jaws123 : well I could just as easily say anyone who does agree with this is 'lazy as crap'. It has nothing to do with nerd or not. I am against the idea because it is not good for students. When you take that long of a break, you lose so much. It is like if a professional athlete just decided to take 2-3 months off. Doesn't matter how good he is, he will be set back in performance. Students are the same way. When the school year starts, how do classes typically start? Super easy with a bunch of get to know each other activities and a LOT of review. Because of summer, they have to have that review for about 2 weeks when that is time that could be spent learning something new. I'm not against summer by any means. I love it. But it does set students back, and extending it would just set them back even more.

ac5129 : By that logic, every real profession should get summer break because I guarantee it is a lot more work than you do as students. We should have a 2 month period where all the doctors get a break, or a 2 month period where all the police officers get to leave. When you get out in the real world (if your age on this site is true, then it won't be long for you), the workload you had in grade school will seem like heaven on earth.

rcarter2 :  I actually have a little experience in this area. XD XD

Our school system has always had shorter summer breaks than most schools across the country.  This meant that at LEAST once a month, we were taking another day off (a Monday or Friday).  These three day weekends were.... ALWAYS looked forward to.  It was kind of a way to relieve stress after four or five weeks of teaching, and it allowed us teachers to really take a breather.

Well, they decided to change the days we are in school, so now summer is nearly a month longer.  That's right... longer by nearly a MONTH.  This is the first extended summer, but they started the adjustments within the school year prior to that.  So during this teaching year, we had TWO three day weekends, and every other break was drastically reduced.  I HATED it.  I can't tell you how many times I was tempted to take a Friday or Monday off, just so I could de-stress a little.

However,that point of view is simply a personal one dealing with the management of stress and workload. It's hardly important compared to the reasoning you gave.

Kids forget soooo much over the summer!  Increasing its length?!?!  NO WAY!  That sets me behind as a teacher, stresses the kids out, and makes the process of ongoing learning fail and fail again.  Even Christmas break is too long for most students to retain whatever math they learned two weeks earlier...

I don't think you should get a summer break at all.

I think stopping the school year and letting the knowledge dribble out of your head for 2 to 3 months at a time is stupid.

Instead, I think you should go all year round, but with shorter days. Go from 8am to 2pm, for example. And add Saturdays.

10 months a year=1400 hours
4 weeks a month
5 days a week
7 hours a day

vs

12 months a year=1296 hours
3 weeks a month
6 days a week
6 hours a day

Less total hours, BUT it'd be more continuous, with only the week breaks instead of a massive 2 month gap in learning. Six hours at school would probably mean more homework, BUT you'd have much more time to do it at home, as well as daylight hours to do kid-stuff even in the middle of winter, when getting out at 3 (in our northern regions anyway) can mean it's already starting to get dark! It would also allow more time for extra-curricular things. I know that when I was in school, band and sports could mean I was at school until 5 or 6pm-the day was gone, and I'd be walking home in darkness.

Also, letting the kids out earlier could allow the schools to cut back a bit on the playground recess time. No 'fense, but the only reason for recess is to give the kids (and the teachers) a break from learning, but if you're getting out two hours earlier, you don't need the break as much? So more learning time!

It's be harder on the teachers, but they'd have that week to catch up on grading and plans, so I think they could do it.

What do you guys think?

8-10 weeks for summer holiday? Americans are spoilt. The UK schools only had a 6 week summer holiday and that bored me to tears. I don't really like summer as it is because of the "get out there and sunbathe and whilst you're at it expose more of your body than you're comfortable with you weirdo" thing I get from my family.

Sunbathing bores me to tears and I'm not one for wearing summer strappy tops purely because they expose my bra straps and I consider that something you only do if you're going for the trashy hooker look. I can't go without a bra either due to nature having given me a rather large bosom.

I do agree, that would be a great thing. I could do so much more rather than cramming everything into one tiny frame of time. But, if that actually happens, then somewhow the time would get taken out of our holidays. That would suck really bad because every once in a while, you want to have off from school, annoying teachers, annoying kids, and just have fun. But that is what summer vacation is for. So, all you have to do is plan ahead what you are going and to do, then go out and do it!

