While some school districts, such Neshaminy’s neighbor Pennsbury, have implemented “block scheduling”- a scheduling system that mimics that of a college schedule, with half the classes and double the daily class time for a single semester, rather than an entire school year – Neshaminy has not. Some may argue that block scheduling is beneficial to the students in that it creates a less stressed student population as a result of fewer classes, however, this clean-cut benefit is greatly outweighed by the consequences of such schedules.

Teenagers, having more gray matter within their brains than adults as they are still developing, face much more difficulty focusing for long periods of time than their biologically matured, college counterparts. Healthy adults can have attention spans of 15-20 minutes on average, which means teens, who are not equipped with such focus, are forced to refocus even within the 45 minute periods typically seen within non-block scheduling.

Because of this, extending the period of time in which students are forced to learn about a single subject makes it much harder for children and teens to keep their minds on the topic at hand for the duration of class. Unable to pay attention, students find it difficult to comprehend new information and concepts.

At the beginning of each school year many teacher are forced to review predeceasing material as a result of their students having little recollection of what they had learned in the previous year. In a block scheduled school, as each subject is taken only one semester per year, it is possible for a student to not have a subject for an entire year, and having less of a timespan to review, students are much less likely to review and catch up to the class adequately. Just as how “summer learning loss,” in which the student ‘loses’ bits of what they learned in the previous year during the summer, has become a major issue for students, block scheduling faces the same problem.

Moving forward, classes of different disciplines can aid each other and the separation of, e.g. science and math can hurt students in their learning. Interdisciplinary learning in high school is what allows students to establish a full grasp of their knowledge, rather than separated fragments that are harder to connect with block scheduling.

With the added hour of learning that block scheduling presents, it is harder to make up work in a class if a student is out for a few days. Much like college, missing one class can add on tons of work within a short period of time. Cramming so much work into half a year is also going to put stress on a student to be able to do well on tests and remembering everything.

Block scheduling is not only extremely stressful on students, but in the end, it’s not much more beneficial than having a class during the entire year.

This editorial represents the dissenting view of the editorial board