Losing it Over Summer Vacation

The school calendar itself is a challenge for some students. Losing huge amounts of what they learn throughout the course of the school year is a common problem for students to experience over their summer vacations. I do feel that the agricultural layout of our school calendar could use some revising, because we do have an educational gap over our summers. However... if programs are being offered in the summer to close that gap, then I don’t think we would need to reduce the time for summer break.

There are plenty of students that do perfectly fine over the summer and come back without missing a beat. Just as many fall way behind because they aren’t doing anything to keep that information with them. So if more summer programs were offered (and maybe mandated depending on the academic performance of the student) then more students would be up to speed when they come back and not have to worry about falling behind. Of course, the other option is reducing or even eliminating summer vacation.

The current layout of the school year is outdated. It was designed for students that had to help their parents with their crops and livestock over the summer, which is nowhere near as common. Especially in city settings, where it is borderline unheard of. So if the layout of the school year was spread out over more of the calendar year, then there wouldn’t be such a huge gap within which to lose all of what you lost last year. Maybe students could go to school for two weeks at a time and then have one week off inbetween. Or maybe whole months could be alternated. Maybe every other week. Who knows? Of course, this may also require some revision in the curriculum itself but that would have to be a series of trial and error to perfect.

So both options would be very beneficial, but if one comes into play, I don’t think the other would be necessary. If we have a shorter summer, then we won’t need to fill it with all of the same activities and programs to fill the gap. But at the same rate, if we have all of these educational programs filling out three month summers, then there would be no need to make our summers so short. So it could go either way, but both could be overkill. Students still need some free time.