Winter break is good for students and schools

1) Winter break is not meant just for Judeo-Christian holidays, there are many other holidays that are allowed to be practiced by many other religions over the course of Winter breakArabic New Year - The Arabic calender is about 10 to 11 days shorter than the one we use, so that means the date of the Arabic new year moves up a week and a half every year. 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 BreakWinter Solstice - Celebrated by a number of Pagan religious peoples whose religion makes up a very small part of America religion total. And some schools do respect Muslims and their holidays if the Muslim population is large enough schools do show courtesy towards them as well.http://espn.go.com...So Winter Break can be applied to people outside Judaism and Christianity and schools do show courtesy towards populations of other religious affiliations. 2) " US students aren't worked even close to as hard as those in many other countries."The average length of the US school year is 16th overall in length in a world where there are close to 200 countries...16/200 = .08 = 8% = The US is in the top 10% of the world for longest school years which can be used to imply that US students compared to the rest of the world work very hard. http://www.northjersey.com..."When 34 countries were considered, the US ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science, and 25th in math." Your comparing the US to 34 countries and not the entire world and the statistic you cited only includes the most educated in the world. When you again factor in that there are close to 200 countries,US Reading = 14 out of 200 = top 7%US Science = 17 out of 200 = top 9%US Math = 25 out of 200 = top 13%So US education is still well off compared to the world ranking consistently in the top 15% of the world in all categories, but wait a sec.......... Does longer school years necessarily mean better results?The US is ranked 16th for longest school year but in educational performance overall they rank 19th in overall educational performance by the time people hit 12th grade...http://4brevard.com...List of countries with shorter school times but still performed better than the US,Sweden,Denmark,Switzerland,Iceland,Norway,Australia,Canada,Austria,Slovenia,Germany,Italy,Russia,Lithuania,Czech Republic.All of these countries have a better academic performance than the US but still have shorter school years than the US does. Do countries with longer school years rank better than the US?Japan - noSouth Korea - noIsrael - noLuxembourg - noNetherlands - yesScotland - noThailand - noHong Kong - noEngland - noHungary - yesSwaziland - noFinland - noNew Zealand - noNigeria - noFrance - yeshttp://4brevard.com...http://www.northjersey.com...So longer school years do not necessarily equal better quality education by the time of 12th grade contrary to what the Pro implies.Unrelated note - You claim that "no child left behind" is the root behind US education problems but to fix the problem you propose NOT repealing no child left behind and instead choosing to cancel winter break so that there is more time to fix the problem.... Why not just repeal NCLB? Longer school semesters dont necessarily mean better educational results. 3) Money shouldn't be an issue in providing a good education, but it does, and that cannot be denied. http://www.thedailybeast.com...On the other hand you brought up a good argument for me for my side of the debate. If winter break were canceled than school budgets would be put under an even larger strain than they are right now, and the government would toil over increasing the education budget when recently the government has only been CUTTING education.http://www.guardian.co.uk...4) You are stating that a majority of students are completely unable to learn anything unless in a school environment, but schools almost routinely assign students to do assignments over winter break that are completed. They range from lengthy english assignments over books they read in class, math projects meant to reinforce their knowledge in a particular field, a history project or these days a history power point bringing light of an obscure part of human history, sometimes classes want you to simply read books over the course of the break and this applies during winter AND summer vacations. Science fair projects, reports about elements, classifications and research of plants are a few things assigned over Winter Break in science classes too. My point is that schools routinely and successfully keep students on their toes by giving them ample amounts of homework over these breaks which help them learn quite a bit. To summarize: - The Pro thinks that Winter Break discriminates against lesser religions when I have shown they do not, - The Pro thinks that Winter Break should be abolished to help the US score better internationally compared to other countries when I have shown that longer curriculum's don't necessarily equate to better scores - The Pro thinks that the costs of operating schools over Winter Break should be disregarded and can simply be avoided by getting the government to increase funding when I have shown that school budgets are a problem that Winter Break helps alleviate by reducing operational costs and that the government has recently only been cutting educational budgets to the states. - The Pro thinks that students cannot learn anything over Winter Break when I have shown that students are routinely kept up to academic shape by being assigned any one of a vast amount of homework assignments over Winter Break.