The Realities of Summer

  

One of the perks of teaching is the summer.  There’s just no way around that one.  We really are very blessed as teachers to have that time to recuperate and prepare ourselves for the upcoming academic year.

The kids also seem to enjoy it, to a certain extent.  I’m never surprised, though, to discover students returning to school in fall complaining about how boring the summer was except for the few weeks their family went on a vacation together.  When you really think about it, most of us do tend to get a bit bored with extended periods of idleness.  As much as we say that we’d love to win the lottery and not have to work, we wouldn’t really not work; we’d find something to keep us occupied, some way to fill our lives with purpose.  What makes us think children and teens are any different.

Recently, I also got to thinking about the sociological and communal implications of summer.  In modern times, and in urban settings in particular, what we are really saying as a culture is that young people do not need to be held accountable for anything for nine weeks out of the year.  They do not need to be moving toward mastery of any skills.  They do not need to contribute to the community in any tangible way.  We essentially tell them to check out from society for nine months because we don’t want to monitor their development and that we are all too busy to give their lives structure and meaning…

…and then we wonder why they get into trouble.

If we ever want to see significant changes in youth behavior both during the school year and over the vacations, we need to stop assuming that parents are equipped to give their children the guidance and structure that are needed over extended holidays.  We need to stop sending young people the messages that idleness is desirable and that aimlessness is socially acceptable.

Maybe I’m simply feeling this way because I have to teach summer school this year and I’m trying to give my own life a greater purpose over the summer.

Maybe I’m advocating that parents sign their children up for summer programs and that individuals and local businesses start supporting youth programs that give students a way to become actively involved in their community.

Maybe I’m simply pondering how we became a society where “education” became so completely divorced from real world knowledge and experience and where, in this evolution, the community was excluded from the process.

June 14, 2010   Posted in: Work

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