G.F. Brandenburg posted a graph from a recent report of the OECD–the same organization that sponsors the PISA tests–which shows the number of hours that teachers work in every country tested.
Teachers in the United States reported working an average of 46.2 hours a week, according to the Teaching and Learning International Survey, which was coordinated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and included responses from educators in 49 education systems. The global survey average was 38.3 hours a week. Only teachers in two other education systems—Japan and Kazakhstan—reported working more hours.
Of the hours U.S. teachers reported working, the bulk of that time—28 hours—is spent teaching, as opposed to on administrative work or professional development. That’s more than teachers in any other education system. The survey average was 20 hours spent teaching.
Open the link to see the graph.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think we need to put this in the context that U.S. workers/professionals in general work more hours than similarly situated workers/professionals in other countries. 46 hours a week is not at all unusual for U.S. professionals (in fact, many work much more) and articles like this run the risk of empathy backlash from those who will see this as “evidence” that teachers “don’t do much”.
I think it is pertinent to note that the difference between the number of hours spent teaching vs working is much greater in some countries than others. I would also be interested to see what the definition of work sounded like in the survey. Am I doing work now, discussing the profession? Am I working when I read Richard Rhodes’ Energy, a great look at the industrial revolution? I happen to think this type of work is every bit as important as the work people normally associate with teaching, much of which is geared toward the designing of lessons and the evaluation of student work. This latter category consumes mountains of time for some teachers.
The small differential between the time spent in class and the total time spent indicates to me the emphasis placed on supervision in the United States. There was an outcry from the public in my youth when a local school system used a schedule that gave teachers more planning time. The public assumption was that the teachers were not working unless students were under their care.
When I have a weekend or a vacation off from being at school, I usually spend a good deal of time planning, grading, or studying, but I appreciate being able to visit the restroom when class is not in session. Having, when not at school, more than ten or fifteen minutes to eat lunch is also good for my health. When corporate reform was in full swing, my school administration made all kinds of cuts that negatively affect teachers’ (and students’) health and well-being. They cut lunch and nutrition/recess time. They cut the passing period between each class. They stopped selling hot lunch to teachers and installed a vending machine with chips and sodas. They even removed the water heater and distributed hand sanitizer instead. I’m sure there are worse conditions in some other countries, but are those other countries the richest and most powerful nation in history? No. Anyone who argues that U.S. teachers are well compensated or well treated has his maladjusted billionaire head firmly planted in manufactured sand. Remember when Bloomberg said nobody needs restroom breaks because he, Michael Bloomberg, never needs to go to the restroom. The height of ignorance.
Bloomberg also said that teachers should have twice as many students in their classrooms and be paid more because they are the best. The others should be fired. So the typical classroom in his world would be 48-50 students.
the exact Gates’ view from both Bill and Melinda
Fifty students per class. In middle school, times five or six classes. So, 300 students. So, if an English teacher assigns one five-paragraph theme to all of them, 1,500 paragraphs to read and comment on. Roughly equivalent to six novels. This simple calculation shows how totally clueless, Bloomberg, the financial wizard, is about schools.
That class size doesn’t matter has long been, ofc, a theme of the drivel coming from the Fordham Institute for the Payment of Big Bucks to Officers of the Fordham Institute. The think tank where the thinking tanks.
Fifty students in a class,
That’s the world of stopping and frisking.
Elections bought by snakes in the grass,
That’s the world of stopping and frisking.
The expression on Bloomberg’s face makes it plausible that he actually has never gone to the restroom.
Of course the boo-birds and teacher haters in this country say that we only work until 3:00PM, we have all the holidays off plus the NJEA convention in November and we get the summers off. When I taught, many teachers either came in an hour early or stayed late after school. I often stayed late after school for one or two hours (not counting all the teacher meetings after school) doing house cleaning (my desk would be a disaster zone after a day of teaching), getting the classroom in order, preparing for the next day, calling parents, grading papers, speaking to the counselor about a child I had referred and then grading massive piles of papers at home that night. WRITING LESSON PLANS, ad infinitum. The weekend was also full of grading papers and catching up on other school related paper work.
Writing lesson plans, indeed. One retired teacher told me the story of a supervisor that wanted him to submit lesson plans early in his career. He taught six classes a day, coached four teams, and was raising a family in concert with a teaching wife. His principal looked at the supervisor and said simply, “when?”
