Here's a reality check: Your report "Maryland schools could trim spring break to meet Hogan executive order" (Sept. 2) is much to do about nothing.
The number of days schools are open is not of critical importance. The crucial concern should be whether students' needs are being met on the days when the schools are open.
Our present system of public education is not working. Public school students are victims of "classroom prison-like education." They are confined some seven hours a day, five days a week and 10 months a year in a classroom with teachers who work just as long.
To deliver dynamite lessons consistently and continuously is a Herculean task. Is it any wonder students easily become bored and fed up in class?
What we need is a revolution in K-12 education that includes writing a new curriculum that reflects the connection between academic subject areas and real world experiences. It calls for students to get out of the classroom and go into the real world of life. It calls for all tracks of education, not just the vocational path, to embrace the concept that learning has to come to life, learning has to be made practical. It calls for a new teaching methodology which allows students to participate in real life experiences.
For example, a revolution in language arts, reading and writing would entail students stepping into places where the mastery of English skills is essential, such as TV and radio stations, magazine and newspaper publishing, etc., with students meeting the people who work in these places and actually performing various jobs.
Ralph Jaffe, Baltimore