This evening Eliot is having a party at our house (not my idea) with some of his friends from school. Summer holidays in France last 2 months (and even longer in Theo's case as his classes stopped in early June). I do not understand the reasoning behind this system. Why do children have 17 weeks holiday when there parents usually have 5-6 weeks maximum. What are parents supposed to do with their children during the 10 extra weeks of holiday they have ? Would it not make much more sense for children to have 6 weeks off school and possibly a few less hours of school per week (they could start no earlier than 9AM and finish no later than 4 PM) which would probably be much healthier for them.
In addition to being impractical for parents and unhealthy for children this system is actually one of the contributing factors to the educational disparities between social classes. In one of his books Malcolm Gladwell describes a study which shows that the gap in educational abilities between children of high and low income parents grows much wider from the end of one school year to the beginning of the next year rather then from the start to the end of the school year. This is because richer families have the means to organise activities and experiences for their children during the summer holidays whereas underprivileged children will often be left to their own devices to watch TV or hang out at home.
If our governments were serious about giving equal educational opportunities to all children an easy improvement would be to shorten the academic holidays, the main reason this is not done is the opposition of teachers who enjoy their 16 weeks of holiday. So what's more important? Educational equality for children or acquired benefits for teachers?
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