Well when you realize we treat school as glorified babysitting and not just education, part of the reason becomes more obvious. Parents work 40 hours so we need kids in school roughly that length of time. Especially when both parents have to work to afford to live.
We need to uplift a lot about the entire system for it to work.
Especially when both parents have to work to afford to live.
That’s exactly the problem right there.
Also ppl are obsessed with high school sports so that’s another reason why they start high school so early (my high school started at 7:45 AM), so there’s time after for sports practice.
As someone who’s direct family member manages a school schedule in the US, it’s sports. Schools are not for academia anymore. Everyone wants little Timmy to grow up and be a famous American Football star and get that scholarship. You have to start school early enough that it ends early afternoon. Which then allows for after school sport practice which finishes around the time mommy and daddy finish their 9 to 5. Then the games are scheduled after that so the parents can come watch and spend money. The spend money is a big one as they are wasting millions on these arenas for sports while the science labs have textbooks with no spines left.
But then it’s not so much sports. The real cause is it’s childcare while parents work.
In my family member’s district, that’s not even a consideration. And weirdly many in the district have a shared overall employer and work starts at 5am to 7am for many of them. Leaving the other parent to drop off or making kids ride the bus solo.
The only thing dictating the schedule is sports. You get some parents that complain about everything. Meaning a fraction of a percent will complain about school starting too early, too late, on days it’s too windy, on days the sun is too bright, whatever. Parents are super awful nowadays. But all that is noise. The only complaint en mass they get that isn’t political/vaccine/FoxNews is sports related. Game started too late/early, not enough fields for all the kids to practice. The million dollar astroturf is bent the wrong way now, and needs maintenance IMMEDIATELY.
There was a high school building that got severely flood damaged in a hail storm. Parts of it are still boarded up and not fixed. But the $30m+ stadium they don’t need is almost finished.
Yup. Spent high school in a relatively large city with dozens of high schools, had stadiums galore, and temp classrooms in porta-buildings that leaked all winter and sweltered in the spring and summer and most of the fall. No money to pay teachers aids, no COLA raises for educators, but somehow the football stadium screen got an upgrade regularly and shiny new jerseys and helmets for the sportos.
Sports in education is a cancer. (source: see NCAA.)
In my high school, the auditorium where we did school plays was falling apart. You literally couldn’t sit in a quarter of the seats. Meanwhile, the football team got a new private changing room with a jacuzzi.
We once got a $250 lumber budget for building sets rejected (with the rationale that we could just reuse the sets from last year, even though that was a totally different play from a different time period, nevermind completely disassembled). Meanwhile, the cheerleading squad was issued matching tracksuits with their names embroidered, including on the duffle bag it came in. Sports sucks up huge amounts of money from school budgets, and everyone else is left to fight over the rest.
This is it, regarding Canada at least. I took a course called HIstory of Canadian Education, the education system in Canada was created because of rising hooliganism in cities, as rural couples moved into cities and took factory jobs, and left their children home to fend for themselves.
it’s disgusting how we prioritize sports over education at the ostensibly education instutions
YUP. I went to a small middle of nowhere school that punched far above its weight in academic performance and well below its weight in sports. Sports budget was consistently enormous compared to everything else and then would have massive splurge years on fucking stadium lights. That shit will never ever remotely meet its value but its the agenda.
I don’t think this is the whole picture, it doesn’t explain why we have such similar school schedules in other countries where school sports aren’t so relevant
All school schedules historically are because of farmers and blue collar worker schedules.
Now that we’ve outlawed child labour (well, it’s coming back…) and your family’s survival doesn’t count on getting those crops picked, we now have freedom to choose school hours at any time. Those countries without such strong sports have had few issues moving it to later start. It’s the sporty ones that resist.
The poorer countries that still have mostly basic labour students and/or child labour are still on an early schedule for the same reason the more developed nations started out that way.
I’d say the only outlier is China. They start early and go loooooong. That’s for bashing in some of the best education at the expense of most other things. There’s probably a happy middle ground in there somewhere.
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whose* direct family member
It’s a bit depressing to me that we’ve known this for at least twenty years, and possibly more and it’s still a problem.
