Winter break is good for students and schools

A response to Pro's assertions:1) It is understandable that students need to stay home to celebrate these important holidays with their families, but we must remember that winter break covers a very large span of time to allow Jewish and Christian students to celebrate, while people who have religious beliefs that are less prominant in our culture (e.g., Islam) typically have no days off for their important holidays. University of Miami students and State University of NY at Binghamton students get over a month off for winter break... [1] [2] By allowing winter break to exist, universities are shortening academic semesters, thereby taking away from the depth and amount of content of students' courses. This, in the end, adversely affects students, whose education is being sacrificed. Also, this especially hurts many nonreligious students who do not celebrate Christmas or Hannukah. The only reason why we have these specific holidays off is because we are in a Judeo-Christian area in the world. Because of this, we completely disregard the religious values of the Islamic community; most institutions of learning in North America do not have school breaks for Ramadan. Also, we completely ignore the religious beliefs of very small minorities; for example, there are no schools in North America for those of the Voodoo faith, who celebrate the Day of the Dead (Nov. 1-2.) [3] The only holiday that there should perhaps be a several day-long break for is New Years, since it is very secular and universal. Classes should continue on religious holidays; teachers/professors on religious leave should not be paid during their absence and should be subsituted by other instructors, and students who are absent should be expected to make up classwork. 2) Mental exhaustion? US students aren't worked even close to as hard as those in many other countries. Through more rigorous and challenging school curricula, other countries are teaching their student more effectively and are thereby defeating the United States in international education rankings. When 34 countries were considered, the US "ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science, and 25th in math." [4] Since the instatement of No Child Left Behind, states have been reducing the difficulty of their respective state examinations and emphasizing a curriculum that is arguably more lax than any in the United State's history; states (e.g., Missouri) inflate grades by lowering standards. [5] How do we fix this trend and get our nation back on top? We can get rid of winter break so that school curricula could be extended and more material could be fit into them so that students are able to acquire more knowledge, which would certainly boost our position in the rankings and keep our country ahead when it comes to technology and scientific advancement, as it had been in relatively recent history. 3) Proper funding of schools is a separate issue. Money should not get in the way of providing an adequate education of students, and policies should be revised in order to change that. A lack of money is not an acceptable justification for depriving students of an education Moreover, education spending from the government should increase in order to fund schools, especially during times like these, when our education system is sinking in international rankings, as stated in the prior argument.4) Most students are not autodidacts and need a proper teaching environment in order to efficiently acquire knowledge. Students learn by themselves year-round; they learn how to do the laundry, how to comb their hair, how to read by themselves... But if acquiring academic information were so easy, students would not have to go to school and just stay home all year teaching themselves all of the coursework. Students would benefit far, far more if they were to continue attending school and being properly instructed over winter break than if they stayed home and built clay models of Egypt. Winter break should not exist. It discriminates against less major religions who do not get breaks for their holidays, it robs students of a stronger education, and there were no break, curricula could be extended, thereby improving overall educational performance of students and allowing the US to climb back to the top of internation education rankings, back into its position of power. [1] http://www2.binghamton.edu...[2] http://www6.miami.edu...[3] http://www.wehaitians.com...[4] http://www.usatoday.com...[5] http://en.wikipedia.org...