But the idea of "summer school" I've picked from the first page is so terrible that it hurt me badly just by reading it.
"Extra classes are how to get ahead, mom said." - Why should a child care about "getting ahead"? Now adults don't get enough of this so we have to torture children too?
Will probably be sad for the rest of the day.
This was once summarized for me by someone in Palo Alto as "it's either Harvard or the gutter".
I haven't heard anyone saying "It's Harvard or the gutter", but they're similar.
As someone who previously had almost no interest in team sports I have to admit that I've been rather impressed at "character building" aspects of a school that is very rugby focused - although I hate to think what it is like for kids who don't like this particular sport.
[Edit: Oddly enough, at the age of 12 our son also announced one day that he'd like to go to Harvard, a pleasingly audacious goal for a 12 year old Scot.]
I used to think that art was useless. Then I grew up and now I think that it's pretty essential to a fulfilled life. Not to material wealth but to personal enrichment.
FWIW I'm rubbish at artistic realism and can barely hold a tune singing (I've no sense of rhythm either).
The latter has a pretty poor performance when done by kids. In the best case they go to music school/painting lessons and earn no skills and no satisfaction and no results; in worse case they show some promise and try to study art only to figure out that they can't live off art and they aren't that good anyway.
I was in the first bucket.
For that reason alone I'd abolish long summer breaks (and homework, which also actively hurts the progress of less supported children) perhaps trading off shorter days and/or more regular but shorter holiday breaks.
Presumably you mean poorer as in less financially wealthy.
Is this just an observation that parents who educate their kids educate their kids?
Isn't your proposal just a way of harming the education of more able kids?
If parents are neglecting to aid their children's education over a long summer break why do you feel that dividing that break up will stop the parents from neglecting to aid their children's education?
Less homework I'll go with.
Both problems are mitigated by having parents that have the time, ability and inclination to help you. If we're trying to find out who has the most well-off parents we could abolish school and award jobs based on the zipcode you were born in. If we're trying to actually educate a population then we should ditch the long holidays and the homework.
This would only hurt better-off children relatively (and may even help some or even all of them in absolute terms), as their peers would no longer be such poor students. I like to think the benefits of having an educated population would outweigh the benefit of being a big fish in an educationally small pond.
You make good points but you appear to be equating financial poverty with intellectual poverty. Whilst there are probably pretty well defined links and very strong correlations they are not coterminous factors.
>If we're trying to actually educate a population then we should ditch the long holidays and the homework. //
Yes educating populations is a different consideration. What I'd ask first is for what purpose you're educating the population? Don't presuppose a direction behind that question please, I'm absolutely not saying that people shouldn't be educated (possibly even against their will) but one needs to start the whole system with an ideal IMO to which to work - why?
It's interesting how culture arcs between similar practices. Prior to the 20th century (and likely prior to the 1940s) in the U.S., children often did large amounts of work. There was a period of "kids being kids" as we enjoyed prosperity (and a move away from factories and farms), but we seem to be swinging back in the direction of "kids as workers," albeit for different reasons.
I took summer school to get classes like Health, Drivers Ed, and so forth out of the way to make room in my schedule for classes I wanted to take but wouldn't have been able to otherwise: Woodworking, Introduction to Networking (ICDN1), and Computer Repair (A+ Cert).
Also, summer school was a neat experience. It was ran much more like a long lecture in college than your standard high school class and introduced me to people that became friends I wouldn't have otherwise met.
IMO dipping into summer holidays more or less equals unpaid overtime at work. Society can force one to do that, but it's unfair, draining and not that much productive.