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politics State

Another Year-Round Idea

The Spectrum did a good job in Year-round Advantages of listing pluses and minuses to the idea of year-round school. Though the title says this is about the advantages they are good enough to acknowledge the well-known drawbacks. I also found the comments of stgeorgeteacher interesting in highlighting the difficulties that teachers can face with this kind of schedule.

As I read the article I began to think that while we are considering major changes to the structure of our education we might as well go all out and consider all the possibilities. What if we not only changed the schedule to have four separate blocks of classes each year but also changed the classes so that we have a higher degree of granularity in our grade levels. What if we replaced grades k – 6 with grades A – Z and students would have the chance to advance one grade during each block of classes. In one year a student could advance from grade D to grade H. There would be room for a student to be held back twice over 7 years and still get through all their grades before they arrive at middle school.

I leave it to readers to decide how serious I am about that particular proposal, but I’d like to know if there is any reason that we should not consider other proposals to change the system while we’re in the mood to discuss the issue of primary education.

By David

David is the father of 8 children. When he's not busy with that full time occupation he works as a technology professional. He enjoys discussing big issues with informed people, cooking, gardening, vexillology (flag design), and tinkering.