Well I agree and Disagree. I agree because where I live the summer vacation is only 1 month and 1 week. But I think that is good because when school starts we should have more of your knowledge, or we would at the very least we would remember stuff, because if we had let's say 3 months than we would not remember as much and we would do worse in schools. I mean that could be fixed if we studied at the vacations but than really who studies in vacations? (I Do!)

Short answer, Yeah it will be great, but we will all be dumb. DERP? DERP? DERP?

Sure that would be nice, but we still need to think about the breaks during the school year. (Sprink Break, Winter Break, etc)

supercool22 :
I agree, but in Buenos Aires, summer vacation begins on December 17 until March 11. and the winter holidays begin 15 to July 26, 2013.

Even know I ain't in school anymore (2012 graduate), every year I was in school, I did wish we did have a longer summer vacation, like for 4 months because the biggest part of the Summer is August, and that's when some schools go back.

Well I did last year because the teachers at my school went on strike and I had 25 extra days.

supercool22 : I agree that we should have a longer summer vacation because of your reason. I can't think of any other good reason to have an extended summer vacation.

I couldn't agree more. We only get like 9-10 weeks for summer vacation. Comparing that to the amount of months we spend in the school that's terrible. I think we should at least get 3 months or so. Our education board is actually thinking about decreasing the amount of days we get for the summer which is even more tragic in my opinion.

You don't know how much I agree. It's way to short.

Having gone through it all and have parents as Teachers, I can tell you that ANY breaks during the school year are welcomed by everyone(except maybe parents XD). Anyways, I have come to conclude that the year-around model that I had in elementary school was the best. Namely, 10 weeks instruction , 3 weeks off(could adjust it to 12 weeks and 1 week off in order to obtain more instructional time). Summer breaks are just too long since retention of knowledge drops as time goes on so the longer the break, the less retention there will be.

Additionally, I think kids today are overburdened or overworked. When you got sports and other extracurricular activities, I can't see how students of today have the TIME to do their homework from 6 classes without sacrificing their sleep and health. Hence, I like the block system or they break up the school year into semesters(or 2 quarters) and you'd take half of your classes the first semester and the other half the second semester. Each class would be Monday through Friday, at least 90 minutes long and it would be at a faster pace since you have to do a "years worth of work" in a semester.

Doing this would allow students to focus on 3 classes instead of 6 and give students the opportunity to take an extra class per semester(hence a maximum of 8) to get a head start on earning credits(so you can take it easy your senior year for example) or give students who flunk a class the opportunity to make it up during the school year.

YEAH! Longer summer vacations for the win! But, Education is more important than fun, and Education beats them all. You need to LEARN before you have real fun..

- Black Bot

I know that I have replied to this already before, but I cannot stress enough how important school is and that education time is valuable and should not be shortened any further. If we get longer summer vacations and more time away from school, then that is less time advancing and learning in school. Plus if more time is spent relaxing during the summer, then that is more time away from school and more time spent not being educated, so when school starts back up again, you become unfamiliar with certain topics and more time needs to be wasted re-familiarizing yourself with those topics. That is why I think we don't need an extended vacation as much as we enjoy it and like it and being away from school, education is important and we are lacking in it as a country.

supercool22 : Umm, school has lots of benefits. You learn to aid your future! School is actually pretty fun. My summers are pretty boring. Don't ask for a longer summer, because you'll end up getting a longer school year. Don't push your luck!

Razor-987 :
PixelBrick :

I love how you both said that. When you said that, it seemed that education is more important than Vizzed, than anything.

Yes school is a lot of fun!

And Razor, I loved how you said that long posts. I ♥ education and school!

On one hand, I agree with you, but on the other hand, I don't. A longer vacation is a fantastic idea, but think of it as another idea, we'll get less vacation, probably no Spring Break, and little to no Xmas Vacation.