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There was a strange protest rally in the Georgia Capitol last week. A bunch of parents, supported by couple of legislators lobbied for an additional month of vacation to push the reopening of schools to September. The reasons, offered partly were to help the tourism industry by prolonging the summer season. Either I am too nerdish or something surely is amiss here, but I definitely feel that after almost 3 months of summer vacation, kids would be raring to go back to school and parents would be only too glad to have them out of their way. At least my parents would have kept me in school even during the summer if they felt that it would bolster my career prospects. Heck, many of us have attended numerous summer school disguised as coaching for IIT, training sessions for the aptitude test for architecture, or computer classes to brush up on your programming skills or even the summer camp thing.
Why would Georgia still want to reduce with a 9-month schedule, which also is hopelessly outdated since farming schedules required children’s help for family agricultural farms? Already Georgia is languishing at the bottom of the heap with respect to SAT scores (they jumped one spot up from 50th to 49th. Yay!) and they want more time to play? Even college admissions in US have become extremely competitive with numerous prep schools and private tutors springing up by the dozen.
I am not an avid proponent of furthering bookish knowledge while compromising on extra curricular activities like arts and sports but reducing the academic load below the mandatory 9 months of school is definitely not the right step in boosting your child’s chance for a bright future. Children of the cyber generation are much more capable of handling multiple activities and have adapted themselves adroitly to the growing needs of a competitive world. I just hope the Georgia parents understand that reducing the already-less school time is not the way towards defining your child’s academic prospects. There is always time for fun.
by Patrix | on Thursday, September 9th, 2004 at 11:10 pm | 
Society Culture, United States, education . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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September 9th, 2004 at 11:25 pm reply
Yay! me first :)
Well I guess that’s an increasing trend.. a jobs paper this week mentioned that ppl are increaasingly putting conscious gaps (of a year or two) in their careers too, just to catch up on life’s pleasures :).. they feel like they have lost out on life by working straight after college etc..with no substantial breaks in between.
September 10th, 2004 at 12:36 am reply
Twilight Fairy - Congrats :) A conscious gap to catch your breath is fine but simply extending your already long summer vacation to sit lazily on the beach is not.
September 10th, 2004 at 5:07 am reply
Dont know much about the education scene in the US, but I definitely agree that reducing the academic year is not a good idea.
September 10th, 2004 at 9:14 am reply
There was a similar move in North Carolina and these groups were successful in getting a legislation approved to prevent schools from opening in August. I posted about it on my blog a few weeks ago.
It seems that many summer-tourist-oriented businesses employ high school kids and teachers who have summers off. If the schools start earlier, then these businesses will lose their temporary workforce and they will have to close down for the season earlier. It has nothing to do with kids helping parents on the farm.
This move is mainly supported by people with these business interests and some nuts who generally are against organised education and think that there is nothing to be learnt at schools.
September 10th, 2004 at 5:39 pm reply
Kiran - Too much school can be a bad thing but we already have lotsa holidays to have fun.
Parag - Now I remember reading about that on your blog. It is really despicable that they would put commercial interests over education…is it a Southern thing??
September 20th, 2004 at 9:44 am reply
Oh, my God! Are all of you actually believe parents would support a shorter school year? Do you have any idea what you are facing when you have a 7-15 year old who is out of school on MAY 20TH WITH NO WHERE TO GO because summer camps don’t start until EVERYONE else gets out in June. and you are forced to chhose the first session because you can’t send them to the second session, because that ends in the middle of August, and here in Georgia, they are already in school the 1st week in August, so families are stuck with absolutely no family vacation time. In May it’s too early to go on vacation and since many families are extended, most likely the rest of the family still has their kids in school, so we can’t even get to visit cousins regularly.
Someone in Georiga wants you to think this legislation is asking for a shorter school year, but it’s not. I grew up in New England. We started school afer Labor Day, ended around the 10th of June, and not only had two weeks off during December, but also had a week in February, a week in April, plus public schools were closed on the first day of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Columbus Day, plus all the other days they get off. Even snow days were counted into the system. One year we had alot of snow days and had to go to school until June 19th, but it still felt like a long summer vacation. As a parent, former student, and member of a family that lives in several states, I oppose year-round education in the public school system and I support getting back to a “normal” school year. One that doesn’t put my child into a freezing classroom because the school can’t regulate the air conditioning properly during the hot August month, and one that ends at a reasonable time in June so that we can plan family vacations, and summer camps, and summer jobs, and all those things that we did growing up and that we want for our own families. If I wanted more education for my children I would send them to priviate school or home school them.
And by the way, this comment goes to Parag…if you think puting commercial interests over students is despicable, how do you feel about the teacher’s unions forcing the early start and end to accomodate the teachers. That is truly one of the reasons why Georgia schools start and end so early, because of the teachers union. It has nothing to do with helping GA kids get a head start on learning. Oh, that is what sounds good and you can argue that it could be a result of starting early, but it wasn’t the impetus for the change.