Before I started writing this article I decided to google 'Why I hate the summer break', just to get the idea of what other people hated about it and did our opinions match. To my surprise, instead of finding a BuzzFeed article named '10 things to hate about summer break (you won't believe the 7th one)' I found a cold pile of articles about the adults who hated summer in general and just thought it was a bit too hot. The only thing about summer break I found was the Yahoo , in which a student asked if she was insane for not liking summer break.
Majority of the answers were: Yes, you are!
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The students answered that they hated their schoolmates and that they preferred closing themselves in their room and eating two bags of Doritos while watching TV series. It seems that it became a new trend to not be a 'people-person', meaning that you don't grow a certain liking or respect for the people around you. Now, I don't intend to post a question of gratitude or teenage morality, but I must wonder: Are students wrong for not being interested in school and it's social life or is it the mistake of school systems that the youth doesn't enjoy them?
My bet is on the second one because I hate being on a break for three months. I feel unproductive, I lack motivation for pretty much anything and I'm cut off from a social group I really enjoyed.
Apart from my personal dislike, I fail to see the need for the three months break, and I feel like the students' potential has been undermined. Imagine just how much more material could be learned if the summer breaks would be shortened to a month and a half. Month and a half every year would mean that high school students would get six months more to concentrate on an area of study. If schools decided to spend six months on solely learning a new language, students would be able to become at least semi-fluent in the language. The new language wouldn't even have to be graded, but simply a graduation requirement.
Some would argue that not all schools own the AC devices and that the hot summer temperatures in some places of the world could greatly affect student's health, but then the problem is not in the heat, but in the money provided by a country to its educational system.
Of course, some students use the summer vacation to work, travel or visit a camp. However, those commodities are only available to the students living in a country which offers jobs to the minors (my country not being one), and to the students who can afford the camps and the traveling. Through summer jobs, students are able to earn some pocket money, but lose the time that they could spend studying if the educational system was different. After all, I thought that the whole purpose of schools was to educate the youth and prepare them to take on jobs and pay taxes after they obtained the necessary or the targeted knowledge.
I would have to mention that I'm not talking about the summer breaks in college, which are often used on internships, which actually help the students gain working experience in their area of interest. I'm talking about middle and high schools' summer breaks which are used for catching Pokemon and binge watching Netflix (both of which I did this summer break).
This being said, long summer breaks are completely unnecessary, and they even inhibit students' academic progress. I do understand the students who find their academic work tiring, unproductive and boring. However, that only points out that such academic programs need to be worked on: avoid giving the easy and simplified materials that students don't find challenging, introduce more fun interaction with the students and adapt the work to students' personal interests. Don't tell me that such a system doesn't exist, because I went through one.
It's a new age, and the teaching techniques from the past won't work, we need a reform!
