Back when I went to school, we did not start until the Tuesday after Labor Day…

[WCGreen]

Football didn’t start until after Labor Day. It was a clear delineation between summer and fall even though the official start of fall was still at least two weeks off.

It was an interesting time for me, this gap between summer and fall. On the one hand, I was anxious to get back to school. I love to learn, always have and probably always will. It keeps my mind engaged in such a manner that I can occupy myself quite nicely, thank you very much.

But on the other hand, there is the allure of summer, the endless days of reading in the sun, talking to friends and yes, partying down with people I enjoyed being with. And the fact that with new school year, I grew more and more weary dealing with tin plated authoritarian figures who singled me out as a troublemaker just because I spoke my mind.

https://mylungtransplantyears.wordpress.com/about/

The latest post to my blog...

[jobycom]

1. And after that you can't wear your white spats.

Or is it before? I never could get those rules straight? :P

[WCGreen]

2. My MIL actually still repeated all those fashion foopaws to us....

[Arugula Latte]

3. Thankfully, it's still the same here.

My kids went back to school today.

[pstokely]

15. And will probably be in school until June

Most schools around here start mid-August and end by the first week of June depending on the number of snow days

[Arugula Latte]

19. Yep -- somewhere around June 11th - June 15th or so.

Just like the good old days. :)

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. What a beautiful distillation of this transitory time of year...

Very moving, and well written...

Thank you for your continuing journey!

Recommended.

[Sinistrous]

7. Just a +1

because I could not improve on your wording.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

8. Aw, thank you!

What a sweet thing to say...

[Warpy]

5. We didn't get a spring vacation, either,

and I suspect that's where the longer school year came from.

On edit: there is a clear delineation between spring and fall here in New Mexico: about the last weekend of August, the chile roasters get set up outside every supermarket and produce stand in town. The smell of roasting green chile is exquisite and more than makes up for the 1950s fall smell of burning leaves.

Since I live alone, I can't justify a bushel of green chile, no matter how much I love the stuff, so I rely on the places that offer baggies of freshly roasted chiles to take home, peel, and freeze. Whole ones will be stuffed with cheese, Quorn cutlets, or whatever else I have. The rest will be chopped for soups and stews. The raggedy bits left on the cutting board will be scooped onto tortilla chips and eaten as is, nothing else required.

However, the kiddies have been in school for 2 weeks now, and won't finish their grades until the second week of June. The difference is that 3 week break in the spring, something we never had when I was growing up.

[WCGreen]

6. As I remember, we had a week off in the Spring and less than two weeks

for Christmas. All the legal holidays and that was it.

I have a friend whose grandchildren seem to be having a day off every other week...

[happyslug]

13. I had Easter Week Off, which was the norm before the 1950s

In the 1950s Florida started to give Collage deans and other Collage people who set the school year free time during their "dead" month of March if such school would change their traditional Easter Break to a "Spring Break" in the Second week of March. This took off and many schools did change (Some did not, some schools still get the week of Easter off for Spring instead of the Second Week in March). This slowly worked it way into High Schools and Grade Schools, but Easter is still taken in many school districts to this day.

Now, one of the side affects of a Spring Break with a Tuesday after Labor Day start of School was that we did NOT get out till June 15th of each year. Now this was an inner city school and we always complained that the Suburbs last day was a week before and the suburban kids obtained all the summer jobs. You take the good with the bad in any system. One of the problem today is the South, to give their students a leg up on Summer Job) have moved to leaving out in May and opening up in the beginning of August. Thus if you move from a School District that ended on June 15th or later, you will have July off, but if your family moves south into one of the School Districts that starts the first week of August you have just six weeks off school. On the other hand if you move from a School District that leaves out in May, but move to a School District that starts on Tuesday after Labor Day, your can have four months off school. This brings to be one possible solution, a FEDERAL rule as to the Start and end of School years. No one is proposing that, but it would be the first step in any movement to increase the School year.

Other possible "solutions" include day by day assignment of what is to be covered, thus a student who moves over a weekend can turn in his assignment from one school to the next and it would be what is required and on time. I have yet to see a School District keep all of their classes on the same page on the same day, but it would be required if we what to maintain a mobile work force AND expand the school year.

