"We don't need no thought control!"

Hello!

This post is going to be the trial run of a new series with me and my BFFL who goes by the name of Countrywoman. Every week or so, we’re going to pick a topic and write posts with differing opinions on the topic. Here’s her blog: http://everythingcountseventually.blogspot.com.

Most schools in America are run on the traditional system. This means that students go to school for nine months of the year, and then get a three month vacation during late spring and early summer. Although this system has worked for us, and continues to work for us, it was designed in a different time period. We got out for summer vacation to help around the farm, which is where many people lived at that time. Now even in the land of corn and cows known as Iowa, I only know a few people that live, or even help out on a farm during the months of summer vacation.

These long summer vacations are not just outdated, but also bad for many students. I personally came back to school a few weeks ago. The first few days of school were terrible, frantically trying to remember facts that I had memorized better than the back of my hand last year. I’m sure it’s also bad for teachers, who have to re-teach material taught in the previous years.

In order to counter this scrambling for lost knowledge at the beginning of the school years, many districts around the country are switching to the year-round system. Lots of people get defensive just by looking at the name. I mean, who wants to go to school year-round? But it’s not like that.

Year-round school is a system where you have to go to school for 180 days, the same amount as traditional school. The major difference is the change in the length of vacations. The way that most schools do it is by cutting summer vacation into a smaller piece, like one month instead of three. They would then take these extra two months and split them up between spring break, Thanksgiving break, and Christmas vacation. Many schools around the nation are already successful with this system, so it does work.

In my opinion, applying the year-round school system would greatly benefit both students and staff. It both updates an outdated system as well as prevents the loss of knowledge that most students would agree happens over summer break.

Thanks for reading!

Matt Finley