Originally Posted by ColinsMum
Originally Posted by Tallulah
But if the extra time is not instructional, I want the option of choosing how it's spent.
Fine, you want that option, so don't send your child to a school like the one my DS goes to. But what you said, in the post that (I hope accidentally) implied that I must be either offering my son a bad home environment or making a bad choice of school for him, was
Originally Posted by Tallulah
As for a longer school day, the only time that is good is when there's a bad home environment.

Originally Posted by Tallulah
You could work 9-5, you could work nights, you could have a nanny, you could take off from work early on a Monday to take your child to piano lessons. If they're doing the group sport at 1pm and math at 5:30 I don't have that option.
Are we talking about you or me? You don't know which of those options I have, actually. And as it happens my son has perfectly good piano lessons in school.

I'm saying in general, the different ways people's lives are arranged and the things they choose for their kids to do before/after school.

I wasn't referring to you, but to the studies that are cited here (in the media in the US) continually, saying that longer school hours= better results. It's one of the things that charter schools like to push. And the reason for the effect is that if a child goes home to a poor home environment vs staying at school to do homework of course there's a difference in test scores. I don't think your son or mine, as the child of middle class intellectually curious people, would see any change in test scores if they spent five extra hours a day at school.