A major concern has been busing. Even in normal times, districts use the same buses and drivers for students of all ages. They stagger start times to do that, with high schoolers arriving and leaving school earliest in the day. The idea is that they can handle being alone in the dark at a bus stop more readily than smaller children, and it also lets them get home first to help take care of younger siblings after school.
If high schools started as late as middle and elementary schools, that would likely mean strain on transportation resources. O’Connell said Nashville’s limited mass transit compounds the problem.
“That is one of the biggest issues to resolve,” he said.
This is basically it, school systems not wanting to buy the extra buses or hire the extra drivers they’d need.
Unfortunately I don’t see this ever being solved without a major cultural/financial shift in the USA towards properly funding education. Too much financial pressure to have fewer buses and fewer drivers. If my high school and middle school had started at the same time as the elementary, that’d be like 14 new buses alone at $60k-$110k a pop, not including driver wages and the diesel for each one…and we had more than one high school and middle school in our district. So it’d be more like 50 new buses, just to start HS and middle school at the same time as elementary. The cost would eat smaller districts alive. It’d be several million just to procure the buses new.
It’s baffling how many U.S problems can be traced back to car-oriented development.
Here in Sweden, dedicated school buses are uncommon - getting to school is usually a matter of walking when young, and then using the common public transportation when older, or biking, or a mix of those two.
Here’s how I got to school while growing up:
- Years 1 -6: school 0.4 km away, walked or biked
- Years 7-9: school 2 km away, biked or took the bus
- Years 10-12: school 9.1 km away, took the bus to school
Note that this was one of the most car-oriented cities in Sweden of about 100k people, meaning that this experience is probably unusually bad for Sweden.
I won’t argue that the US is exceedingly car-focused, but that’s partly because distances travelled are greater. When I was a kid, my elementary school was 2.6 miles (4.18 km) from my house, and many classmates would have been even further. I had classmates who had a 45 minute bus ride (time stretched by making multiple stops obviously). While I’m sure 5 year olds can bike 2.6 miles, it’s probably not ideal and certainly not ideal in snow/sub-zero (Fahrenheit) temps. Much of the US is just very spread out.
When I was at school, the bus was a charter from the company that ran the local public bus fleet. Every other time it was running public routes or just part of that companies reserve.
But this was in the UK, where dedicated school buses are exceptional.
Yeah you were lucky. I had to take public transport for the number 93 bus. Memories of queuing in the rain.
On the plus side, the bus was filled with pretty Japanese students going from their Hall of Residence to University.
In the school district that I live in (and where my kids attend school), elementary school starts earliest and middle/high school both start at roughly the same time.
I’ve found that this works really well since my youngest wakes up and is ready to go earliest anyways, I don’t have to adjust my schedule because they’re out of the house before I have to get to work and I would need after school care regardless. My older kids can more or less fend for themselves before school so I don’t need to worry about them while I get to work before they leave.
If elementary school started at 9 like high school and middle school I’d have to organize care for my youngest both before and after school since I’d be working at both times.
And now imagine if instead of making new schools in places where everybody needs to be driven there either by car or by bus we build them so the majority would walk or bike as it is the more convient option. Other countries like Japan can imagine. Turns out it’s actually better to walk/bike to school even who knew!
The problem is you’d have to build not just schools, but entire neighborhoods so they are walkable + tunnels under any larger roads between them, or maybe guarded crossings would do here and there. While it could certainly be done, the majority of the US is built to be car centric from the ground up.
good thing there’s plenty of reasons to do that anyways
Thank you for the insight! Love reading comments that really get to the heart of an issue without all the emotional crap.
Your comment for example, I had never thought along those lines. Not an easy problem.
schools are largely daycare facilities for the low/middle income brackets.
I am like the only parent who is happy with their child’s school.
Because school is entirely geared towards parents. Nothing about school is actually good for the people going through it, but the system doesn’t actually care about them, and isn’t designed to.
Nothing? I’d argue that learning mathematics is good for people going through school but then again I’m no expert in education.
It’s not the concept, it’s the execution.
There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with having a classroom of students being taught a curriculum. It’s effective even if it’s inefficient. The execution is lacking for sure, but to suggest that none of it is good for students is a little dramatic.