Yes, the above two suggestions are ridiculous, but the present system is working and if we were to expand the school year how do you handle children whose eduction level in NOT up to the School District he or she moves into? Right now such students are brought up to the rest of the class when the School reviews what they learned the year before. It is a good solution, with minimum need to know the differences between the schools as to what is taught and when.

[Swamp Rat]

9. Halcyon days of yore.

:kick:

[SheilaT]

10. It helps to remember that our

"traditional" school year was developed around the needs of agriculture. Lots of kids who needed to help with the harvest, that's why the year started so late.

We also have the shortest school year, typically 180 days, in the developed world. Most other countries the kids go about 2oo days a year, and some one, maybe Japan, goes 240 days, I believe I have read. Is there any wonder our academic achievement is generally lower?

[happyslug]

11. Agriculture has NOT been a factor in the School year since about 1900

Yes, Farming requires a lot of work during the summer, but the peak time for work on the farm is the spring and fall. By 1900 even Rural School Districts had school during the spring planting and fall harvest periods. The farmer worked around the 180 day school year.

If farming is NOT the reason for the 180 school year what is? In simple terms it is the cost of a mobile society. The US has one of the most mobile (if not the most mobile) workforce in history. The problem with such mobility is that the most mobile of workers tend to workers in the 20s and 30s with Children. Thus a sizable number of children change schools every year. It is bad enough at the end of a School year but some do so even in the middle of the School year. To avoid the problems of changing schools in the Middle of the School year, people wait till summer, then they move. Now the house may be obtained earlier in the year (as was the job the family moved to obtain), but if the family can do so it waits till the end of the School year to change schools.

Given most people in the 20s and 30s, when they start a new job, only have two weeks of vacation, most moves occur on the weekends, and often on more then one week end. This includes obtaining a new place to live AND disposing of the old place one use to live. Looking for a new home is more then just checking the local listing and picking the first one, most people want to look over the potential home and often several of them over a time period (And doing this while showing their old home for sale in their old home town). Thus most people need the entire summer to move (i.e. not only the physical act of moving but looking for a new home, getting rid of the old home, turning on and off utilities etc).

Thus most homes are purchased in May, June, July and August. Some homes are sold in September and October, but the real estate market is dead till April. This all reflects the fact people move in the summer.

Now, one of the side affects of a long summer break is that children need to be refreshed as to what they learned the previous year. This same action ALSO brings children who MOVED into the School District up to task as to what the rest of the children are doing in the new school. Remember Schools do NOT teach at the same level. Most Collages even forbid transfers for classes in the last two years of a four year degree (and then treat such transferred credit as NOT as good as one form their own school to encourage students to take the same class again in their school).

As to those countries that have longer school years, most do NOT have the level of movement of families as does the US, in most countries it is rare for families, once formed, to move at all. During WWII, the Germans tried to get people to move from their old neighborhoods to new Neighborhoods nearer the new Factories being built in the Suburbs of German Cities. Those efforts failed until the British and American Bombing campaign (In the post WWII analysis of that Bombing Campaign this was one of the findings that supported the finding that the Bombing Campaign actually did more GOOD for Germany then it did harm, people forget that during the last years of WWII when the Bombing Campaign was at its peak Germany war production INCREASED do to this shift to the suburbs from the inner cities being bombed).

Just a Comment that the reason for the Summer Break has little if anything to do with farming. That is why it started but has NOT been a Serious Factor since at least 1920 (The first census when More Americans were living in Urban Areas as opposed to Rural Areas). The main reason is the mobility of the American Worker. How can we keep up that mobility giving such worker only two weeks vacation per year? How can we prepare children who goes from one School District to another School District in the MIDDLE of a School year? Given that the less education the parents have the more mobile they tend to be, how do we help them given that they can expect no help from their parents?

These question are NEVER brought up in a longer school year debate for no one has answers to them. Furthermore the people doing the debate almost NEVER move during a school year (and rarely move their children while they are in High School, let alone Grade School). Thus these problems are never discussed, but they need to be before we expand the school year.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

12. This is an excellent post...

You should re-post it as your own topic, in your own thread.

It IS that good.

