I'm sitting by the pool watching my five kids cheat at Marco Polo in the pool with their cousins. They've been in the pool for almost two hours when my four year old comes running over to show me her wrinkled hands. But she doesn't want to get out of the pool. She just thinks it's cool to have "little old lady hands."
I'm watching the kids and reading a piece by President Obama's former budget director Peter Orszag who seems to think summer vacation is making kids dumb and fat. I guess he wants to get rid of it. He writes:
It’s July, and for many of us, that brings back fond childhood memories of family vacations, summer camp or long, happy days spent playing with friends. But this quaint notion of summers as a kids’ paradise is dangerously misleading, evidence from social research suggests.
After spending the summer away from the classroom, children return to school one month or more, on average, behind where they were when the previous year ended. Kids also tend to put on weight in the summer two to three times faster than they do during the school year.
To put it unkindly, the average child becomes dumber and fatter during the vacation. And although there’s no need to declare war on summer, there’s plenty we could do to combat the seasonal learning loss and weight gain.
So he's not declaring war, just combat. Whew?!
The argument goes that summer vacation is a holdover from our agrarian past that now hurts our children's chances at a better education. My kids don't work on a farm. They don't even like eating vegetables. (I guess that's the dumb and fat part, huh?) But you'd think that before Orszag suggested getting rid of summer he'd consider giving school districts the ability to fire bad teachers. But no.
But Peter Orszag left out a few things. He clearly wasn't thinking of parents when he wrote this. I need late June and July just to get vocabulary words, word problems and math facts out of my head. To heck with the kids, I need summer vacation. Unstructured singing along to "Sweet Caroline" in the minivan, impromptu catches in the backyard, pushing each other on the swings for hours at a time. I need that.
And what about long term punishments? My nine year old hit the seven year old on the arm the other day. I sent her to her room so long that she forgot why she was sent there. She came down the stairs after an hour of being banished to her room and she asked, "Dad, why was I punished again?"
I reminded her that she hit her brother. She said, "Oh yeah. I'm really sorry about that." It was the sincerity of the apology that really got to me. Then she went out and joined a monkey in the middle game that was already in progress. I think they were going for the record of shortest time it took for a child to burst into tears because her sisters were being mean and not letting her catch the ball.
You can't punish kids super duper long term like that long during the school year. There's too much homework and running around to do.
Here's my thinking. If any kids are reading this please stop. I assume that my kids when they look back on their childhood aren't going to remember geometry all that well. Let's face it, I haven't had much occasion to use geometry. I think I saw a hypotenuse in the zoo once but I wasn't all that impressed. But while they may forget geometry they'll remember winning the "hold your breath under water" contest against their older sister. (That is, unless the brain cells destroyed by that game make it impossible to remember.)
Kids won't necessarily remember why The Battle of Hastings was important but they'll remember reading sitting on the couch discovering the world of RR Tolkien's The Hobbit which they didn't have time to do during the school year.
I don't think they'll remember all their polysyllabic vocabulary words or which train reached New York first if one traveled from Baltimore at 132 miles per hour and the other from D.C. at 147 mph. But they'll know that Amtraks are always late and they stop and start for no apparent reason whatsoever.
And you know what they'll remember - the time we traveled to New York City and the lights went out on the train because...well, I don't know why the lights always go out on the train but they do. And that's important to know when you have a seven year old doesn't like the dark one little bit. He's not afraid, he tells you in the dark. It's just that he can't see his enemies in the dark. I assume that he lives a very active interior ninja life.
It's funny, the kids don't talk about being in the city all that much. They talk about the train ride. It's like the kid who gets the big toy and wants only to play with the box it came in. I think they liked it because we all sat together just talking and laughing for a few hours.
What I think Peter Orszag forgets is that sometimes just sitting around with our family doing nothing...means everything.
So I yell out to my children in the pool that someone wants to take away their summer vacation and there's a gasp. And just so you know gasping isn't something parents want to hear from children in their pool.
But I think the gist of the gasp seems to be that the government can take their summer vacation when they take it out of my kids shivering wrinkled hands.
