grade or eleventh can disable them, or
at least harm them, forever.
Having made my case, I offer it to you, if you want to make it
your own. I hope you share my outlook that an education is not a
luxury for subsistence farmers but a box full of tools for a lifetime,
an endless series of points of departure, and a full-time joy.
