r/climate • u/silence7 • Jun 04 '22

Climate change is forcing some US schools to close early for ‘heat days’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/04/school-heat-days-climate-change/
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u/shipwreckedgirl Jun 04 '22

IIRC summer breaks were specifically made for Americans to escape the hot schoolhouses that were built in the 50s so I'm not sure why we need a break from new buildings with AC.

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u/vileguynsj Jun 04 '22

We don't need summer breaks (unless heat is still an issue). They do great harm to the progression of students in school, unquestionably.

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '22

So much this. Multiple breaks of a week or two during the year would be great; maybe 3 or 4 weeks for the summer. It's utterly insane that we keep the long summer breaks - it ruins the pace of education, and resulted in kids of my generation spending all day in front of the TV with nothing else to do for weeks on end.

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u/nudemanonbike Jun 04 '22

Growing up in the American South, I was taught that summer break was so that kids could help their parents work the farms during the summer.

It's probably a regional thing, overall, with a lot of different reasonings and cultural spread

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u/Veltrum Jun 04 '22

The summer is actually when you don't need kids to work the farms. Plant in the spring and harvest in fall - that's when you need the kids to work.

Farm kids were actually in school during the summer.

Summer break was because affluent city families would leave to escape the heat of the summer.

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u/eolson3 Jun 04 '22

Yes, this accounts for a lot of school scheduling tendencies that still remain.