By Efrat Shapir
A student this summer asked me about the purpose of being at school all day. “Can’t you just teach me all that I need to know in, say, a two-hour window and let me go home?” he asked. My response rambled on about how school prepares students for the workplace.
Of course, the same question applies to the workplace: do we really have to work all day, instead of getting done what needs doing and then being finished for the day?
In both cases, this is a legitimate question that does not have a simple answer.
Generally speaking, both the parental and academic units expect children to be at school all day. Why, though? A few reasons immediately pop to mind: to be in a safe space, to stay out of trouble, to have a nourishing social environment, and, obviously, to learn. These are all valuable reasons, as well as factors that enable learning, but do all of them require eight hours each and every day? Could less count for more?
It is no secret that we have only so many productive learning hours in a day, which is significantly lower than the hours spent in school. Is the goal behind a full day of school to give every student enough time to actualize their productive ability, so that if they are slow to get started, or if they burn out quickly, there is enough time to work, rest, and repeat?
Time is a very good friend to learning
Certain concepts require time in order to absorb and get a handle on. Mathematical concepts that seem like rocket science in Grade 9 become clearer in Grade 10, for example. Not necessarily because of a better teacher or a stronger explanation. Rather, time and repetition make the difference. This is a different concept of time, though: a longer, horizontal time, as opposed to the vertical time frame of a single day at school.
In the individualized school setting, where teaching is shaped to the students, their ability, and their pace, the question becomes even more acute. Do students need to be in school all day if the learning is structured more specifically to them?
Wholistic learning
Being in school all day allows for a different, more wholistic kind of learning. The discussion that followed with the student mentioned above was riveting. It could only happen because he was there, because he was, in a sense, required to be there. We also played chess and watched a few videos for the same reason, because we had time together. The value of this type of living education exceeds any type of content-based learning.
Not all students want to, or can, engage in social, living education, either with their teachers or their peers. For them, school is learning in order to complete high school and its requirements. In an ideal world, this is a temporary situation. Perhaps the environment is not right yet, or the social circle is not ideal for them. Until the environment improves and their social and emotional needs are met, the short answer is that these students do not have to be in school all day, so long as they learn the required content toward course completion.
Living education
Ultimately, school should encourage students to learn in whatever way fits them. Ideally, it will let students experience not only content-based learning, but also this other kind, which I have called living education. Living education happens organically in a day that is not built solely around class time and class content. For learning like this to happen, teachers and students have to be in school all day. It is the only way for it to happen.
That balance, between structured coursework and the living education that grows out of time spent together, is something we think about every day at AVRO.