The when of our work is not ever considered. In business, a presentation to a potential customer might consume hours or even weeks to prepare for a fifteen minute spiel to a group that is made up of adults who are very interested in what you have to say. We are given what is essentially no time outside of supervision for anything.
The when of our work is never considered.
This is why schools need to be run by teachers. Let there be an administrator whose job is to oversee the physical facility and to carry out the human resources decisions made by the teachers as a body. Otherwise, get the admins the hell out of teachers’ hair.
I worked in one district in Illinois where I had to submit copies of the week’s lesson plans to the principal and the superintendent. This included goals, supplies needed and a detailed listing of activities to be done. I got a few hours break when a music teacher, same district but different schools, came and taught 3 of my classes ONE afternoon each week. [All classes met two times a week]. I had to make copies of my lesson plans for her.
We were given a card to use on the copy machine. If the limit for the month had been reached, I had to drive to the administration office to make copies. [I started stealing a rubber bands each trip to make up for this driving me crazy.]
I had a large room that was supposed to be the music room. I was told to leave as soon as the bell rang because a boy scout leader didn’t want me in the room.
The janitor was told to clean out teachers’ closets and throw things away during the summer if the closet wasn’t in good order.
I had to fill out a paper request to have the janitor move the piano into the gym for the Christmas program. This form had to be signed way ahead of time by the principal. After the Christmas program, I was told to watch 75 kids in one room because the teachers had lost their planning time. I had a bunch of Orff Schulwerk xylophones to put away. One teacher came up to me and told me that I wasn’t putting the instruments away fast enough.
UGH. No wonder people leave teaching. I was in this district one year and that was plenty. Principals run dictatorships.
Carol: it has never been that crazy for me.
Teachers’ days are so hectic. I once spoke to a urologist who said that teachers were the #1 patient for bladder infections which often occur from holding “it” too long.
The biggest thing I learned volunteering in our school is how little time teachers have. The day is jam packed, down to the minute. That’s why I worry when ed reformers lobby my state legislature for new mandates, which they do (mostly successfully) every single legislative session. They cannot do all this stuff WELL. It’s impossible. The latest fad they’re all pushing is “money management”. They really need to realize they cannot ADD without SUBTRACTING. Everyone can’t have their personal hobbyhorse taught in public schools. No ordinary mortal could cram any more into a school day, let alone doing all of these things well.
Lawmakers need to learn to say “no”. There’s no duty to follow every dumb fad and passing fancy that the ed reform echo chamber churns out and enshrine it into law.
How many school systems regret following ed reformers like lemmings and spending millions on ed tech? We’re not hiring you to take orders from the Walton, Gates or Dell Foundations. If we wanted that we would hire those people. We’re hiring you to use your own judgment. Tell them “no”. Skip a couple of campaign cycles of ed reform fads. Local people will love you for it.
Bingo, you nailed it. TIME was a huge issue, there just was not enough time in the day to accomplish what had to be covered in the classroom with the kids and all the other paper work that had to be completed for me personally and by order of the supervisors and principals. Lesson plans were really just a guide line because the classroom situation is so dynamic and changing, that digressions and going off topic often happened. The principals demanded a minute by minute format for the lesson plans in case you had an emergency or accident and couldn’t make it into school. We also had to create a substitute packet that could last for at least a week and had to be updated frequently. The principals would come in and check to see if all these things were up to snuff.
Time is THE issue for teachers. People outside of school don’t grok this AT ALL. Particularly ignorant of this are the oligarch-and-self-appointed “experts” in Deformer think tanks, where thinking tanks.
“..where thinking tanks…” Good one, Bob, I will borrow it. Krugman also had a snappy retort about these libertarian think tanks, like Heritage, AEI or Cato. Krugman: these think tanks take the think out of think tank.
My inviolate belief is that a think tank must be genuinely independent to think about subjects and issues regardless of where their funding comes from.
Judge them by whether they hew to a strict ideology.
By that metric, there are very few genuine think tanks, and a lot of ideological chop shops that produce research as required by their funders.
I had the same level of appeasing administrators where I worked as well. It resulted in long hours before and/or after school.
