In Favor of the Longer School Year?

Are you in favor of the longer school year? Do you think that adding a month or more to the current 9 month school year can improve public education across the nation? Do you believe that additional funding to support such a change would be money well spent?

You may be right. But before you jump on the bandwagon filled with folks in favor of a longer school year, you may want to consider what such a change might subtract from the overall learning experience of children.

Lessons Lost Is it possible for example that shortening summer vacation might seriously impact the opportunities that many children find during summer to learn things besides math, science and reading? Without the current lengthy summer vacation what would happen to camps and programs that help children learn how to swim, use a tennis racket, play ball, manage a boat and learn leadership skills?

What about specialty areas like theater, arts and crafts, culinary skills, music and school related topics for which young people have a particular fondness or aptitude? What would subtracting a month of vacation time do to local programs that provide those kinds of learning options and the individualized growth that goes with them?

Health and Well Being How would increasing the school year likely effect the overall well being of children.? Summer is a season that automatically encourages lots of outdoor activity and exercise. Would it be wise for a nation battling twin issues of childhood obesity and diabetes to extend the school year and in the bargain reduce time available for health enhancing outdoor exercise?

Free Play and Exploration While it may be easy to compute how many additional chapters or lessons may be covered by a teacher for each day added to the school calendar, it is quite a different thing to determine how much will be lost in budding creativity by decreasing the amount of time children have for open, free play.

Children use summer as a time to fly kites, collect bugs, climb trees, go fishing or camping, hike, visit museums, star gaze, visit new places and make new friends. Reduce that time significantly and who can judge what the overall negative effect may be on the personal development of young people.

Family time Certainly learning how to build relationships and get along with others can be part of local school learning goals. But lasting values like honesty, sharing, trust, cooperation, courtesy and kindness are nurtured in homes where time is spent together.

Summer provides a large block of potential family time that is uninterrupted by outside school related responsibilities. For many parents summer provides time for catching up and checking in on their kids and smoothing out rough patches that may have developed during the busy school year. When you take away a month of summer vacation do you effectively strip parents and children of this time for playing, working and living together as a family unit?

In favor of a longer school year?

As a former high school teacher I surely could attest to the value of having more class time to accomplish curriculum goals. But my experience as a parent and former camp waterfront director has opened my eyes to two other factors.

1. Children are young for a very short time and their childhoods should be guarded. Before subtracting the carefree days of that childhood and putting them into the hands of classroom teachers and administrators it would seem crucial to establish the value of what those professionals are providing. Extending the school year for children who are attending ineffective schools would seem to be counter productive for children.

2.There is more to the full education of children then increasing test scores in math, science and reading. Education happens in many places beyond the classroom. A balance must be struck that allows children adequate time to learn through free play, unfettered exploration and family fun if the goal is to produce happy, healthy, inquisitive and balanced human beings.

Before reducing vacation time perhaps these factors deserve thorough consideration.