Can you believe? School has already started in many districts, and if not last week, then this, or next? What happened to summer? Remember when school got out shortly after Memorial Day and didnt begin until after Labor Day?
More to the point: Remember when public schools actually educated students to standards much higher than the current ones?
It seems clear that we have mistaken quantity for quality. When real learning takes place intensively, and steadily, then a three-month vacation has the effect of nurturing the mind in a different way. A summer job, a summer trip, a summer competition, a summer camp and perhaps most important simple summer down time, goofing around with friends, provides just the right balance to the intensive school year.
Today we have an earlier start to the school year along with lower test scores; with fear imposed on teachers for imposing standards; with excessive focus on self-esteem to the detriment of academic achievement; with the assumption that people who arrive at school from non-English-speaking homes cannot learn English quickly; with parents fleeing to private schools not in principle, but to escape the maladies in a significant percentage of public schools; and, paradoxically, with a handful of truly outstanding schools that produce truly outstanding students.
Which, of course, raises the question: If some schools can do it, why not all? Whatever the reason, cutting off summer vacation i.e., vacation that actually is in the summer and deintensifying the curriculum, the standards and the schedule of learning are not the answer.
Copyright © 2011 by the Intermountain Jewish News