“People outside of school don’t grok this AT ALL. ”
“Grok.” I finally looked it up to see if it was a real word. It is! And here I thought it was some sort of odd typo you made. I kept looking at the keys surrounding those letters the first time you used it, trying to figure out what you had hit by accident. It really doesn’t sound like what it means at all. How many of us would look at someone and say, “I grok what you are trying to say.”?
That’s funny (well, not so funny), Diane. Judging by your excellent metric, most “think tanks” are “Research ‘r’ Us” outfits where you can order research to say whatever you want it to say. Horrifically, this spills over into universities, too, where entire departments are owned.
Some universities are wholly owned. Like University of Arkansas.
The shining example!
Other Universities are Holy owned, like Pepperdine and Notre Dame
Here’s an example:
https://fordhaminstitute.org/ohio/commentary/top-5-ohio-education-policy-stories-2019
That’s Fordham’s list of the “top 5 education policy stories” in Ohio. What is says is that Ohio lawmakers accomplished absolutely nothing in 2019 that is in any way helpful or even relevant to any public school student, in a state where 90% of kids attend public schools. Their single accomplishment? A huge expansion of vouchers. They will now spend 2020 tweaking the huge voucher expansion, because they jammed it though with no actual thought or planning. What does that mean for public school students? The huge group of public employees you’re paying in Columbus accomplished nothing on your behalf, again. This is the status quo since 2010. It’s been a decade where none of these people lifted a finger on behalf of 90% of students.
They’re captured by this lobby, and to such an extent that they no longer function as to public schools. Year after year after year. Nothing for our schools and students. I don’t know why I’m paying them. I’d prefer to give teachers a raise.
The full name is, of course, the Fordham Institute for the Payment of Big Bucks to the Officers of the Fordham Institute .
People fail, too often, to question extreme craziness when the craziness is quotidian, and time, in school, in the United States, is a really good example of this.
School age is driven, in the United States, not by what is optimal for kids but by the desire to have kids out of the way while their parents work. In the United States, most kids start school at five or six years years old, though a lot of them have a year of Preschool before that, beginning at four or five. In Finland, there is free, universal daycare for kids eight months to five years old. There is a year of free, universal preschool for six year olds, and school STARTS AT AGE SEVEN. Finns understand that KIDS NEED TIME TO BE KIDS. Kids in the U.S. get summers off because not because having three months off from school is ideal for learning but because in the 19th century, rich parents would retreat from the hot cities to their summer places in the cool countryside or the beach. In the US, what matters for rich people is what matters.
School hours are driven, in the United States, not by what is optimal for learning but by the desire to have kids out of the way during the day while their parents work answering telephones, sitting in meetings, and building predator drones. In Finland, the school day typically starts at 9:00 or 9:30 and ends at 2:00 or 2:30. My students (I taught in a high school) started at 7:45, were in class until 3:45. Less is more.
Time spent by students in classes is driven not by what is optimal for learning but by the desire to have kids supervised and busy for as much of the day as is possible. Kids get 15 minutes between classes. In most high schools and middle schools I taught in, students had 3 minutes between classes–barely enough time to get to class). Try attending, as a student, six or seven classes back-to-back with 3 minutes between each and see how attentive you are. Try this for a single day. For a discussion of that craziness, go here: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/03/17/one-way-to-make-high-school-suck-less/
And don’t get me started on the time I had to spend on the job when I was teaching (I have recently retired). I spent several years of my career as an Executive Vice President and Director of Development for a major educational publishing house. I worked far harder and MUCH LONGER hours as a teacher. In my last position, I had seven classes and five preps. In ADDITION TO my teaching, I had to do car line duty, coach an extracurricular, take 300 hours of ESL training, pass seven (seven!) mandated examinations for my teaching license, decorate my classroom, prepare data walls and conduct data chats, prepare bulletin boards for the hallways, chaperone school events, do lunchroom duty, attend weekly meetings or trainings, get to class early or late to write a long list of required objectives on the whiteboards, attend parent-teacher conferences, document every parent contact and disciplinary action, post grades and attendance in hard copy and online, prepare 2-page lesson plans for each day for each prep, do test prep tutoring during my prep period and after school, attend several IEP and 504 meetings each month, write discipline reports, and much, much else that I won’t mention because this post is already far too long. I typically had 28 or 29 students in a class, though some classes had as many as 35. If I assigned a five-paragraph theme to all my students, I would have 855 paragraphs to grade. A typical novel is a third that length and isn’t scribbled in ungrammatical kid English.