[happyslug]

14. I have posted the concept before on other threads like this one

In one of which someone who worked on a farm pointed out a lot of farm work get done in the Summer, but he then went on how he lost his last year of High School when his father pulled him out for that year to help on the farm. I think it was more an attack on his father then me, but he had a valid point a lot of farm work occurs doing the summer. He missed my point that such summer farm work has not been the reason for "Summer Vacation" since at least 1920 (and probably the 1880s when School Districts first start to move to a 180 day school year). Thus more a argument over prospectives then anything else.

That other thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4079375

Some other thread on the Same Topic:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=219x14713

[SheilaT]

21. But we haven't changed the school year

We still use the dates originally good for farming.

Our long summer break means that kids forget a lot of what they've learned from the end of one school year to the beginning of the next. Teachers sometimes need to spend almost all of the first semester re-teaching what was taught the year before.

And the mobility of the American worker isn't really why we have the long summer break. People, even those with young children, do move at other times of the year.

It is a real problem that school districts can be so widely variant in what they teach, and I've observed the problem of kids moving from one district to another with very different standards, no matter when that move took place. Other countries tend to have national standards and a national curriculum. It is a genuine failing of our school system that we don't have the same.

And if the average American worker, as you've correctly pointed out, only gets two weeks vacation a year (if the worker is lucky), how does any average American manage to move across the country, whether or not there are school-aged children involved?

[happyslug]

22. You do what is required, even if it hurts your children.

That is my experience when a family is forced to move. The Children grades suffer, so in some classes they are ahead of their new fellow students and in other subjects they are behind. With no support from home (Do to parents having to work AND to set up a new house at the same time) the children suffer. God Forbid if the children have to do it more then once.

I had to do it twice. First in first grade, and the school I moved to insisted that I re-do first grade for they called my first year of first grade Kindergarten. The second time I was between Ninth and Tenth Grade. The only real problem I had was I made the mistake of trying to take German III. I was just lost in the Class. The Teacher was a native German Speaker and has insisted on the Students speak German. I never really spoke German so I was lost. I transferred to Latin after about two weeks, took me the whole year to learn Latin Numbers and other simple words for I missed the first two weeks of Latin, but I did well in the class. Now this was when my parents waited till the end of the School year to move, when I moved in First grade it was in the middle of the School year.

I took Biology in tenth for I had NOT taken it in my previous School. I had wanted to but I was in the Wrong track to take Biology in ninth, thus I had to take it in Tenth, Chemistry in Eleventh and then both Chemistry II and Physics in Twelfth. I had the same problem with math, in the wrong track so I took Algebra in Ninth instead of Eighth, Geometry in Tenth, Algebra II in Eleventh and then Trigonometry and Calculus in Twelfth.

Now that was in the 1970s, no calculators or computers, but that I had to drop German shows the difference between the Schools and the chief reason you can NOT do what I did in High School in Collage. If we desire teenagers to live with their parents we have to accommodate both parents and students. Right now both groups and the schools have worked out most of the problem of people moving with the use of summer break. All three have done so since around 1900. I have NOT heard of any proposals to address the problem of of even transferring records from one school to another let alone trying to keep the Schools more or less uniform. Thus Summer break main reason to exist is to "solve" the problem of people moving while their children are in school. It is NOT the best solution, but it is a solution that is working and to change it we have to address the affect of children moving during the School year.

[SheilaT]

23. I'm truly sorry that you had such an

unpleasant experience when you moved.

I moved across the country before the start of my freshman year in high school, and had no trouble adapting. There are plenty of kids who change schools for whom it is not a disaster. It's not realistic that every family stay put the entire time their children are growing up. We moved from one state to another when my children were young, so my oldest experienced two different public schools. Then, several years later, for very personal reasons we moved them to an independent school, rather than stay in the public one. They did just fine.

We do need a better national school system so that there's not such a vast difference between schools, I agree. Unfortunately, there's enormous resistance to that at many levels, including, unfortunately, teachers.

The AP classes are taught to a national standard, but only a relative minority of students get to take them.

