VACATION’S OUT FOR SUMMER ———— by Steve Nadis
If we’re worried that our kids might be getting dumber, it’s no wonder given the harebrained thinking that dominates education these days. Rather than taking on the important (though hard) job of figuring out how to improve the education of our children, unimaginative policymakers can’t come up with a better idea than making the school year longer. But if a nine-month school year didn’t get the job done, why will more of the same be any better?
And perhaps, as I hinted at in Dr. Max’s “That One Blog” (see link on right), we should just get rid of summer altogether. Why not extend spring and fall so that we now have just three seasons? My meteorologist friend from northern Maine–the same one who lives amidst northern flying squirrels (ha, ha)–has argued in print that the number of seasons is entirely arbitary; there’s nothing sacrosanct about having four seasons, though proprietors of a certain hotel chain might argue otherwise. Why not downsize it to three? Before long, kids won’t even know they’re missing anything. They’ll go through life without having an inkling that there once was summer.
Are you trying to put farmers out of business? If you eliminate summer, you eliminate most of the growing season. Unless this is just a clever way of dealing with the obesity epidemic. No summer, no food. It could work.
As you can see, this is as complicated plan. I haven’t worked out all the details.
What is happening to CMS? Go back to talking about nothing!
Seriously, though, the Key Biscayne plan makes some sense in that if one believes that school is good for kids, then one might conclude that more school would be better.
In the People’s Republic of Cambridge (where Snake does his slithering), some years back someone at the high school had the bright idea to change from a 5-day schedule to (I think) a 7-day schedule. They didn’t, however, hold classes on Saturday and Sunday. School wass still in session 5 days a week, but the schedule repeated itself after 7 school days. So, if you had health class on Monday this week, you would have health class on Wednesday next week.
I think the idea was that if confusion is good for kids, then more confusion is better.
Actually, there is something sacrosanct about four seasons. Ask Vivaldi. Ask the Greeks and Romans and various pagans.
Plus, what would we rename "A Midsummer’s Night Dream" to? "A Four-Fifths Spring Night Dream"? "A Forgotten Season’s Night Dream?"
And what about the Boys of Summer? If you rename them "The Boys of Spring" it could provoke some kind of anti-gay backlash.
Last but not least, I do NOT want to hear Janis Joplin singing "Mid-spring grow-in’ sea-ea-eason, and the living is easy…"
So you damn intellectual Cambridge types keep your high-fallutin’ ideas to yourself. And tell your meteorologist friends to stick to predicting the weather–which, incidentally, they haven’t done too good a job of this summer. Maybe they’re using the Spring computer modules…
Woa! I see some people still have a strong attachment to summer. This will be more complicated than I thought, but it’s still doable. As for writing about nothing, I’ve given that matter a lot of thought and will be writing about it–if not about nothing–very soon. P.S. I don’t like the term "slither," which suggests something underhanded, unseemly…
To my prudish midwestern raised eyes, kids are already revealing too much in fall, winter and spring, I can’t imagine what they’d come up with in mid-August!
That may be the best argument yet to abolish summer.