Winter break is good for students and schools

1) "From 2008 - 2009 the Arab new year coincided with Winter break so for a period of time Winter break did honor Arabic beliefs, and this will be true again in the future when the cycle once again coincides with Winter Break"By coincedence, THAT YEAR, it happened to coincide with the normal winter break time. Yes, by coincidence... The opponent fails to make a point here. Clearly, major holidays for religions outside of Christianity and Judaism are ignored by the education system.Winter Solstice isn't a holiday in itself, but rather a position of the earth's axis, although some religions, such as Paganism, do make it into a religious festivity. There is no break specifically designed for the Pagan faith... Winter Solstice just happens to fall into time span of winter break. According to pro's source, there is a school in Detroit that happens to take into account Muslim faith into school policy. I am glad that PRO was able to research thoroughly enough to find one of the small handful of schools who do. Very, very impressive. 2) The US school year is 16th overall, you say? That's very interesting, because PRO's source says nothing to support that. PRO must have assumed, for whatever reason, that the statistics presented there were ranked. The website however does not indicate that these countries are ranked. This is simply the opponent's misinterpretation of a source. Also, who ever said that they were the 34 most educated countries? PRO completely fabricated this claim. But, anyway, why would we be comparing the US' education system to those of third-world countries? We are competing against highly-developed societies like China... Why would we compare our education system to that of Sierra Leone? Who cares how we compare to all 200 countries? It's all about how our education system compares to those of other highly-developed powerhouses, and so far, we are not faring well. I would love to respond to some of the rest of this argument, but it's based on the fabricated "16th for longest school year" statistic that I have yet to see proven in your sources. I see the trend you are trying to present, but it just shows that there are certainly more factors than length of school year that affect quality of education. These statistics show an illusory correlation between length of school year and educational quality, since your argument completely ignores other factors that may have played a role in this trend. The only way to prove causation is to show experimentally that, after increasing or decreasing the school year in a specific country, specific results came about. 3) The issue at hand is not monetary feasibility. We are discussing if it would be beneficial to education. No context was given in regards to time, so we might as well be arguing about extending the school year in 400 years, when, hypothetically, the economy is booming and the world has become Utopia. Monetary matters are completely irrelevant since we are not talking about immediate reform, here and now, so let's do ourselves a big favor and take them out of the equation. 4) Assigning students homework and projects effectively supplants a teacher-student learning environment in the classroom? An interesting claim made by PRO. (By the way, I never said that "students are completely unable to learn anything unless in a school environment." Do not shift the claims of my argument for the sake of your own.) I look forward to the opponents refutation... and (hopefully) clarifications.Thank you.