Ignoring the normal constraints of physics, FHS Principal Gary Martin hopes that next year Flathead High School will practice the art of student time compression. In a revolutionary scheduling procedure used in Yelm, Wash., — at Martin’s previous high school — students will progress farther and have less homework, yet spend less time and fewer total days in a class. Supposedly, the new 90- minute block schedule would provide more time for student-to-teacher interaction. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, students will actually spend less time in class every year. Current blocks are 110 minutes long, 20 minutes longer than blocks would be next year. Single period classes have more class time through the year than block classes can fit in to a single semester. Proponents of the block schedule say that it will provide a larger block of quality time for student and teacher interaction. Unless we violate the laws of nature, however, students will actually lose time with their teachers. Four classes would be taught per semester and eight classes would be taught over the whole year. Teachers of the new block classes would have half the number of school days to cover the same amount of material. The schedule would allow fewers nights for homework that is meant to be done only at home (like many math assignments or English compositions). Teachers would be forced to either assign more homework at night, or to cut their total number of assignments. One of the biggest advantages of a block schedule, according to the administration, is that students have 90 minutes of uninterrupted instruction per class period. It makes sense that seven periods a day cause interruptions. Unfortunately, teenage attention spans also cause class interruption. Typical students already have trouble concentrating for 55 minutes. Many schools that switch to block schedules are forced to make learning more entertaining to keep kids focused. Students could actually learn less because they could have more trouble concentrating. Combined with fewer class sessions, this concentration factor could result in significantly less learning. During 1993 in the Windston-Salem/Forsyth County School district in North Carolina, four out of eight of the county’s schools adopted the block schedule. Three years later, all four schools with block scheduling had lower average SAT scores than the four schools with traditional seven-period day schedules. Current semester-long classes would need to be redesigned to fit the longer class period. According to Martin, some semester long classes would have to be eliminated or combined with other classes of a similar nature. If students are only interested enough in a subject to take one semester of it, who would take these redesigned semester courses if they involved such a substantially larger amount of time? The block schedule may be the newest educational fad, but it isn’t the answer to our problems. Another unproven gimmick is what we need least. |
