From: davids@hpsdde.sdd.hp.com (David Schwantner)
Newsgroups: sci.edu,misc.education,misc.kids
Subject: Re: Year-round schooling
Date: 2 Oct 1992 10:38:54 -0700
Organization: Hewlett Packard, San Diego Division
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: hpsdde.sdd.hp.com
Keywords: year,round,school,schooling

In article <1992Oct1.204956.24483@cbfsb.cb.att.com> osan@cbnewsb.cb.att.com (Mr. X) writes:
>In article <1992Sep23.133254.29555@erenj.com> maduran@erenj.com (Marco A. Duran) writes:
>>
>>The Board of the School Disctrict where my children go to school is 
>>recommending to change to year-round schooling.   
>
>	This is patently idiotic and the result of lazy, inept, or
>	thoroughly uninspired minds.  As with mature adults who 
>	take vacation every year, children need to be given a break
>	from the experience of attending classes.  They need a sense
>	of cycle, of variance, and time to rest themselves from the
>	daily deliberation in the school environment.
>

I will assume that your negative response is based on a misunderstanding
of how year-round schooling works. I attended a year-round elementary
school 20 some years ago (why have been starting to feel old lately?:-)).
The school population was split into four "tracks", A, B, C, and D, roughly
coresponding to whether you lived north, south, east or west of the school.

Each track was on for 9 weeks, then off for 3 weeks, rotating so that
at any time, 3 tracks were in session, and one was on vacation. There were
four elementary schools in the general area were I lived, and each of them
had some sort of "vacation school" activities or classes. (roughly analogous
to summer school classes). you could choose any of the four schools to go
to on your vacation for whatever you wanted to do (or not do if you wanted
to stay away from school!). From my experience, three things resulted.

1) I don't know of any student that feeled deprived for not having a long 
vacation. As a matter of fact, because school was always in session, they
even allowed special arrangments that would allow you to substitute some
other time to take your vacation if your family wanted to do something 
at a time other than your normal time. And, we actually looked forward
to getting a vacation more often (four 3 week vacations per year instead of 
one 12 week vacation).

2) It was always claimed that this sytem actually saved the schools money.

3) The teachers also benefited by getyting breaks more often. The stress
of school on students is nothing compared to the stress of students on 
teachers:-) :-)!!!!

Hope this first hand stuff, in adult retrospect, helps.

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