Second, when holidays are taken from teachers, they are unlikely to have lesson plans developed to compensate for the transference of school days from early in the year to later in the year, and, indeed, even they are likely to harbor some resentment at being in the classroom when they had the expectation of being elsewhere on that day. The result is that children sit in schools for a legislatively mandated number of hours per week and days per year regardless of whether actual learning is occurring during any given hour or day. The consequences of creating a rigidly structured system that correlates how much is learned with how many hours are spent in school reach into the life of the family. Whereas government officials are heard bemoaning the fate of the family in America, it is government policies that are separating children from their homes earlier and earlier, for more and more hours and days, and forcing two parents to work to make enough money to support these interventive programs. But let's examine this time-usage assumption.
Children spend about six hours a day, five days a week, forty weeks a year in school.
If an individual parent, who still had other responsibilities, were to make this sort of commitment, it would be Herculean. Looking at the actual time spent in the process of education during those legislature-mandated hours, however, it quickly becomes evident that the requirement is much less in an individual household, for an individual child, or a small number of children. To begin, schools have to meet a certain set of requirements about saying the Pledge of Allegiance and singing patriotic songs. They have to take attendance. There are announcements and administrative tasks to complete even before the ostensible task of teaching is allowed to begin.