One of the antiquated (yet very much appreciated) aspects to public education is summer break. The origin of this practice comes from when America had a predominately agrarian economy and youth were needed to help their parents ( & community) with the harvest. Most of the United States has, of course, moved away from the necessity for a summer break-economically, anyway. In fact, I'm sure many parents would save money if the public education system were to embrace the year round model nation wide.
All that being said, there are certainly still pros to the summer break system. First, there is the all important effort to keep our educators (myself included) sane. I'm sure many, if not most, of my colleagues would agree that summer vacation is a welcome opportunity to pull ourselves back from the brink of madness every year. I mean, if your 2.4 kids drive you nuts, imagine having more than 30 (approximately per class) toddlers, elementary school, or teenagers for 8 hours a day...aaaaaahhh! I know those of you not in education think that we have it easy with "all the time off we get" but, believe me, we don't get as much as most think. Further, during the school year, teaching is certainly not a 7:30-3:30 job...that's just when we have kids. After they leave we still have hours of papers to grade and lessons to plan, so any "down time" we get is usually spent trying to keep ourselves organized. Second of all, the time off does give families an opportunity to spend time together or make pilgrimages. I teach in Texas. Many of my students take the summer break to go see family members in Mexico that they would not have an opportunity to see if they had to attend school year round.
As an educator, I must acknowledge all the research that suggest that students retain information at a much higher rate minus the summer break. With the Federal Government becoming ever more involved in education, time will only tell what changes will come. I'm sure that revising the summer break will be one issue on the table; I, for one, would be sad to see it go!
