Why we have summer vacations

Finally! Summer vacations have begun!  All of you must be looking forward to spending time at some cool holiday destination, pools, beaches, grandparents’ homes or summer camps. Summer vacation is probably the happiest period in a child's life as it lasts for about two months. These vacations generally commence from the first or second of May every year in most countries but have you ever wondered about what the history of summer vacations is? Do you know how and when the concept of summer vacations started in schools?

The amazing fact is that schools used to remain open all year around 200 hundred years back. Urban schools used to have only one break per quarter. The 11-month school year provided immigrant families with a safe place to send their children while they worked.  Moreover, rural schools had long breaks in the spring and fall season to allow their kids to help with the planting and harvesting as most families back then relied on agriculture and farming.

In America, the urban schools in the 1800s also lacked the long summer vacation modern American kids take for granted. Like working families today, new immigrant families needed a safe and affordable place for children to stay while parents worked. In large cities, children of parents who worked in factories, shops, or mills learned English and other subjects during an 11-month school year.

Then came a time when Horace Mann, the great education reformer got worried that over stimulating the minds of children could lead to stress, insanity and mental breakdowns. So in the year 1840, the summer break was created. Though the term ‘summer vacation’ wasn’t discovered or heard by anyone in that era. So this solution made students and teachers happy because they got a big break from studies. Moreover, it made doctors happy because they were concerned about children spreading disease while packed into sweltering classrooms. Parents and experts feel just as strongly that short school years and long summer vacations are essential to growing up.

Though some teachers, principals, parents still believe strongly that a three-month summer vacation hurts children, fragments education, and wastes tax money. Since the early 1900s, school districts around the country have offered a longer school year or a school calendar of multiple short terms interspersed with many short vacations. They feel there is the need to compete internationally.

Most other industrialized nations have longer school years than American schools do and there is fairly strong evidence that more time in school means higher standardized test scores.  Japan has 243 school days in a year, India has 236 and United States has the least number of school days at 180. Makes you wonder who’s the smartest then, doesn’t it?