Should Kids Go to School Year-Round? — Survey of the Day
The two-and-a-half-month summer vacation that kids get was a mid-19th century compromise between rural school districts, which had children who needed to help out on the family farm, and urban districts, which often dealt with extreme heat in the summer.
These days, air conditioning can solve the heat problem and there are far fewer farms which rely on child labor. So, is it time to scrap the extended summer break, which is the reason kids in the United States attend fewer days of school per year than children in just about every other country in the world?
According to a new poll from Rasmussen Reports of 1,000 American adults, only 27 percent believe that schools should adopt a 12-month calendar, whereas 66 percent oppose the idea. Year-round school was slightly more popular among adults with children — 30 percent for versus 58 percent against.