Ten Reasons We Should Eliminate Summer Vacation

1. After April vacation, or when the weather gets warm (whichever comes first), the students shut down.

2. So do the teachers.

3. It's an anachronism. Kids don't help out with the plowing anymore.

4. Nobody else gets the summer off. We're supposed to be preparing students to live in the real world, but businesses don't shut down in June and reopen in September. (They don't normally take a week off between Christmas and New Year's, either, but that's another column.) And as long as we're getting serious about preparing students for the real world, how about a school day that runs from nine to five? We can have sports before school starts (brisk exercise plus a shower would produce more alertness at the beginning of the day) and other cocurriculars at night. And we could do that because there'd be...

5. No homework. None. Zero. Zip. Not for students. Not for teachers. With a much longer school year, students could do all their readin', ritin', and Orithmetic during school hours, with books, computers, and adults to help them. As it stands now, homework only widens the gulf between the kids who have those things at home already and the kids who don't. Imagine how much more effectively students could learn if we didn't have to constantly rush, rush, rush them to cover the curriculum. Imagine how much pleasanter life would be for teachers if we had the time to read, write, plan, edit, and correct student work in school. Imagine -- o, imagine! -- what it would be like if teachers could go home at five o'clock and forget their jobs until the next morning; read something for pleasure, work out at the gym, have a leisurely meal with their own kids, get involved with community enterprises, or just do blissful nothing.

6. And weekends, too!

7. The end of summer vacation wouldn't cripple the economy, either. How many families can afford to take the whole summer off? A lot of parents face real problems figuring out what to do with their kids once school is out.

8. The fact is, a lot of kids are bored out of their skulls by the beginning of August. Often the summer is an endless merry-go-round of carting them from day camp to overnight camp to sleepovers to summer jobs. And when they learn to drive themselves, it gets worse. Now they stay out long after working parents have to go to bed, doing stuff that would give those parents bad dreams if they knew about it, and sleeping until noon the next day, which throws their circadian rhythms totally out of whack by the time school starts up again. By which point, I might add, they've forgotten a significant amount of what they learned the previous school year.

9. Ah, but what about the benefits of a summer job? Building character, learning responsibility, knowing the value of a dollar, and all that? Get real. Summer jobs are usually (a) lousy (b) poorly paid and (c) hard to find. If kids want or need to work, they would have plenty of time for part-time jobs before or after school (see #5).

10. I've saved the best reason for last: If there were no summer vacation, then when teachers asked for higher pay or better working conditions, they wouldn't have to listen to the yahoos who say, 'I wish I had the summer off!'