Less is more.
correction: I had six classes, five preps
correction: In Finland, kids get 15 minutes between classes to chill, play, have a snack, socialize, regroup, prepare for the next class, etc.
I now see that you corrected this.
Yes. Sorry. I need to learn to proof comments before posting them!!!
We all make mistakes. Especially because of autocorrect
“Kids in the U.S. get summers off because not because having three months off from school is ideal for learning but because in the 19th century, rich parents would retreat from the hot cities to their summer places in the cool countryside or the beach.”
And here I thought it was because the peons’ children had to work in the fields. The rich kids were in boarding schools that catered to the whims of the rich.
The peak times for working the fields are planting time (early spring) and harvesting time (late fall).
Depends on where you live and what you farm. We were haying in August. My cousins had chores all year long, but the summer months were busier on the dairy farm. Sugaring was in March, but no one missed (much) school because of it. I won’t pretend to really know all of what needed to be done. My aunts drove tractors for planting and harvesting but refused to learn to milk. They had enough to do without taking on that task. Their gardens fed the families all year long fresh and then canned. You can imagine the size of gardens that fed families of five all year long.
All that being said, I finally did a little research (very little) to find out that the summer break was invented with the rise of a robust middle class. School attendance became rather erratic during the summer months when more families were actually able to escape the heat of the city for a summer vacation. It made sense to take an extended break during that time. Someone could finally admit that maybe kids could use a break to reboot their brains. Very interesting! So now with all this push for rigor ( and the decline of the middle class), we should see a push for more school time. Oh wait, we do!
speduktr: My father, a really intelligent man, never graduated from high school. He let his brother and two sisters graduate and he stayed home to help his father run the farm. He hated farm work but he was the eldest and figured that was his job.
Whoever decided that intelligence is limited to “educated” people?
Yes, as I said. I grew up on a farm as well. The busiest times were planting season (spring) and harvest (fall), not the summer. But it wasn’t the middle class, which barely existed at the time, that was escaping to country estates. The rich did this and dragged everyone else with them.
The brief research I did said that the summer break didn’t really exist for farm kids before the Civil War. Breaks tended to be during planting and harvest, as you said.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/56901/why-do-students-get-summers
But, yes, planting and harvest times vary somewhat depending on what is grown and where. The point remains–summer was the slow season, not the busy one requiring all hands on deck.
Summer was not the slow time in northern Vermont dairy country. The dead of winter took that honor.
Oh, yes. Everywhere. Winter was the really slow time. But there was still work to be done. Mending fences and equipment, for example.
The fences were under three feet of snow, so fence mending had to wait until the spring thaw. That spring thaw probably marked the beginning of a lot of tasks when temperatures got above freezing in the day light hours. I don’t know when the cows finally got out of the barn, but spring cleaning had to have a special meaning on a farm where the animals spent most of the winter in the barn.
Pennsylvania?
Northern Vermont.
Ah, you said. Vermont.
I know those winters. I spent 25 years of my adult life in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
Those dairy farmers have it tough. The work is unrelenting and daily, throughout the year. No breaks. Very difficult for them to take a vacation, except in the very big, industrial operations.
What’s the point of this discussions? Kids should get the summers off.
Does everything have to have a point? Think of it as aimless coffee klatch conversation, and I actually learned something new! Besides I like talking to Bob. He always has something interesting to say.
Jesse Stuart recalls working in the schools around Ashland , KY during the 1920s when agricultural rhythms of society dictated a winter school year. Thread that Runs So True is partially an account of this.
Hi, I’m JosEllen, Roy Turrentine’s daughter. I sort of stole his iPad and was reading over all the posts, when I came across the paragraph in yours about how kids barely get a break between classes. I want to agree: our choir teacher has to deal with kids coming in late partially because we have have five minutes to a) make our way through the crowded hallway, b) jam our two-inch binders in our small lockers, c) then run all the way down the hallway, where you are either thirty seconds early or five minutes late. It’s irritating because choir needs to practice, and people in band probably have the same problem.
Also, I noticed a bit of irony in your post. This isn’t meant to be rude, but you admitted that you wrote a long post (which you did, but I have no problem with that), and ended your post with “Less is more.” It’s kind of funny.
