The Education Corner - Is the Summer Vacation a Burden on You and Your Children?

• Why should the children not join with their parents in drawing up a daily program of activities that takes account of their natural inclinations?

• Let the summer program include some household duties, so that the children learn to bear responsibilities and to love work.

• It is the parents' duty to encourage their children's ambition and to nourish their love of knowledge and learning.

• Children have a creative mind of their own, which we must respect and encourage, that it may grow and flourish.

Most parents in our country wish that the school term would run on through the whole year and never stop, not even in summer. This wish of the parents is stripped of every thought but the thought of themselves and the denial of their parental duties. They wish their children would go to school every day of the year, even in the summer season; because once summer comes and the schools close, the calamity of calamities descends upon the parents, and they set about hunting for some means of keeping the children away from the house, if only for part of the day. And it is well known that the summer vacation is given to pupils for rest, for change, and for the recovery of energy for the coming school year.

I do not blame parents very much if they feel this way toward their children, for I agree with them that amusing children — nay, raising them — is no easy task; it calls for sacrifice, knowledge, and effort.

How many children are sent to school in summer, not because they need lessons and strengthening in certain subjects, but because the house is turned upside down by their mere presence in it! Thus we see that most of our summer-resort towns contain no small number of summer schools, and this number grows year after year, since attendance at these schools doubles every year. And the misfortune falls on the children, for most of the time they are sent to a summer school that follows systems and methods other than those they were used to and familiar with at their school in winter. And so the children come to loathe school, and lessons, and books, and everything.

It is no fault in parents to feel at times that they are tired of their children and to wish they could allow themselves a short spell out of reach of this responsibility. Such a feeling, coming over parents now and then, is a natural feeling... but our problem is that it comes over them always — always!!

There are many reasons for parents' shrinking from responsibility for their children in the summer vacation, and for their weariness at having them in the house the whole time — a weariness that passes by contagion to the children themselves, and turns them, too, against their parents... And so both parties are made miserable.

Children need attention; they need to bear responsibilities and to be kept busy with something, whatever it may be. If a program is arranged for them to follow in the summer season, we shall have done them justice. But in most of our homes the children take their vacation and stay in the house, and the shouting and the squabbling begin between the mother and the children. The children want to busy themselves with something; but the mother sets up barriers without number and unreasonable rules to keep the children from using this room, or that balcony, or that chair. Thus every request from the children is met with rebuff and denial; the children grow weary of all these prohibitions, and their sweet, artless conduct turns into a stubborn, harsh rebelliousness that crosses every grown person in the house.

The normal child, sound in body and mind, loves movement, loves work, and longs for encouragement and incentive. Why, then, should the father and mother not sit down with their children, whatever their number — two, three, four — and draw up a weekly program for the children to follow?

Suppose a family has two boys and a girl, their ages ranging between six and twelve. In a program of activities for these three there is great and profitable help for the mother throughout the day — provided the program takes account of the children's natural inclinations and their opinions on it are consulted.

Perhaps you will say: How can the children sit with us to draw up a program? Are they at school, that they should march according to a set program?

And my answer is that if you impose on your children what they are to do, and if the children feel that they are being driven according to your own thinking and your orders, they will very often cross you. And then you will brand them with rebellion and disobedience, and impose certain punishments on them — and so the troubles begin...

But if you discover what your children love, take their opinion in some matters, and cooperate with them in dividing up the hours of their day together, then rest assured that all the troubles will vanish.

Let the children's program in the summer vacation include some household duties, such as making the beds and helping in the kitchen — in drying the dishes and setting the table and some light cleaning. In this way the children learn to bear responsibilities and to love work.

Let us encourage the children to read in books other than the set schoolbooks. Let us read them stories. Let us choose with them certain books for them to read, and encourage them to summarize or criticize them if their age permits.

Children have ambition and a love of knowledge and learning. And it is the parents' duty to encourage this ambition and to nourish this knowledge.

Children have their own independent personality, and like grown-ups they love to preserve it. It is a sin to treat them like statues. Children have a beautiful, creative mind, which we must respect and encourage, that it may grow and flourish.

Children need the grown-ups to respect them, and to stop treating them as though they were dumb beasts that neither understand nor hear nor reason.