Consider the norm. The average high school student in the United
States spends 6.75 hours in school per day with an average school-year length
of 180 days.1 That represents an average of 1215 hours in
the school each year. Then, if you
conservatively subtract ten hours a day for sleep, you end up consuming 3650
hours in bed during the year. Add sleep
and school together and subtract that total from the hours available in one
year and you end up with 3895 hours of free time while your child is awake.
That’s the gold! Even if you subtract six more hours each day
for things like eating, getting dressed, traveling to and from school, and so
on, you still end up with 1705 hours, or an average of about 4.7 hours each day. Throughout four years of high school, the
average student will have a grand total of 6820 hours to use outside the
classroom and free from the incidentals of life. That’s more than the equivalent of 852 eight-hour
work days! That is what after school,
weekends, and summers can amount to for a student throughout their high school
years. Imagine what you could do with
that much time if you had it available to you while most, if not all, of your
needs and expenses were covered.
Now I realize that many high
school students have to work to help their families and others have bona fide
responsibilities that cannot be compromised.
I also understand that the amount of homework given to the average
student seems to require a significant amount of their free time. But please do not miss the point. A lot of time gets wasted. However, it’s not just that many young people
sit around doing nothing. I cannot
believe how much ambition the younger generation has. The problem seems to be that most students
never take the time to re-think the opportunities available to them and they
choose from a small list of possibilities—a list that is about as limited in
creativity as the average teen-channel sitcom.
What does that list look
like? Well, it contains things like
social networking, texting, online gaming, television (a lot of that), movies,
more texting, listening to music, online chatting, more social networking, more
television and on and on. Then it also includes
concert band, football, a job at McDonald’s, cross country, marching band,
volleyball, soccer, 4H club, a job at the grocery store, basketball, a job at
the mall, baseball, track, National Honor Society, wrestling, science club, and
on and on again.
Our children learn to do what
other children do. They tend to stick to
the script and, though I am not suggesting that the items on the typical teen
list are bad, the script is limited—really limited! Most children will never think outside of the box and the choices they
will make regarding their free time
will follow patterns set by their peers.
Please understand, that’s not a
problem in and of itself, but it can be a fantastic opportunity. It’s
your privilege to help your kids rethink the limits and recognize how
creatively they can use the time that they do have. I think this represents one of the most
exciting propositions of parenting (or mentoring) because it involves exploration and
risk-taking. The fun that it generates
for you will pale in comparison to what begins to happen in and through your
children. If you can begin to remove the
limits to their thinking and get them dreaming on a plane of big possibilities,
you have done your job. Do not try and
tell them what to do once they begin to dream, but simply give them permission,
open a few mental doors, and watch what happens.
1. Stephanie Summers, “It’s Not the Time Spent in School, It’s How It’s Used,”
University of Connecticut, Neag School of Education Spotlight, July 2011, found
at <http://spotlight.education.uconn.edu/2011/its-not-the-time-spent-in-school-its-how-its-used/>,
found on August 31, 2012.
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