I still haven’t had a chance to read “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell, but in preparation of reading the book, I want to give some preliminary thoughts.
“Outliers,” as I understand it, discusses the problems with summer break, especially for economically disadvantaged students. He’s not the first person I’ve heard of that wants to lengthen the summer break. Former Dallas ISD Superintendent Linus Wright advocates this change, as well as longer school days.
The argument is that summer break is outdated. It stems from our predominantly agricultural days when farming families needed all hands in the field in the afternoons and summers. Students often dropped out of school when their family decided they had enough to pass as a farmer (or needed full-time help). As anyone could infer, students don’t need summer breaks and afternoons to work on the farm – if anything, many complain that unsupervised time off (such as from 3 to 5 p.m. when parents are still at work, or most of summer break) allows students time to find and make all sorts of trouble.
The RAND Corporation says that economically disadvantaged students slip, on average, a month behind their achievement level in the spring. Trying to catch those students up from a month’s worth of learning keeps teachers from teaching, hypothetically, a different month’s worth of skills and information.
The National Summer Learning Association says the solution is summer school. It says that this program would be different from regular school (more hands-on, more field trips, Socratic teaching methods, etc.). Duval County Public Schools in Florida cites research suggesting hands-on summer elementary programs help involved students improve from Fs and Ds to As and Bs, and helps close the gap gained over the summer break.
I see a different problem, though. In theory I agree with the idea that if students spent more time in school, they might learn more (or forget less) and get into less trouble over the break. But in practice, one could argue that a lot of time is wasted every day in school as it is. Most students see the last week of school as a time to watch movies or go on earned trips to Six Flags or the theater, not to mention time wasted throughout the school year.
U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan said, “Our students today are competing against children in India and China. Those students are going to school 25 to 30 percent longer than we are. Our students, I think, are at a competitive disadvantage. I think we're doing them a disservice.”
If you go by those numbers, you might argue the U.S. is at a competitive disadvantaged (some, such as the Center for Public Education, don’t – they believe that Duncan’s sources use elementary figures, or that if you look at the number of hours spent in instructional time, the U.S. spends more time learning).
I don’t believe that looking at how long a country is in school is looking at the whole picture. Wouldn’t we learn more by analyzing China and India’s curriculum? What do they teach their students? How do they spend their time (regardless of whether it’s less or more)?
After all, 16 countries scored higher on the Program for International Student Assessment in reading literacy, 30 countries scored higher mathematics literacy, and 22 scored higher in science literacy, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Doesn’t it make more sense to learn what these 14 to 30 countries teach about literacy, science and math and how they teach them? How long they are in school is important; but, it’s certainly not the most important factor.
Finland (who scored 3nd in reading literacy on the PISA, 6th in mathematics literacy and 2nd in science literacy) spends less time in school than Texas does and performs better on international tests. Finland spends about 777 hours in instruction in an average middle school year, according to CPE. Texas, in comparison, spends around 1,260 hours.
It’s important to understand that the U.S. has a highly different situation than China, India, Finland or any of the other countries that perform better than we do. We would need to analyze and test any ideas we glean from their methods. It’s also important to note that the PISA isn’t a perfect indicator of a countries achievement – many other countries only test their brightest students. But the U.S. isn’t close to the top in any comparison – something needs to change.
What do you think? Should summer break be shortened or eliminated? How could we make the time we already attend school more productive? And what can we learn from the countries who perform better than us?
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