Vincent Gray, who is the mayor of Washington, D.C., which has some of the worst public schools in America, has an idea he believes will improve them: Keep children there longer.
When I was in elementary school, I hated attending class. But I learned things there.
However, I did not have the misfortune of attending an inner-city government-controlled school operated by overpaid members of a teachers union. I went to a Catholic school operated by Dominican sisters.
We did not need vast homework assignments because we did vast amounts of work at school. That was the entire purpose of those seven hours from 8:05 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. The late afternoon was well-deserved playtime.
We played basketball. We played football. We played hide-and-go-seek. We played with our dogs. We traded baseball cards. We walked around the neighborhood and visited with our friends.
You could do that in those days — way back in the 1960s.
Terence Jeffrey