The first day or so of school, as well as the last day or so is, generally, a waste of time. Books are handed out or collected. Students and teachers are getting settled in or getting ready to spend the summer off. Time is spent getting ready to work or getting ready to take off. Is this productive time?
During the summer, school buildings are generally empty. Other than summer school and teacher workshops, the buildings are not used during these weeks off. Of course, this is true of evenings and weekends. Is this a productive use of buildings which cost millions of dollars.
During the summer, many families, especially single parent households, scramble for child care or leave young teenagers alone. This can be very stressful for parents. Children often spend their time doing absolutely nothing because there is no money to pay for summer activities. Television is, generally speaking, free and used to occupy a child’s time. There is a lot of research which suggests that time spent watching television passively is not good for intellectual development. Summer vacation is about 10 weeks long. Is this a good use of time?
Granted, many families use the summer to take family vacations. In my own experience, this doesn’t usually take more than a week or two of summer vacation. Is it a good idea to take 10 weeks of summer so that a family can schedule a vacation? Is there a more efficient way of doing this?
Not one to raise questions and point out problems without at least suggesting the possibility of solutions, here are a few things which might be considered. The world is changing. It is obvious that more and more jobs require 24-hour solutions. Many people work hours outside of the traditional 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. For the most part, they suffer because so many businesses are closed when they need them to be open. Those who work the traditional hours have always suffered because running errands while having to work full time has always proven to be difficult. Why not have schools which operate for longer hours. Already, overcrowded schools attempt to partially solve their problem by having traveling teachers who use rooms belonging to teachers who are on break.
