Our long summer vacation is a relic from an agricultural past when kids were needed for seasonal work on farms — or so we’ve been told. Since that’s no longer the case, we should lay the three-month summer break to rest, right?
We’ve heard that argument over and over again from politicians and other critics of summer vacation and all its parental and educational discontents. The COVID-19 pandemic, which spawned dramatic learning losses for America’s students, only heightened concerns about long summer breaks. Our kids need more school, the reasoning goes, and summer is an obvious time to start.
They might be right about that, but the oft-repeated folk history is wrong. When our common school system began, in the early 19th century, students actually went to school in the summer. And if we want to bring them back today, we’ll need new ways to teach them.
