Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
This is the part that's blowing my mind just a bit. I'm just trying to imagine how any teacher at a state funded school actually (actually mind you) has the authority to assign what amounts to homework over the summer break?
|
I have no idea why they wouldn't. Nor why they should be illegal. Summer off isn't a right. It was a necessity for farming communities that needed their children on the farms during the summer months. Many communities when I was a teenager even looked into year-round school, with alternate on-off periods, to handle huge overflows of new students, and all children in the family on the same schedules. I don't know any that went that route, but I know it was discussed for a while. Mostly they just built more schools, or crowded up the classrooms.
I don't know of any parents in my childhood that had a problem with it, especially since reading lists were really the only homework we got. We had very long, boring summers. It helped fill in the time, and the local libraries always had copies in stock.
For my own kids, it was welcomed, not only as something to do, but gave us something to discuss during the summer as they read. Summer is a hard time to keep teenagers entertained, unless they're old enough to find summer jobs.
Summers off isn't like a religious holiday or anything. As a parent, I'd much rather they went to school year-round, with more time for PE, (which most schools seemed to have dropped), more art, shorter days... parcel that time out to better use, and keep the kids busy and learning and still have time for play and family vacations.
Daycare centers do it all year, to get kids ready for kindergarten. Most seem to parcel the time out well.