Persuasive Essay on Shorter School Days

📌Category: Education, School
📌Words: 1091
📌Pages: 4
📌Published: 03 April 2022

Imagine this, you wake up and walk into the kitchen at 7:30 a.m. to see your 6 year old downing coffee and answering early morning emails. They curtly say good morning before straightening their tie, putting their lunch in their briefcase and walking out the door. Wouldn’t this seem weird? You're 6 year old in Kindergarten acting like a small businessperson. Surprisingly CEO’s and children aren’t that different. They wake up earlier than usual, eat breakfast or skip it all together, and grab their things and walk out the door. They then stay at school for 7-8 hours before coming home. Children aren’t employees, so why do they live like them? School days should be shorter because shortening the school day will benefit students and staff and because long school days will affect students in a negative way.

Students and staff will benefit from shorter school days. Shorter school days allow more time for students to sleep and take a break from school and homework to have time for themselves. In an article written by Bonnie Wood, Wood states that “Some people argue that because the work day is roughly seven or eight hours, the school day should be as well. But students, especially young ones, should not be expected to perform the same amount of time at work as adults. They need breaks from sitting at desks and in the classroom. Some educational settings allow students to be active during the day, and this helps, but students still shouldn't be expected to put in an eight-hour work day” (Wood). This evidence shows that students would benefit more from shorter school hours and that students aren’t adults and shouldn’t be treated as such. These facts give powerful insight into the problem of longer school days, and how shorter school days are more rewarding.  Students are not adults who can put in 8 hour workdays and benefit from it. Moving onto staff, all staff in a school environment are overworked and underappreciated. For example, this study shows how teachers would benefit from shorter school days: “Teachers are often under-appreciated, under-paid and over-extended. Even though they get the summers off, they often have to go above and beyond the call of duty during the school year, with grading, programs and out-of-class tutoring. If they worked shorter hours during the day, they could better focus on their students and their education through mentoring and the work they do from home, such as grading and lesson planning” (Wood). This study indicates how teachers would benefit from shorter school days. Shorter school days would give more time for teachers to create more beneficial lesson plans, and evaluate students' position in understanding certain topics. Therefore, shorter school days will allow students and staff more time for themselves in order to benefit their learning and teaching experiences. 

Longer school days are harmful to students, shorter school days would be more practical. Many students participate in extracurricular activities such as sports, community service, the arts, and other activities outside of school. Longer days mean less time for students to perform homework and study for classes, especially for events that end late at night. They stay up later than they should because of it. An article written by Ayanna John, a reporter for Clarksburg High School, gives evidence towards why longer school days are detrimental to students, “A typical American school day is six to eight hours starting between seven and nine a.m., which means students have to wake up early in the morning just to sit in a classroom for hours on end. Child Mind Institute, providing the highest quality evidence-based care to children and adolescents, has shown that school causes chronic sleep deprivation in teens which makes it more difficult to focus in class and affects the brain’s ability to consolidate. Other problems include not having enough time to study or do homework and giving less time to do other activities outside of school” (John). This piece of evidence shows that students can develop a permanent condition that can affect them for the rest of their lives.Chronic sleep deprivation can cause excessive daytime sleepiness and daytime impairment such as reduced concentration, slower thinking, and mood changes. This is extremely unfair, considering that school hours aren’t something that most students can control. Longer school days can be physically harmful to students. Another unjustifiable norm that needs elaboration, is the fact that longer school days are unlikely to be an effective approach to boost achievement unless other elements are in place. In other words, longer school days will not boost test scores, or be more beneficial unless other components are being used. The duration of school days will not aid students, only trouble them further. As said in an article written by Walden University, (Walden has been accredited by The Higher Learning Commission (HLC) since 1990.) “It’s possible that changes in teaching strategy and improvements in educational materials could offer a much more efficient way to boost academic achievement”(“The pros and cons to longer school days”). This evidence shows that longer school days are rarely beneficial if there is not an exceptional teaching strategy. For these reasons, longer school days will be harmful to students in the long run, and that longer school days are rarely beneficial. Shorter school days will be more rewarding. 

Some people argue that teachers would have less time to elaborate on topics and questions if school days were shorter. According to this argument, “A shortened school day would reduce the amount of instructional time. For some laboratory classes reducing the number of minutes in class each day could have a detrimental impact. Even if the number of days were extended to counteract the reduced number of minutes in class, shorter segments of instructional time might diminish the quality of instruction” (Bradley). This claim is valid, however, with shorter school days, teachers would have more time to create more elaborate and time efficient lesson plans in order for the students to get the education and information that they need. Teachers can have more time to prepare each day when the days are shorter. Therefore, this problem can be solved due to the fact that teachers would create assignments fitted to the duration of their class. 

In conclusion, school days should be shorter because shortening the school day will benefit students and staff and because long school days will affect students in a negative way. Shorter school days will be substantially more beneficial to students and staff than longer school days. As well as the fact that longer school days will be extremely harmful to the students, which is why shorter school days are needed. Some people argue that shorter school days mean less learning, and how students might not get the key details from each class. However, this problem can be solved. Teachers will create specially formatted lesson plans in order to fit the duration of each class and will allow students to get more out of each lesson. Instead of having your six year old running a company, they can be a kid, enjoy outside interests, and have time to relax.

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