Note to Mr. Orszag: Summer isn't making my kids fatter or dumber but they sure do seem happier. And me too.
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I tend to agree with Mr. Orszag. If kids went to school all year round with three week long breaks scattered throughout the year (like they do in most other countries around the world), kids would retain more and they could cover more in each grade. Think about it. If kids have to be re-taught most of what they learned the previous year for the whole first month of school, between first grade and senior year of high school, they have wasted an entire YEAR of school. That’s not insignificant. Three weeks is plenty of time to allow yourself to get bored stiff.
Thanks.I agree.
Perhaps the the govt solution would be to take kids away to indoctrination/education/exercise camps & return them at age 18.Downtime with families is just too risky.
This is a man that needs a carepackage of smores, fireflies in a jar and a tire swing.
“Active interior ninja life”! Hahahahahahaha.
You missed a HUGE important piece - with everyone spread out across this vast country these days, you need summer vacation to visit family! When you have kids, you can’t afford to hop on the plane from New York to California for a three-day weekend. No, you need a few weeks that you’ve saved up your leave time for so you can drive across the country with the kids reading/squabbling in the back seat.
My summer vacations as a kid were filled with visits to grandmas and grandpas, cousins and other family that I would not otherwise get to spend time with all year. They were also filled with visits to the Grand Canyon, Amish country, Lake Erie, the Rocky Mountains, the Golden Gate Bridge, the New Jersey shore, and countless other places. All by packing us up in the van with a tent and cooler.
And summer camp? Good grief, I learned so much going to resident camp as a kid. I learned about the environment by living in it for a week at a time. I learned how to ride and care for horses, and learned discipline on the archery range. And I made so many good friends.
Year-round school might be good for “book-learning”, but summer vacation is for life learning.
Amy,
“like they do in most other countries around the world”
What are you, some kinda Euro-loving commie or something? ;-)
Kids need summer vacation and so do their parents! There are important things that can only be learned outside the school-year schedule. Summer vacation also allows ‘percolation’ time of what they have learned from a book to connect with ‘real’ life. If children were taught the basics of learning - the 3Rs - so they had a solid structure on which to build, they would learn to ‘think.’ It worked in the 50s! Take the sex ed classes out of the classroom and teach what should be taught in school from September to June and let the family determine who needs to know what else - and when - while they get to know each other.
That is one of the many reasons we homeschool. Vacations and school are on our schedule. The classroom is where ever we are with our children. The lesson is whatever is appropriate to the situation.
Colleen,
Good post.Learning can take place outside the classroom & is often better retained.How much Geography is remembered thru textbooks & how much thru summer road trips?
I think the value of vacation is one of the primary reasons to do a series of shorter (yet still substantial) vacations over the courses of the year. I think it would be much better to get those experiences multiple times a year, in different seasons. And there is a value of keeping each vacation length to the reveling in vacation time and not extending it into the bored to tears time.
That being said, the nanny-state tone to the piece bothers me. There is an undercurrent of “parents can’t be trusted with kids, we need them in the warm embrace of state-run institutions because parents just let kids get fat and dumb.”
I know Obama’s way of looking at things so I tend to not agree with Mr. Nanny State himself. This kind of change I am conviced will lead to a greater indoctrination. Making kids smarter is only secondary to making kids learn to not think like mom and dad so they won’t hold “backwards” conservative points of view. Think-left and not right. Its a disgrace.
Pat, you know I am!!
Honestly, for those who are so worried about it being more indoctrination time, pull your kids out of the public schools or start going to school board meetings and demand that the curriculum be put right. I know not all of us have a ton of money for private schools or for parish schools (some of which may not even be better than or even worse than the public schools), but the development of our children’s minds, the formation of their consciences, and the protection of their souls is too important.
And three weeks off at a time is plenty of time to visit family at all different times of the year.
