To give you an idea of US schools.
My school started at 7 am. It got out at 2 pm. Our day was broken in to six periods and a lunch.
For those keeping track, that is seven hours in school.
In my school district periods were fifty-five minutes long with ten minutes to pass in the halls. Our schedule looked something like this:
7:00 am - First Period
8:05 am - Second Period
9:10 am - Third Period
10:15 am - Fourth Period
11:20 am - Lunch
12:00 pm - Fifth Period
1:05 pm - Sixth Period
2:00 pm - School gets out
Seems reasonable, right? Except that the bus ride was an hour and a half long. To be at school by 6:50 (the latest a bus could arrive - we have to have our ten minutes after all) I had to catch the bus at about 5:20. Most people allowed an hour to get up in the morning. So now our schedule includes waking up at 4:20.
This, by the way, is in fact when I woke up every morning to go to high school.
It gets better though. Our teachers? They are allowed to assign an hour of homework every day. That is in addition to any in-class work that you didn’t finish. If you were in an Honors or AP class, the teachers were expected to assign an hour of homework every day.
I assure you. Teachers did this, especially for grades 10, 11, and 12.
That’s six hours of homework a day that I was expected to do. And I got six hours of homework a day on a regular basis. Easily three out of the five school days. This is district policy by the way. They think it is perfectly acceptable.
To be clear, that means waking up at 4:20 in the morning. Getting to school at 7 am. Spending roughly six hours in class. Getting out of class at 2pm. The bus left at 2:30, got me home at about 4:00 pm.
By the time I walk from the bus stop to home, get out of my school clothes, get stuff sorted for homework, etc., it has been roughly twelve hours. I am still expected to do six hours of homework.
And here’s the thing… this was just for the required courses to graduate. If I want to get into college? If I want to stand out? That means extra curricular activities.
Those take place at two times; the Zero Period, and Seventh Period. That is, from 5:55 am to 6:60 am I had the option of orchestra, band, jazz band, choir, jazz choir, and a few others. Seventh hour was of course from 2:10 to 3:05. This was all the sports, cheer leading, student government, gay straight alliance, chess club, whatever.
We are taught, by the way, that if we do not take at least one 0 or 7 period class every semester that we will not get into college.
And you can bet your ass there was homework in those “optional” classes. Want to be in orchestra? You better be practicing on your own time. Drama club? Learn your lines on your own time. GSA? Bet you sure as shit are making posters and flyers and all that on your own time.
This is what high school looks like in the US. There are days where you are literally expected to do 20 hours of school related stuff and that is normal.
Of course, you point out how that leaves only four hours to sleep and the answer you get is, “Well, that’s what weekends are for.”
They tell us that high school is to prepare you for the “real world.” It’s not. It is about teaching you to accept unrealistic expectations as normal so that you will be a good worker.
Taking out the passing periods and the bus rides, I put more hours into school in a week than my parents worked. My mother worked 40 hours a week. My father worked about 55 hours a week. Between lectures, in class work, homework, I regularly had 80 hour weeks.
20 hours a day with only four hours to sleep sounds ridiculous - and it should! But my junior year? I almost failed because I was averaging less than 4 hours of sleep a night.
Welcome to the United States of Public Education.
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