Since the budget cuts for schools are a big issue now (I know locally there are tons of teaching positions being cut) one of the latest proposals is shrinking the school week down to four days a week. As of now, there are only about 100 school districts in the U.S. that are on that schedule. They would try to add an additional hour or two onto the days in order to make up for some of the missed time.

Some of it makes sense concerning the cost of transportation and it’s impact on the environment. There have been talks about cutting work weeks down to 4 day weeks, especially when people were paying as much to get to work as they were making there. If there were some congruency between the work and school week for the sake of parents, then I probably wouldn’t be opposed. I’m not quite sure if kids would be less able to obtain information in longer periods of time or not?

If you ask me where this is all going, I’d say that government simply doesn’t want to spend so much on education (big revelation there, huh?). It appears that all of this is happening because of the economy, however I think some major changes to the ways our children are educated are happening for other reasons as well.

Schools have been over-crowded for years now and unless you have the funds to pay for your child to go to schools where the teacher to child ratio is adequate and children are looked at less as numbers, then the kid is going to be short changed. Our children already fall behind when it comes to education, so what’s going to happen with these new budget cuts that eliminate teachers and beneficial programs that enrich their lives?

I’ve seen the innovative schools that Bill Gates has tried to help get started where children aren’t limited by traditional and outdated learning methods. But there is only so much that private funds can do and that only lights the fire, it doesn’t keep it burning. So how many parents and children are dependent on this crippled education system and how is it going to impact future generations and our world as a whole? The average parent can’t affort do pay for private education and usually it’s the same working class that doesn’t have the time to teach their children at home all that they need to learn.