Why Don’t YOU get a Spring Break?
I expect many pastors who read
this column are just like I was for most of my life. I didn’t get a “Spring Break” unless I took
“vacation days” for it. Now I teach college so I get a “Spring Break” the first
week of March every year. Even though it isn’t technically spring it is definitely a break.
How come YOU don’t get a Spring break? Why are breaks like this considered an
entitlement for students and teachers but most everyone else has to keep
working though virtually all of the year? And, while I’m at it, how come
students and teachers have summers off too? And weeks-long Christmas breaks?
What’s up with education taking so much time off?
What sort of business could stay
afloat if they took this much time off? What do we teach our students by giving
them off so much time? Maybe schooling isn’t supposed to get students ready for
life—but if it did, what kind of work life are we training students to expect? I think most students are in for a real shock
in the real world.
It all starts with elementary school. In my state (Indiana)
schools are required to meet 180 days a year—that’s 36 weeks of “work” with 16
weeks of vacation left over. Do you know any normal jobs that offer 16 weeks of
vacation? Maybe in
Germany, but not in the USA. I suppose one could argue that this
shortened work year makes sense because elementary children can’t be expected
to work as hard as adults yet. But the same 180 day rule applies to 18 year old
high school seniors too. Does 16 weeks off from school prepare students for
adult life?
But it gets even better in college. You’d think that by the
time a student was 21 years old they’d be ready to work more like adults work,
right? But that’s now how it works usually. At my University (Indiana Wesleyan
University) students attend school about 70 days a semester or 140 days a year
when vacation days and holidays are subtracted from the school schedule. That’s
the equivalent of working 28 five-day work weeks leaving students 24 weeks of
vacation left over. Do you know any pastors who get 28 weeks of vacation a
year?
Now, you might argue that being a student isn’t supposed to train you
for the adult working world. After all, we don’t pay students to go to college—they pay the bill so maybe they’re
entitled to “buy” only a half year’s worth of education if they want to. And
you can argue that many students work regular jobs in the summer (sometimes two jobs) to help pay their school bill.
That’s true too. But when I correspond with recent graduates in their first job
in a church almost every one of them describes their shock at adjusting to an
adult world where they get only two—or at the most three—weeks vacation a year.
Now they see why their parents advised them, “Sure, go to Florida or
hitchhike around Europe while you can—this’ll end soon enough!”
All this reminds me of the sorry state of education. We expect
a 100% outcome with only a 50% input. Teachers and professors work for ten
years to earn their advanced degree then are only expected to show up in class
a bit more than half of the year. Sure, when school is not in session they are
expected to grade papers and write textbooks (what I’m doing this week while
students are on spring break) but still even if a professor spends ten full
weeks a year writing and doing research they still would have 14 weeks left
over! What other enterprise gives their primary “line workers” 14 weeks off?
Now I’m not complaining personally because I enjoy those
days off. I’m just mentioning it because in this country sooner or later we
have to re-examine how we use teachers and professors along with how we use our
classrooms and campuses. I believe we ought to go to year-round school and
expect both students and teachers to work at education closer to what normal
people work in real life. I support both longer school days and longer school
years.
Now that opinion makes me highly unpopular with both my students and
some of my colleagues. But, luckily most of them are on “Spring break” so they
won’t be reading this anyway. ;-)
So
what do you think?
During the first few
weeks, click here to comment or read comments
Keith
Drury March 2, 2010 (Spring Break
‘10)