>Also I was lucky enough to go to a well funded California elementary
>school in rich neighborhood pre-Reagan. Music was taught by music
>teachers. Art was taught by art teachers. So they did not increase
>work loads. On the one hand I know it is incredibly far from what most
>kids experienced even when I was a kid, let alone today. On the other
>hand, why shouldn't that be part of what we ultimately hope for, for
>everybody.
what a great story. I went to the only school in town, so no choice, but we had specialized art, music, and reading teachers and a librarian starting in the second grade. By the 6th grade, our teachers were all specialized into social studies, math, science, art, music, literature.
I don't think the school day needs to be shortened. After all, the schools do most of the work that parents - mostly women - once did at home. That unpaid work has now been socialized out of the home into the paid workforce, as the Marxist feminists of the 70s would have described it. At the time, the Marxist feminist were keen on socializing housework and pulling women into the paid workforce. others wanted to see women be paid for their labor at home through a government funded scheme to ensure women had an income for their labor. Their reasoning was that you needed to have all production socialized (and have no pockets of unproductive labor IIRC) in order to have a strong socialist movement. (something like that anyway.)