School Calendar, continued..

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the idea of year-round schooling. I thought I ought to elaborate on that a bit.

It is widely recognized that the traditional 9½ month school calendar is a throw-back to an agricultural society that hasn’t existed for several generations, One consequence is that the United States, where 180 instructional days is typical, has one of the shortest academic calendars in the industrialized world. (State College has 185 days.)

Said calendar continues nationwide with no reasonable justification, educational or otherwise, except inertia. What a waste of time, effort and resources to spend a month or more every year catching students up to where they were back in June!

It is also generally recognized – although not as often stated publicly – that the current school year seems interminable to many, perhaps most, students and teachers. Some ambitious doctoral student should research how much actual learning occurs in May, as opposed to say, October.

This is what I envision – please note: this is not a proposal! - as a potential calendar: four, ten-week sessions, separated by two-week breaks, a longer four-week break in August and perhaps a week each for Christmas and other holidays.

This will seem familiar to Penn State alumni old enough to remember the four, ten-week term calendar; I have yet to meet an alum who did not consider that to be superior to the current "traditional" semester calendar. (For one thing, there was always light at the end of the tunnel.) But that’s another discussion.

A couple of years ago I attended a presentation by a school district that did some very creative things with those two-week breaks. They allowed their teachers to teach a mini-course on any subject in which they had a personal interest. These optional courses were offered to students on a tuition basis. Both teachers and the students were invigorated as a result.   

The establishment of a year-round school calendar would require a lot of planning, and may well be decades away, but it strikes me as inevitable.

Meanwhile, back to our calendar: I hope that not only do we approve the school calendar for next year, but that we establish parameters that would provide a basis for calendars in future years. It would be a service to the community to eliminate the annual tradition of the calendar debate.