Why Does the School Day End Two Hours Before the Workday?
6th September 2018
Because it is typically a government operation, and (like many government operations) it is run for the convenience of the employees rather than of the customers.
The eight-hour American workday caught on in the early 1900s, after decades of pressure from labor unions urging corporations to do away with exhausting, backbreaking schedules. Yet the American school day never adapted to match parents’ schedules: On average, U.S. students are in school for six and a half hours, five days a week—with a two-month summer break and a smattering of other vacations. We owe that structure largely to 19th-century school reformers, who, seeking a standard school year nationwide, aligned the rural school calendar—which gave students the spring and fall off for harvesting and planting—with the urban one, which dismissed students during the summers so their families could escape cities’ oppressive heat. There’s been some variation over the years: During the first half of the 20th century, for example, schools experimented with summer sessions to accommodate an influx of immigrant children. But most school districts settled into today’s schedule by the 1960s, when only about a third of adult women worked and could be counted on to watch their children when the last bell rang.
Don’t send your kid to a government school. It will turn out badly.