Wow
I am impressed.
Your posts are very well thought out and well expressed.
Less IS more
Less is more
And void is boast
Rich is poor
And least is most
Hola, JosEllen
Good to see you responding! It’s important to hear from students about their take on what is happening in the schools.
Hi, I’m JosEllen, Roy Turrentine’s daughter. I sort of stole his iPad and was reading over all the posts, when I came across the paragraph in yours about how kids barely get a break between classes. I want to agree: our choir teacher has to deal with kids coming in late partially because we have have five minutes to a) make our way through the crowded hallway, b) jam our two-inch binders in our small lockers, c) then run all the way down the hallway, where you are either thirty seconds early or five minutes late. It’s irritating because choir needs to practice, and people in band probably have the same problem.
Also, I noticed a bit of irony in your post. This isn’t meant to be rude, but you admitted that you wrote a long post (which you did, but I have no problem with that), and ended your post with “Less is more.” It’s kind of funny.
Thanks, JosEllen!!! BTW, Roy shared one of your poems with me. I was quite impressed!!!! I wish I had written as well when I was your age!!!
In the school where I was teaching recently, kids had a three-minute passing period. No way they could go to the bathroom or stop at a locker AND make it across the two buildings to a class. It was insane, and officially, we teachers were supposed to be sticklers about this, issuing detentions for arriving late.
JosEllen,
You are fortunate to have such a wonderful father.
By the way, the reason we were reading the blog so late was that we took a day trip down to the Frist Center in Nashville to see a couple of exhibits. One was a compilation of art from Native North American women. Some modern, some as ancient as pre-Colombian, these art pieces celebrated the women as the heart and soul of the resilience of a people who were and are under a constant societal pressure. It will soon travel to Washington D. C. And From there to Tulsa, OK. One of the directors there told me people were flying in from all over the country to see it. I can see why.
I am confused, Bob: “Kids get 15 minutes between classes.” Where does that happen in the US? My kids literally had to run from classroom to classroom during breaks to make the next class. They regularly reported to me not having time to go to the bathroom.
Not here, in Finland. Even when I was in high school back in the sixties, we had four minutes between classes. Try getting from the basement to the 4th floor or the gyms on the opposite end of a block long high school from the arts and tech classes.
The 3-to-5 minutes that kids here get is insane. The argument for it is that this doesn’t give them time to get into trouble. But the Finns have figured out how to monitor them during this time to keep that from happening. We can, too.
Secretary Betsy DeVos
Dec 31, 2019
It’s been a great year working to help our nation’s students. Take a look at some of the highlights from 2019
Except students in public schools. Who were excluded from any advocacy in the DeVos department of ed and offered absolutely nothing of value, other than traveling the country telling them they’re all failing.
Maybe we could think about hiring and paying some public employees who actually support the 90% of students who attend public schools, instead of working against them? Is that too big a demand? That they return some value to the students in the unfashionable public sector schools in exchange for a paycheck? Too high a bar? Should I lower my expectations?
Here’s ed reform’s decade wrap up:
https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/roaring-decade-school-choice
Nothing for public school students other than elaborate and ever-changing measurement systems. Our students apparently exist in order to be used to market charters and vouchers. They have no intrinsic value at all. Data collection units and once the data is in it’s used to gut their schools. Are there any other groups of people who are mandated to spend 2 weeks a year working to provide information to a group of people who provide absolutely no benefit to them?
47.2 hours per week, where did that statistic come from? My contract is based on a 37.5 hour weekly contract (40 hours minus 30 minutes for lunch. I am given 2.5 hours per week prep time during the week. This does not provide adequate time to prepare lessons based on the required curriculum. To make in engaging requires much more time. I am usually in the building no later than 7:30. I leave most evenings at around 5:30 to 6. I like to add that most of my teacher friends spend just as many hours in the building. This does not include outside time doing grading, running errands, preparing lesson plans or classroom materials or studying. I am currently working on a class from Stanford on teaching math. 46.2 doesn’t begin to cover the hours teachers spend working. If the powers that be really want a better education for students then they need to show more respect for my time.
