We Should Retool The Idea Of School

Published: May 7, 2008

For a lot of people, the end of the school year can't come soon enough.

It's like a marathon, a teacher told me, but with wind sprints scheduled over the last mile.

She was being kind. The school year more closely resembles a triathlon with a sprint thrown into each grading period and obstacle courses set up at random.

In May, there are new distractions that can torpedo academic progress.

"It's hard enough to cover the curriculum," one high school teacher said, "without the competing activities spring tends to bring."

Let's take a look at the math. I'm basing my calculations on about 180 school days, with six to seven hours each day on campus, and factoring in lunch and other expected interruptions.

Depending on how liberal I am with my "on-task" multiplier (0.75 is generous) and not counting missed school days, we're looking at somewhere south of 800 hours of instructional contact before moving to the next grade.

Eight hundred hours might sound like a lot, but compare that with 8,760 hours in a year; the estimated 1,500 hours the average youth watches television, according to A.C. Nielsen; or 2,920 hours sleeping, not counting sleeping in class.

Now subtract time for things such as field trips, parties, end-of-the-year activities, assemblies, in-school pep rallies and excessive standardized testing.

Teachers are pulling their hair out. When school begins to look like a three-ring circus, we have to wonder where something as fundamental as instruction fits in. Too often, it doesn't.

Let the teachers teach.

Most of Hillsborough County's instructional personnel are talented, knowledgeable, dedicated and hard-working. An increasing number of educators are frustrated and overwhelmed, however, and it's not the children who have them on the ropes.

If we're concerned about preparing students for the future, it's time we took a long look at what we want to achieve when we send young people to school.

Ask any teacher how much of his energy is available for actual teaching. The answer will shock you. Imagine how much of the budget shortfall would become irrelevant if we dismantled education and retooled the concept with simple learning as the No. 1 goal.

Radical? No.

The elemental concept of school seems to have gotten away from us. There's too much going on to get the primary job done.

Columnist Derek Maul can be reached at derekmaul@gmail.com.