The question about making school year-round has been a debate for quite a long time. Making school year-round means no Summer break, and students will attend school for 365 days a year. More people are pushing the government towards making school years round for various reasons such as reducing overcrowding, to provide students with better instruction and reduce the pressure for parents who are always at work. I believe this is what needs to be done, where students get to spend more time in school. This will help them master the skills they need in the corporate world, whose complexity never stops. This way, they will be in a better position to compete for jobs in today’s complex economy.
All these can be achieved if students continued with their studies during Summer. It has become a norm for students in the United States to spend their summer without any supervision, unproductive, and involved in unhealthy activities instead of studying. How students spend their Summer holiday is a common thing known to everyone. They wake up, surf on the internet all morning, sometimes the whole day, play video games, most of which are very violent, and they do all this because no one is there to stop them, as their parents are busy at work. Another option is for these kids to spend hours watching mediocre shows while eating very unhealthy snacks. Some go out ton meet friends, and the peer energy sometimes pushes them to do things they aren’t supposed to be doing. This discouraging pattern is what is always in store for most middle school students during summer break. This unhealthy routine turns these students into couch potatoes and chronic video game addicts for three months, until when schools reopen, and they can now drag themselves back to school, having forgotten most of what they learned in school, including facts, skills, and strategies (Martin, 24). Although some may argue that students must have breaks when they can recharge before embarking on their studies. However, the big question that follows is whether they need two months to recharge for the next semester. The current school year that allows students to have two months of summer break was arrived at based on the time in the 19th century, where children were needed to work on their family farms during the summertime (Lettiere and Kokorudz, 38). This is the twenty-first century, and we don’t have that many farms in the country where students are needed to work on during the summer break.
According to child psychologists, children with structure as part of their lives tend to be happier, healthier, and demonstrate good behavior. Children only get this structure while in school, provided by the weekday routine that makes them disciplined and stable. Teachers also provide them with great mentorship as they challenge them to think, take intellectual risks, and ask them questions.
Conclusion
A break from school is essential for the students. Being as young as they are, these students need more than just the usual academic instruction to become wholesome individuals in society. However, the summer break duration is too long a break that any student would need to recharge for their next semester.