More Vacations=Less Education

By Aya Hariri

Edited by Danya Nahas, Farah Al-Takrouri, and Leena Khan

 

This year in AIS-R, there have been a lot of different holidays for different reasons. Each of these holidays are decreasing the amount of school days at AIS-R. Teachers think that long weekends disrupt their routine and student behaviors, as in the students don’t take school seriously.  But some students think that we need more long weekends or more vacation days, as opposed to other students who think there should be less holidays.

 

Mr. Blazek, the 8th grade humanities teacher, says, “a traditional school week is five days and us teachers are used to planning in five day sections. In a week you’re able to accomplish a certain amount of work, but once the week gets shortened, it’s sometimes hard to get into a good rhythm with learning.”

 

Ms. Tracy Hill, the middle school instructional coach says, “Personally I like the long weekends and they help to break up the weeks and allow us to leave Saudi and have little adventures. I would never consider any long weekend useless!”

 

However, Layan Al Kaelani an 8th grade student believes that long weekends are useless because there's nothing to do in those days and we already have too many vacations. However Layan believes that spring, summer and winter should remain in school.

 

Even though Summer, Winter, and Spring vacations remain around the same time for most of the schools, AISR has more than the average amount of days off. Danya Nahas, an eighth grader, thinks there should be less half days. “When I moved from the U.S to here, I noticed a big difference in vacations and half days. I was honestly surprised by how many half days we were given,” says Danya.

 

On average in the United States there are 180 school days in a year. In our school there are about 174 school days. Unlike the US, AIS-R gives more vacations. Most US schools don't get half days or long weekends that often.

 

As the amount of summer days for AISR decrease because of Ramadan, less people are struggling in school, because summer loss is now a big problem and many people are forgetting what they have learned during the school year. “Keep the summer the same because it’s the only long break to have fun and relax in, but I also think that the teachers should give some optional work assignments to do over the summer so that we don't forget what we’ve learned,” Haya Al-Dabbagh, eighth grader, says.

 

AISR is required to have a Spring, Winter and Summer holiday because according to the middle school counselor, Ms. Mathy, we follow the US system and the US schools are also required to have these holidays. However, the number of people who are forgetting the information they've been taught before these holidays are increasing. Most students that travel from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia forget almost everything that they’ve learned. Other students who do work assignments over the breaks remember what they’ve been taught.

 

Overall, AIS-R is receiving less of a chance for the students to learn, because of our shorter school year. This topic is very controversial for students, because some of them think that they should get more school days, while others don’t. But the effect of school days lost is tremendous, and if we can reduce the chance to lose schooldays and knowledge, then schools should do everything they can to do so. Education is one of the most important things in anyone’s life, and excessive vacations limit students education. Is that what schools want?