<story><title>Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School</title><url>http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/06/stop-penalizing-boys-for-not-being-able-to-sit-still-at-school/276976/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pekk</author><text>Historically many, many children have sat still at school and behaved themselves.&lt;p&gt;That doesn&amp;#x27;t mean that others should be stigmatized, but it&amp;#x27;s not like this is impossible and unprecedented.</text></item><item><author>learc83</author><text>School is half education and half babysitting. The problem is that schools aren&amp;#x27;t aware of that, and they try to cram too much learning&amp;#x2F;work into a day at school. Kids just don&amp;#x27;t have the attention span. College isn&amp;#x27;t taught this way. Colleges realize that even young adults can&amp;#x27;t handle 40 hours a week of continual instruction, why do we do this kids can?&lt;p&gt;I think the reason, is that we&amp;#x27;re always behind other countries trying to &amp;quot;catch up&amp;quot;--50 years ago it was the Soviets, 20 years ago the Japanese, now it&amp;#x27;s the &amp;quot;global workforce&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;In our frantic rush to compete with everyone else we end up forcing an overambitious curriculum on kids. How much time can kids really spend learning everyday? A few hours at the most?&lt;p&gt;I have a friend who teaches 1st grade, she knows kids at that age can&amp;#x27;t spend time on focused learning for more than 20 or 30 minutes, but the school districts forces here to teach in 1 to 2 hour blocks and spend almost 6 hours out of the day instructing&lt;p&gt;(they get 15 minutes, no more, of recess; 30 minutes lunch, many times in silence because the lunchroom gets too loud;  and on some days 45 minutes of focused PE).&lt;p&gt;What 6 or 7 year old can possibly sit still and study for 5 or 6 hours each day?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sarchertech</author><text>First, historically mass education of the type we now employ is only about a century old, and designed to produce factory workers not to promote creativity. Learning to handle monotonous boredom and obey orders was of primary importance to a factory worker.&lt;p&gt;Second, much of this is unprecedented. When my parents were children, they didn&amp;#x27;t attend Kindergarten, and first grade was a half day. When my parents younger siblings were children, Kindergarten was a half day. When I was a child, I didn&amp;#x27;t attend preschool.&lt;p&gt;In 3 generations we&amp;#x27;ve added more than 2 years of education for every child, and that education is qualitatively quite different, even from what I experienced (Kindergarten 23 years ago)&lt;p&gt;When I was in kindergarten the majority of the day was playtime, we had 30 minutes of recess, 45 minutes of mostly freeform PE, 30 minutes of naptime, and a few hours of structured playtime (drawing, making crafts etc...).&lt;p&gt;From friends of mine who are teachers, since no child left behind, all of that has been removed or severely restricted. Recess is now 15 minutes, PE is more structured and not every day, no more naptime, and they don&amp;#x27;t have time for freeform activities because the curriculum is so dense.&lt;p&gt;In Kindergarten we spent almost the whole year learning the Alphabet. Now the curriculum assumes that children already know it.&lt;p&gt;Teachers know this doesn&amp;#x27;t work, but schools are obsessed with testing and metrics to the determinant of real education.</text></comment>
<story><title>Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School</title><url>http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/06/stop-penalizing-boys-for-not-being-able-to-sit-still-at-school/276976/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pekk</author><text>Historically many, many children have sat still at school and behaved themselves.&lt;p&gt;That doesn&amp;#x27;t mean that others should be stigmatized, but it&amp;#x27;s not like this is impossible and unprecedented.</text></item><item><author>learc83</author><text>School is half education and half babysitting. The problem is that schools aren&amp;#x27;t aware of that, and they try to cram too much learning&amp;#x2F;work into a day at school. Kids just don&amp;#x27;t have the attention span. College isn&amp;#x27;t taught this way. Colleges realize that even young adults can&amp;#x27;t handle 40 hours a week of continual instruction, why do we do this kids can?&lt;p&gt;I think the reason, is that we&amp;#x27;re always behind other countries trying to &amp;quot;catch up&amp;quot;--50 years ago it was the Soviets, 20 years ago the Japanese, now it&amp;#x27;s the &amp;quot;global workforce&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;In our frantic rush to compete with everyone else we end up forcing an overambitious curriculum on kids. How much time can kids really spend learning everyday? A few hours at the most?&lt;p&gt;I have a friend who teaches 1st grade, she knows kids at that age can&amp;#x27;t spend time on focused learning for more than 20 or 30 minutes, but the school districts forces here to teach in 1 to 2 hour blocks and spend almost 6 hours out of the day instructing&lt;p&gt;(they get 15 minutes, no more, of recess; 30 minutes lunch, many times in silence because the lunchroom gets too loud;  and on some days 45 minutes of focused PE).&lt;p&gt;What 6 or 7 year old can possibly sit still and study for 5 or 6 hours each day?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pessimizer</author><text>Also historically, many, many children have been thrown out of school or deemed ineducable because they couldn&amp;#x27;t sit still in school and behave themselves.</text></comment>