There simply isn’t enough time to do the job properly. The ideal teaching scenario is tutorial. No, we can’t do that. But English teachers must have their kids write and write a lot, and they need to respond to a significant portion of this writing. If education “leaders” bothered to do a little simple arithmetic, they would see that there simply is not time for an English teacher, any English teacher, to do the job properly. Too many kids, too many papers, not enough time. In my first year as an English teacher, I woke one night from a nightmare. Do you know the scene in Jesus Christ Superstar where the lepers crowd around him and he freaks out because he cannot deal with their overwhelming need? Well, that was the scene in my dream, only it was students. All the students whose needs I did not have enough time to address.
I taught at the beginning of my career, then had a career in publishing, and then taught again at the end of my career. So, I had the opportunity to see how things have changed. What a stark contrast!!! It seems that for that entire 25-year period, administrators had been having bright ideas about what additional stuff they needed to have teachers do on top of actually teaching. And no one ever bothered to ask, “Is this, in fact, doable?” or “What’s the opportunity cost? What will the teacher NOT be able to do because he or she has to do this?”
Teaching, today, has become insane, an exercise in attempting the impossible. I honor those who have stuck with it, but under current conditions, I can’t honestly recommend it to young people. Too much micromanagement. Too little autonomy. Not enough time for the kids. Insane levels of mandated extra-classroom work.
And here’s another thing: Ideally, teaching and learning are reflective, contemplative activities. In schools in the US today, teachers are running around like chickens with their heads cut off ALL THE TIME.
Imagine teachers having the time in their schedules, because of reduced class loads and class sizes, to spend a few hours each week doing Japanese style Lesson Study–discussing with colleagues what’s working and what’s not, sharing ideas and materials, doing rough planning of lessons–real continuous improvement activity instead of the bs top-down micromanagement by the clueless.
It’s not just English teachers. I teach history and geography, and I require the kids to write all the time. I am responsible for about 200 students. My students say that I require them to write a lot more than they ever write in their English classes.
That’s excellent. Kids need to be reading and writing all the time. Hat off to you, Threatened!!!
And yes, there is a huge industry for EduPundits teaching teachers how to manage their time and do everything just perfectly. It’s never that the demand is ridiculous. It’s always, blame the teachers. They are not managing their time properly. If they JUST divided their classes into small learning groups and set them to work, they could have the time to pull out the kids with particular needs. If they JUST used a rubric, they wouldn’t be spending all that time grading. If they just used ZIPGrade and multiple-choice exercises, grading would be a breeze. If they just flipped their classrooms. If they just [insert your magic formula here]. And it’s all crap. There are too many demands on teachers, and there isn’t the time to do the job properly and administrators and the bevy of EduPundits are, by and large, willfully CLUELESS about this because they are required to be by their clueless superiors or by the general ED Deform climate.
It struck me today as I was reading the plans in local elementary and high school districts to stress social emotional health that perhaps we wouldn’t have to be inventing another micromanaged program if the kids weren’t so stressed out by all the horse manure that is expected of them. Maybe it is time to cut out the cr** so that both teachers and students (and parents) actually have the time to live rather than just perform.
The issue is that even in the number of hours US teachers spend in class is among the highest, and much higher than the international average.
It’s insane to compare teachers’ hours with the students in class with the 8 working hours of other people. The teacher has to be fun, energetic, inspirational during class time, and has to feel the pulse of every single student in the class. Nobody expects athletes to train, actors to act, musicians to play their instrument, surgeons to cut patients 8 hours a day.
Not all jobs are equal, not all jobs require the same way to spend the daily energy.
Máté Wierdl: “The teacher has to be fun, energetic, inspirational during class time, and has to feel the pulse of every single student in the class.”
You are SO right. Teaching music to kids involved constantly moving and being cheerful for all activities. There was no down time except for lunch. I had no problem with this overseas when class sizes were small, materials were available and there was plenty of planning time.
However, that wasn’t the case in Illinois. I was running exhausted all the time..with a cheerful smile before I collapsed at home.
Wow. Nailed it, Mate!
I add that the working hours are possibly incorrectly calculated. For example, in Finland, teachers teach four 45 minute classes a day, which seems to be calculated as 4 hours/day spent in the classrooms. In the US, teachers teach six 50 min classes…
The conclusion: US teachers should teach four 45 min classes a day with 25 min breaks. Put aside your cultural guilt, and demand this.