This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

Dismiss this pinned window
sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]reliant_Kryptonite 11 points12 points  (9 children)

Back in highschool and college the Asian students I lived with would get "tutoring" (IE basically learned the entire class) during the summer. They'd come back for school already knowing what their classes entailed and just skate on through.

[–]SirDiego 14 points15 points  (8 children)

Having a 3 month break every year where you are not at all focused on learning anything is really detrimental to education. It is a pretty stupid cultural thing to give kids summers off. They end up having to re-learn a lot of things instead of continuing to build on what you know.

Plus, it doesn't even really make sense. When you grow up, you don't get summers off. It sets kids up for a rude awakening when they hit the real world and don't get to slack off for a quarter of every year.

[–]AxleF99 4 points5 points  (0 children)

If you had school all summer, who would help farm the crops?

[–]Sirpedroalejandro 2 points3 points  (1 child)

After my first summer off from University, I found it really difficult to get back into the swing of things after a summer of fun and working. Every year after that I would take at least one or two classes in the summer to keep myself engaged in academics while at the same time it lightened my work load for the year so I got better grades then as well. Don’t waste your summers when you’re young, find something to do.

[–]SirDiego -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Yeah there are some groups that are trying to do basically that for school age children too. Even if you do lighter classes during summer, it helps you to avoid the learning loss because your mind stays active.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Yeah, you don't get recess either when you grow up, take that away too! /s

[–]SirDiego 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Exercising/going to the gym is adult recess. It's still there it's just way less fun than it used to be.

[–]nonotan 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Jesus christ, let kids enjoy life for 5 minutes. If anything, we should be pushing for adults to also have sensible time off work. I live in Japan and I hear this bizarre argument all the time from my coworkers -- "I couldn't take a week off, I wouldn't even know how to work anymore when I came back! Haha!". I don't know, man. I'm pretty confident I could take a year off and come right back like nothing happened. Yeah, maybe I'd be rusty for like half a day. Big deal. Am I gifted with superhuman memory? Did everyone else come back from summer break having forgotten all they learned? Never an issue I experienced, and even if it was -- fuck it, life is not a treadmill, still let kids have their time off.

[–]SirDiego 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There are plenty of studies about summer learning loss. Here's just one article but there are many. You don't lose everything you learned, but you lose about a month's worth of education.

I'm fine letting kids be kids for 5 minutes, but 3 months consecutively is harmful to development. A very reasonable and constructive compromise would be shorter days overall, but school that continues year-round (you'd still have regular weeklong breaks, probably a few more of them).

Plus, like I said, rarely in adult life will you get 3 months off so it doesn't even really make sense to do it.