Ah, May's here. It may well be the greatest month of the year. The days are long and the weather's perfect, flowers are blooming and birds are singing. May is a time of new beginnings and the heady expectations of summer. Winter is over now -- you survived, barely, and now it's time to enjoy the finer parts of living.
Yes, May is a good time of year for everyone. But it's an especially good time for kids. Once May first hits, kids can feel the tortuous school year coming to an end. Less than two months to freedom, to camp or a summer job -- to whatever, so long as it doesn't involve insufferable teachers and monotonous classes.
Enjoy it while you can, kids, because some adults are trying to abolish your summer break, once again proving they have absolutely no idea what's good for young people.
Last week, British Columbia introduced new legislation that does away with mandatory school calendars. If it's passed, schools in the province will be allowed to design their own schedules -- that is, while the number of school days will remain the same, schools will be allowed to decide how to divide those days over the course of the year.
Translation: OMIGOD, THEY'RE TRYING TO GET RID OF SUMMER VACATION.
Why? Why would they do this?
In typical adult know-it-all fashion, they're saying it's for kids' own good. Studies apparently show that going to school all year makes kids smarter, healthier and happier. An article earlier this week in the National Post explains there's this thing called "summer slide" -- basically, during the summer kids forget all the stuff they learned during the school year. Also, the article says kids get fat in the summer because they're sitting around watching T.V. and eating junk food all day, which, OK, might be true, but so what?
B.C.'s stupid Education Minister, George Abbott, who tabled this ridiculous legislation, says, "What we now have is a pretty strong case that children learn better when they don't have a long summer break, that a shorter period where they're away from school is better."
Duh.
Obviously kids learn better when they're in school. That's what school's for. But you know what else happens at school? Kids' souls get crushed, that's what. By the end of the school year (my own) personal studies have shown, the student brain has reached a state known as "totally fried." Just one more day of school beyond the current 10-month schedule and the human child would be rendered incapable of having any fun ever again. Is that what adults want?
The article also quotes Joan Hamilton, who is the evil principal of a devil-school in Toronto that has already adopted the year-round schedule: "Come August," she says, "kids are looking for things to do."
If Hamilton is insinuating, as I think she is, that the "things" kids are looking to "do" in August involve going to school, she must be completely nuts. Seriously, someone should check if this woman is on drugs. In reality, in August kids are trying their hardest to think about school as little as possible, because even the slightest, passing thought about the coming school year causes actual, feel-able pain. In kids' minds, there is a moratorium on school-related thinking that stretches from the end of June to the exact moment on the day after Labour Day when the bell rings.
But fear not youngsters, you have a most unlikely ally on your side: the very teachers and principals who make your lives miserable 10 months out of every 12. They don't want all-year schooling either -- presumably, 12 months of teaching and punishing and boring assemblies would make them even crabbier than they already are, if that's actually possible.
This unholy alliance is the best chance at ensuring the future of summer vacation. And it's an institution well worth maintaining. Kids will learn soon enough that in the adult world there's no such thing as getting two months off just because the weather's all of a sudden nice.
For now, they should be allowed -- encouraged even -- to experience the pure joy of self-discovery that can only occur when there are no teachers around telling them what to think and do all day.
Follow Yoni Goldstein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/yonigoldstein
It's Yoni Goldstein. That should just about explain it. Mr. Goldstein is right up there (or rather, down there) with JJ McCullough in the 'Why In The World Would Anyone Let This Guy Write A Column?' brand of political punditry.
If the traditional school year were changed, it would alter the general flow of a community at large, wouldn't it? Many aspects of our society are organized around the assumption of the summer vacation. It's interesting to think about all the differences and complications it would bring.
In our home we look forward to our summer vacation: Mom's off work, kids are off school, and we do have the luxury of time to explore, learn, visit, travel, be active. It is indeed a blissful time of year.
At the same time, we need to acknowledge that OUR valuation of summer holidays as a luxurious stretch of time to live life to the fullest is also based on our socioeconomic perspective. I know many of my students literally spend most of their summer vacation indoors.Their parents work long days year round without the benefit of long paid holidays. They can't afford to take time off work nor can they afford to send their kids to camps at the rate of $200 a week. They're suburban kids. There's a dinky park down the road and a highway-ish road bordering their larger subdivision from the rest of the world. There are little to no activities for them to be involved in. They walk to the store, and they walk home to play video games. Most of them report back on their summer vacations as "boring."
I don't want
I think if you get over your weird issues with school and perhaps seek some professional help, you might consider the possibility that breaks throughout the school year to break up the monotony are better than concentrating all the vacation for the year into two months. This is actually a lot more similar to how it works in the "real world".
And of course, if you bother to think about it for longer than 2 seconds, families can still take vacations in the new model. I don't know of too many families who could afford to take an epic vacation for the entire summer. This is simply not the experience for the vast majority of people.
If you take off your rose coloured glasses, you would probably see that long summer breaks were not as idyllic as you remember, and they included a lot of boredom and drudgery as well as the magical memories you cherish.
Gosh, life must be great for you in your 1940's time machine.
This does two things. One, it relieves mental stresses placed on kids during the long dead periods without any breaks by putting in more frequent vacations. Two, it decreases the negative impacts of long breaks and the diminishing returns of the benefits of the breaks by shortening their average duration.
It's simply a superior system - and there's a reason that so many cultures that highly prize education (such as the Japanese) use versions of it (the Japanese take one month off as "summer" in the middle of their school year which otherwise begins in April; however, the students still usually go to school for club activities/extra tutoring and teachers are expected to actually work).
Human beings aren't meant to be chained indoors to a desk for the entirety of their lives. Being forced to sit in a classroom for a year won't lead to better schooling; most of the quality learning I've had in life happened outside the hallowed halls of education.
And FYI, kids have PLENTY of time off to 'discover' and be kids outside school. School is not 24/7 jail, but some adults like to paint that false picture for some odd reason. Is your job 24/7? No. So what makes adults think school would be? Re-structuring the school days will have no effect on their time off. What a false claim to make.
Many children have multiple opportunities to learn on their summer break. Many go to stay with grandparents, travel, read books that are far and above anything they're offered in school, go to cottages....
Maybe it would be better to break up holidays during the year for some but speaking for myself my summers spent at the shore were everything to me and the same story again for my son. It was magical spending that time with the sea and the grandparents with little regimentation to speak of. That part of the family is all gone now so I'll see how it goes for my granddaughter on her first 'summer vacation' and maybe my opinion will change but at this point it seems rather sad that little children don't get to experience that kind of freedom.
Basically the breakdown was this: instead of heading back to school after Labour Day, we went back after the August civic holiday. In addition to Christmas and March break, we also got week long holidays at Thanksgiving, in February and in either April or May. Plus we got a bunch of extra-long weekends. Yes, I was in school "longer" out of the year, but I also had more breaks. I don't know that it's a perfect solution, but I loved it.
As far as what's good for students, well I don't really see the author asking any school aged students here either. One person's bad (or good) memories of being a child don't substitute for that.
I am a retired elementary teacher and counsellor so I am somewhat familiar with the other side. Many staffroom discussions were about the sense of revamping the school year. The original rationale was no longer relevant(children would be kept home to help with the crops) and much of September was taken up with review and reteaching as much had been forgotten.
Could much of this 'outrage' just be a reflexive reaction to change? The children would get EXACTLY the same amount of time in school and the 'learning' situation might improve.
I know from my childhood experience that the elation of early July's dismissal quickly ceded into a different sort of off-school drudgery by the time August hit. I would have welcomed the ability to take those last 4 weeks of time off and spread them out through the year, a week here, a week there.