Isn’t that about what I said? Of course the idea of children learning important topics in an organized fashion is decent. The objections I have are the forced social structures, mandatory attendance at risk of school or legal punishment, limited ability to specialize in topics or pick a curriculum, rigid schedules all day enforced with various punishments or humiliation including strict control of access to bathrooms, and in general the prison-like obsession with routines and schedules.
I’d add the fact that not everyone learns the same way, and while some people do well with lectures and note-taking, others would be better reading books alone, and others would be better in a discussion format. My experiences varied wildly. One major issue for me was that the strict scheduling and punitive obsessions didn’t work well with what was going on with my health and family life, but there’s little room for that. Personally I would have done much better to have not attended school at all. Each year was pretty much an excruciating review of things I learned from books 2 years before, combined with extensive peer and administration torture.
My high school had block scheduling, we’d have 2 90 minute classes in the morning, then “I Block” in the middle of the day which was essentially our homeroom, then 2 more classes in the afternoon.
When they first started it, I block was a pretty freeform thing, you had to check in with your homeroom teacher, but could then go pretty much anywhere in the school and do whatever, go see your other teachers to get some help or just hang out in their room, go to the library, etc.
They slowly cracked down on that, first one day a week you had to be in your homeroom for SSR (Sustained Silent Reading, you weren’t allowed to do homework or anything else, you had to sit there reading silently) and they slowly cut down on reasons you were allowed to be out of your homeroom room during I block without a note or hall pass to the point that when I graduated they were making announcements at the beginning of I block that anyone caught in the halls without a hall pass would be written up for, and I vividly remember this specific wording, “defiance and insubordination”
What the actual fuck was that shit? That feels like wording they would use in an actual prison or in the military or something?
We were a relatively safe, solidly middle class suburban district, we didn’t have rampant gang issues, violence, drug use, anything of the sort, the odd troublemaker or prblem child sure, but overall we pretty much kept ourselves in line, there wasn’t any need to crack the whip on us.
strict control of access to bathrooms, and in general the prison-like obsession with routines and schedules
I’d argue that this is one of the only real life situations that school prepares people for: you’re very likely to be stuck living on someone else’s schedule for the vast majority of your life. Your employer decides what time you have to be there and what time you’re allowed to leave; when you get a break; when you can use the bathroom; when you’re allowed to take a vacation. Sick for more than a day or two? Better burn some cash and get a doctor’s note. Need to go to a funeral? Immediate family only, company policy, sorry buddy.
That’s the thing: schooling is set up to condition people for fucked up jobs with corporations, which I guess is a realistic plan.
strict control of access to bathrooms
They still do this. The middle school I just took my daughter out of (she was being bullied by half the school) had a maximum number of bathroom breaks per child per semester. I told my daughter that if she ran out of breaks, she should tell the teacher I either do it in the bathroom or right here on the floor. You pick.
Well, I hope your daughter is doing well. You seem pretty savvy, maybe home school her? Sorry if that’s not a feasible suggestion.
Anyway, peeing on a teacher is not a good move. Vomiting on a non-reasonable teacher is a power move.
Thank you. She’s not better yet, but this was like 2 weeks ago. We’ve put her in online schooling for now. We might try sending her to another middle school next semester. The online school is run through the school corporation, but it’s too hard for her to do by herself. She’s lucky I’m on FMLA right now. But it’s ridiculous, they bought the cheapest education package possible from whatever corporation and all the English texts are public domain 19th century texts. 7th grade is way too young to be able to read an O. Henry story about a safecracker with an ironic twist ending or an H. H. Munro story about English Edwardian manners and understand what the fuck is going on. So basically I have to sit with her, read the text for her because she can’t figure out how a lot of the words are pronounced, while we stop every few sentences so I can explain to her what it means. We’ve looked up the texts and most of them are at least a 10th grade level. The English teacher they have assigned to this program has been very unhelpful and not very responsive.
