Val, would all of that be impossible in a six week long summer, which is what you get with year-round school?
Pretty much, yes. It would have to be rushed and scheduled in carefully. A lot of the spontaneity would be gone. What I love about summer break is the extended, very long period of downtime.
Obviously, if year-round school works for you and your kids, that's great. Don't think I'm trying to tell you what to do. I was only pointing out some of the wonderful things that a long break offers. Yes, some kids forget stuff, but six weeks is enough time to forget, too.
I lived in Switzerland for a while and am close to a teacher there. They have a six-week summer break, and from what I could see, the kids are in school for a few weeks, then out for a week, then in, then out.... One problem with this is that settling in after a break takes time. Kids also get wound up before a break, so they have more periods of reduced concentration. Plus, they don't get an extended period of learning.
The much-celebrated Finnish schools have a 2.5 month summer break. Canada has a long break too, and is also known for its good education system. Countries with short breaks (Japan, Korea) are known also for good education, too. Switzerland has a short one, and it's somewhere in the middle internationally. So, in this quick examination anyway, I don't see a correlation between length of summer break and the quality of the school system.
I think that Americans tend to look for simple solutions to problems, especially in education. We commonly hear that the problem is teacher pay, class size, and funding. Yet even a
brief examination of systems in other countries shows that some of the best school systems are below us in all of these respects.
Sure, some of the simple solutions work for individuals (e.g. a shorter summer break), but for a population as a whole, we need a thoughtful, multifactorial solution.
The US is currently in a period of stress over education, with test scores (national and international) driving a lot of the stress. In our push to force a solution to the problem, we seem to have lost sight of the purpose of an education system, which is to create a thoughtful populace. From what I can see, our current focus is to create kids who can get passing scores on high stakes tests. In a way, that handicaps us from day one.
Just my two cents.
Val
