Summer School

There’s been some concern among the professional educators about skills lost over the
Summer since I was a small child, and that concern has not abated. Well, duh, of course some children are not as proficient in September as they were in May: they didn’t practice those skills for three months. I’ve not practiced differential equations for 15 years now; do you think I can do them? The same goes for calculating the area of anything not a rectangle, or playing “Minuet in G.” Practice, as my parents reminded me often enough, makes perfect.

Use it or lose it.

But do I think children should attend school year-round? No. I think they should be given opportunities to use the things they’ve learned.