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篇章阅读14：教育改革 While the mission of public schools has expanded beyond education to include social support and extra-curricular activities. the academic schedule has changed little in more than a century. Reclaiming the school day for academic instruction and escaping the timebound traditions of education are vital steps in the school-reform process, says a report released today by the National Education Commission on Time and Leaming. The commissions report, titled Prisoners of Time, calls the fixed clock and calendar in American education a fundamental design flaw in desperate need of change. Time should serve children instead of children serving time. the report says. The two-year commission found that holding American students to worldclass standards. will require more time for classroom instruction. We have been asking the impossible of our students-that they leam as much as their foreign peers while spending half as much as in core academic subjects. it states. The Commission compared the relationships between time and leaming in Japan. Germany, and the United States and found that American students receive less than half the basic academic instruction that Japanese and German students are provided. On average. American students can earn a high school diploma if they spend only 41 percent of their school time on academics, says the report. | 