I feel sort of trapped, because what if she has the same issues in the next middle school? She is very independent in terms of not conforming with the other kids (she was the only one who wore punky clothes and jewelry) and she does have psychological issues that make it harder and make her act less like the other kids, especially when she gets stressed and has to let it out, which is basically middle school code for ‘bully this child.’ The entire school called her a furry because she wore studded leather collars. To her credit, she kept wearing them despite that bullying, but eventually we got her up and ready for school one day and she completely broke down and said there was no way she could face another day of it. What’s especially awful is that while every kid in the school piles on her, every adult she meets thinks she’s awesome, although them telling her so isn’t enough for her self-esteem.
We did less structured and ultimately badly-done online schooling during COVID. It was bad in other ways, but more importantly, I don’t know how long we can survive on a single income again and that’s what will have to happen if we keep her in online school.
Sorry, had to vent.
youre being a bit hyperbolic with the ‘nothing’, no reason to double down
they’re not even the person who said that. Neither of squiblet’s posts even contains the word “nothing”. Drink some coffee
The control of bathrooms is about vandalism and vaping. Vapes are endemic in public schools. Students will also try to rip out sinks, cram things in toilets - also a convenient place for gang initiations. It’s not about being cruel, it’s about making sure that the hallway isn’t flooded with piss and shit because these kids are out of control.
Person saying it is probably a teenager
It’s not designed to teach mathematics particularly well
Really? The thing most people end up using the least in their lives beyond an elementary school level?
Math education is a crapshoot for most people. All it does is serve as a way to make them feel bad about themselves for not being interested in what people like you tell them to be interested in.
Thank god computers are putting math majors out to pasture.
No, I’d argue learning history and how to read is more important than anything else the school system provides. It’s what follows most of us throughout our entire lives.
Math and literacy are both fundamental and essential tools for a self sufficient adult. You don’t need to remember how to to apply the quadratic theorem or complete the square outside of high school for most jobs. You do need to remember how to read and basic concepts like compound interest or multiplication. People who don’t are ill prepared for life, not just adulthood.
Adults also need a fundamental understanding of more advanced maths like statistics so they’re not conned by people who lie with statistics. And WOW, is there ever a ton of that going on these days.
beyond an elementary school level
Math and literacy are both fundamental and essential tools for a self sufficient adult.
Lol, the ironing.
Given a bunch of middle school and high school kids have been pushed forward in the system (past pandemic) with very shaky understanding of these very crucial subjects, I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. The education system in the US really doesn’t seem to care about making independent and intellectually curious adults. It begins in elementary but is a failure to proceed beyond that.
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Source?
John Caldwell Holt, either “Instead of Education” or “How Children Fail.” I should reread them; is been a while.
I meant sources showing how “school is entirely geared towards parents” and how “the system doesn’t actually care about them [children], and isn’t designed to”
I… did? I mean, I can give you more of my pro tooth reading list but those are the ones that would explain that particular point. I’m not sure what else you’re looking for.
Your sources may show how the system is more beneficial for parents but does it show proof that it was designed that way?
I think so. And if Holt doesn’t go into that part of the history then John Taylor Gatto does. Wanna join our book club? You have me wanting to reread all of these.
I need to read holt too. maybe we should organize a book club?
That’d be cool. I wonder if there’s a community for that?
we could make one
Then the question becomes how to get other people to see it…
honestly abolish school. I can’t imagine subjecting my hypothetical child to what I went through.
I wouldn’t go so far as to abolish school completely, but things definitely need to change. Kids deserve so much better
Exactly my feeling. I wouldn’t put somebody I hate through that; why the fuck would I do it to someone I love?
to get them used to being overworked amd underpaid ofcourse
You jest, but this was essentially the response one parent made when this subject was brought up in our school district.
the school system is basically based on producing factory workers during the industrializational. it is severely outdated and impractical.
our children are subjected to the very condtions that we adults are trying to avoid.
It’s not all bad. I don’t recall any of my teachers in high school scream cusses at me or telling me their bigoted opinions.
They cite one reason, busses, for the issue? With no mention of sports? Bad reporting.
It should also say not every person has to be at their job at 9am plugging up the road for the same reason said teens are being dropped off by these parents.
These are just outdated practices left over from previous generations. No one even tries to change them at this point. It would be so refreshing to see these things start to make sense.
I can tell you my personal hypothesis as to why it happens in universities:
- Timetabling work 8–4
- Misery loves company
It has always been about work. It lines up with most morning shifts because no one can afford childcare.
