Why take these summer breaks in the first place? Are your kids needed on the farms still? Or is it because salty teachers are underpaid and having summer breaks is th only way the US can convince them to work. Where is the data that summer breaks help any students at all? Poor or rich smart or lazy? What about the kids that don't get lunches when they are not in school? Summer slumping is a detriment to all, to society. I don't see many teachers willing to stand up to that as the underlying issue, and I don't see how it's fair to blame those that are either willing or able to fight it independently with additional learning. They are not the ones to aim your laser at.

[–] EmpathicVagrant@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Smart and lazy aren’t opposites.

[–] imgonnatrythis@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Yep, that's correct. You must have been in a good school system.

[–] pthaloblue@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

I don't live in the US. I'm adequately paid, and the summers are short where I live. Take your strawmen and throw them back whatever hole you dug them out of.

I can't speak about US problems, but what I'm talking about is education in general. I'll give you an example: I was teaching some students to read the other day, about 8 years old. One student clearly has the leg up on the other one. She goes to after school programs, short summer programs, the works. She can read about two levels higher than her classmate. Hey, that's great. And actually when reading is concerned, I'm happy that she can do that. But what happens is that when I need to slow down and actually teach that other student to read (at a level that's perfectly fine for her age), she groans, she gets impatient, she makes fun of that kid. And what happens to that other kid? She feels stupid, she feels inadequate.

And ok, you might say, an intensive reading program is good! But one thing it does not teach these kids is that they are not better than anyone else, and even if they learn more, they need to also learn to be respectful to their fellow students.

Tl;dr we're teaching them to be competitive, not good human beings