I SO AGREE with you, Matt. Life is not only about numbers - how much you packed into your brain, how soon, etc. It is also about Joy. Has anyone noticed how overworked people in the USA have become? How busy? How stressed? Try watching ‘Nursery University’ on Netflix; and you will see just how anxious and afraid parents are these days, if their tiny child does not get into the ‘right’ nursery school, kindergarten, etc. Heck, I have a friend who is a SAHM, and she runs a little school for 2-4 year olds. The 2 year olds cry and cry and cry; they don’t want to leave their mothers. Children and adults need fun, downtime, time to dream, to be creative, to be with each other with no particular ‘goal’. There are requirements enough in adulthood for one to meet ‘goals’. Did you know that, on Catholic Answers radio, there have been podcasts regarding the ways in which evil forces get a foothold in our lives? It’s by being too BUSY. Not taking time to relax, have fun, BE. If summertime, by its very nature (warm or hot, sunny, beautiful) is not the time to have fun, then I don’t know what is!
I wonder how much of this really boils down to catering to the two parent working home and encouraging that. Many homes with both parents working find it difficult to figure out what to do with the kids in the summer…the “dumb and fat” conclusion is just an excuse.
I do not know aboout the US… but in many European countries you get Summer-homework, which keeps you busy (sometimes more than kids would like!!) and aids you not to forget what you learned.
Most kids in the US get at the very least a summer reading list of some sort or another. It varies between schools and districts just how much is assigned, though.
On a day to day basis, I don’t need to recall any facts I learned in school. The true value of my education was that I learned reasoning and critical thinking skills. Of course, I live in constant fear that my boss will one day come to my desk and demand a handwritten replication of the periodic table…
Point is, three months’ break every year for 12 years didn’t hurt me all that much. I have a good job at a good company, and can still recall all of the noble gases!
We know the powers that be want kids in school year-round as yet another way to diminish the bonds of the family. They claim it is because our math skills are behind those in foreign countries. I don’t believe for an instant that extending the school day or year will change that. Kids and adults need some down time. Great art, great inventions once came from do-it-yourselfers. People tinkering in the basement or the barn. Now we rely on the secular university system, and you see where that’s left us. How many would-be Thomas Edisons or Charles Ketterings have we lost by stifling creativity in government schools or the diploma mills that are our universities?
Don’t let them take summer vacation!!!
I totally and completely agree with you Matt! Summer vacations were the best times of my childhood and it is the same way with my kids. Even though we homeschool and could do any schedule, we still keep summer vacation. In fact, I extend it longer than the schools around. this year I let them out really early too. We usually go back in mid to late September. But I do have them do an hour of math every morning even in the summer and of course they do free reading during the summer. We all need summer. We is the culture constantly trying to rob our kids’ of childhood?
There may be something to be said for a year-round classroom experience, I’ll give that.
But to Matt’s point…wouldn’t it be a better thing to ask teachers to do a good job at what they do, rather than to mess with a schedule that has become a part of the culture of our country?
Our family, too, enjoys the ability to just have down time with the girls, to teach them all the things that have to be left aside during a (too) busy school year.
Perhaps the problem with summer vacation and learning loss is the quantity and (lack of) quality of the crap they are expected to learn; I’m *still trying to count hours, and to figure out how I was able to go to school from 8 to 3 daily (same school day as now), attend Mass *every day*, and learn math, English, spelling, science and reading well enough to essentially skip a grade over my public-school counterparts in those subjects. At our parochial school today, you would think you were wrecking the entire curriculum to suggest that the kids take time out to pray a Chaplet of Divine Mercy!
No…they need to leave my freakin’ summer vacation with my kids alone.
