By Mazen Baleelah
WITH the school vacation drawing to a close, rumors are being circulated about a possible extension. Some people deliberately circulated the rumors with the hope that they would be believed and the government would announce the extension.
However, a recent study has revealed that the long school vacations are detrimental to our educational standards.
While the actual school days in the Kingdom range between 140-150 a year, they are much more less than that in the developed countries.
In the United States for instance, an academic year is not less than 180 days. In South Korea it is 220 days and in Japan it is 243 days with the summer holidays hardly reaching 22 days per year.
One will be in for a great surprise when he counts the number of hours of a school day in the Kingdom. They are hardly five hours as against between 8-9 hours and are ever decreasing.
Regardless of the short school days and the long summer vacation, we are asking for the extension of summer holidays to get more rest and relaxation from our long rest.
This is an obvious evidence that we do not give enough time to educate our sons and daughters. We are not taking their education seriously and are more concerned with their relaxation after a long resting period.
A study conducted by Washington’s John Hopkins University, one of the best educational institutions in the world, proved the futility of long school vacations. The research team, headed by renowned sociologist Karl Alexander, surveyed 650 public schools to collect and analyze the data.
The study divided the students into three groups. The first group hailed from poor families, the second from a medium class and the third from wealthy families.
On conducting a capability exam, the researchers discovered that students from rich families achieved better results. However, after five years of school education, the results were similar or were, at times, in favor of medium and poor strata of society.
The surprise, however, came at the time of an exam held immediately after the summer vacation. The study found out that students from rich families did much better than those from the medium and poor ones.
This had a main cause. The poor and medium students ignored reading during the summer vacation. Their families could not invest their time in them while they were vacationing.
Therefore any extension of the school summer vacation will be catastrophic for our children.
