Should Kids Go To School Year Around?

There’s been lots talk lately about making kids go to school all year long so that we can keep up with Asia or whomever. The advocates for year round schooling point to our nation’s children’s math scores as evidence that American schoolchildren need to go to class twelve months a year. If we just do this, the proponents of this plan say, our children’s test scores will go through the roof and we won’t be left behind in technological fields. Well what is our nation’s future going to lose in the tradeoff?

Summers are times for the magic of imagination. Daydreaming of bigger than life issues day after day. Like- "How many extra forks can I extend on my bicycle? How high can we build a bicycle ramp and not kill ourselves jumping off of it? Does this critter bite? Will this homemade bomb blow up under water?"

Summers are for playing baseball, fishing day after day. For building dams down at the creek. For learning how to chew tobacco and play poker in the Heaton’s (my next door neighbors growing up) carport. For camping out in your buddy’s back yard and terrorizing the neighborhood in the wee hours of the morning. One of the greatest memories of my childhood is camping out in my neighbor’s backyard and listening to Roger Miller on a little cassette player I had. I couldn’t have done that on a Wednesday night if we had have had school all summer long.

Who cares if we catch up with Japan in math? Our imagination and spirit is what sets us apart from other countries. Are these other countries going to produce a Bill Monroe, Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, Mark Twain, Louis Armstrong, Chuck Berry, Minnie Pearl, Earl Scruggs, Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, Johnny Thunders or an Iggy Pop? No, they are busy copying us, wishing to Buddha that they could be American and have that rebellious American Spirit.

Now if our kids are gonna stay indoors all day during the summer playing Pokeymon or whatever, well…… pass the sushi.

Which brings me to another issue. USA Today ran an article a few months back on how kids stay indoors playing computer games all the time now and don’t get exercise running from neighbors they have pranked in the middle of the night or playing baseball. Well, when I was a little kid we had the cutting edge of electronic games like electric football and fun stuff like playing with Hot Wheels. And they were as exciting and up to date to us as these newfangled games are to kids today. These games were played indoors too. But we didn’t stay inside all the time playing them. We still went outside most of the day.

And blew things up.

Chicken Little

Our hearts go out to the victims of Hurricane Katrina and to all those folks in the devastated areas of the Gulf States. And we are really glad to see all of you folks chipping in with donations of money to relief efforts, busses, ships, and aircraft to help evacuate victims, and places to stay for those displaced by the hurricane and flood. As I write this, the noon news is showing refugees arriving here in the upstate of South Carolina on planes donated by the airlines. The American people once again showed their unlimited compassion for those in need.

But we here at The Gazette are disgusted by the actions of people here in the upstate, and elsewhere, greedily and frantically running to the gas stations filling up, worrying that there won’t be enough gas, further exasperating the problem.

If it ain’t Y2K, then we’re scared that letter from Old Aunt Martha contains anthrax.

Folks, there’s a reason why we read the story of Chicken Little when we are young.

Letters To The Editor