Interesting conversation - here’s the thing. The main component (again) is the home. There are schools in the U.S. who do year-round schedules. I don’t know if there has been any sort of measurement taken (since that is the true test of whether something is effective/sarc off), comparing those schools to the ones who do a traditional summer off schedule. My feeling is that families and homes who do an adequate or above job of being families (talking, listening, working, playing, cooking, eating) are fine, whatever they choose to do, hence one of the strongest arguments for home-schooling. Homes who do not have a learning rich environment, for whatever reason, will not succeed. As a teacher in the public schools, my daughters have fared extremely well without summers full of homework or “traditional” school. One just graduated summa cum laude in three years, one is a junior in her second year, on the same track as her sister, grade-wise. They are curious and interested (and interesting:). The question isn’t about summer, really. It’s about families, and as a teacher, I love summer:). And my family.
mr. Orszag’s ideas are arrogant and really somewhat stupid.. Does he really think that the magnificent, multi faceted creation called the human brain functions only in the institution? That is an offshoot I suppose of the only- government- can- act- effectively mentality. The child’s brain is always active and learning. The trick is to put them in situations where they learn the good, the true and the beautiful. And, by the way, aren’t all those touchy feely excerizers that do steal good class time trying to teach just what the kids can and do learn in the summer en famille?
We live in a beach community and my kids work in the summer. Sitting around playing video games and eating garbage isn’t an option. Just because kids aren’t farming doesn’t mean they aren’t working at all. Its been my experience that work for teens during the summer is equally as important as school. It teaches extremely valuable lessons of real-world responsibilities that school doesn’t mirror and working during the school year can be difficult for some kids.
Just try and get ANY teacher to give up their summer vacation. And you will hear much squawking from them and their unions. This will never happen. Teachers need summer too! We need to plan for next year and time to relax. And I’ve taught during the summer too, just one class but the kids would be looking longingly outside.
Honestly throughout most of the country, summer break is only about 2 and a half months. Sometimes more like 2 months so that is short time for adults, a long time in kid time.
I totally agree with Amy. Our students would be better off with two or three week breaks throughout the year. Students wouldn’t actually be spending any more time in school. They would just have their breaks spread out. The best part would be that students wouldn’t have to wait for summer school if they started to fall behind. Think of how much easier it would be to catch up after 10 weeks than after a whole school year. There is very little learning done in either the last month of the current school year (lots of tests though), or the first month(review of everything everyone has forgotten over the summer). If the main worry is the government wanting more time to indoctrinate, then it is public school that is the problem, not the amount of time spent there. I do agree that getting teachers to give up their summer vacations would probably be the biggest issue of all. Happily, I homeschool, and am free to follow any schedule I want.
Another dumb Nanny State idea. So America became great by trying to do what the Russians or Japanese or some other “smarter” nation did? Summer vacation is part of the natural cycle of life, even Natural Law! Summer reorients the entire family to being a family and not just members of society as a whole. I pray this idea never gains traction.
“And summer camp? Good grief, I learned so much going to resident camp as a kid. I learned about the environment by living in it for a week at a time. I learned how to ride and care for horses, and learned discipline on the archery range. And I made so many good friends.”
Great point Colleen.
There should be opportunities for learning beyond the classroom walls and enoughtime to do so. And time to have fun and explore without mandated constraints.
Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/matthew-archbold/in-defense-of-summer-vacation#ixzz22gpf6cCn
I could get behind multiple shorter breaks (say 3 weeks?), IF it could be well enough organized. Unfortunately, I have friends in some school districts that do that, and if you have multiple kids it almost never works because the different levels of school have their breaks at different times. (Your grade schooler has a different break from your middle schooler and from the high schooler) And hoping it coordinates with your nieces and nephews in another state? Yikes.
Kids don’t get the summer vacation they used to. I have two kids still in high school. Both have heavy summer reading loads, one also had a list of chemistry experiments to perform, and almost-daily band practice started two weeks ago. It is difficult for working parents to schedule a vacation in the same five-six weeks (first or second week of June to mid-July and forget trying to book a camp-site around Fourth of July)as every other family in the state/country. Kids taking advanced level classes are penalized for being smart - they don’t get near the vacation as other kids. Both kids seriously considered not taking any advanced classes and the younger child only took one when she could have taken more. I say skip the summer homework and cut out school-day homework (with a few exceptions for special projects) THEN consider shorter summer vacations.
