Students in the United States and in other countries eagerly count down the days towards their summer break. They generally anticipate between six and fourteen weeks of nonacademic leisure time, which varies by country and region. The reasoning behind this time of scholastic independence has varied over the years.
People in the United States used to believe that summer vacation stemmed from the agricultural origins of the country. In the founding days of the nation, many families operated farms that required the aid of all available family members, including children, in all farm duties. This would require children to be available for farm work instead of educational pursuits. The conflict with this belief arises from the knowledge that most agrarian labors occurred during the spring and fall, as spring was planting time and fall was harvest season. The summer months required the least amount of effort and therefore would be an impractical time for children to leave school.
The legitimate reason behind the summer break appears to have climatic origins. Children formerly attended school all year, regardless of the season. Many schools developed in cities crammed full of buildings and busy roads. The human-made structures in these urban areas replaced trees and vegetation with dark roofs and roadways. This caused the Urban Heat Island Effect, where the metropolitan “island” of darkened buildings retained the sun’s heat and caused city temperatures to skyrocket.
These elevated temperatures caused summers in pre-air conditioned schools to be nearly unbearable. Affluent and middle-class families with the financial abilities to travel kept children out of class during the hot summer months as school attendance was not mandatory. Families often left the city and its heat island effects behind to vacation in the much cooler country. This caused severely reduced classroom capacity for most of the summer.
As this trend of summer evacuation persisted, politicians and labor unions eventually agreed on the concept of a consistently scheduled break. They would allow for an academic hiatus to give both students and educators an opportunity to recover from the strenuous educational year. This allowed for the development of a new industry devoted to summertime pursuits including vacations, travel time, and summer camps.
Eventually, experts discovered the disadvantages of the school break in the form of the “summer slide.” Some children lose a month or more of learning during the weeks they do not attend school. Furthermore, this slide disproportionately affects children in lower socioeconomic groups and gives them an unfair disadvantage in the following school year. Many schools nowadays offer summer schooling programs intended to assist their lowest-performing students to try to beat the slide.
While many contemporary children and teachers earnestly await their yearly summer vacation, other students and educators still struggle to find a way to keep up academically with the rest of the population. Still, the overall anticipation of the warm weather, outdoor activities, and free time implies that many families will continue to count down the days until their summer break.
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Submit
The primary purpose of paragraph 2 is to
A
describe the farming roots of the United States
B
justify why families expected their children to be available during summertime
C
explain why education became secondary in warmer months
D
establish the faults in the original assumption of the origin of summer break
