As educators continue the centuries old quest for silver bullet solutions to transform the education system, they have progressively proposed more and more radical reforms. While the ideas often address real issues with the current education system, they often slash away vital aspects of education without thinking through all of the potential consequences. Year-round schooling is no exception.
Proponents of year-round schooling often have two main points: it eliminates long breaks during which students forget material, and it can cut education costs.
The first point, that year-round schooling prevents people from forgetting information, is the beloved argument of all year-round schooling proponents. They believe that by slicing the summer break up and sprinkling shorter breaks throughout the rest of the year they can create a more fluid system to aid the learning process. While there is limited evidence for this idea, the results are inconsistent and have been contradicted numerous times.
The second claim that proponents of year-round schooling often make is that their idea will save schools money while allowing schools to raise capacity.
For starters, by creating systems in which different grade levels run at different times, this automatically raises the costs for expenses such as bussing and utilities at the school. The size of classes also cannot be raised without hiring more teachers.
There is also the added factor that year-round schooling hurts teachers economically. According to U.S. News and World Report, more than 20 percent of teachers work second jobs during the summer.
This brings me to my principal argument: summer vacations are incredibly valuable opportunities for students to develop in ways that formal education would never allow them to. Whether it is joining month long summer programs to develop new skills or working a summer job, young people have the potential to develop exponentially during summer breaks.
Ultimately, there are issues with the current school year model and schools should find ways to address the memory gap created through long vacations, but the solutions should come through taking advantage of technology or encouraging beneficial uses of summer breaks.