Obama wants to make the school year longer-according to all the news articles I’ve been reading. At first I thought this was a good thing. Then I decided to actually LOOK up how many hours American children go to school compared to other countries.

Kids in the U.S. spend more hours in school (1,146 instructional hours per year) than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the U.S. on math and science tests – Singapore (903), Taiwan (1,050), Japan (1,005) and Hong Kong (1,013). That is despite the fact that Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong have longer school years (190 to 201 days) than does the U.S. (180 days).

It seems that these countries who continuously outscore us do NOT go to school longer.. So it leads me to wonder what is it that our school system is lacking if it in actuality is NOT hours? It has to be the way things are taught, what is chosen to be taught or maybe what is put INTO this time?

Is America not using the school time as wisely as other countries? If this is the case then I do not see HOW extending the year will make any bit of difference.

Ryan got his orange belt in Karate a few weeks ago! I couldn’t believe how well he did on the test. My Dad and I went to watch his test before his promotion. He did everything the instructor asked almost perfectly, he even did sit-ups and pushups! I couldn’t believe how fast he could switch stances and everything.

I wanted to take pictures of him to send to my aunt but he didn’t want to. I don’t have any pictures of him in his full Karate Uniform.