With school starting earlier, is summer lost? | ajc.comSpend it outdoors, dude. You'll figure it out. It's no coincidence that the term "air conditioning" was coined by a man from North Carolina (no, really), even though the process itself was invented in New York. (Thank you, Mr. Carrier.)
“As an unreconstructed Yankee, I hate the Georgia school schedule,” said Chris Murphy of southeast Atlanta, whose two daughters go back to school Aug. 9. “It’s hot outside! I’m just glad I’m not a teacher.”
A native of Binghamton, N.Y., Murphy spent his childhood summers canoeing and fishing. School didn’t start until after Labor Day.
Many schools in the Northeast and West Coast still hew to that calendar, which makes it “unfathomable” to Murphy that so many Georgians spend one of the hottest months inside the classroom.
“This [shorter summer] is an educational fad,” said Vivian Jackson, of Marietta, co-founder of Georgians Need Summers.
Today’s shorter summers are often thoroughly programmed, giving children less time to be bored, and, eventually, inventive. Summer ennui is important, said Tina Bruno, executive director of the San Antonio-based Coalition for a Traditional School Calendar. “You don’t appreciate the structure of school until you are bored at home.”
It's not enough that they go to school, they have to "appreciate the structure"?
Sounds like parents need summer more than the kids do. They're pining for an idyllic pause in the year that no longer exists. (And the original reason for school to be out of session for the summer--so the kids would be home to help Mom and Dad with the crops--went out with the Industrial Revolution.)
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