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How did you "spend" your Daylight "Savings" time?

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by Godiva, Nov 4, 2007.

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  1. I stayed up an extra hour.

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  2. I got an extra hour's sleep

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  3. I stayed up and then I slept in.

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  1. patsparks

    patsparks An Aussie perspective

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    I'd rather have christmas in summer under the gum trees, around a barbeque by the pool than a dead tree in a snowed in lounge room.

    I hate eggnog but I love a cold beer.

    Sorry but that really is daylight saving!!
     
  2. JSH

    JSH Senior Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(patsparks @ Nov 7 2007, 04:48 AM) [snapback]536036[/snapback]</div>

    No I'm not joking about school starting at 7:30AM. Here school starts at 7:30 but parents are allowed leave their children at the school as early as 7:00AM. This allows parent to prepare the children for school as they get ready for work and to leave them at school on their route to work in the morning. Very few children ride buses to school and some school districts in my area have even eliminated the bus program completely.

    When the school year begin and ends on the calender varies from state to state. However, the State of Michigan, were my mother is a teacher; requires that all state funded schools start the school year no earlier than Labor Day (First week of September) and end the school year no later than Memorial Day (Last day of May) This was specifically done to stop school districts from slowly moving to year-around school. School districts were doing this by starting a week earlier and ending a week later each year with the goal of moving to a year-around school year. This would allow children to learn better by reducing the amount of material that children forget during their holiday periods. This is especially important for the subjects of Math and Science.

    The reasoning for banning year-around schooling was that it hurt the tourist industry. Many tourist businesses would only stay open from Memorial Day to Labor day. With more schools staying open in the summer, children had more time off during the Fall, Winter, and Spring when these businesses were not open. By mandating June, July, and August for school summer holidays, the tourist industry could enjoy the highest volume of tourist per day with the shortest number of days open and therefore the lowest labor costs.

    Isn't it great how business interests trump the well-being of our children? :angry:
     
  3. Godiva

    Godiva AmeriKan Citizen

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jhinton @ Nov 6 2007, 11:03 PM) [snapback]535939[/snapback]</div>
    Not 3 months, more like 10 weeks. Our schools go from the first week in September to the third week in June.

    Not all suspend learning during this time. There are those that must attend summer school. Yeah, like a student that has failed a subject they had 10 months to learn is going to master it in 6 weeks? Gee, I don't think so.

    There are plenty of kids here that have to walk to school in the morning. They don't qualify for a school bus and even then school buses don't pick them up on their front doorstep. Nor do they have parents that can drop them off at school and pick them up. As I child I walked to school, even in kindergarten. When I was old enough to ride a bike, I rode a bike. When I got a driver's license I drove the family's extra car and it was my job to take my younger brother and sister anywhere needed, like baseball games or music lessons but not school. They walked or rode their bikes.

    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(patsparks @ Nov 7 2007, 03:48 AM) [snapback]536036[/snapback]</div>

    No, I am not kidding. At the Middle School where I teach the bell rings at 7:15 am and the students have 5 min. to get to class. School starts at 7:20 am.

    Our school system has nothing to do with student achievement. It is driven by parents' who want free daycare (I.E. drop the kids off before they have to be at work) and the cafeteria and bus schedules.

    If we were serious about raising achievement and reforming schools Middle and High schools would start between 9:30 and 10 am and we'd be on a true year round schedule of 9 weeks on and 3 weeks off with 4 quarters per year.

    You'd instantly raise test scores just by starting school two hours later in the day and evenly dividing the school year, allowing students who needed to to "catch up" during that 3 week period between quarters.

    Notice how this hasn't happened.
     
  4. JSH

    JSH Senior Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Godiva @ Nov 8 2007, 12:30 AM) [snapback]536560[/snapback]</div>
    Your description of walking, biking, driving to school is the same as my childhood in Michigan. From 1st to 8th grade I walked or rode my bike to school daily unless my mother dropped us off during a bad snowstorm. (I walked to school with my older brother and a group of about 10 kids from my street.) When I got to High School my brother had a driver's license and drove me and some of the younger neighbor kids to school. I'm 29 so this wasn't that long ago.

    However, this is not possible in the suburban area of Birmingham that I live. You cannot walk to school because there is no sidewalks anywhere. We have roads with about a 8 inches between the white line an the edge of the pavement. As I said, some of the schools districts in this area have voted to end their busing systems altogether. So in this area the primary method for a child to get to school is for their parent to drop them off and pick them up. This leads to huge traffic jams of parents trying to get into an out of the school parking lot even when every school has a police officer that directs traffic.

    I agree with you that our school systems are not set up around learning but instead convenience and tradition.

    Whether it is 10 weeks or 12 weeks, that is still plenty of time for a 6th grader to forget how to do long division and fractions. I distinctly remember spending the first 4 to 6 weeks of math class every year reviewing the material from the previous year.

    (BTW, most of your message didn't show up until I replied to it. Weird.)
     
  5. JHSmith

    JHSmith 2020 Avalon Hybrid Owner

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    This poll needs another option or two (both related):

    "Running around resetting all the !@#$%^ clocks! " :lol:

    And

    "Spending 2 hours with car manuals trying to find out how to reset the GPS so it would display correct time." B)