So, I have been reading more and more about what we should be doing as Americans to improve our educational system.  Over and over I hear people mention the idea of longer school days and longer school years.  I get why people want to talk about these ideas but I would like to point out a few things.         

             First full disclosure, my daughter is  (as anyone reading must know by now) disabled and therefore gets the majority of her therapy in school.  The upshot of this is that she already basically goes to school year round.  She gets a few weeks at the end of the normal school year and then a few weeks at the end of summer off. Other than that she goes all year.  I DEFINITELY think this is genius. Feisty Pants gets this wonderful opportunity because they don't want her to start sliding backwards so to speak, physically due to missing therapy.  As a natural result, she also does not backslide intellectually.  All kids should have this advantage.  It also would be easier on parents who work outside the home. Good daycare is often hard to find and even harder to afford.  Add to that, all the kids who need that school lunch and breakfast to make up for a lack of resources at home. (1 in 6 kids in the US live in poverty, I believe) and a year round school seems like a win/win for everybody.

         Having said that, a longer school year is not the same thing as a longer school day.  Our kids are already over scheduled in general.  And we are all underslept as a society, imho.  Maybe I'm old and crotchedy but I think we put too much pressure on kids anyway. Dance, athletics, clubs, music lessons, etc etc etc.  When do they get time to just be kids?  C'mon people, we have all seen (or should have seen) the research saying that kids need time to get bored and to have to entertain themselves, it's how they learn to be creative.  God knows we need them to be creative.  They are gonna have a big job running/ fixing things when we hand the world over to them.

         And speaking as a mom who has raised one kid who never fits the mold (too smart,too artsy, too flighty) and is raising one with no mold to fit (too feisty and different doesn't even begin to cover her), we need something that works for ALL kids from Hippie Pants to Feisty Pants to the straight A Ken and Barbie down the street.  We need to find a way for our schools and our teachers to be allowed to be creative.  Standardized testing is not working.  All we are doing is teaching kids how to take tests.  We need to go back to teaching them how to think not what to think.  And that means unchaining the hands and minds of our teachers.The best teachers I have ever seen all shared one thing in common. They were creative.  They found ways to incorporate the lessons in ways the kids thought of as fun projects instead of boring classes.  It is amazing to watch children blossom and work their cute little tushies off without even realizing how much work they are doing.  Why on earth are we not letting our teachers do this ALL THE TIME??  And while we are at it, why don't we pay them what they are worth?  Think about it, who is we all quote when we want to seem smart? Plato, Aristotle, Socrates.  Teachers- thousands of years later.  The people we want others to know we know, so we look smart, are teachers.