Summer Vacation

"The wealthiest kids come back in September and their reading score have jumped more than 15 points. The poorest kids come back from the holidays and their reading score have dropped almost 4 points. Poor kids may out-learn rich kids during the school year. But during the summer, they fall far behind." (pg. 258) -Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers

I was at first surprised to find out that poorer kids forget more than richer kids. I was also surprised that poorer kids learn more over the school year. This means that it is not truly the education that richer kids tend to receive, but the attitude of the environment that they live in. The richer families can afford to send the kids to summer camps and continue activities throughout the summer, which can maintain and increase their education. The families also tend to encourage reading more at home and doing educational activities. The poorer schools have not encouraged their students to love reading and learning enough for them to continue over the summer.

Gladwell pointed out that a shorter summer break would be incredibly beneficial to our education system. Though I feel like our summer breaks fly by, when I heard about how short some other nation's breaks were I felt that ours was very leisurely. The United States has a school year approximately 180 days long, while South Korea has 220 days and Japan has 243 days long. A shorter vacation time (or smaller vacations dispersed throughout the year) may be the "solution" to our education system's problems.