Photo credit: Cameron MacDonald

Why? Why do people think this stuff? If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.  Apparently it has been observed that students consistently lose part of the knowledge and skills developed during the previous year of education during summer break.   If I do something  enough,  I will remember it and the really important things are done over and over and over again when you’re a student.  I just don’t see why we’d have to add hours to a school day. Maybe if you added a few minutes to the day so that lunch could be longer that’d be okay.  But adding more classes to a day? Seriously?

According to The Wall Street Journal and capital region media sources, governors from Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and NEW YORK announced they would add at least 300 hours a year to some schools.  If you do the math, that would be an hour and a half a day.  That’s only if they decide to add it on to existing days and not add more days to the year.  If you add more days to the year that’s about 42 days assuming each day is 7 hours long.  Now that may not sound like much but if you go 42 days (not counting weekends) away from the end of the Regents exam you end up on August 20th.

Yeah that’s right August 20th. So it basically would eliminate summer vacation. Summer is an important part of  a student’s life. It’s when we spend an extended period of time a way from using their brains. We can just sit on a beach and look out without a care in the world. We can go to a camp and meet new people or be a counselor at a camp.  We can work in a different setting and learn different skills on the job plus help our parents save for college, which seems pretty important if people are concerned about nurturing an educated society.

Also more hours could require pay for teachers to rise WHICH COULD MEAN THERE WILL BE MORE PROGRAM CUTS TO SUSTAIN SALARIES. We almost didn’t have a JV Basketball team this year. Last year we didn’t. What would this mean? We could lose some electives,  sports, or after school programs.

And why would those in control care about that? They have no reason to. And that’s why we are where we are today. BECAUSE NOBODY CARES! They don’t care what experiences we’ll lose out on. Look at the evidence.  It’s everywhere. SOPA, PIPA, gun control laws, ALL OF IT. They just care about numbers and percentages. Not people. These are the people we put in office. Parents, if any are reading, I want you to think back to your teenage years. Remember summer? Remember beaches, and camps, and seeing all the biggest blockbusters with your pals, remember having sleepovers where you could stay up as late as you want because you wouldn’t have to adjust to wake up early any time soon? Remember that? They are trying to take that from your children.

Teens will continue to be moody and form negative opinions about education, movie companies will make less money, politicians will get less votes from the people who don’t favor this, camps won’t be able to operate, beach attendance will be low, theme park attendance will be low. SUMMER IS A GOLD MINE OF MONEY! A GOLD MINE for a lot of communities and so much more than a luxury for the younger generation.