Why do we still defend the brain on summer vacation? topic 1 by Abimael Nunez
When it comes to debating efficiency in the educational system of the United States, summer vacations have been viewed by some as a deterrent in educating the youth. The time off between switching grade levels is believed to degrade a student's academic ability as they are not continuing these intellectual pursuits over their break. Yet, those who believe so may want to yield such claim as there is little evidence that just having time off during the summer is a major factor to substandard learning. There is such a thing as students losing academic ability when going long periods of time without learning, but elongating the standard school year would be sort of a
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But concluding that China's longer school years and academics correlate does not take in account the overall hours devoted to schooling. According to the article “Why do we still have summer vacation” by Dan Luzer “American students living in some of the most populous states—California, Florida, New York, Texas, and Massachusetts—spend about 900 hours a year in school. India requires 800 to 900 instructional hours per year, depending on the grade. China, too, provides about 900 hours of instruction per year.” It seems that the anti-summer break crowd is negligent to this fact and focus on the quantitative scale. There is also a cultural factor to this as well; many in China enforce an industrious academic approach. They don’t have the more free-spirited mindset that is more prevalent in a western society. And lest we ignore an exemption to the amount of hours a student must have of schooling, as the aforementioned article states “The hours of compulsory instruction per year provided to students in other developed countries range from 608 hours in Finland to 926 hours in France. And Finland is a top-performing county in terms of education, its children averaging among the world's best-educated students.” This is not to say that U.S suffers from too many hours per say, the issue however may represent a more …show more content…
More troubling is that it disproportionately affects low-income students: they lose two months of reading skills, while their higher-income peers – whose parents can send them to enriching camps, take them on educational vacations and surround them with books during the summer – make slight gains.” This confirms the idea that a student’s environment can have a significant impact on their capabilities. Students in poverty surely cannot have the same tools provided by higher-income youth, they are held back by being a product of their own environment. Yet increasing time in school overall would probably not do much in closing the gap that lower and higher income student’s face. A student cannot do all their learning in mandatory schooling, part of the developed mind comes from personal experiences and ventures. If some were given the tools to learn more and perhaps become more immersed in an academic field, not everything can be purely instructed in a classroom, unless one wishes to live in a world of lacking innovation and
In the United States, most schools still use a ten-month calendar that was developed when our country’s students needed school off to help with harvesting (Palmer). Trimble Local Schools Superintendent Kim Jones says, “year-round schooling is the notion of getting away from the old agrarian calendar...which was formed up around the planting season. Students were out of school from April until harvest to work in the fields,” (qtd. in Hapka). Under the agrarian system, most United States students are in school for nine to ten months, and get a two- to three- month summer vacation. However, the United States is no longer an agricultural-based society, and students have no need to take a three-month-long, unnecessary, not to mention disruptive break during the summer months; instead, the United States should switch the school systems to a year-round calendar.
Year round schooling is becoming increasingly popular in the United States, and has shown positive academic benefits for students enrolled in year round schools. Many countries implement year round schooling, and academic ability of their students greatly surpasses those of the United States. Year round schooling, as well as increase in school days should be implemented in schools nationwide in the United States. The need for long summer vacations is non-existent, as society has become industrialized. Implementing year-round schooling, and increasing the number of school days will allow the United States to invest more time into education in order to grow and build academic success.
“Despite decades of federal, state, and local programs intended to support young children’s preparation for schooling, children from low-income families continue to begin formal schooling at a disadvantage.... ... middle of paper ... ... Sometimes they won’t learn anything, they may have made some good friends, or enemies, but they never really realized how to do certain things the teacher wanted them to grasp.
Reading, writing, math, science, and other skills learned in school are instrumental for a child to have in order to be successful both in higher education and in life. Many factors contribute to a student’s acquisition of these skills such as their learning environment, preschool education, mental and emotional development, parental involvement, and dedication to learning. The issue that many young children are facing, however, is that all of these factors can be greatly influenced by the Socioeconomic Status (SES) of their family. Unfortunately, up until recently it was virtually unknown how teachers could help these “at risk” children, which caused an increase in the likelihood of children dropping out of school or repeating a grade. However, it is now becoming clear that there are ways that educators can help ensure children have successful academic careers and lead better lives.
For years, parents and educators have debated the advantages and disadvantages of the traditional school calendar, which has long summer vacations for all students.The longer you are away from school, the more you lose what you learned in the previous year. Studies have shown that children who know English as a second language benefit the most from year-round education because during the long summer break, they may not hear English for several months. Long summer breaks is a problem for traditional schools and the solution is to substitute traditional schools for year-round schools.
