Persuasive Essay Sample: Should Schools Keep Summer Break?

Your childhood is the most wonderful and adventurous year of your lifetime. Think about the times of running wild around your neighborhood, taking vacations with your family, and having gut-busting blasts with your friends. Most of these core memories that shape you take place in the summer vacation days between June and August when school is out. But now people are suggesting that we rob the next generation of these precious times by getting rid of summer break and instituting a yearlong school schedule. We should keep our current summer break tradition because it allows them to pursue job experience, students with summer break perform better on tests than students with year-long school, and it gives teens an emotional break.

Having a summer break allows students to pursue job opportunities and career experience. In Source E, journalist Anita Balakrishnan explains a summer program designed to give teens career paths. She states “She's taking part in One Summer Chicago Plus, one of many skills-based summer job programs… They help high school students better adapt to the workplace at a time when many young people lack practical career training.” This shows that while out of school, students can pursue other forms of education like career-oriented training. A lot of education lost during summer break can be made up for or improved upon with these summer job programs. Source E also quotes “While many of her high school classmates are working cash registers and fast-food grills this summer, Gabriela Lacy has a job not typically seen as a teenage rite of passage:”…." Initially I just wanted to earn extra cash for my household," many students want to get jobs so they can afford college, cars, or in Gabriela’s case, support the household and family. School can interfere with these opportunities, causing tighter work shifts, less flexible hours, and more stress overall. Having an extended school-free break gives teens the chance to focus on their job and earn an income.

Students who have summer break have scored higher on standardized tests than students with year-long school. In source C, a bar graph illustrates the average standardized test scores from schools in LA with traditional schedules and Schools with year-long schedules. The schools with traditional schedules consistently scored above the 700 points mark. This point range is expected from a regular public school providing optimal education for its students, showing that even with summer break, the schools can still manage to reach that standard. Source C also provides a Bar graph for the average standardized test score for students in year-long school. The average score was under 700 points for every one of the counties, painting a crystal clear picture that students in year-long school are doing worse academically than students who have a summer break. Kids are like computers: if you leave them on and running at full capacity, they overheat and process information slower. You need to let them rest, and reboot, and cool down for optimal function. This is what summer break does, and why students perform much better with it.

The opposition's main claim for getting rid of summer vacation for “extended learning time” is that students lose knowledge over the break and need more education to participate in the global economy. This is exactly how Granderson puts in source A when he says “Summer camps, even academic ones can have too much emphasis on fun…No offense to the parents whose kids are playing basketball in a rec center right now. But we’re in a global economy.” When he states this, he’s prioritizing money and the economy above students' happiness and mental health.  Author Westneat rebuts this by stating In sours B “The real reason schools created the break in the 19th century was the belief that too much schooling impaired a child’s and a teacher's health.” This evidence of how summer vacation started shows that it is necessary for both students' and teachers' health. I can understand Granderson's push for extended learning time, but putting the global economy before our own citizens' health and well-being is selfish and inhumane. Extended learning time should be optional for students who need extra help or want to get a head start. It should not ruin summer for students who are already doing well In school.

Imagine if you had no summer vacation growing up: you would lose all memories of summer camp with friends, getting the opportunity to get job experience, and missing the much-needed break from school. Without summer break our children would turn into emotionally wrecked husks, with their only purpose being to. We need to fight against this oppressive and selfish movement.