Summer Slide

There are some amazing people in the world! True thinkers not contained by any box. Like the engineers that went to work to bring back the astronauts of Apollo 13. We don’t even know their names. Disney Imagineers, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Albert Einstein, Elon Musk, Madame Curie, and people you’ve never heard of but know by their inventions, like Bette Graham (Liquid Paper), Stephanie Kwolek (Kevlar), and Mary Anderson (windshield wipers). There are so many more. These people are simply amazing! You know what they all have in common? None of them attended year round school! What? How can that be possible? What about the “Summer Slide”?

The “Summer Slide” is one of my big pet peeves. The idea of it irritates me and I find it personally insulting. The Summer Slide insinuates that I am as dumb as dirt, as are the people who grew up just like me, enjoying a summer full of nothing but free time!

The summer slide theory is that during summer break kids slide academically, resulting in the need for remedial work when they return in the fall just to get them back to the level where they left off in May. How much slide depends on who is doing the study and their agenda, but generally it’s 2 months. Apparently the kids most at risk for sliding are low-income, because they don’t have access to the organized summer camps that the more affluent have. That slide doesn’t end with a slip in academics. Some fear that summer vacation also results in weight gain, especially for those children that are already fighting the battle of the bulge. Good grief!

I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s. You only went to summer school if you failed to keep up during the school year and that didn’t seem to have anything to do with economic standing. It depended more on how much you messed around during the school year. My summer was filled with reading, swimming, playing ball, watching tv, playing with friends, irritating my sisters, and probably irritating my mother. I slept in, stayed up late, babysat for the neighbors, rode my bike, used my imagination, the list goes on. The most important part…the days were my own to do with as I wished.

We were not well off, though I never felt like we were poor, even when we didn’t have things. I did not go to summer camp, or to fancy day camps. That’s not to say I never had an opportunity for organized activities. I remember a couple of weeks of a parks and recreation arts and crafts class one summer, another summer I attended a week-long church camp, and for two weeks I attended a band camp for kids of all ages and economic background. That was pretty much the extent of organized anything.

What I did have was a mother who took us to the library and let us check out 10 books apiece. Remember that place? It’s a building filled with books that anyone can take and read. It’s amazing and it’s free!!! I had sisters and I had friends. I’m pretty sure that describes most kids and we could find plenty to do that didn’t require money.

During the school year you hear parents complain of too much homework, too many activities, not enough down time for our kids to just be kids and then we turn around and champion year round school! Why? Cheap babysitting? Down time is what it takes to allow the imagination to get out of the box it gets stored in during the school year and stretch its legs! Summer is for discovery, experiments, dreaming without being restrained by the ticking of the clock. We can exercise our brains without the confines of right or wrong answers. Those people I mentioned before…that’s what they did on their summer vacation, so when it really mattered, they could make it count!

Our kids are young for such a short time. How about for just a little while we afford them time to just be little kids. Let them play, let them imagine, let them dream, so one day they will know how to dream big and make amazing things happen.