Summer School Online - Is It An Easy Way Out?
I could link to many articles from a Google search about whether American education is falling behind other countries or not. However, I don't know who to trust on the topic. Education is so fraught with special interests that I don't feel comfortable accepting most studies, particularly when I don't know who is funding the study and why. Not to mention that the criteria for comparison is rarely if ever mentioned in news reports.
Instead, I try to use the benefit of my own American education and judge for myself.
Before I get into it, let me just distinguish here between a child with real learning disabilities or familial problems limiting him or her, and the child who is flat out too lazy and unmotivated to do his or her work despite having the God given ability to get it done. This post is about the latter.
The school district where I live now offers summer school online to students who failed a class during the school year.
I understand the ultimate goal of summer school is to make sure the student learns the material, and if that end is achieved, then mission accomplished.
But aren't a few extra-curricular lessons being lost? I always figured there was a punitive aspect to summer school - spending 3 hours a day in a hot class with no air conditioning while your friends are frolicking on the beach.
It might also interfere with summer sports. Good. A life lesson is that good things come to those who work when they are supposed to work, and play when they are supposed to play.
What of social opprobrium? Wouldn't a daily walk of shame through the schoolhouse doors put pressure on a student to not fail classes to begin with or ever again?
The online curriculum is designed to be done at a student's leisure, when the student's problem may be that he or she spends too much time making bad choices that put leisure over work in the first place.
What are your thoughts? Give me a yes or no for online summer school.
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Dec '10
Re: Summer School Online - Is It An Easy Way Out?
Until you mentioned it, I never considered summer school to be about learning the material. I stayed out of it precisely because I viewed it as punitive. Putting it online sounds about as effective as giving me a choice between salad and desert. Safe money's on me cramming my pie hole full of pie.
Re: Summer School Online - Is It An Easy Way Out?
Summer school is 90% punitive and 10% about learning the material. Ergo, summer school online nearly completely misses the point.
I once made the mistake of signing up for summer school to get ahead in math (I took geometry during the summer before my first year in high school). Learned almost nothing, since the class was mostly intended as 4 hour detention for the dumb older kids who had flunked out. I got an A in the class for good behavior, but not learning geometry properly had pretty big consequences down the road for me.
Come to think of it, I would have learned more online. So perhaps summer school online should be offered to the kids who want to get ahead, and old school summer school should be offered to the kids who flunked out.
Sep '10
Re: Summer School Online - Is It An Easy Way Out?
One caveat: During my high school years (in the neolithic era), I took a summer high school biology and chemistry course at the local collegiate attached to my home city's university. They crammed a 5 month course into 6 weeks. It was a lot of work, though not insurmountable. I then asked the instructor:
"We went 5 days a week for 6 weeks and only logged slightly more hours than we would have in our normal high schools, what additional stuff do they teach if we'd taken this course at our normal high schools?"
Stony silence. Public education: the conspiracy to keep you poor and stupid.
Edited on Jul 14, 2011 at 8:31amNov '10
Re: Summer School Online - Is It An Easy Way Out?
I think I had the one teacher that cared during summer school when I took art. I figured it would be an easy ride, easy A that I could put on my transcripts before college under the "Fine Arts" category. But no, we had two months to do a year's worth of material. And none of this grading for participation either.
Of course, now they don't even offer the optional classes. Budget only allows for the remedial classes. Online classes might help with some of the optional classes, and wouldn't break the bank.
Diane Ellis, Ed.:
Come to think of it, I would have learned more online. So perhaps summer school online should be offered to the kids who want to get ahead, and old school summer school should be offered to the kids who flunked out.
I think this would be ideal.
Sep '10
Re: Summer School Online - Is It An Easy Way Out?
I hope everyone has heard of Thinkwell:
Geometry
Dec '10
Re: Summer School Online - Is It An Easy Way Out?
Yes.
I always saw summer school as a way to get ahead. Considering I wanted to be done with high school and on to college as soon as possible, summer school was an attractive option. Summer school also sets the student up for using the summer for internships and the like once they get to college as oppose to using summer as your break.
Jan '11
Re: Summer School Online - Is It An Easy Way Out?
Anytime education can move from a classroom centered instructional base to one where students can get content from the best instructors [not sure if this is happening is this particular case] where they (the students) are required to read more, write more, and work more independently at finding the answers, I think that it's a good thing. Not only that but the cost savings in transportation and heating & cooling costs is considerable. The flexibility of on-line courses for everyone involved is also a great feature.
This is a good direction to take even though one's gut instinct might be to want to punish slackers for not adapting to the current curriculum's delivery method. If those slacker-students are more successful with this mode of delivery, isn't that a good thing?
Dec '10
Re: Summer School Online - Is It An Easy Way Out?
What is this "opprobrium" of which you speak?!
Anecdote: Youngest Boy (OK, step-Boy) did extra tutoring this year (good!) and his school's grade rose to an "A: from a "C" school. Every single day, this summer, he and I still have to work on mutliplication tables. He has been passed and advanced to Middle School, but yesterday I offered him a deal; after the first 48 eggs his chickens produced, I would pay him 5 cents apiece, as I had paid for so much of the feed and fencing. They had provided 18 eggs, as of yesterday. He was completely unable to calculate the additional number of eggs he had to bring in, before he got into the black. 48 minus 18, insolulable, he's passed out of an "A" school, to Middle School.
He can't even ride his bike down to the school for summer school, less than a mile from the house in a rural area, because he's younger than 16 and is required to wear a helmet and not allowed to ride where there are no sidewalks. State law. 48 - 18 insoluble. Not held back, from an "A" school. Opprobrium? Hahahahahahaha.......