A major concern has been busing. Even in normal times, districts use the same buses and drivers for students of all ages. They stagger start times to do that, with high schoolers arriving and leaving school earliest in the day. The idea is that they can handle being alone in the dark at a bus stop more readily than smaller children, and it also lets them get home first to help take care of younger siblings after school.
If high schools started as late as middle and elementary schools, that would likely mean strain on transportation resources. O’Connell said Nashville’s limited mass transit compounds the problem.
Are staggered start times common in America?
Every school district I’ve been in does this.
Very
My oldest starts school at 7:35 and my youngest starts school at 9:20.
I’ve only seen it the other way around, though. Elementary starts first around 7:30 am, middle school at 8 and high school 8:30.
Good God! 7.30!
9am start here for more or less everything, give or take 10 minutes (Ireland).
My preschooler is 9.30.
We had four high schools in our city that used the school buses.
One started at 7, two started around 7:30ish, the fourth started around 8:30.
I was in the 8:30 school. We didn’t like it because we didn’t get out until 3:30, so all of the other high schools had been out for over an hour at that point. It was a point of rivalry contention between schools.
Where I’m from primary, middle, and secondary school are near each other, use the same busses & staggered start times, and we have no public busses. At least I see more bike racks now than when I attended!
In my experience talking with school officials and reading between the lines of BS that get fed out by them, you get to take your pick because all are true.
- sports are more valuable than the mental and physical health of all of the students. Boosters bring in fat stacks for the school and scholarships bring prestige and clout when it comes time to justify government spending.
- so the teens can get out of school early enough to be exploited for free childcare by parents.
- so they can be pushed into the labor force after school.
Really all of them are actual reasons that they start so early despite overwhelming research that starting later in the morning would lead to better academic outcomes and better long-term information retention.
Schools in the USA are not about education. They are conditioning centers to “prepare” kids for abusive expectations in post graduation employment.
Worked at a HS that started at 7 so kids could pick up their siblings after school. Many of them had jobs too - quite a few ended up being scheduled during the last class period too.
Schools in the USA are babysitting to keep the economy going. You can’t teach a class of 30. Students can do everything short of punch a teacher and you have to keep them in your room, so learning just doesn’t happen.
Because parents would then have to pay someone to babysit and then take their kids to school at the later time in addition to after school care. And why can’t parents go to work later? Same reason companies aren’t allowing work from home even though it’s proven that the majority of people are more productive. The managers need to justify their existence, so they have to have their employees all there at the same time. And for some reason society has decided that morning people are somehow better than everyone else.
Because kids need to be at school while parents work
Right, so they get home at 3pm, makes perfect sense
It roughly lines up with morning shifts, I guess? When I was working at a grocery store our morning shift was like 6-3 with an hour lunch. I don’t know how you make sure your kids actually go to school if you’re at work by 6, though… And if you work evenings (or overnights, for places that are still open 24 hours) it doesn’t help at all.
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My rationale for what? 9-5s were covered by implication in the comment I was replying to: if you work 9-5, it’s kind of awkward that the kids get off at 3. I was just saying that if you work mornings it’s kind of awkward that you probably have to leave before the kids do, and if you don’t work during the school day then the kids aren’t at school while you work.
Not sure what I’m parroting. The topic of this subthread is Grammaton Cleric’s assertion that “kids need to be at school while parents work,” so I’m just mentioning that for a lot of parents that already isn’t the case.
I don’t have an opinion on times they “should” be at school.
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I wasn’t defending kids being in school so early. I was just musing that it sort of lines up better than it does with 9-5s. Which is probably incidental.
After school care exists. Before school care too.
Easy. Let parents start work later too.
I hate how getting up early is somehow perceived to be more efficient. There’s nothing natural about working hours anyway. We could choose to place them when it fits more people.
Because parents have to go to work, and teens with boyfriends/girlfriends don’t know how to use condoms and can’t get abortions in some states. Also, used car prices and insurance make teens driving to school on their own unaffordable.
First it has to start early enough so parents can get kids off then get to work. Also, extra circular activities like sports and clubs, as well as parents wanting kids home when they are home.
