I can hear it already: “Really Jacob? Summer vacation? Is nothing sacred?” Well, I’m glad you’re catching on, IHS—nothing is sacred, and certainly not your coveted two-month break from homework, insomnia, and those god-awful morning shoutouts. Because just like many archaic traditions, the American summer vacation has miserably failed the test of time, pushing economically disadvantaged students farther behind their peers and leading to a substantial increase in inequality both in school and out, all while causing millions of children to go hungry.
Summer vacation exists because back in the 1800s, buildings lacked air conditioning, which I’m sure you can imagine would have been terrible, especially considering what our school can be like on hot summer days even with modern technology. It’s worth noting that dress codes back then were also even stricter than the ones we have now, with these modern rules being the ones I once compared to sharia law (read that article on ihstattler.com). Getting students to come to school, much less pay attention and learn under those conditions, proved to be a challenge, and so summer vacation was born. The tradition of the upper class leaving the city during the summer also contributed to the break, a shocking case of the richest in society influencing government policy.
As anyone who has ever been quizzed on trig facts will understand quite well, going for months without using something is a great way to forget it. A review of 39 studies published by the American Educational Research Association found that summer vacation led to a drastic decrease in scholastic performance, noting “that the summer loss equaled about one month on a grade-level equivalent scale.” This was all while middle-class students actually “appeared to gain on grade-level equivalent reading recognition tests,” which meant that the burden of this academic decline was on the shoulders of the poorest students (Sage Publications). A study ran by Karl Alexander, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins, found that poor students actually learn faster during the school year than their upper-class counterparts, but that this progress is completely negated during the summer. This inequality is compounded each year, and by the time students reach high school, the so called “summer slide” can account for more than half of the difference in performance between low-income and high-income students (Politico). If people weren’t so steadfast in their ways, the air conditioner could have been one of the greatest social equalizers of all time.
More directly, lack of access to subsidized food further encourages inequality, causing many students in food insecure households to go hungry. Of the 21.7 million children receiving free or reduced lunch, only four million are aided by the USDA’s summer food program, leaving over 17 million of them to face undernourishment (CNN). This is exacerbated by the fact that working parents, especially those who have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, will have to find some way of supervising their children when deprived of subsidized child care, which might not always be possible.
There may be some out there that just don’t care about the poor, and that’s fine. For those of you who dread the idea of giving up this sweet release from the monotony of our education system, I submit the following replacement: we take the days we currently get off during the summer and space them out during the year. If you do the math, it equates to roughly a day a week, with some left over. Therefore, I think it would be best that instead of summer vacation, students would have Wednesdays off. Having a day in the middle of the week to catch up on sleep, homework, and social life would increase the morale and health of students, while also providing additional time for homework (which theoretically would not increase in quantity, given that the same amount of material would be covered in a year). Students would switch to new classes after Regents week, meaning they would have the same amount of time to prepare for tests as usual, but spread over a greater period of time. Retention of material would be substantially higher and classes could have more continuity from year to year to prevent relearning the same material every year—I’m looking at you, metric system in science classes. I was going to include a list of other examples in the parenthetical, but it was so lengthy that I decided to go with a full-on bulleted list of cases where students get taught the exact same thing many years in a row:
- The distinction between observation and inference
- The definition of density
- The scientific method/how to write a hypothesis
- How to write a thesis statement
- How to use basic measurement tools like a ruler, thermometer, and graduated cylinder
- Literary devices (if you don’t know what a hyperbole is, you’re literally the dumbest person)
The point is, even if you don’t care about social inequity or child malnourishment, getting rid of summer vacation has something to offer for you.