'The case against summer vacation'

That's the provocative title of this week's Time magazine cover piece.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2005654,00.html

The subhead in the print edition calls it "an outdated legacy of the farm economy," and argues that time off devastates the academic progress of low-income children.

I have such idealistic memories of summer as a child that my intuition is to shout this down at the top of my lungs. You're only a child once, right? But the author builds a pretty good case.

 

I'm like you. I can hear 19,000 different kinds of stats about how much better children learn without three months to have their brains turn to mush.

But I would have revolted like you wouldn't believe if they tried to make me go to school year round. To hell with that!

 

Screw sentimentalism. We spend a crapton of money on schools, we need to do it right.

 

I grew up with X, have fond memories of X, have no point of reference other than X, so any attempt to change X is crazy.

That's basically the prevailing argument here so far.

 

Personally I would love to have that year-round schedule that some of my friends' kids have, where they have three or four three-week breaks throughout the year.

Reason is that I'm a baseball writer, so it's hard for us to have a real family vacation. I think it would be great if my kids were out of school the whole month of January or something.

Anyway, that's just my personal thing.

It probably is better for their education to not have them take so much time off, though.

 

Nine on, three off is not that bad of a deal.

 

Wrong, douchebox. What I said was that I understand that it's better. But I would have hated it. Try reading again.

 

I bet you (and I, and millions of other children and their families) would have revolted initially because it was changing the system we had grown up with. But after a couple years we'd start to see the advantages of the new setup. Personally, I and most other parents I know can't wait until this summer vacation ends, and we're only in July. One big culture shift between our days and now is that you can't send your kids out -- or at least parents don't send their kids out, I guess "can't" is more of a subjective matter -- to make up their own fun for an entire afternoon. So there's a lot of video game time, and then there's some educational summer camp which is pretty much school lite anyway.

 

LTL, fair point, and one I've discussed with friends who are parents. I asked my mom once, because I didn't understand that one day when you suddenly decide your kid can just leave the house and go to their friend's house and trust them to be back for dinner. I mean, I did it all the time growing up, but there has to be a day when you're suddenly like "this is it. peace out" and throw them out.

If I ever had a kid (I'm not), I would never let it out of my sight. Ever. I'm not kidding.

 

Year-round schooling is not the panacea it is often made out to be.
Every couple of years it gets trotted out as a miracle cure. Many school districts try it, and most go back to the traditional summer vacation schedule.

 

You work your way up to it. You don't just say "Hey, kid, I've never let you get more than 3 feet from me, but now I want you to go wander for awhile." You teach them basic skills and build their confidence over time.