Ultimately harmful

Re: Year-round schools catch trustees’ attention — Jan. 15

Switching to year-round schooling is a mistake. When you switch to year-round schooling for elementary schools, you are depriving the children of a childhood. As a child, summer break was what you look forward to every year. Two months of playing your favourite sports, going to camp and making new memories with friends. Cutting back on summer, you are depriving the children of their childhood, forcing them to grow up too fast. When you switch to year-round schooling for secondary schools, unnecessary stress will be formed. Teenagers use the summer break to destress, and most important, they use the nine weeks to work so they can pay for post-secondary education. A Statistics Canada study in 2010 indicated that “more than one-half of students report that either savings (27 per cent) or earnings (26 per cent) provide the largest amount of money toward the total cost of their school year.” Cutting back to one month of vacation will ultimately cause more debt for students, dampening our economy.

As stated, there are pros and cons, but overall the cons outweigh the pros. Advocates for year-round schooling say it will be easier for more kids to learn because it gives them a full year to learn information. What happens when these kids go off to post-secondary schooling? Going from learning year-round to the regular two months off will cause students’ grades to fall, assuming the previous statement is true. They will not retain the information in the same matter they would have in past schooling. Students who are flunking their majors because they cannot comprehend the information the same are not the students we want in the workforce. Abbey Patton Tavistock Grade 12 student at Waterloo-Oxford District Secondary School