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 How
do you feel about year-round schools in areas where overcrowding
makes them advantageous?
I
know there are administrative advantages to year-round schools,
especially since the facilities are not standing idle two months
a year as they are under the current system.
Nevertheless,
many parents say year-round schools are very hard on them. Siblings
attending different schools may have their vacations at different
times, making it impossible for families to take trips together.
It is also more difficult to coordinate children’s time off
with parents’ schedules.
In
short, year-round schools represent just one more hardship on families
seeking to do fun and recreational things together each year.
+ + +
I’ve
read that it is possible to teach 4-year-old children to read. Should
I be working on this with my child?
If
a youngster is particularly sharp and if he or she can learn to
read without feeling undue adult pressure, it would be advantageous
to teach this skill. But that’s a much bigger “if”
than most people realize. There are some parents who find it difficult
to work with their children without showing frustration over immaturity
and lack of interest. Furthermore, new skills should be taught at
the age when they are most needed. Why invest unnecessary effort
trying to teach a child to read when he has not yet learned to cross
the street, tie his shoes, count to 10 or answer the telephone?
It seems foolish to get panicky over preschool reading. The best
policy is to provide your children with interesting books and materials,
read to them every day and answer their questions.
+ + +
How
do you feel about corporal punishment as a deterrent to school misbehavior?
Do you believe in spanking our students?
Corporal
punishment is not effective at the junior and senior high school
levels, and I do not recommend its application. It can be useful
for elementary students, especially with amateur clowns (as opposed
to hard-core troublemakers). For this reason, I am opposed to abolishing
spanking in elementary schools because we have systematically eliminated
the tools teachers have used to traditionally back up their word.
We’re down now to a precious few. Let’s not go any further
in that direction.
o
These
are excerpted from books written by Dr. James Dobson of Focus on
the Family and published by Tyndale House.
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