Stephen Joel Trachtenberg's Education Is Not A Luxury?

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With longer school hour, students perform better, right? At least to Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, it is. In his article “Education is Not a Luxury,” he believes the current American school schedule is the debris of the old agrarian calendar, which does not cope with the modern educational system. Hence, he suggests lengthening school period similar to the university model to promote better learning atmosphere, along with providing different resources to students and rewarding teachers adequately to stay in teaching profession. Even though objections are inevitable, he reckons the educational system ought to cope with the changing world by shading accordingly. His proposal seems to be a rational, viable way to solve the problem that “school is not taken seriously” (213), however, lengthening school hour may not be the best way around. We should change the …show more content…

As school hour increases from 6 to 8 hours a day, the 2 extra hours should be well spent to reach its potential, otherwise, there will only be 2 more hours wasted. Trachtenberg proposes to give teachers more preparation time and let students engage in other activities (214), but which? Activities often need supervision from teachers. Those who supervise activities will need more time to care about student, and have little time left for preparation. If the extra time serves only teachers, it is not the school schedule being changed, but rather teachers’ working hours. The 8-hour school schedule is proposed to serve students, or teachers? Even if we distribute one hour for each, how can you ensure students will like to participate those activities? Maybe some simply want a good rest or family time. The lengthened schedule might cause these students further dislike being in school, creating an opposite effect. Seemingly, simply extending school hour does not suit students the best, let along prolonging the schedule to 11 months (214), it will only bring more

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