Does America need to get smarter?

I worked with American high school students for several years - and the standard of their education always impressed me. Even though there's a lot of noise made in America about how terrible the education system is, in my experience American students have been a lot more confident in several areas than the European kids I've worked with.

European kids tend to do better with languages, history and humanities - but American kids are more confident in general and have a wider, more practical curriculum. Most American tenth graders, for example, could Solve math problems that were gibberish to me!

Despite that, President Obama recently made a pledge to improve the standard of education across the nation. By extending hours and curtailing vacation, he hopes to improve test scores across the board and put American students on a level footing with more education-focused countries like Japan.

Of course, this plan has had a mixed response. Richer parents tend to be against it - longer school hours means less time with their kids without much discernible benefit. Also, private businesses like summer camps and day care are concerned that the longer hours means less business for them - kids will be in school for hours that parents used to have to pay day care costs for.

But for poorer kids, Obama's plans offer huge benefits. Kids from poorer backgrounds tend to drop back during the summer vacation, so longer school hours and shorter vacations will keep their educational momentum going. Longer school hours also keep disadvantaged kids in a supervised environment for more of the day - reducing juvenile crime rates and the opportunity to experiment with drugs, alcohol and sex. Finally, school is sometimes the only opportunity really poor kids have for a hot meal - so reducing the summer vacation has an enormous benefit for them.

And regardless of demographics, increased school hours have been proven to Help math scores across the board - and if other subjects follow suit, longer school hours aren't going to do the next generation of American students any harm whatsoever.

“Ten minutes extra math sounds trivial to a school day, but don’t forget, math periods in the U.S. average 45 minutes,” said researcher Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution. “Percentage-wise, that’s a pretty healthy increase.”

Help with math is particularly important for kids. In the United States, math is 50% of the infamous SAT, which helps students gain entry into college. A grounding in math can lead into lucrative careers in all sorts of fields - economics, engineering and science. If I had my time again, math is certainly something I'd work harder at:

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All this talk of longer school hours isn't all positive, though. It's not just day care providers and summer camps who are criticizing Obama's plans. Others are wary of the school system being expanded.

For a start, increasing the school day by three hours a day would cost thousands per student - and increase schooling budgets (and property taxes) by millions. That's a tough sell in the US, despite what benefits it might bring for American students.

Secondly, there's already a push back against state eduction - with right-wing groups objecting to approved curriculum which teach evolution in science class, sex education for age-appropriate students and history curriculum that have become too 'politically correct.'

"Remove your children from the pagan institutions known as public, or government, schools. Evidence shows how dangerous these institutions are spiritually, morally, and academically," argues the creator of TakeYourKidsOutofPublicSchool.com.

“The research data on the success of the public schools in indoctrinating Christian youth with humanistic or neo-pagan worldviews is overwhelming. The Nehemiah Institute’s worldview PEERS test shows that 83-percent of the children from committed Christian families in public schools adopt a secular humanist or Marxist socialist worldview."

As far as some members of the right wing are concerned, indoctrinating their kids with blinkered religious and political dogma isn't the responsibility of the school system - that's what they're there for.