Yet again, a politician has decided that the "long" school Summer holiday is considered fair game, and has called for us to shorten the Summer so that we remain competitive. Quite apart from the fact that a politician decrying a long Summer holiday is actually rather ironic, ("calling black kettle pot" - rearrange to form a well-known phrase) it is also inaccurate.
Some years, state schools get a full six weeks in the Summer. More often than not, it's five and a half, very occasionally just five. I am prepared to admit that the staggered start at the beginning of the Autumn term does make it longer for some students (and, as a teacher, I guess I'm biased.)
Chris Skidmore MP claims that children need shorter holidays because they "forget" everything over the break, and this lowers academic progress. He also thinks children find long holidays tedious.
Well, I've been a teacher for longer than he's been an MP and I can vouch for the fact that, should you ask a student what work they did before the weekend, most of them would have forgotten it. This is the reason that lessons start with a recap of what we did before. It's well-known that repeating things over and over again helps to improve retention. "Forgetting" stuff over the Summer isn't actually a problem. Children (and teachers) need to have a break from academic work.
Mr. Skidmore points out that the long Summer holidays are really a relic from our farming roots. Again, speaking from my years of teaching experience, I can vouch for the fact that students really don't benefit from being herded into hot, stuffy classrooms and forced to try and concentrate when the Sun comes out. All those high-achieving countries tend to have air conditioning as par for the course, I believe. The infrastructure for home learning is also there - Singapore regularly closes its schools to prepare against outbreaks of diseases such as swine flu, to check that everything is in place for home learning.
It is also interesting to note that independent schools in the UK have longer holidays than state schools. I haven't noticed a dearth of attainment in children who are privately educated. As a former student at Bristol Grammar School, Mr. Skidmore would have experienced holidays lasting 8 weeks in the Summer, which I dare say he found tedious, especially as the Autumn and Spring half term holidays were each a week and a half in length (state schools get a week for each), and Christmas and Easter are both three weeks long (state schools get two weeks for each of these.)
Does Mr. Skidmore feel he could have achieved more if he hadn't been handicapped by such onerously long holidays, or does he think it only applies to the children of the general masses who are too stupid to cope?
I suspect that what Mr. Skidmore really means is that the long Summer holidays are inconvenient for parents who have to work. His description of children sitting playing with their Super Nintendos (how very out of touch - it's all Wii now, I believe!) strongly suggests children who are home alone, without a parent who can encourage them to go out to museums, parks, swimming pools and so on. The emphasis in this country is not giving children a good all-round education (encouraging independent exploration of topics and subjects which interest the individual child over the Summer would do this) but providing childcare while the parents are out at work. Hence the proposals to shorten the holidays and calls to lengthen the school day.
Stalin would have given his right arm to get this sort of separation of children from their parents and putting them into the care of the State...
8 comments:
I am wholly with you on this one! I was teaching when the evil Thatcher ruled and her minion Baker was Education Secretary. Their hatred for people in the public service knew no bounds and they introduced what were known as "Baker Days" as a means of stealing five days holiday from teachers under the pretext of providing in-service training- the content of which, in practice, proved an irrelevant and tedious distraction from useful work. As a colleague pointed out at the time, teachers' long holidays are an illusion. They are when you get a chance to do the chores that you simply don't have the time for during term.
You folks are NUTS to have kids in school well into July!!! In the US the number of school days is typically somewhere between 180-190 depending on the state/locale. In the places I grew up, school typically started the new year just after the Labor day Holiday, which is the 1st Monday in September. [Some places, for cruelty start mid August, but they also end 2 weeks earlier at end of May.] School ends 1st or 2nd week of June, depending on how the calendar falls. So you end up getting about 12 glorious weeks summertime. What they DON'T have is "mid term week offs." Absolutely unheard of there is no week break 3 times a year "for the heck of it." You will, typically get a few day holidays here and there, Veteran's Day in Nov., a 4 day weekend at Thanksgiving in Nov. and about 10 days to two weeks at Christmas, depending on how the calendar falls that year. Then you get a few random days off like MLK day (these days, in my day you got 2 president's days off in Feb. Lincoln and Washington.] kids now get 1 president's day... and you are lucky to get a couple extra days around Easter. Memorial Day. And that's pretty much IT. However there is that gloriously long summer where you can pursue your interests, take up a new hobby, play on a sport team or pick up teams, build a fort in the woods and keep out the opposite sex, and have a complete personality make over so if you were a total jerk in 6th grade you can transform into a butterfly or just plain stop being whiny and grow up, and toss out all those weird clothes you can't believe you wore last year. I'm sure the teachers appreciated the break from us too. And the long break allowed them to work on Master's degrees, take a summer job, whatever.
Karen, we only have 190 teaching days a year plus five non-teaching days (the "Baker days" Patricius mentioned, now called Inset days) but I definitely prefer the half terms to be there too... After a six week term the kids start to go a little stir crazy...
Well said Mac!!!
Yeah, but it still must SUCK to be in school during the short time of year the UK *may* if you are lucky, have decent weather!
Two comments from a passing Anglican:
British school holidays are short by European standards. I recently looked up bus times in Brescia, and they're already on "orario feriale non scolastico" for weekdays.
The "agricultural" thing is, err, the by-product of a cow's husband. Compulsory education in the UK dates only from the 1870s, when the industrial revolution was long complete.
There will be plenty of ranting about this in my house this evening. My Mum has decided that she is going to take 3 weeks off for the summer holidays (time dedicated to sorting out the attic and having a good clear out) before she settles down to planning etc for next year.
I am quite keen for her to invite an MP (Mr Gove) to spend a fortnight with us so that he can find out exactly how many hours teachers work, and join in with the family marking/ cutting/ sticking/ labelling/ looking for music/ Christmas play writing etc which takes place in the evenings. I started marking spellings when I was 10 and I too enjoyed having a break in the summer holidays!
In Spain, school summer holidays are from the 22 of June to the 10th of september.
Post a Comment