In the USA, average amount of time spent in homework is about 7 hrs /week. Average school day is 8 hrs. Sleep is about 8 hours.
You have to subtract the sleeping time; its inaccessible.
Average 9 hrs out of 16 waking hours is spent in or about school. We’re at 57% of a day spent on school. Then there is travel time: The average travel time on a bus to school is 35 minutes there, 35 back. Let’s call that an hour a day.
Now we’re up to 10 hours a day out of 16. 62.5% of a waking day spent on school related things.
Now I will expand to add up the little things that take away from free-time in a kid’s average day with the assumption that these are times where they don’t have much autonomy:
Now you have approximately 8 minutes for breakfast and 20 minutes spent eating dinner (US Average). We’ll call that 1/2 hour.
10.5 hrs a day spent not having to yourself. Then you have time spent on hygeine: US Average is 1/2 hour – 1 hour. a day. (I imagine teenagers would be more like the hour – primping and preening; appearance – much of the time with hygene is spent BECAUSE of having to go to school.
So now there are 11 hours a day between school, family obligations, personal hygene, much of which is making yourself presentable for school.
5 hours left a day. Out of 24.
20.8% Free time.
79.2%: School-related, Sleep, Eating/hygene.
But it’s easy to tell any story with statistics; Using one set of metrics, you show that a minority of time is spent with school; using my set of metrics, a majority of time is spent with school. [with an emphasis on “What’s left over for the individual?”]
Parents do not control a child’s day once they enter the education system as it currently stands. I didn’t even include sports; I could easily add the recent push for encouraging sports in kids; which adds up to even more time related to school;
Everything you said is true: If you don’t graduate high school or vocational school, your employment options are quite limited. That is how things are currently set up.
Good schools work well for those they work well for. They worked for me. They worked for you.
Do I have an alternative I could present to a community that’s complete and full and entirely researched, tested and the like?
No. It’s a work in progress. This is part of that work for me.
You can dismiss what I’m saying. I do not need to convince you that there are problems with the current system that need to be solved. But I am grateful for the exchange, because it challenges me to further clarify my thinking and presentation.
You’ve made it clear that you won’t budge in your position. Things are fine as they are. That’s my take; correct me if I’m mistaken.
But I know of kids who are cutters; a boy in my 6th grade class was tormented by a teacher and jumped down from the 3rd flight of stairs to “end it”; in his note, it was the criticisms of the teacher that brought him to it. He made it thankfully; and has grown to be a very intelligent guy.
The system works for those it works for; but some people crack under the pressure. Why should that be? What’s missing in the way things are being done now?
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