In 1838, Madison s first public school had about a three-month school year. The current calendar of nine months on and three months off was built around an agricultural model. Expectations grew, and the role of the schools went beyond reading and arithmetic and began to reflect changing societal attitudes and beliefs, especially those around how people interact with each other. Schools gradually grew to assume the new role, and in the process the school day grew longer. Desired, but not yet a community mandate.
Rainwater finds the question relevant.
It s so important that the Madison Metropolitan School District has a full-time staff person who teaches day care workers how to teach literacy skills to children before they arrive at the MMSD doorstep. In other words, Rainwater considers early childhood development so important that he s putting resources into it, all the while acknowledging that a lack of consensus on whether it is a school district responsibility puts clear limits on how far the district can go. Then there s the 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. part of the day. Certainly school officials will view the added hours as extended learning opportunities, but there are obvious limits on how long young people can be expected to absorb knowledge in a classroom setting. Still, Rainwater says, schools, with their infrastructure and expertise, are a logical institution if you are going to look at expanding the amount of institutional care for children.