The United States generally looks at education as a path to success but the people with the longest road towards success are not getting enough education. In the years before kindergarten, children form their basic thinking skills and children who don't learn these at home fall behind everyone else. In most cases children in poverty do not achieve these skills to the extent of middle-class children from their environment at home. When poor children enter school they are generally a year and a half behind the language abilities of their middle-class peers. Already children of poverty are behind in their ...
Students in poverty tend to obtain low grades, have little academic achievement, and often misbehave. Many often drop out before graduating high school. Students ages sixteen through twenty-four are up to seven times more likely to drop out. A study published in Nature Neuroscience discovered “a link between physical brain development and poverty level. In a study of eleven hundred children, adolescence and adults from around the US, researchers found significant differences in the brains of children from the lowest income bracket in comparison to those in the highest. Families who lived on less than twenty-five thousand dollars a year had as much as 6% less surface area in their brain in areas like language and decision making than families who made more than one hundred and fifty dollars a year.” This may support why many students in poverty tend to do worse in school over middle class students. Employers usually lean toward more educated workers, leaving the poor at a serious disadvantage when it comes to work Children growing in poverty regularly have families of their own poverty. Some workplaces, manufacturing jobs have replaced their human labor with machinery and technology, which leaves many potential jobs out of the hands of people hungry for work. Having a weak education leaves them unskilled, resulting poor and low paying occupations. This creates a long lasting loop of poverty, a loop which is hard to escape. They
The summer vacation students on a traditional schedule receive could be very beneficial since summer gives time for the students to attend camps or other activities that would allow them to learn. The camp may not be like the learning in school, but students would be able to get a different style of education while having fun. Lynn-nore Chittom and Jeff Klassen, two authors who wrote about year-round vs. traditional schooling say,
The first reason why year round schooling wouldn’t be a good idea is because of focusing for long periods of times for some students. First of all, many kids with disabilities or elementary school would have a hard time focusing that long of a time without their traditional three month summer break. Second, the more breaks students have might make it harder to focus before and after breaks. Before breaks many kids would be excited to
Rybak: In a Chinese school the day is much longer than an American school day. This means that Chinese students spend a lot more time in school which brings us to the conclusion that Chinese are more advantaged than the American students in long run. This prepares them for college or even the young adult to be bio-lingual. Most American students usually attend school for seven hours each weekday and may forget what they have learned because it is instilled into the young adults’ heads like the Chinese do with their students.
The traditional School schedule is set up so students go to school for 9 months and then have a 3-month summer Vacation. This system dates back to a time when most people's lively hood was farming; therefore, the educational schedule was built around the times of harvest and planting. But in modern day, with so little farmers this schedule is severely out dated. The long break in the summer encourages students to forget knowledge that they learned that previous year, forcing teachers to review information for 4-6 weeks, time that could be well used teaching students new and enriching things. This schedule also isn't very cost effective, for three months schools stand empty and unused, which is ridicules due to how over crowded the educational system is. Does it really make sense to use an outdated schedule when with every other aspect of our lives we want the newest and the best?
Within most countries, students strive to become doctors, engineers, lawyers, etc. Education in China requires students to attend school for 9 years without any objection. In the United States, Americans are encouraged to go to school. The government upholds the "no child left behind" policy which mandates students to attend school for at least 12 ye...
Living in poverty exposes children to disadvantages that influence many aspects in their life that are linked to their ability to do well in school. In the United States of America there are an estimated 16.4 million children under the age of 18 living in poverty (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). “The longer a child lives in poverty, the lower the educational attainment” (Kerbo, 2012). Children who are raised in low-income households are at risk of failing out before graduating high school (Black & Engle, 2008). U.S. children living in poverty face obstacles that interfere with their educational achievement. Recognizing the problems of living in poverty can help people reduce the consequences that prevent children from reaching their educational potential.
There are many different factors that affect education. One such factor is, socioeconomic status. Children who attend school in a wealthier community receive a better education than those students in poor communities. In poor communities, student’s education is not only affected by a lack of resources, but also from teaching methods and philosophies. Urban and poor schools’ students do not receive as equal of an education as their more affluent and suburban counterparts do.
It can be argued that the academic performance of children has nothing to do with their socioeconomic status, because there have been many cases of children from very poor families who have excelled greatly in academics (APA, 2017). Furthermore, many predominantly high-end schools have posted poor results when compared to school with poorer backgrounds. This is despite the fact children from lower socioeconomic classes do not have access to the best forms of learning materials. The high performance of children from poor backgrounds is often attributed to the fact that they are not preoccupied with many activities which would otherwise hinder them from concentrating on their studies (Sacerdote, 2002). Therefore, some believe it is false to say that poor performance is associated with children who come from low socioeconomic classes. Rather, they believe academic achievement is genetic (Sacerdote, 2002).