Too many days off school can cause learning loss for kids and stress for working parents. The US school year is one of the shortest at only 180 days.
What in the brainwashed proletariat–
MAKE THE GOVERNMENT PAY FOR CHILD CARE. The only reason adults hate the long breaks is because their kids are around to bother them when they have to be at work, because work doesn’t offer flexibility or accommodations for children. “Make school longer” is nonsense, the real problem is a gaping lack of support for parents.
I do think school should be spread out more. Summer break is a missed opportunity to refresh kids’ knowledge, and instead it atrophies, and in that respect only I can see this point. We’re not a farm-centered society any more, and we’re also morally opposed to child labor now, so we really don’t need kids’ help around the farm in the summer, which is the only reason we ever had summer vacation. Something more like four-days-on, three-days-off, with occasional week-long breaks–paced throughout the year–would give kids time to rest, do projects, learn skills at home, and still retain knowledge throughout the year instead of losing it. But I’d advocate for keeping the same number of “on” days, just spread out better.
For the “off” days, provide childcare. Provide things for kids to do that aren’t school. Stop making them sit at desks for 7 hours a day to simulate an adult life-grind that nobody should have to participate in.
Also, lest you think I’m just saying this selfishly, I don’t even have kids. I want my taxes to pay to take the burden off of parents. It benefits everyone.
This isn’t really true in rural communities. However, this imo is a bigger economy issue than it is an education issue. Truth is that kids as young as 11 and 12 are routinely hired for work in communities like these for the extra income they bring home to their families. Even farm kids on successful farms generally test or drop out of high-school even today. It’s just not worth it to spend all day in class when you can be making real money running the farm. And industrialized farms still need as many hands as they can get. What we need to do is take the profit out of basic food stuffs and subsidize it entirely as the basic necessity it is. Same with water and housing. There is no reason to squeeze every drop profit you can out of a venture except greed.
I disagree with this headline. It’s not the days off that is the issue : brains need resting time, and time to process the information. It’s the distribution of the downtime that is the problem. A more uniform, rhythmic school year would benefit learning.
Fuck teachers need a break too. They work 10-12 hr days sometimes 7 day weeks for shit pay, increasing responsibilities, and they are not allowed to take a vacation when it could be cheaper. Can’t even take a Friday or Monday off before a long weekend.
Nevermind planning the curriculum for months and year in their spare time during the summer. They get maybe 4–6 weeks off before they are working again preparing classrooms, professional development, etc. /rant
The first point made in the article was about parents lost opportunites for careers and how hard it is to get work done. I didn’t get much further due to frustration.
What kind of bullshit is this?
