Kids all over Canada are converging on their elementary and secondary schools after a long summer vacation. And there is no good reason for that.
The school calendar – minus a few regional particularities and a handful of exceptions – has remained largely unchanged for decades. Though summer holidays are often depicted as a vestige of an agrarian past, the better explanation is they are the result of 19th century efforts to standardize curriculum, hours of instruction and the like, across urban and rural areas.
The world changed, demography changed, education changed – yet we stubbornly maintain the no-school-in-the-summer schedule. Why? Research from multiple countries demonstrates students are better served by shorter, more frequent breaks rather than an entire season without schooling; this appears to be particularly true of disadvantaged children.
A lot can be forgotten in the space of eight or 10 weeks.
Roughly 150 Canadian schools, most of them in Ontario and Alberta, have moved to a so-called modified year-round schedule, with no summer break. They remain a resolutely marginal phenomenon, however.
Basically, our schools seem to be set up less for the benefit of kids than for that of working parents, employers and organized labour.
Take, for example, the fact that the bulk of Canadian elementary and secondary schools begin their day between 8 and 8:30 a.m. This despite ample studies that show many kids – and most teenagers – are at their cognitive worst early in the morning.
And while Canada's summer break may be too long, our kids are arguably spending too much time in class. Canada is in the top-third of Western countries in hours of instruction, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
In Finland, the fashionable choice as the world's most successful education system, lesson time is broken into 45-minute chunks, and kids there spend about 200 hours less per year in class than Canadians. The curriculum is more flexible, children are encouraged to learn through play, there is more outdoor time, and holidays are interspersed through the year (although Finns do still have a long summer break). And homework in Finland is minimal to non-existent.
All of which should cause Canadians to ponder how we organize our kids' school year, and their school day – and whether changes might yield better results.