As you have noted, there are many advantages to year round education. They include: Students have a few more breaks in which to forget what was taught in the last session. This allows the students and the teachers an excuse for not knowing something that had been taught previously. It is one of the few facts about YRE that more breaks will be a cause of more forgetting. Since there is no demonstrable educational advantage for year round education few people are concerned about whether or not anyone does better or worse after the change. This means that one does not have to set up an experiment to determine whether or not YRE is successful, teachers will not be evaluated on the success or failure of YRE and students are not expected to do better. Students can easily opt out of sports that they will be unable to participate in due to the timing of their breaks with thoseof other schools that are on the traditional calendar. Students can spend almost an entire year in school by taking improvement courses during the breaks. This allows the parents to avoid child care throughout the year, by judicious use of the school as their child care provider. Students can essentially become wards of the state without having to go to somewhere like China! Students can enjoy almost the entire summer indoors in cool air-conditioned comfort (provided there are excess fundsfor the air-conditioning). If there are no funds for air-conditioning, then the schools make out by not having to heat the buildings as much in the winter - lowering their heating bill (with no offset of cooling). Families will become closer together because they will have to manage the new breaks with child care, other school calendars,such as, middle school, high school, college and universities and their relatives through-out the country! If this added stress is managed properly think of how proud the family can feel. The whole community can see how little impact parents really have in their child's education. Administrators can exercise their power and feel good about themselves. Parents that are educated in YRE tend to be against it. So there is a good lesson here on how the communist system works. The school administration can provide the students and parents with what they think is best and the students and parents have to make do with the system. A lesson in "how to lie with statistics" can be had by biased loaded surveys run by the school systems. This is an educational goldmine for teaching students about sample survey methodology. The students can be taught about brainwashing. They can be given one sided biased information about YRE and then spout this off to their parents, friends and teachers. After enough people say it most believe the biased information is in fact truth! A great lesson in how to manipulate people though brainwashing. In excess of 2,000 schools have tried year round education and reverted back to the traditional calendar. So, if your school can change and keep YRE they have done something that several thousand other schools where unable to accomplish.This should make them feel good and proud. I'm sure there are other benefits to YRE. Just ask your teachers. They tend to push YRE. In our community 63% of teachers wanted to continue research into switching to YRE and only 45% of parentswanted to continue research into switching to YRE. Who is smarter, the teachers or the parents of the students? Also, those parents with more experience with children in elementary, middle and high school, tended to be against YRE. So, ask people with children that have not yet experienced all of the complexities of raising a family through these grades and you are more likely to getfavorable responses to YRE. As I hope you figured out by now that the system does not always desire what is best for our students, parents and families interms of education. They are looking out for themselves. They are often deluded by inaccurate information, half truths,observational studies and individual success stories.I believe the teachers either really believe that YRE must be better educationally or they are thinking selfishly about breaksduring other times of the year when vacation areas will be less crowded. Sincerely, Jim W. |
| Tracy Parents against MTYRE and YRE |
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| This is a letter written in response to a 13 year old Girl named Ashley. Ashley wrote to expound the benefits of Year round Education. Below is the response of Dr, James Wendelberger. |
| Dear Ashley, |