Sad, sad, sad

I read today that President Obama has proposed that we add time to our school day and days to our school year, in order to "level the playing field".

It seems that he wants the children in this country to be more like those in other countries, although he didn't really specify which countries.

I saw an ad on TV last night that showed a seven year old girl breaking rocks. The voiceover explained that she did that for pennies a day to feed her family.

I recently read an article on the suicide rates among Japanese youth. These youth are under tremendous pressure, pushed hard in school, and into the workplace. Those who fail in school, or at their job, are considered a failure at life, and the honorable thing to do is kill themselves, so as not to be a burden on society.

A recent article in one of the news magazines, explored how young men in Afghanistan are forced to join the army sometimes as young as 10 years old.

I wonder which playing field it is we want to level?

The move to a longer school year, and longer school days is not a new concept. For years, advocates of such measures have argued that our current school year is based on the trends of agriculture, from a time when farmers needed their kids help in the fields. Since so few of our family farms still survive, the talking heads argue, it makes little sense to continue those same schedules.

Perhaps I'm just an old fashioned kind of guy, but I fail to see how further deterioration of he family, further separation of children and parents, further alienation, can possible be a good thing.

I get it. The powers that be have decided that parents are not capable of teaching their children, so the more time they can spend in classrooms ad the less time they can spend with their parents, the better prepared the children will be to face the "real world".

As proof, they point to inner city youth who spend their after school time in gangs. They point to children of illegal aliens, who struggle with English. They point to latchkey kids and children of the Playstation Generation, Alphabet Children, who spend their time in front of a video game, with fast food in one hand and the game controller in the other, playing Grand Theft Auto III. They point to the alarming number of children whose life revolves around their Facebook wall, their Twitter list, their MySpace Friends, and their buddy list.

While I agree that there are some dangerous trends among the youth of this country, I fail to see how spending more time at school will address those trends.

Perhaps, a more logical solution would be to improve the quality of the time already spent at school.

I propose instead, that there be a mandatory family time.

That instead of adding three hours to the school day. Parents should spend those three hours a day with their children. Without the interruption of work. Work should stay at the workplace where it belongs, schoolwork should stay at the school where it belongs, and families should spend time together, learning, exploring, teaching values, talking, playing, enjoying life and each others company.

I propose that if families spend more time together, and parents spend more time teaching their kids, we will see much better and longer lasting results than anything that can be accomplished by requiring students to spend more time in school.

Of course, sending the kids to school for longer hours and more days is much more convenient.

Besides that, it gives us someone to blame.