Summer Brain Drain

[SmokeAndMirrors]

I always thought 3 months is too long, personally.

When you're a kid, especially living in the suburban sprawl where there's really nothing for miles -- not even a decent group of trees -- there isn't really a whole lot to do, and since your parents still work, they can't just cart you wherever at any given moment.

I liked going to "summer school." I would have been perfectly ok with 2 or 3 week breaks scattered through the year. That's about how long it took for me to go through everything on my shelf and start getting bored.

Look at how quickly a lot of retired people start going nuts. And unlike kids, they can go wherever the hell they want under their own power at any time. It's pretty common for retired people to wind up going back to work, or a really intense volunteering stint, or for the less self-aware just start buying lots of crap, simply to ward off the sense of stagnation.

My dad's been retired for 6 months and it's already starting to make him kind of crazy. I imagine he'll dive into something relatively soon.

 

[Bodi]

Not only do I think kids lose a lot of what they learned the past year over the summer months, but I can testify that teachers get "brain drain" too. At least I do. Every time another year begins, I have to train my brain to get back in the mode of going to work everyday. I usually forget most of the great ideas I had from the past year because I haven't been thinking about it at all for 2 months now. I think it would serve everyone well if we had year-round school...or at least a much shorter summer break.

The year round system is much better...

 

[winston53660]

School started today across the street from my house tody. Ug!

 

[Bodi]

Nothing like speaking of adults and kids as if they're the same.

I don't see a point in restricting the down time of children, individuals in a stage of their life that should be able to relax while learning about the world. They're going to be working their whole lives -- a daily grind that goes on for a while, though a while would be putting it lightly. Leave them alone and let them be kids, their summer is hardly too much down time. Instead of trying to blaming the summer holiday, which is all this thread is, let's focus on the classroom. Besides, one can just push for kids to do something productive with their summers and give reasonable summer work to be turned in for a grade the next school year. My school did the latter, normally just geared towards literature though, you could add in maths or science. Though, when I hit high school, it was only my AP or Honors classes that required such things, but that's easy to fix. I prefer quality over quantity.

Kids are going to work their whole lives, let them have a bulk of free time to be free and be kids. There's more to life than exam scores and trying to make schools look better, I'd hate for America to turn into South Korea when it comes to schooling. That'd be depressing.

Though we can all agree American pre-collegiate schooling needs help. But, a severely shorter summer vacation isn't going to do much but ruin kids' childhood.

How does shortening a summer and having a year round system restrict down time... whatever that is.

 

[Bodi]

School started today across the street from my house tody. Ug!

We are nearing the later part of our mid year here...

 

[Dittohead not!]

Some people are happy school is starting.