Kids and their parents need summer vacation. Just let the kids sleep in longer than 6am for a few months, they have the rest of their lives to be a drudge, only get 2-3 weeks of vacation a year. They need time to be outside, riding bikes, going to camp (how exactly would summer camp work with every school taking different vacation days??), going to the pond for the day, spending hours at the library, mowing the grass, going on vacation…
How come so many great inventors, thinkers, authors, presidents, scientists managed to achieve great things and weren’t forced to sit in a stifling classroom for 11 months out of the year?
OH! That kind of thinking is so flawed, I don’t even know where to begin! Who says learning STOPS during the summer? EEK! Being a homeschooling family, we can assure you that learning continues year-round. And no, we are not glued to textbooks, children pasty-skinned and weak, unable to run and play with their friends during the summertime. In fact, they have so many activities throughout the year, we struggle to find the time and energy to actually SIT with anything other than the books they read for pleasure (year-round!). But we do pull out math books and other materials during the school year, and we get work done. And in the summer, we travel far and wide (car trips—we do this on the cheap!), and learn all about this beautiful country. They learn by DOING. And kids who can’t travel are still learning: swimming, running, playing, and all the other fun summertime activities are teaching our kids so many skills that are not taught well with textbooks nor in the classroom. It’s so frustrating to see how badly many school systems are failing our children, and then to read that people think kids need MORE of that! I am not anti-schools, but I am against BAD schools and BAD teaching! It is my hope that we get some amazing people in power come November, who have some great new ideas about how to FIX our broken school systems in this country. I can hope. (And yes, we’ve had the kids in school before. We’ve done private and public schools, before finally bringing them home, at THEIR request. And I’m happy to say that 3 are in college now, and 3 are at home. So whatever is happening here at home and in our community around us seems to be working just fine.)
There’s no one way to learn or one method to educate.Length of vacations can vary.The offensive part is the “govt knows best/time spent with families can be damaging” attitude in the quote.
We keep increasing the time children are in school (since say the 1950’s) and our public school children keep getting fatter and dumber. Back to the ole drawing board.
Is he in favor of people working without weekends or vacations so they never have to check back into real life at the office and catch up? Maybe he should try that first and let us all know how it goes. Starting…NOW!
The idea that MOST learning takes place in school is demonstably false. It is almost laughable that we have made such a graven image of formal EDUCATION (bow 3 times). For the past 30 years I have estimated the average child learns more outside of school by a ratio of 9 to 1.
Summer vacation was going to visit my grandmother for a week who lived on the other side of the state (YOU try riding 5 hours buckled in the back seat with your brother hitting you). Now it’s only 2.5 hours without pit stops (but you ALWAYS have to have pit stops!). Been there done that summer camp-yes you TOO can get an education from the outdoors…from learning how to identify poison ivy/oak to how to shoot an arrow without killing anybody, to learning the responsibility of your turn on canteen detail.
I wish they had summer camps for adults.
This is one of many reasons we homeschool: to be free of arbitrary schedules that “some” kids may need but ours do not. And to allow time for kids to be kids. There is an incredible amount of time wasted in brick and mortar schools: lining up, attendance, teachers helping other kids while your kid finished ten minutes ago and is sitting there doing nothing. Also, I am appalled by parents who feel that learning only takes place in school. One of the reasons I pulled my kids out of school was because i resented that, after they were in school all day, the school dictated how my entire family would spend its non-school time by sending homework. Homework is only necessary because classroom time is inefficient, at least prior to, say, 7th grade. For those who feel school should be year-round with shorter breaks in between lest kids forget what they learned over the summer: If parents are concerned that their particular children need enrichment over the summer in order to retain what they learned, then do it yourself. Get some workbooks and have them do a few math problems each day, or take out books from the library and read/discuss them together, whatever they need. But don’t force regulation on MY kids. Vacation isn’t just about “free time.” It needs to be long enough to remind us that it’s not just a “break from school” but an important time in itself, a time to live an entirely different kind of life AND engage in a different kind of learning (yes, learning). I’m with Matt; I went to excellent public schools, college, and graduate school, but all my fondest memories were of non-school activities: summer adventures, family events. But again, this is why we homeschool; we work harder and cover more material than any public school I know of, but at the same time, we treasure our lives together, not just our school hours.
love it, thanks!
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