I honestly don't see how a long summer break in any way mitigates the sometimes large differences between school systems, so I'm not completely sure exactly why you are defending the long break, when there are other large negatives, mainly how much the kids forget over the long break. And I honestly don't think anyone anywhere is seeing the long break as a really good way of allowing families to move. There are some major differences across the country in the actual start times -- some schools still go with the after Labor Day, some as early as the beginning of August, an entire month earlier. Any family moving who doesn't pay close attention to that could have real problems.

[happyslug]

24. I am defending the large break for it leads to the requirement of re-teaching what had been taught

Remember the chief complaint of the long Summer Break has to do with what the Students forget over the summer. That forces teachers to re-teach a lot of what was taught at the end of the previous school year. That duplication of teaching is what I am defending. That duplication not only refresh what had been taught in the previous year, but also teachers any new students those same lessons. Thus the long summer vacation forces teachers to re-teach ALL the students, even students who had changed schools. In many cases such re-teaching is just that, but in some cases it permits students who came from outside the School to catch up with the students in the school he or she had moved into.

Thus duplication of teacher is what I am supporting, it comes out naturally out of the present system with a long summer vacation. It is what makes the present system works. if you get to far away from it, how do you integrate students from other schools?

This brings up an idea based on the teaching of W. Edward Deming. Deming taught a school of thought as to quality that was rejected by American Management in the 1950s and embraced by Japan in the same decade. Japan used Deming philosophy to replace the US as the top name in quality. It took a while, but by the 1970s Japan has passed America in terms of quality.

The key to the Deming method was defining quality. Deming taught your best quality can be no better then your worse input, thus adding quality at the top or even the middle can NEVER improve quality. You improve quality bu improving the worse input, i.e. the worse element of production.

In most schools that will be those students transferring in. Some will know what had been taught in that school the previous year, others will not. Thus such transfers will be the worse input AND THE BASIS THE REST OF THE CLASS MUST BE TAUGHT FROM. Thus the best solution is that any school a students is transferred to MUST obtain the records of that students, contact the student's former teachers directly about the student. Once that is done, then you have the base the class can be taught from. The incoming student is NOT discriminated against and you minimize duplication of teaching but just teaching what the class OR the incoming student had NOT been taught.

It is a solution for Grade School and even High Schools. Teachers will hate it, but if we force them to call the previous teacher of the students the teachers can work together to make sure the transferring student is not lost in the transfer.

For more on Deming:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming

[SheilaT]

25. Interesting.

A better way could be with a shorter break, and have special catch-up classes for students who need to catch up. Meanwhile, those who actually learned something and remember what they learned -- which would be much easier if we had a longer school year and shorter summer break -- could go on and learn even more.

Maybe our students could start actually being competitive with other nations' students.

[Rochester]

16. My school year started the Wednesday after Labor Day

and ended the third week of June. We had a winter break (Christmas-New Years), a late-winter break (a week in February), and a spring break (the week before Easter). The biggest morale-booster we had was early Wednesdays. They shortened each Wednesday by 45 minutes (each period being shortened by 5), and that was great! No matter what went wrong on a Wednesday, nobody cared, because it was early Wednesday and we were all outta there earlier than on any other day! I think it had something to do with the budget being so tight.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

17. Um, school year here starts today.

Except for the college students, they don't start for a few weeks. But as for football, they're at it well before classes start.

:shrug:

[lostnfound]

18. It's a waste to start school earlier, especially with Labor day as a holiday

This is a short week, just 3.5 days, because Friday is some special school function and kids get out early, and Monday was a holiday. Starting school in mid-August is a drag, and I would have had my son in two more camps, tennis and drawing, if there'd been time this summer. The school environment is so distorted IMHO.

[missheidi]

20. Kids in my area started school on Aug. 3rd.

Really sad! I'm in my 20's and remember starting around Labor Day.

[madokie]

26. Mid august for me here in northeast Oklahoma

We didn't get any spring breaks either, a week to ten days off for Christmas/new years and no snow days so we were out by early to the mid of May.

Wasn't any airconditioners and you wore your coat all day on cold days too.

[InvisibleTouch]

27. Mine always started the week before...

...on a Tuesday, so our first week had only 4 days - and then the following week we had Labor Day off, so the second week had only four days also, to ease us back in. Not a bad way to do it, IMO.

[awoke_in_2003]

28. I had to walk to school uphill...

both ways