Longer school days are a poor idea. More time spent in the confines of a school will not really result in better outcomes for children. In fact, if you want to improve outcomes, time spent in classrooms should be reduced.
The school system is coaxing children into a sedentary lifestyle that will ultimately be destructive to their health and happiness.
The main reason to keep children in school between nine in the morning and five in the afternoon is because of "the custodial function," to use the educational jargon, i.e., to babysit them.
The public does not need to hire expensive teachers for this job and it is punitive to children to keep them chained to a desk for this length of time.
I would recommend that children be taught four hours a day at most. Two hours of instruction followed by a halfhour recess and then two more hours of instruction.
This would finish the instructional day at 1 p.m., given an 8: 30 a.m. start. The remainder of the day (until 6 p.m.) would be given over to recreational pursuits that would encourage physical activity.
Official schooling should not start until age eight, particularly for boys. All of this emphasis on putting children into kindergarten when they are just past being toddlers is a mistake. It is a little like planting your vegetable garden in April instead of May or June.
Unfortunately for children, it leaves too many of them bruised and battered at a tender age and they spend the rest of their years in school trying to overcome this early discouragement. Furthermore, the span of school years does not need to be 12 years and the school day does not need to run from 9 to 3.
Bob Pellow
Parksville
