<p>“She said yes, she was going to make them do volunteer work over the summer. Yikes. Okay, she was already misguided on not knowing where her teens are in the wee hours. But I couldn’t help saying that volunteer work is something to do because it is the right thing to do. Not a punishment.”</p>
<p>What’s really sad to me is that particularly low income people seem to think that community service is only something that people do to avoid jail.</p>
<p>An organization that I’m involved with was doing a neighborhood cleanup last year as a community service, and most of the residents just stared at us even though it was their neighborhood, not ours. Some even started making fun of us. It ended up that they assumed that we were doing community service to avoid jail. They really were shocked to find that we were doing it to simply try to be helpful.</p>
Then it seems like the “feed a man a fish and you feed him for a day” theme seems appropriate here. It seems hardly worth it to bother cleaning up a very low-income neighborhood. I would also think that some people would deliberately trash it once the volunteers would be done, with that kind of attitude.</p>
Actually, Cali Trumptet, it’s not. The idea of “summer”, back when we were an agrarian society, was that the children were necessary to help with the planting, sowing and harvest, much more grueling work than school. Children back then were an economic necessity; the farmer didn’t need to hire and pay someone to do the work that the child could do. (And that’s also why southern schools start earlier and end earlier - because the planting and harvesting seasons were earlier.)</p>
<p>The “summer vacation” as it is now known is a historical artifact. Parents don’t get a summer as “a break from working five days a week.” Students don’t need it either. Summer should now be spent doing something worthwhile - be it camp (while fun, allows for the child’s physical and emotional growth), job, summer study (academic, art or otherwise) or volunteer work.</p>
<p>Doing community service as a punishment is not necessarily a bad thing. Especially if it fits the crime. Kids putting dog doo in mail boxes can be the community pooper scoopers. I think litterers are appropriately given the job to clean up areas that are a mess because of people like them. Vandals just might learn how much trouble they caused by having to fix things that they broke. Working at a food bank or soup kitchen is not a bad punishment for kids who steal food or walk out of a restaraunt without paying (dishwashing is a classic consequence).</p>
<p>To add to Chedva’s remarks, there is a growing trend for year-round schooling with shorter breaks. Studies have found that a traditional 10 - 12 week “summer vacation” means the children come back having lost up to 25% of their knowledge base, especially in math. Other countries like Japan have a 6 week summer (plus have summer homework). Also, countries like Japan have a higher total number of school days per year resulting in much higher number of hours per year spent on schoolwork. It is no mystery why Japan students score so highly in comparision to US students. The combination of culture (high expectations of the children from the adults) and school structure (year round schooling) has yielded predictable results in Japan. It is not out of the grasp of the US (where I am from) to do something similar. In the meantime, parents who want high academic achievement from their children should not solely rely on the school system, but supplement it. (And I advocate this is a decision to be made from parent to parent, not all will see this the same way.) </p>
<p>After about the age of 12 - 13, my personal philosophy is that children need to stop being treated like children by their parents. It doesn’t mean I think children should be sent out into the workforce, but I do think it means that parents should take a look at summer break as an opportunity to prepare their children for the challenges of adult life. This might mean summer camp (friendship, survival skills, new experiences, dealing with other adult role models, etc), or helping around the house (being a member of the family that <em>contributes</em> significantly vs. just a free-ride member), or volunteering (exposing them to different careers, or having them help people of different ages, abilities, socio-economic or ethnic or religious backgrounds), or any other numerous activities. Our son wants to be a computer programmer when he grows up… during the summer he gets weekly programming “assignments” from his father to challenge him beyond his normal hacking. The assignments steer him to skills in programming that deepen his knowledge in a way that can be applied to many programming challenges. </p>
<p>The keys to consider are promoting balance, engaging in forward thinking and planning on behalf of our children, and considering our teen as a “young adult” capable of stretching beyond childhood self-definitions. There’s plenty of time for the teen to play, sleep in, goof off while also being directed over the summer break. The 3 or 4 summers before heading off to college or the real world of fulltime employment are about preparing our children for those challenges. NOT a summer of a “break” as the teen poster seemed to indicate. </p>
<p>Most adults do not get a summer break (and teachers do not, either - they often have to work parttime to supplement their income or end up taking classes for further credit and career advancement) - and I don’t want my kids to think that the majority of their adult lives will revolve around the idea of an automatic 12 weeks off. I remember when my son was in 2nd grade and his teacher gave him … gasp … WEEKEND homework. His reaction was tears and frustration because he had erroneously taken to believe that weekends were off-limits to homework assignments from teachers. I see a bit of this attitude (shock, denial, frustration, even anger) in some teens when confronted with the idea that summers during high school are <em>not</em> vacations, but a time that should be harnessed (with reasonable balance) for preparation to enter the adult world of responsibilities. </p>